Cheryl

Good thoughts, Michael and Greg,

After having finished reading The Father Son and Holy Spirit, by Bruce Ware, I am very concerned about this subordination teaching in the Trinity that has crept into the church. The teaching in essence is that only the Father’s will is done. In my discussion with Bruce Ware, he has agreed to this point and we are still in dialog on some of his wording regarding the Supremacy of the Father. The problem is that if only the Father’s will is done from eternity past to eternity future, then the Son’s will in essence doesn’t exist. In what way can the Son’s will be considered a will if it is never used and never expressed? The teaching is that the Son has subordinated his will in every instance to his Father’s will. All this does is create a will of one person that is elevated and the will of another person that is subjected so that it is never expressed, yet scripture shows that in the Trinity the three have a united will. Only if the Son’s will is identical with the Father’s will can the Trinity have a true equality of essence because their united will is part of the essence of God. Anything less then Jesus having his own will which is also in complete unity with the Father’s will, would end up downgrading Jesus to be rather like a Stepford wife who has no mind of her own because she is just a mindless walking zombie.

It should also be noted that with several of the prominent complementarians, in their testimonies about their marriage, they have admitted that their wives were taken over by their actions as authoritative husbands and the wives felt like they didn’t really exist. Is this now how we are going to picture Jesus as one who has been “taken over” by the Father and one who never uses his own will in his place as God in the Trinity?

The interesting thing is that as I read scripture, I come away with hearing about our wonderful Savior and it is all about Jesus. Yet with Bruce Ware’s book the entire emphasis is on the Father who has the preeminence.