Frank

Mark, I apologize for the terseness of my previous comment. It was addressed more to Cheryl, Dave, Lin, and Kay who know me better than you do, and who understand where I am coming from. For on both Cheryl’s site and CBE’s The Scroll, I have previously demonstrated my knowledge of past and present Trinitarian controversies, and why I believe, contrary to what they say, Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware are promoting a novel and dangerous form of Arianism, or Subordinationism. Now you may not agree with me, but on the basis of my own studies of the Trinity over the last two years, that is the conclusion I have come to, and that is why I so fiercely oppose them. However, I recognize that I need to clarifiy what you regard as my “apparent” misrepresentations, so you at least understand why I am taking this stance. So let me make the following points:
1. Now how, I don’t know how well versed your are in the disputes between the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers with the Arians, but the one of main contentions made by Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom against the Arians was that it was logically inconsistent and incoherent to argue that two persons, divine or otherwise, are essentially equal if, at the same time, one is in permanently and obligatorily in subordination to the other. Kevin Giles sums it up this way:

From the time of Athanasius, theologians have recognized that if the Son is eternally subordinate in his work, function or operations, it must mean he is eternally subordinated in being, essence, nature, person or subsistence. If the Son or any human being is a personal equal to another, they may choose to subordinate themselves to another; but when subordination is both permanent and obligatory, the personal inferiority of the subordinate is implied. If one party is always and necessarily subordinate to the other, the subordinate person must lack something the superior person possesses (Cf. “The Subordination of Christ and the Subordination of Women”, Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, IVP, 2005, p.348).

So, if of necessity the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father in all things, and not by choice and for a limited time for a specific purpose, then he is inferior to the Father in being. By the same token, if women are, of necessity, permanently subordinate to men in all things–not by choice and for a limited for a specific purpose–then they are inferior to men in their essence or being. And so both the denials of the Son’s inferiority to the Father, and of women to men, as so often made by complementarian, are meaningless.
2. You accuse me of misleading people, twisting history to my own ends, because I argue that “the Arian heresy stemmed primarily from the roles of men and women.” If that is what you think I said or meant to say, you are incorrect. Nevertheless, there is evidence that 1 Cor. 11:3 was a text Arians later used to argue their case that the Son was inferior to the Father, using the “lesser to greater” analogy. Perhaps you are unaware that John Chrysostom (ca. 347-407 A.D.), a younger contemporary of Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory, addressed the Arians’ misuse of this text? Here’s what he said in one of his homilies:

“But the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3). Here the heretics rush upon us with a certain declaration of inferiority, which out of these words they contrive against the Son. But they stumble against themselves. For if “the man be the head of the woman,” and the head be of the same substance with the body, and “the head of Christ is God,” the Son is of the same substance with the Father. “Nay,” say they, “it is not His being of another substance which we intend to show from hence, but that He is under subjection.” What then are we to say to this? In the first place, when any thing lowly is said of him conjoined as He is with the Flesh, there is no disparagement of the Godhead in what is said, the Economy admitting the expression. However, tell me how thou intendest to prove this from the passage? “Why, as the man governs the wife, saith he, “so also the Father, Christ.” Therefore also as Christ governs the man, so likewise the Father, the Son. “For the head of every man,” we read, “is Christ.” And who could ever admit this? For if the superiority of the Son compared with us, be the measure of the Father’s compared with the Son, consider to what meanness thou wilt bring Him. So that we must not try all things by like measure in respect of ourselves and of God, though the language used concerning them be similar; but we must assign to God a certain appropriate excellency, and so great as belongs to God. For should they not grant this, many absurdities will follow. As thus; “the head of Christ is God:” and, “Christ is the head of the man, and he of the woman.” Therefore if we choose to take the term, “head,” in the like sense in all the clauses, the Son will be as far removed from the Father as we are from Him. Nay, and the woman will be as far removed from us as we are from the Word of God. And what the Son is to the Father, this both we are to the Son and the woman again to the man. And who will endure this? (“The Life and Work of St. John Chrysostom,” NPNF, IX, 3-23).

Now, it seems to me he is refuting a heretical view of Subordinationism that has many parallels to that advocated by Grudem and Ware. So compare what Chrysostom says about this text with what Grudem and Ware teach about it, and then draw your own conclusion.
3. Subordinationism, in all its forms, was a heresy condemned by both the Eastern and Western Churches. For example, at the Roman Council of 382 A.D., where the Nicene Creed was confirmed as authoritative and binding on all Christians, Bishop Damasus made 24 pronouncements regarding heretical departures from orthodoxy, among which are these: “If anyone denies: That the Son of God is true God, just as the Father is true God, having all power, knowing all things, and equal to the Father, he is a heretic;…that the Father,Son, and Holy Spirit have one divinity, authority, majesty, power, one glory, one dominion, one kingdom and one will and truth, he is a heretic.” And so however you may wish to deny it, the Subordinationism being advocated by Grudem and company is a new form of an old and deadly heresy. Advocated, I will add, for neither just nor good reasons. Here again, Kevin Giles has a pertinent comment:

In the Trinity, we are told, ontological equality and permanent role or functional subordination coexist without one canceling the other. If this is how the Trinity is ordered, the argument continues, the the Trinity justifies women’s permanent functional subordination. Furthermore, it is claimed that the differences between the sexes and the differences between the divine Persons can be preserved only if role differentiation–understood in both instances as the subordination of one party to another–is upheld. This argument seems to have persuaded many, but at this point two things should be noted. First, prior to the 1980’s no theologian had ever spoken of the Son’s subordination in “role” only. This use of the term, as well, as the idea of the permanent role subordination apart from personal subordination, came from the woman debate, where it appeared for the first time in the mid-1970’s. The language and reasoning that was invented to make an acceptable-sounding case for the permanent subordination of women was introduced into theological discourse about the Trinity and, in turn, the newly devised doctrine of the Son’s role subordination was used to support the doctrine of the role subordination of women. Second, this new doctrine of the Trinity, formulated by evangelicals opposed to the full emancipation of women, undermines the complete unity of person and work in the Godhead so clearly taught in Scripture. On this view, the works of the Son do not indicate that he is fully equal with the Father in divinity, majesty, power and authority. This novel doctrine of the Trinity makes the Son eternally subordinate to the Father in what he does. In his works he is less in power and authority (Cf. “The Subordination of Christ and the Subordination of Women,” Discovering Biblical Equality, pp.338-339).
4. Here I will only make two additional, but necessary comments on this matter. First, as regards how orthodox Christians are to think properly about the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Spirit. This matter, along with other Trinitarian concerns, was settled long ago by the Nicene Fathers, as T. F. Torrance explains:

What then does it mean to think of the three divine Persons specifically as ‘Father,’ ‘Son,’ and ‘Holy Spirit’? This is a question that had been cropping up in the Church since the Arian controversy, when attempts were made to speak of divine Fatherhood and Sonship on the analogy of human fatherhood and sonship. While there is certainly a figurative or metaphorical ingredient in the human terms ‘father’ and ‘son’ as they are used in divine revelation, they are to be understood in ways that point utterly beyond all sexist connotations and implications.Both the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit are incomprehensible mysteries which are not explicable through recourse to human modes of thought. Hence, as Athanasius and Gregory Nanianzen insisted, we must set aside all analogies drawn from the visible world in speaking of God, helpful as they may be up to a point, for they are theologically unsatisfactory and even objectionable, and so must of ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ when used of God as imageless relations. ‘Father,’ Gregory pointed out, ‘is the name of the relation in which the Father stands to the Son, and the Son to the Father, but such that it is an ineffable relation which exceeds and transcends human powers of imagination and conception,’ so that we may not read the creaturely of our human expressions of ‘father’ and ‘son’ analogically into what God discloses of his own inner divine relations. Hence, Gregory Nanianzen, like Athanasius, insisted that they must be treated as referring imagelessly, that is, in a diaphanous or ‘see through’ way, to the Father and Son without the intrusion of creaturely or sensual images into God. Thus we may not think of God as having gender, nor think of the Father as begetting the Son or of the Son as begotten after the analogy of generation or giving birth, with which we are familiar with among creaturely beings (Cf. “Three Persons, One Being,” The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons, T & T Clark, 1996, pp. 157-158)

Secondly, not only is this heretical component of hierarchical complementarianism based on a defective theological method, but it also rests on a false analogy that actually contradicts the very view these people are seeking to promote. So I both agree with and endorse the excellent expose’ and critique of this false analogy given by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis:

Unlike the subordination prescribed for women, there could be no subordination in the eternal Trinity that would involve one divine Person acting against his own preference or best judgment under orders issued from the contrary will of another divine Person. When the Father sent the Son, it was not along the lines of an earthly father who says, “Well, son, here’s what I’m going to have you do,” at which point the son learns what he better do or else. Rather, with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of one mind on how to redeem sinful humans (as they always are on every matter), it was the Son’s will to go as much as it was the Father’s will to send him (Phil. 2:5-11). Moreover, in Christ’s own description of his earthly ministry, he states that the Father has given him all judgment and authority (Mt. 28:18; Jn. 5:21-27; 17:2). Even during his earthly incarnation, when Jesus did only the Father’s will (Jn. 5:30; 8:28-29), the relationship of the Father and Son was not at all like that of a husband and wife in a patriarchal marriage, where the husband holds final decision-making authority and is neither expected nor required to share this authority with his wife. Even if there were an eternal subordination of the Son to the Father, it would fail to model the key elements of the woman’s lifelong subordination to man. What would female subordination to male authority look like if it were truly analogous to the subordination of the Son to the Father? First, the authority of the man and the submission of the woman would not be decided or demanded by their different male and female natures. Second, there would never be an occasion in which the man’s will would or should overrule the woman’s will; the man therefore would “send” the woman to do only what was in accordance with her own will. Third, every husband would willing and consistently share all authority with his wife, acknowledging her full authority to make judgments and decisions on behalf of both of them. In short, the oneness in being of the divine Persons, which results in oneness of will, precludes invoking the Trinity as either illustrating or vindicating the doctrine of woman’s subordination to man (Cf. “Equal in Being, Unequal in Role,” Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, IVP, 2005, pp. 330-331).

So, Mark I hope I sufficiently clarified what you regarded as “apparent” misrepresentation, or unclear and misleading statements; have given a clearer indication as to what I regard as the true, orthodox doctrine of the Trinity; and why I am a staunch opponent of what I regard as heretical teaching.