Sue

While I am deeply concerned with some of the things that have been said about the trinity. I believe it is difficult to resolve the issue.

On the other hand, I am not aware that historically, before the last 30 years, there has been any association of hierarchy in the trinity with hierarchy between male and female. Please correct me if I am wrong. but I have never seen evidence of this.

In the early church, sexuality was problematic, and some held that there was no sex in the garden of Eden, and others that there was sex but no lust. Gender relations were understood to have been altered not only in the degree of hierarchy, in that it was harsh, but in that there was no hierarchy before the fall, because Adam and Eve were only friends in the garden and not subject to desire/lust.

The way to regain this proper state, in the early church, was to be a virgin or martyr. If a woman was a virgin or martyr she escaped her femininity and returned to the true state of the soul, which was neither male nor female.

Therefore, the true state that we are all seeking in Christianity is to be once again free from our sexual constraints. In this framework, it would be very difficult to see male and female as projecting relations within the trinity. Rather, we as souls, although we do happen to be male and female, are in the image of God.

I haven’t any quotes at the moment, but if you find something that would support this, I think it would clarify the fact that subordination in the trinity, whether it exists are not, has not historically been used to reinforce gender hierarchy. See also Craig Keener’s paper, which is available on the internet, by googling his name along with trinity and subordination.

Under Much Grace,

The link was embedded in my second sentence,

Look at this quote from a book review Jim Hamilton wrote about a book by Denny Burk,

Here it is again – both ways.

http://jimhamilton.wordpress.com/2007/08/28/denny-burk-on-articular-infinitives-in-the-greek-of-the-new-testament/

Okay, this was one of the most shocking things I read and I wonder if these opinions can be called Christian. Look at this quote from a book review Jim Hamilton wrote about a book by Denny Burk,

N. T. Wright follows BDF in the opinion that the article with the infinitive in the final phrase of Philippians 2:6, “the being equal with God,” is an anaphoric article pointing back to the initial phrase of the verse, “the form of God.” On this understanding, “being equal with God” is equivalent to or synonymous with “the form of God.” But if, as Burk argues, the article is not anaphoric but appears as a grammatical necessity, marking the components of the double accusative construction, “equality with God” is not connected to “the form of God.” Rather, the articular infinitive designates “the being equal with God” as the object, whose complement is “a thing to be grasped” in the double accusative construction. Burk thus renders the sense of the verse as, “Although Jesus existed in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God as something he should go after also” (139). The payoff, then, of Burk’s careful grammatical investigation is that Philippians 2:6 affirms the ontological equality of Father and Son while maintaining the functional subordination of the Son, even in his pre-existent state (cf. 139–40 n. 46).

The payoff, why is it a payoff to have a subordinate Christ. Don’t we want Christ however he is. But the payoff is subordinate women!

Personally I think it is very silly for a complementarian wife to have the right to vote. She is required to vote for whoever her husband tells her to vote for so that man gets two votes and his wife gets none. This way complementarian men get twice as many votes as egalitarian or single men. In fact, I think that a wife who vows to obey her husband in the marriage ceremony should sign a paper forfeiting her voting rights as long as she remains married. That would make women think twice about vowing to obey.