StAnselm said:
My first reaction is, what's wrong with that? But I guess we need to work out what we mean by "subordinationism". Care to define it, Jon? And explain how the Nicene Creed teaches it?
I'm glad this came up. I'd be happy to explain it.
StAnselm said:
You see, I think the Nicene Creed has got it exactly right. The Son is equal to his Father in terms of his being, but still submits to him. This means, of course, that submission does not imply inferiority.
Okay, the explanation that you gave is correct and orthodox. But I think the Nicene Creed teaches something more that is outside of the economic distinction that you have drawn.
(Before I go ahead and give my own comments on the subject, I would like to refer everyone to Dr. Robert L. Reymond's discussion of this topic in his
A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, pp. 323-335. He addresses the issue better than I can and at greater length. Moreover, his scholarship, thorough-going Reformed faith, and biblical insights are a testament to his wisdom concerning this matter.)
Allow me to first give a working definition of subordinationism:
A doctrine that assigns an inferiority of being, status, or role to the Son or Holy Spirit within the Trinity.
The argument that either the Son or the Holy Spirit are inferior in
being to the Father is is embodied in a number of ancient doctrines, such as Sabellianism and Arianism. Now, the Nicene Creed clearly dismantles Arianism, for it explicitly denies that the Son was created. So much for that. And the Creed was written directly in response to the Sabellian heresy, which denied that any figure of the Trinity was fundamentally distinguishable from the other. That is, they did not possess any unique properties.
Rather, the problem is illustrated in the section of the Nicene Creed that addresses the eternal generation of the Son, which reads as: ". . . begotten out of the Father . . . out of the being of the Father . . . God out of God, Light out of Light, very God out of very God." You may or may not be familiar with the Greek word
homoousia. This translates as "of same substance." This is what the Nicene Creed affirms of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
viz. one Substance, three Persons. This is all very correct and very orthodox. What must be examined is the subordinationism of the beings of Son and Holy Spirit to the Father.
The Nicene Creed says that the Father is neither begotten nor proceeds, but that the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds. There are two types of subordinationism in focus: economic and ontological.
Economic subordinationism is implicit within the genitive forms of the Persons of the Trinity,
i.e. "Father of," &c. More importantly, it is embodied in the work of the Triune God. For instance, God (the Father) by his Son created the universe. Also, God (the Father) by his Spirit (and his Son's, as the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Sonthis is the filioque clause that divided the Catholic and Orthodox churches) inspired the Scriptures. In other words, in economic subordinationism, the Son and the Spirit are reliant upon the will of the Father to work. This is the subordinationism of which St. Anselm (the forumite, not the bishop
) was speaking. This is orthodox.
However, there is another type of subordinationism that is not orthodoxontological. Ontological subordinationism says that the Son and Spirit derive their essence from the Father. That is, they are not individually divine, but derive their divinity, albeit equally, from the Father. At this point, I will quote Reymond, somewhat at length, for he sums up the point very well:
The only conclusion we can draw from this data is that Scripture provides little to no clear warrant for the speculation that the Nicene Fathers made the bedrock for the distinguising properties of the Father and the Son. In fact, when they taught that the Father is the "source" ([Gr.] arche, or fons), "fountain" ([Gr.] pege), and "root" ([Gr.] rhiza) of the Son and that the Son is God out of (Gr. ek) God, that is, he was begotten out of the being of the Father by a continuing act of begetting on the Father's part, they were, while not intending to do so, virtually denying to the Son the attribute of self-existence, an attribute essential to deity. There were exceptions among the Fathers, such as Cyril and the later Augustine, who did not teach so.
The Nicene Fathers were satisfied that they had carefully guarded the full deity of the Son by their affirmation of the homoousia and by their insistance that the Son was "begotten not made." And no doubt his deity was guarded. But their language ("out of the being of the Father," "God out of God"), regardless of their commendable intention to distance the church from Sabellianism by it, suggests the Son's subordination to the Father not only in modes of operation [that is, economical] but also in a kind of essential subordinationism [that is, ontological] in that he is not God of himself [Gr. autotheos]. And this became by and large the doctrine of the church and it went unchallenged for well over a thousand years. (A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, pp. 325-326, emphasis in original).
In other words, the formulation "of one Being with the Father" taken in conjunction with "God out of God" indeed affirms
homoousia (same subtance) between the Son and the Father, but goes even further to say that the Son's existence is dependent upon the Father's. That is, the Son is not self-existent, but receives his existence by extension of his eternal generation (his eternal "begottenness") of the Father. To continue borrowing from Reymond's argument, but to now quote John Calvin, we'll see the Reformed theologian's thoughts on this matter:
Christ with respect to himself is called God; with respect to the Father, Son. Again, the Father with respect to himself is called God; with respect to the Son, Father. In so far as he is called Father with respect to the Son, he is not the Son; in so far as he is called the Son with respect to the Father, he is not the Father; in so far as he is called both Father with respect to himself, and Son with respect to himself, he is the same God. (Here, Calvin is quoting Augustine)
Therefore, when we speak simply of the Son without regard to the Father, we well and properly declare him to be of himself; and for this reason we call him the sole beginning. But when we mark the relation that he has with the Father, we rightly make the Father the beginning of the Son. (Institutes, I.xiii.19, emphasis Reymond's).
What Calvin says here is what we looked at above,
viz. that the Trinity naturally expresses an economic subordinationism, but in nowise an
ontological subordinationism.
Reymond continues the argument, citing recent Reformed theologians, such as Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, who both concur that there is something of an ontological subordinationism in the Nicene Creed. In fact, Warfield goes even further and says the clauses "out of the being of the Father," "God out of God," &c. are "speculative elaboration," asserting that Calvin also thought as much, and that it has no scriptural support ("Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity,"
The Complete Works of B. B. Warfield, vol. 5, pp. 277-279). Reymond also cites John Murray as affirming that Calvin thought the Nicene Creed taught an ontological subordinationism and that Calvin controverted this (see Murray's "Systematic Theology,"
Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 8).
Reymond's concluding argument and mine is that we should view the Son as eternally begotten in an
economic sense, but not in an ontological sense. That is, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all one Substance, three Persons, and all self-existent. More to the point, that each Person of the Trinity derives his existence from himself, and not from any other Person of the Trinity. While God is one God, none is subordinate to any other in any
essential sense. God as a Triune God is necessarily tri-Personal. And this necessity precludes any possibility of derived essence. God cannot be God without the Son, nor without the Spirit, nor without the Father, but all three Persons must exist for God to exist. Therefore, it is improper to think any Person is ontologically subordinate to another.
Soli Deo Gloria
Jon
