In this essay we analyze some of the most influential of the recent claims that the Son is permanently and necessarily subordinate to the Father. After first summarizing the case made by Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem for their view, we evaluate the strength of their case and advance some counterarguments. In spite of the fact that their view has attracted a great deal of attention and criticism, the massive and important metaphysical claims made by Grudem and Ware have not (...) yet received adequate scrutiny. (edited). (shrink)

The doctrine of the Father’s begetting the Son in his divine nature, despite its credal affirmation, enjoys no clear scriptural support and threatens to introduce an objectionable ontological subordinationism into the doctrine of the Trinity. We should therefore think of Christ’s sonship as a function of his incarnation, even if that role is assumed beginninglessly.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward an East–West Ultramontane Polyphony:On Dogma, Ecclesial Unity, and the FilioqueThomas Joseph White O.P.The book that the contributors to this symposium have commented upon with graciousness and remarkable intellectual acuity is a work consisting of four parts. There are four main claims to the book associated with these four parts, each of which is divided into sub-themes. Thus, one can denote a number of inevitably controversial ideas advanced by (...) the book. In clarifying the nature of these claims, I can initially respond to some of the main points advanced by various of the helpful review essays in this symposium.Framing the Argument of the BookThe first part of the work posits that there is a fundamental developmental continuity between Old and New Testament revelation, wherein God is revealed first to Israel as the one Creator, and subsequently in Jesus Christ as three distinct persons, the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.1 This revelation is in turn received in the pre-Nicene era of the early Church, principally under a twofold conceptual format, according firstly to a model of God as a single transcendent subject of wisdom who sends his Word into the world in human nature, and inspires the prophets by his Spirit (the apologists' monotheistic model, exemplified by Justin Martyr) and, secondly, to [End Page 569] a model of economic Trinitarian activity, of the Father, Son and Spirit, who are each divine and one in being, active in sacred history (Irenaeus).2 Nicene Trinitarian authors sought in various ways to find a deeper concordance of the two approaches, one of which emphasized more the immanent unity of God (potentially tending toward a danger of Sabellianism) and the other of which emphasized real distinction of persons active in the economy (potentially tending toward the danger of subordinationism).3 Pro-Nicene figures like Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Augustine, among others, paved the way for a mature doctrine of immanent Trinitarian life, in which God was understood to be characterized, mysteriously, by eternal processions of the Word and the Spirit who originate from the Father, and receive from him the plenitude of their deity or divine nature, and thus are equally and identically the one God.4 God is mysteriously three persons who are truly one both in essence and being.The second part of the book is concerned with the theological exploration of what it means to speak of God as one, and of the divine nature of God. This determination of Christian theological wisdom stems from a threefold exigency: first, to uncover the inner unity of revelation itself, as indeed the Israelite revelation of the divine unity and the oneness of God the transcendent Creator is thematic to both Testaments;5 second, to consider the preconditions of Nicene orthodoxy, as indeed the claim that the three persons in God are one in essence or nature presupposes that there is a nature of God that is one common to the three persons;6 third, to consider what must be said about the inner life of God as truth and love, as a precondition for thinking about the processional life of the Word and Spirit, who are immanent distinct persons in God who receive and possess this fullness of life but who do not divide this one eternal life in God or cause it to evolve due to their relational proceeding.7I argue that a consideration of God's nature as simple, perfect, good, eternal, immutable, and so forth is essential to any theology that takes the biblical revelation of the unity and transcendence of God seriously, and therefore confesses the revelation of the Trinity integrally.8 Furthermore, regarding [End Page 570] the apophatic contours of this form of reflection, I hold that it is precisely in order to guarantee the kind of circumspect avoidance of "non-biblical speculation" about positive knowledge of God outside of Christ that it is necessary to qualify rightly how God is not identifiable with creation and thus remains unknown in his inner divine nature and eternal life apart from and outside of his divine self-disclosure in the revelation of the Old and New Testaments. Philosophical... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:REFLECTIONS ON PANNENBERG'S SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY 1 PAUL D. MOLNAR St. John's University Jamaica, New York RADING PANNENBERG leaves no doubt that one is encountering an intellectual giant. His thought is clear, systematic, comprehensive, and fact-filled. In many respects this book is exciting; topics are introduced and developed with details from scripture, from obscure and renowned Protestant theologians, from Aquinas, Augustine, Origen, Duns Scotus, Barth, Jiingel, Moltmann, Rahner, and many (...) others until Pannenberg 's own position is clarified and fully developed. Its six chapters explore : 1) how truth is the foundation of systematic theology; 2) how the concept of God relates to this truth (natural theology) ; 3) how the reality of God is understood in relation to other religions; 4) how to understand revelation; 5) the trinity; and 6) the unity and attributes of God. This last lengthy chapter (337-448) presents a very challenging description of God's attributes arguing that " the trinitarian life of God in his economy of salvation proves to be the true infinity of his omnipotence " (415). Hence the doctrine of the trinity makes it possible to speak correctly about God's immanence and transcendence without falling into pantheism, dualism, modalism, or subordinationism. This book is essential reading for any serious student of theology. Because of its complexity and difficulty, however, we shall focus on the relation of theology and philosophy and briefly explore the roles of experience and faith, natural theology, the 1 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991). 501 502 PAUL D. MOLNAR trinity, revelation, God's being and act, and the person and work of Jesus, with a view toward seeing how Pannenberg's philosophy affects his theology. In spite of his view that Rahner may succumb to " subjectivism " through a consensus theory of truth ( 14, n.22), many of Pannenberg's ideas, e.g., that "Nonthematic knowledge of God" is real and " part of our original situation " ( 115), and that, in the context of modern secularism, the word " God " still reminds us that "the wholeness of human existence has become an unanswered question" (71), would resonate positively with a Rahnerian method. And while he believes Barth did not succeed in grounding the doctrine of the trinity in revelation (327, 296), he contends that Rahner made progress with his thesis of identity, even though by allowing the Father to remain transcendent, he did not go far enough and should have seen that the Father " has made himself dependent upon the course of history " (329, emphasis mine). While Pannenberg deliberately intends to emphasize God's freedom and to avoid subjectivism (36ff., 127ff., 376-7, 391, 419), as when he argues that dogmaticians do not decide what is true, but only God decides (56), fundamental problems do affiict his approach to theology from the beginning. For example: The natural theology of the philosophers had formulated a criterion for judging whether any God could be seriously considered as the author of the whole cosmos, and Christian theology had to meet this criterion if its claim could be taken seriously that the God who redeems us in Jesus Christ is the Creator of heaven and earth and thus the one true God of all peoples (79). The obvious question which arises here is whether it is philosophy or God the creator, known through faith, who determines the meaning of creation and redemption; problems connected with this assertion arise within each chapter. Even though Pannenberg recognizes the problem of establishing our knowledge of God by negating our limited experience ( 184£., 406), he actually attempts to understand God's being in terms of the limits of creaturely experience when he argues that finite knowledge " is grounded especially in the time-bound nature PANNENBERG'S SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY 503 of the knowledge" (54). Thus all of our statements about God, who is not an object in the world, "rest on anticipations of the totality of the world and therefore on the as yet nonexistent future of its uncompleted history " (55, emphasis mine) ; following Descartes, he writes " We attain a sense of the infinite only by negation of the limit of the finite "; while our direct unthematic... (shrink)

This article intends to analyse the Hobbesian version of the Christian dogma of the Trinity as it is observed in the corresponding sections of Leviathan , De Cive and Heresy , and alluded to in other texts (controversy with Bramhall). It shall be important to specify: (a) As a starting point, the exact place of such concept within the general problem expressed by the difference between "political theology" and "theologico-political problem" (C. Altini); (b) The main items of the philosopher's Trinitarian (...) exposition as well as his intention while writing it, according to the "secularist", "theistic" and "Divine Omnipotence" interpretations. (J. Overhoff, A. Martinich, P. Springborg, L. Foisneau, F. Lessay, G. Wright); (c) His relationship with the contemporary orthodox currents (Trinitarian) and heterodox currents (antitrinitarian), as well as with the elements from ancient antitrinitarian heresies (subordinationism, modalism, sabellianism). (shrink)

The Alexandrian theologian Origen wrote that God the Father exceeds the Son in a way that surpasses the Son’s own transcendence of creation, and he apparently did so in order to oppose those who disregarded Jesus’ statement that «the Father is greater than I» . Just a few years after Origen’s death, however, when correction of his Son of God theology was well underway, Arius radicalized the latent subordinationism present in Origen’s thought by placing the Son among created things. (...) The Arian tendency to associate the Son with the created realm can be traced back to the attempts of Methodius of Olympus and Eusebius of Caesarea to counter Origen’s doctrine of eternal creation. Arius claimed that Christ is called «Son» because he is the created instrument of God’s will, and he gained sympathy for this voluntaristic view by citing John 14:28. Here was irrefutable scriptural proof of the metaphysical priority of the Father over the Son who is a separate and yet perfect creature of God. (shrink)

William Hasker and I have a friendly disagreement over the doctrine of the Trinity. We both reject classical theistic attributes like divine timelessness and divine simplicity. Instead, we affirm that God is temporal and unified. Further, we reject so-called Latin models of the Trinity, and prefer social models of the Trinity. Where we disagree is over the doctrine of the processions of the Trinitarian persons. In this essay, I articulate some problems for the doctrine of the processions.

This article investigates the growth and decline of the use of the ante-Nicene Fathers in relation to Trinitarian issues in seventeenth-century Anglican apologetics. Anglican apologists referred to the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers as the earliest and most reliable testimonies of Christianity contra what they perceived as Popish, Puritan, and Socinian corruptions of the true religion. On the other hand, Catholic, Reformed, and anti-Trinitarian polemicists stigmatized the incompatibility of the ante-Nicenes’ writings with the Trinitarian dogma formulated at Nicaea and elaborated (...) by the post-Nicene Fathers. In response, several Church of England divines attempted to defend their engagement with the ante-Nicene Fathers from the criticisms of Catholic, Reformed, and anti-Trinitarian polemicists, which exposed their use of the ante-Nicenes in Trinitarian matters to the charge of priestcraft. The historical narratives employed by Anglican apologists ultimately proved ineffective, and even provided various heterodox thinkers, such as John Toland, with additional arguments against the Trinitarian dogma. (shrink)