Trinity and Authority (Part Four of Five)

The Relational Analogy

It should be evident we do not approach the Trinity according to eternal relations of authority. However, it should also be evident we believe the ERA theologians have wielded some persuasive arguments for their position. In the final installment of our series on Trinity and Authority, we propose a way forward that may help diverse conservative evangelical theologians unite in their desire to affirm both orthodox Trinitarianism and gender complementarianism. However, we first examine the context and issue a warning about the limits of the relational analogy.

The Context of the Relational Analogy

Among the difficulties we have in utilizing the relations of authority approach is the strong connection sometimes made between anthropology and Trinity. Following Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we do believe there is an analogia relationis between the Creator God as Trinity and created humanity as male and female. And following Bonhoeffer, we believe this analogy of relations is derived from the creation account conveyed in Genesis 1-2.

Bonhoeffer's interpretation is attractive for many reasons, but perhaps mostly because it is grounded in divine grace and intended for divine glory. The analogy begins with God and ends with God, with humanity as the recipient of the grace and the conduit for God's glory. The woman is given to the man as a grace so she might help him "live before God—and we can live before God only in community with our helper" (Creation and Fall, 99).

But before one employs Bonhoeffer's currently popular analogy of relation hastily, his circumscription of grace must also be recalled. The grace of sexuality and marriage is not for an end in humanity, but in God. Moreover, the relation is never located in humanity, but is a relatio from God to God. The relation is "not a human potential or possibility or a structure of human existence" (ibid., 65). Rather, the relation is a gifting that is "justitia passiva!" (Bonhoeffer's exclamation point). Those conversant with Lutheran theology will recognize that statement is highly grace-oriented.

For Bonhoeffer, the analogia relationis "must not be understood as though humankind somehow had this likeness in its possession or at its disposal." The analogy operative in the human being "derives its likeness only from the prototype, so that it always points us to the prototype itself and is 'like' it only in pointing to it in this way" (Bonhoeffer's italics; ibid.). With Bonhoeffer, we agree the analogy of relation is never located in humanity, but ever moves from God through humanity to God.

The Limits of the Relational Analogy

If Bonhoeffer is correct, then attempting to illustrate the divine Trinity from even the most harmonious and loving human marriage disrupts the paradigm of grace. This does not mean one may never move conceptually from the imago dei back toward Deum, but in doing so, the theologian must cringe at himself and his tradition and constantly remember to resist hurried conclusions.

This is why transcendence-oriented theologians refer so often to the concepts of analogy, apophaticism, and eschatological reserve, as well as the doctrines of grace, revelation, and progressive sanctification. We do not have space here to unpack these concepts and doctrines, but to note they demand humility in the theological task. (See Keith Whitfield's forthcoming Trinitarian Theology for more).

This is not intended to discourage those following the ERA theologians, but to highlight those same theologians when they warn against injudicious correlations between creation and Creator. As Grudem states, "It is best to conclude that no analogy adequately teaches about the Trinity, and all are misleading in significant ways" (Bible Doctrine, 111). Grudem is on solid ground both in using analogies and in warning against analogies.

An analogy consists of both a conjunction and a disjunction between the object and its comparison. The key is determining where the conjunction ends and the disjunction begins. This is not easy to do, but it is necessary.

The Relations in 1 Corinthians 11:3

For instance, in 1 Corinthians 11:3, analogies are drawn between three headships: Christ and man, man and wife, and God and Christ. The difficulty is in determining how the three headships correlate. Do they correlate? Absolutely! But disagreements may occur among well-meaning exegetes over their exact conjunction and disjunction. Exegetical disagreements may be manifested in at least three places.

First, the ordering of the headships are significant, but in what way? If a primarily hierarchical or "chain-of-being" approach was intended, why did Paul (and the Holy Spirit) not place the third pair first, the first second, and the second third? Against those who would stress a tight conjunction, it must be stated that the headships are analogous rather than univocal. But against those who would stress a loose disjunction, it must be stated that the headships are analogous rather than equivocal.

Second, with regard to the question of gender relations, which analogy is to receive primary attention when comparing man and wife: Christ and man? Or God and Christ? And what does the comparison intend? In the longer comparison drawn in Ephesians 5, the emphasis is not on Christ and the man, or on God and Christ, but on Christ and the church, a comparison not made in 1 Corinthians 11:3. This suggests further canonical exegesis is required when correlating the Trinity and human marriage. (Moreover, 1 Cor 11:3 should be read in the context of 1 Cor 11:2-16.)

Third, the relations themselves are not identical. While there is a headship in each relation, each is characterized by its own properties. The relation between man and wife is copulative, while that between God and Christ is generative, and that between Christ and man is creative. To misconstrue the relations among the headships would create not only theological but ethical chaos.

This example suggests there are significant exegetical qualifications required before drawing anthropological conclusions from analogies. The relations of authority analogy is helpful and necessary, since it is divinely revealed. But it must be utilized within its appropriate limits.

Malcolm and Karen Yarnell

Fort Worth, Texas
June 2016

Trinity and Authority (Part Three of Five)

Theological Strategies for Eternal Relations of Authority

In order to make judgments regarding the eternal relations of authority effort, we suggest a review of their primary strategies for promoting their theological perspective. We discern three primary ways that the ERA theologians are advancing their theology: a scriptural strategy, an historical strategy, and a cultural strategy.

The Scriptural Strategy

Rather than glibly affirm a traditional heresy or neo-orthodoxy, the ERA theologians have recently busied themselves in two other ways. First, they seek to prove that their presentation of God is rooted in Scripture. In our mind, this has been their most successful strategy. They have demonstrated, without sufficiently detailed counter-arguments from their accusers, that Scripture constantly presents divine action—in creation, redemption, and consummation—as originating with the Father and moving toward creation through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. (Alongside this progression is the consequential return of the unitary divine activity from the Son and the Spirit to the Father.)

The most prominent exegetical argument(s) deployed against the ERA theologians are that the submissiveness of Jesus Christ toward God the Father in the New Testament is attached to his humanity rather than to his deity or that the divine economy is opposed to divine ontology. But these traditional arguments do not satisfy the free church desire for exegetical rigor over historical precedence and systematic expedience. On his part, ERA theologian Bruce Ware has repeatedly pointed to submission passages that broach, if not breach, the liminal boundary between time and eternity. 

In a first instance, 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 brings the subjection of all things at the consummation of time unto, if not directly into, the eternal relation between the Son and the Father. In Ware's favor, why should we believe that this passage has to do with Christ's humanity rather than his deity? On what basis is this exegetical division required? And what would the division do to the Son's unitary personhood as the God-man?

In a second instance, Grudem argues it is difficult to dismiss κεφαλή (kephale) in 1 Corinthians 11:3 as merely a reference to "source" rather than "head" (we believe it probably means both). If the correlation between the Father and Christ is merely ascribed to his humanity, how is it that this restriction is exegetically required? Again, what does this division do to the unitary personhood of Christ? Or why must we believe this passage is a reference to the economic Trinity rather than the immanent Trinity? Alternatively, if 1 Corinthians 11:3c is a reference to an economic Trinitarian work, why must we follow Warfield rather than Rahner and disconnect the economic from the immanent Trinity? And if we so follow Warfield rather than Rahner in this choice, are we not in some sense casting doubt on the trustworthiness of divine revelation?

With these judgments and queries, we are not permanently cutting off the ERA opponents and their interpretations of the biblical text, but we are saying the credibility of the ERA theologians' biblical hermeneutics is powerful and their judgments must receive deeper consideration. The scriptural case is far from closed but the weight so far in this particular debate favors the eternal relations of authority proponents, though we will have more to say in this regard later.

The Historical Strategy

The second major strategy of the ERA theologians has been to demonstrate their position is not a historical novelty. As historical theologians, we are not yet convinced by the ERA proponents here, though we believe the situation has not been finally determined. While Malcolm utilized the early church fathers in his own work on the Trinity, he did not read them with a focus on the questions raised by the eternal relations of authority theologians. Malcolm's other historical theological work has centered in the Reformation, while Karen has focused on early twentieth century German theology. We come to the current problem with appreciation for the historical task, though with limited patristic expertise.

But what we can say with certainty is that neither Wayne Grudem, who drafted Malcolm for his argument for eternal functional subordination, nor Mark Jones, who drafted Malcolm against Grudem, were entirely correct or incorrect. As Jones properly recognized, the indisputable fact is that Malcolm follows the classical eternal generation interpretation in his reading of the biblical text, and not the eternal relations of authority interpretation. This is not to say that Grudem was wrong to see a possible correlation with his position; it is to say that Malcolm's careful affirmation of equality with subordination did not distinguish the functional from the ontological in the way Grudem does. (It was perceptive and kind of Grudem to note Malcolm's use of the term, "subordination," is carefully paired with "equality.")

As for Mark Jones, we read his response to Grudem and found much with which to agree. Like Jones, we try to receive historical theology in a contextually sensitive way. In The Formation of Christian Doctrine and Royal Priesthood in the English Reformation, Malcolm argued that we should allow historical figures to speak for themselves according to their sitz im leben. We both remain convinced that meticulous re-presentation of the thoughts of those who have come before us is a necessary virtue.

However, Malcolm also remembers when his former professor and friend, the revered Reformed theologian John Webster, took him to task for dwelling upon historical fidelity. (For the curious, Malcolm was defending an historical reading of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion in a seminar at Oxford University, while Webster was advocating a freer appropriation of Calvin.) John Webster responded that historical theology is fine even necessary, but systematic theology ultimately requires the judicious appropriation of history for eternal concerns now.

If Webster's principle is correct, then Wayne Grudem is not entirely wrong to employ previous "subordination" claims in his favor, even if those authors used that language differently. Historical controversies rarely if ever exactly repeat themselves. And the ERA theologian need not necessarily adhere to a perfect correlation in order to infer a modicum of historical support, even if we ourselves prefer meticulous representation. Historical theology pursues truthful representation of the past; systematic theology utilizes historical theology to pursue truth itself. More thought is required in this question of theological method.

The Cultural Strategy

What the ERA theologians have not stressed in this latest round of controversy over Trinity and authority is their premier illustration for the immanent Trinity, the application to gender relations. For Grudem, Ware, and Ovey, gender relations in marriage has been the leading analogy in their presentation of the Trinity. This seems undeniable, though what is its import?

The ERA theologians have been accused of allowing contemporary cultural issues to drive their doctrine of the Trinity, but they have denied such. Similar accusations against their older evangelical opponents, the egalitarians, have also been leveled. Both the ERA complementarians and some egalitarians have found the Trinity helpful in addressing contemporary anthropological concerns, and both have been accused of reading anthropology into theology. The scandalous claim of idolatry has even been bandied about.

Whatever the case regarding currently unverified internal motivations, the marriage analogy is doubtless preferred among the ERA theologians. A preferred analogy is not all that unusual, but it can create problems. For instance, among those reviewing the classical tradition, the Cappadocians have sometimes been represented as leaning toward human community while Augustine has been represented as overextending human psychology. The Cappadocians were thus falsely accused of incipient tritheism and Augustine was thus falsely accused of incipient Unitarianism. The research of Barnes and Ayres has shown the so-called "de Regnon thesis" incorrectly fostered these readings of the fathers. Likewise, because of their preferred analogy, it may be that the ERA theologians have been falsely accused of Arianism.

In light of this, it seems prudent that we should never allow an analogy or illustration of the Trinity to remain unaccompanied. Malcolm encourages his systematic students at the least to use countervailing Trinitarian illustrations. This may help their people see that every analogy of the perfect God proves inadequate at some point. Unfortunately, if analogical variety is not deployed, somebody down the road may drag out a preferred analogy and attempt to hang its misuse against its proponent.

Misunderstanding or misrepresentation of intentions may also be driving some of the accusations against the ERA theologians. Apart from external proof to the contrary, or the omniscience which only one human being possesses, we who lack the divine nature must take the ERA theologians (and, by extension, the egalitarian theologians) at their word.

Malcolm and Karen Yarnell

Fort Worth, Texas

June 2016