Semi-Arianism Masquerading as Orthodoxy: A Baptist Scholar on the Trinity Weighs in On "Eternal Subordination"

Contrary to the views of a handful of Baptist Identity bloggers, Southern Baptist blogs can be a source of beneficial debate within the Southern Baptist Convention. Evidence is in the the following email, sent to me after the writer read Growing Semi-Arianism in the SBC The email is from Dr. Curtis Freeman, Director of the Baptist House of Studies, Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina. His words, profound and direct, need no commentary from me.

October 8, 2008

Dear Wade:


Thank you for taking up this issue of the Trinity. Getting a Trinitarian conversation going among Baptists is more important than one might first expect given that most Baptists these days are, and for some time have been, functionally Unitarians. For example, in The Baptist Hymnal (1991) out of 666 hymns only 20 are Trinitarian (a ratio of 1:33), but 268 of these 666 hymns are Christological (a ratio of 1:2.5). Baptist worship in the South clearly tilts toward Unitarianism of the Second Person (i.e., a faith in Jesus alone to the near exclusion of the Father and the Spirit), just as on occasions in the past it has leaned in the direction of Unitarianism of the First Person (i.e. a faith in the Father alone with a subordinate role for the Son and the Spirit). To put the matter pointedly, most Baptists are Unitarians that simply have not yet gotten around to denying the Trinity. Non-Trinitarian faith is not necessarily anti-Trinitarian, yet it is reason for concern nonetheless.

All this may seem counter intuitive, but it's true. I often tell incoming students at Duke that they will hear the Trinity invoked more in the first week than in their entire life in Baptist churches. They later surprisingly tell me that they thought I was exaggerating at first, but after a week they came to see that I may have underplayed the way in which our community draws from the life of the Trinity in prayer, worship, study, and living. It has thus become one of my life goals to help the wider Baptist family retrieve a faith and practice grounded in the life of the Triune God in whom we live, and move, and have our very being. To the end that your conversation has served to raise that awareness I am grateful.

However, like you, I am concerned about embracing a Trinitarian doctrine that is not well grounded or tested. For several years now this new doctrine of the eternal subordination of the Son (ESS) has been surfacing among Baptists and other evangelicals. As I've read some of the replies on your blog and other blogs criticizing you, I've encountered the very odd claim that ESS is the historic doctrine of orthodoxy. A simple fact check of the history of the doctrine of the Trinity will reveal that ESS is not a historic doctrine at all, but a very new one. Nor is it part of the received wisdom of the Christian tradition, but in fact is a matter of contemporary speculation. Doctrines do change, and sometimes innovations are received as wisdom. But ESS has yet to be tested and proved by any but a very small and unrepresentative group. The doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t belong to Baptists or Evangelicals. It is the faith shared by all Christians. And until ESS has been tested by the whole Church, it seems prudent to wait.

One of the major concerns about ESS is the supposed distinction between functional and ontological subordination. While it is true that the incarnate Son in his earthly life was submissive to the Father, the suggestion that this subordination extends to his eternal exalted state is worrisome. As Kevin Giles has argued, very persuasively I think, this appears to be a new iteration of Arianism. To be fair to the proponents of ESS, they are not Arians in one important respect: they believe in the Son’s eternal generation (the aspect or Origen’s thought appropriated in the Creed of the Council of Nicaea, “eternally begotten of the Father”), but they also believe in his eternal subordination (the aspect of Origen’s thought not appropriated by the Nicene defenders of homoousios). I suppose that makes them only semi-Arians. [Thanks to my friend and colleague Steve Harmon for this qualification.] The burden of proof, however, is on those proposing this new doctrine of ESS to show that it is not a new form of an old heresy. I’ve yet to be convinced. Until this is worked out it seems wise to wait until this new doctrine of ESS has been thoroughly examined and tested.

Beyond the question of the orthodoxy of ESS, which is still very much in question, I am suspicious of the not so subtle political agenda of ESS which is attracted to Trinitarian theology, not as an account of the life in which we live and move and have our being, but as an argument that underwrites complementarian views. I am just as suspicious of those who use Trinitarian doctrine to support the complementarian social agenda as those who engage in social Trinitarian speculations to underwrite feminist convictions. Miroslav Volf, one of our best Free Church theologians on the Trinity, has called for caution in the use of such speculative Trinitarian theology which can easily be co-opted by ideologies of the right and the left. His cautionary word seems wise regarding ESS. I am suspicious that the real energy behind this new ESS doctrine is really a thinly veiled attempt to elevate complementarianism to de fide orthodoxy, so that complementarian gender relations are set forth as the only acceptable model for Christians and that egalitarianism is heresy equivalent to denying the Trinity. This utilitarian use of Trinitarian doctrine is (in my opinion) based on dubious scholarship and bad theology.

I share the goal of helping our wider Baptist family retrieve the wisdom of the vast storehouse of orthodoxy. As bad as functional Unitarianism is, however, the possible embrace of a semi-Arianism masquerading as orthodoxy used for political ends may be even worse.

Yours in a common faith,


Curtis


Curtis W. Freeman
Research Professor of Theology
Director of the Baptist House of Studies
Duke Divinity School
Box 90966
Durham, NC 27708-0966

The one sentence from Dr. Curtis Freeman's email that succinctly states the point I am making about the rise of eternal subordination in the Southern Baptist Convention is this one:

I am suspicious that the real energy behind this new ESS doctrine is really a thinly veiled attempt to elevate complementarianism to de fide orthodoxy, so that complementarian gender relations are set forth as the only acceptable model for Christians and that egalitarianism is heresy equivalent to denying the Trinity.

I shall allow Dr. Al Mohler's own words to frame Dr. Freeman's sentence above:

"The misjudgment of true Fundamentalism is the belief that all disagreements concern first-order doctrines. Thus, third-order issues are raised to a first-order importance, and Christians are wrongly and harmfully divided."

Amen, Dr. Mohler. When the "role" of women vs. men is set on an equal plane with the doctrine of the Trinity, then we Christians are wrongly and harmfully divided. May we resist any and all attempts to manipulate our understanding of the Trinity to justify our Biblical understanding of gender.

For further study on the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity, read Dr. Freeman's God in Three Persons: Baptist Unitarianism and the Trinity

In His Grace,


Wade Burleson

Growing Semi-Arianism in the SBC and the Consequences for Women If Left Unchallenged

Periodically Istoria Ministries will offer a doctrinal post for debate and discussion. Many Christians have little endurance when it comes to doctrinal reading and even less comprehension of how doctrine affects behavior.

This apathy for doctrine has far-reaching harmful consequences.

For this reason I challenge you to carefully read the following article as it reveals a doctrinal debate within the Southern Baptist Convention that has direct consequences on our Convention’s attitude and behavior towards women.

Let me repeat the last sentence for clarity: There is a current doctrinal debate within the SBC that directly affects our Convention’s attitude and behavior toward women in general.

The Arian Controversy

Arius was a Christian who lived and taught in Alexandria, Egypt (250-336 AD). He became the leading proponent of a heretical teaching that would later be identified with his name. Arianism is the belief that God the Father and the Son did not exist together equally and eternally, but that Jesus was created by God the Father and is eternally subordinate to the Father.

In plain English, Arianism teaches Jesus is inherently inferior to God the Father.

Some Christians wrongly confuse Arianism with Aryanism. The latter is the belief that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive, superior race. Hitler was an Aryan, but not an Arian. Aryanism is a belief in human racial superiority. Arianism is a belief in divine patriarchal hierarchy.

In 325 AD, Christian leaders gathered in the city of Nicaea (modern-day Iznik, Turkey) and debated the doctrine of the Trinity. The Council of Nicaea convened on May 20, 325 AD with around 300 pastors present to discuss the Arian Controversy.

After meeting for a solid month, these pastors issued on June 20, 325 AD what we now call The Nicene Creed.

The Nicene Creed is the clearest and most accepted statement on the divinity of Christ in the history of the church.

The Council declared that the Father and the Son are of the same substance and are co-eternal, believing this to be the biblical and traditional Christian teaching handed down from the Apostles.

The Nicaea Council believed that Arianism destroys the unity of the Godhead, and makes the Son unequal to the Father, in contravention of the Scriptures ("The Father and I are one" John 10:30).

The Council of Nicaea ended with the Christian pastors declaring Arius and his followers heretics.

A Resurging Semi-Arianism in the Southern Baptist Convention

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is composed of many Southern Baptists who are introducing to evangelicalism a novel, if not peculiar, view of Christ which has more in common with Arianism than the historic, orthodox view of Christ’s person.

The theologians and teachers who write for the CBMW are teaching what they call “the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father” as a basis for their anti-New Testament, patriarchal view that the female is always to be subordinate to the male.

Women’s subordination to men, according to the teachings of CBMW, is established because it reflects the truth of Trinity. Women will always be subordinate to men and wives will always be subordinate to husbands because Jesus is eternally subordinate to the Father.

That is the scary doctrine being promoted by leading Southern Baptists, a doctrine deemed heresy by the church nearly two millennia ago, and a doctrine that has disastrous consequences for women in the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Bible calls man's desire to "rule over a woman" a sin. The notion that God designed leaders to be males, and that He designed women in the role of submissive servants to men, is a direct contradiction of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

"Jesus called His disciples together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord their power over people, and their high officials exercise authority over others. It shall not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must serve." (Matthew 20:25-27) 

The false doctrine of men's hierarchal authority of women 

Some Southern Baptists, like Paige Patterson, Al Mohler,  and Wayne Grudem, believe and teach that the man is equated to God the Father in hierarchical authority. The woman can be equated to God the Son in humble submission. Just as the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father, so the woman is to be eternally subordinate to the man.

For this reason, the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood proposes that God’s unchanging ideal is the permanent subordination of women.

Their teaching is in error, and it contradicts the teaching of the New Testament.

The New Testament teaches that followers of Jesus Christ - regardless of gender - are to submit "one to another" (Ephesians 5:21). It is as natural in a Christian home for a man to submit to his wife in selfless, humble service as it is for the woman to submit to her husband in selfless, humble service. In fact, the great leaders in the Kingdom - male and female - are those who are servants to all (Matthew 5:27).

While there is no denial that there are differences between men and women, to base the “subordination” of women to men on the alleged eternal subordination of the Son to God the Father borders on an Arian view of the nature of Christ.

The very word “ordination means “to order by virtue of superior authority.”

To say Christ is “subordinate” to the Father means he has lesser (sub) authority, lesser (sub) superiority, lesser (sub) ordination.

There is a great deal that will be said in the Southern Baptist Convention and the evangelical world as a whole in the coming months and years about the role of women in society, the church, and the home.

Sadly, there is a tendency for those who hold to the hierarchical view of a man’s authority over women to label those who disagree with them as liberal. I've come to believe that those Christians who truly believe the teachings of Jesus Christ and who truly hold to the infallibility of the New Covenant Scriptures are at the forefront of empowering and encouraging women.

Those who follow Arian's teachings more than Christ's teachings refuse to let a woman teach Hebrew to men because of her lesser "spiritual authority" They refuse to allow a woman to hold a supervisor’s position in the International Mission Board because of her need to be subordinate to men and receive orders from men, not give them.  They advocate that women staying out of the work force because of their subordination to men in society, and call "liberal" those who oppose their alleged non-sinful "roles" of men and women. To these Southern Baptist modern Arians, women are viewed and treated as the “lesser” in terms of “authority” when compared to men, and anyone who dares disagree with them is considered a "liberal" Christian or a pagan.

It’s time for conservative, evangelical Bible-believing Christians who believe in the equality of men and women to realize that the great error in this debate is not a denial of the sufficiency, the authority, and the infallibility of God's Word by those who hold to gender equality.

Rather, the great error in this modern debate is the promotion of semi-Arianism - and a denial of Christ's clear teaching in the New Covenant - by those who wish to force their hierachical views of male authority upon the church, the home and society.

Peter Schemm, a member of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, argues that there is room within Christian orthodoxy for the belief in "the eternal subordination of Christ." He argues that people like Giles (and me) who oppose "eternal subordination" and view it as semi-Arianism are simply speaking too harshly for "there is room for both views within evangelicalism."

It is ironic that those who have an affinity for calling conservative evangelicals who disagree with them "liberal" are now proposing tolerance and acceptance of their unique views of the Trinity.

I do believe that we should accept our brothers (and a few sisters) in Christ who are arguing for "eternal subordination," and we should always treat them with Christian love and respect, but we should never be shy to challenge their unorthodox views of the Trinity.

Arius lost the debate in 325 AD, and I predict semi-Arianism will eventually be on the losing side of this current debate.