Those interested in
‘subordination’ or its absence, and eternal begottenness Nicea -style, ought to
take a look at what Warfield has to say about such questions. Below is a section
toward the end of his paper ‘The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity’ (Biblical Doctrines). The paper can be downloaded
as a PDF by Googling it. In keeping with the theme, I've split
up the section into three consecutive parts, as Warfield’s stately, compressed style needs to be read
carefully.
‘Begottenness' in the NT
It may be very natural to
see in the designation "Son" an intimation of subordination and
derivation of Being, and it may not be difficult to ascribe a similar
connotation to the term "Spirit." But it is quite certain that this
was not the denotation of either term in the Semitic consciousness, which
underlies the phraseology of Scripture; and it may even be thought doubtful
whether it was included even in their remoter suggestions. What underlies the
conception of sonship in Scriptural speech is just "likeness";
whatever the father is that the son is also. The emphatic application of the
term "Son" to one of the Trinitarian Persons, accordingly, asserts
rather His equality with the Father than His subordination to the Father; and
if there is any implication of derivation in it, it would appear to be very
distant. The adjunction of the adjective "only begotten" (Jn. i. 14;
iii. 16-18; I Jn. iv. 9) need add only the idea of uniqueness, not of
derivation (Ps. xxii. 20; xxv. 16; xxxv. 17; Wisd. vii. 22 m.); and even such a
phrase as "God only begotten" (Jn. i. 18 m.) may contain no
implication of derivation, but only of absolutely unique consubstantiality; as
also such a phrase as "the first-begotten of all creation" (Col. i.
15) may convey no intimation of coming into being, but merely assert priority
of existence. In like manner, the designation "Spirit of God" or
"Spirit of Jehovah," which meets us frequently in the Old Testament,
certainly does not convey the idea there either of derivation or of
subordination, but is just the executive name of God --- the designation of God
from the point of view of His activity - and imports accordingly identity with
God; and there is no reason to suppose that, in passing from the Old Testament
to the New Testament, the term has taken on an essentially different meaning.
It happens, oddly enough, moreover, that we have in the New Testament itself
what amounts almost to formal definitions of the two terms "Son" and
"Spirit," and in both cases the stress is laid on the notion of
equality or sameness. In Jn. v.18 we read: 'On this account, therefore, the
Jews sought the more to kill him, because, not only did he break the Sabbath,
but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.' The point
lies, of course, in the adjective "own." Jesus was, rightly,
understood to call God "his own Father," that is, to use the terms
"Father" and "Son" not in a merely figurative sense, as
when Israel was called God's son, but in the real sense. And this was
understood to be claiming to be all that God is. To be the Son of God in any
sense was to be like God in that sense; to be God's own Son was to be exactly
like God, to be "equal with God." Similarly, we read in I Cor. ii.
10,11:' For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For
who of men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?
Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.' Here the
Spirit appears as the substrate of the Divine self-consciousness, the principle
of God's knowledge of Himself: He is, in a word, just God Himself in the
innermost essence of His Being. As the spirit of man is the seat of human life,
the very life of man itself, so the Spirit of God is His very life-element. How
can He be supposed, then, to be subordinate to God, or to derive His Being from
God? If, however, the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father in
modes of subsistence and their derivation from the Father are not implicates of
tbeir designation as Son and Spirit, it will be hard to find in the New
Testament compelling evidence of their subordination and derivation. (163-4)
1.
‘Son’ and Spirit’ may seem to be obviously subordinate expressions. But this is
not the semitic way of understanding these terms.
2.
Sonship in 'only begotten Son' is simply ‘likeness’. Whatever the Father is the Son is also. It is
thus an assertion of equality with the Father, and not of subordination.
3. So expressions of the ‘begottenness’ of the Son may convey no
suggestion of coming into being, but of the Father's priority of existence. And similarly
with ‘Spirit’.
4.
There are in the NT almost full definitions of Sonship – in John.5.18 – and of
Spirit – in I Cor. 2. 10 -11. – that are non-subordinationist.
So
what of the subordinationist language in the NT?
There is, of course, no
question that in "modes of operation," as it is technically called -
that is to say, in the functions ascribed to the several Persons of the Trinity
in the redemptive process, and, more broadly, in the entire dealing of God with
the world - the principle of subordination is clearly expressed. The Father is
first, the Son is second, and the Spirit is third, in the operations of God as
revealed to us in general, and very especially in those operations by which
redemption is accomplished. Whatever the Father does, He does through the Son
(Rom. ii. 16; iii. 22;v. 1,11, 17, 21; Eph. i.5; I Thess. v.9; Tit. iii. v) by
the Spirit. The Son is sent by the Father and does His Father's will (Jn. vi.
38); the Spirit is sent by the Son and does not speak from Himself, but only
takes of Christ's and shows it unto His people (Jn. xvii. 7 ff.); and we have
Our Lord's own word for it that 'one that is sent is not greater than he that
sent him' (Jn. xiii. 16). In crisp decisiveness, Our Lord even declares,
indeed: 'My Father is greater than I' (Jn. xiv. 28); and Paul tells us that
Christ is God's, even as we are Christ's (I Cor. iii. 23), and that as Christ
is "the head of every man," so God is "the head of Christ"
(I Cor. xi. 3). But it is not so clear that the principle of subordination
rules also in "modes of subsistence," as it is technically phrased;
that is to say, in the necessary relation of the Persons of the Trinity to one
another. The very richness and variety of the expression of their subordination,
the one to the other, in modes of operation, create a difficulty in attaining
certainty whether they are represented as also subordinate the one to the other
in modes of subsistence. Question is raised in each case of apparent intimation
of subordination in modes of subsistence, whether it may not, after all, be
explicable as only another expression of subordination in modes of operation.
It may be natural to assume that a subordination in modes of operation rests on
a subordination in modes of subsistence; that the reason why it is the Father
that sends the Son and the Son that sends the Spirit is that the Son is
subordinate to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son. But we are bound to bear
in mind that these relations of subordination in modes of operation may just as
well be due to a convention, an agreement, between the Persons of the Trinity -
a "Covenant" as it is technically called - by virtue of which a
distinct function in the work of redemption is voluntarily assumed by each. It is
eminently desirable, therefore, at the least, that some definite evidence of
subordination in modes of subsistence should be discoverable before it is
assumed. In the case of the relation of the Son to the Father, there is the
added difficulty of the incarnation, in which the Son, by the assumption of a
creaturely nature into union with Himself, enters into new relations with the
Father of a definitely subordinate character. Question has even been raised
whether the very designations of Father and Son may not be expressive of these
new relations, and therefore without significance with respect to the eternal
relations of the Persons so designated. This question must certainly be
answered in the negative. Although, no doubt, in many of the instances in which
the terms "Father" and "Son" occur, it would be possible to
take them of merely economical relations, there ever remain some which are
intractable to this treatment, and we may be sure that "Father" and
"Son" are applied to their eternal and necessary relations. But these
terms, as we have seen, do not appear to imply relations of first and second,
superiority and subordination, in modes of subsistence; and the fact of the
humiliation of the Son of God for His earthly work does introduce a factor into
the interpretation of the passages which import His subordination to the
Father, which throws doubt upon the inference from them of an eternal relation
of subordination in the Trinity itself. It must at least be said that in the
presence of the great New Testament doctrines of the Covenant of Redemption on
the one hand, and of the Humiliation of the Son of God for His work's sake and
of the Two Natures in the constitution of His Person as incarnated, on the
other, the difficulty of interpreting subordinationist passages of eternal
relations between the Father and Son becomes extreme. The question continually
obtrudes itself, whether they do not rather find their full explanation in the
facts embodied in the doctrines of the Covenant, the Humiliation of Christ, and
the Two Natures of His incarnated Person. Certainly in such circumstances it
were thoroughly illegitimate to press such passages to suggest any
subordination for the Son or the Spirit which would in any manner impair that
complete identity with the Father in Being and that complete equality with the
Father in powers which are constantly presupposed, and frequently emphatically,
though only incidentally, asserted for them throughout the whole fabric of the
New Testament. (165-7)
1. In the NT there is
subordination in the ‘modes of operation’ of the persons in respect of
redemption, but it is ‘not so clear’ that there is subordination in each
person’s ‘mode of subsistence’, the way in which the person’s are related to
each other.
2 It may be that the
subordination in respect of redemption rests on subordination in modes of
existence, but it might equally well be based not on nature but on convention,
a one-willed convention of a covenantal character. And it looks that way
because of the pervasiveness of the NT teaching on the Covenant of Redemption,
on the humiliation of Christ, and on the two-natured character of Christ.
3. But this must be
understood as being not at the expense of the NT’s teaching on the ‘complete
identity’ of the three persons in their being and powers. The three are one God.
The three
- fold causality of the saving process
The Trinity of the Persons of the Godhead,
shown in the incarnation and the redemptive work of God the Son, and the
descent and saving work of God the Spirit, is thus everywhere assumed in the
New Testament, and comes to repeated fragmentary but none the less emphatic and
illuminating expression in its pages. As the roots of its relation are set in
the threefold Divine causality of the saving process, it naturally finds an
echo also in the consciousness of everyone who has experienced this salvation.
Every redeemed soul, knowing himself reconciled with God through His Son, and
quickened into newness of life by His Spirit, turns alike to Father, Son and
Spirit with the exclamation of reverent gratitude upon his lips, "My Lord
and my God!" If he could not construct the doctrine of the Trinity out of
his consciousness of salvation, yet the elements of his consciousness of
salvation are interpreted to him and reduced to order only by the doctrine of
the Trinity which he finds underlying and giving their significance and
consistency to the teaching of the Scriptures as to the processes of salvation.
By means of this doctrine he is able to think clearly and consequently of his
threefold relation to the saving God, experienced by Him as Fatherly love
sending a Redeemer, as redeeming love executing redemption, as saving love
applying redemption: all manifestations in distinct methods and by distinct
agencies of the one seeking and saving love of God. Without the doctrine of the
Trinity, his conscious Christian life would be thrown into confusion and left
in disorganization if not, indeed, given an air of unreality; with the doctrine
of the Trinity, order, significance and reality are brought to every element of
it. Accordingly, the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of redemption,
historically, stand or fall together. A Unitarian theology is commonly
associated with a Pelagian anthropology and a Socinian soteriology. It is a
striking testimony which is borne by F. E. Koenig ("Offenbarungsbegriff
des AT," 1882, 1,125): ‘I have learned that many cast off the whole
history of redemption for no other reason than because they have not attained
to a conception of the Triune God." It is in this intimacy of relation
between the doctrines of the Trinity and redemption that the ultimate reason
lies why the Christian church could not rest until it had attained a definite
and well-compacted doctrine of the Trinity. Nothing else could be accepted as
an adequate foundation for the experience of the Christian salvation. Neither
the Sabellian nor the Arian construction could meet and satisfy the data of the
consciousness of salvation, any more than either could meet and satisfy the
data of the Scriptural revelation. The data of the Scriptural revelation might,
to be sure, have been left unsatisfied: men might have found a modus vivendi
with neglected, or even with perverted Scriptural teaching. But perverted or
neglected elements of Christian experience are more clamant in their demands
for attention and correction. The dissatisfied Christian consciousness
necessarily searched the Scriptures, on the emergence of every new attempt to
state the doctrine of the nature and relations of God, to see whether these
things were true, and never reached contentment until the Scriptural data were
given their consistent formulation in a valid doctrine of the Trinity. Here too
the heart of man was restless until it found its rest in the Triune God, the
author, procurer and applier of salvation. (167-9)
1. The
threefold work of God in redemption is echoed and thus borne out in Christian
experience.
2. The
Christian finds the doctrine of the Trinity underlying and giving their
significance and consistency to the teaching of the Scriptures as to the
processes of salvation.
3. So the
doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of redemption stand or fall together.
So if Warfield is correct,
what he says affects the theory that the Son is subordinate, being begotten, but
subordinate only by a convention, the Persons' co-willingness, the willingness
of one eternal will, to take different roles in redemption.
