The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesiological Theology

December 21, 2011 by Gerald Hiestand

Christology, Gender, and the Fathers

Many complementarians believe that 1 Corinthians 11:3 teaches a kind of functional (not ontological) subordination of Christ to God. While the Father and the Son are equal in essence (pertaining to ontology), the Son voluntarily submits his will to that of the Father (i.e., the Son freely chooses to make himself  functionally subordinate to the Father). This functional subordination between Father and Son is then seen as the anti-type of the functional (not ontological) subordination of the wife to her husband. Or to state it again, the voluntary submission of the wife to the husband is seen as an expression/image/type of the intra-Trinitarian relationship (a typology basically identical to the Christ/Church relationship in Ephesians 5). Of course, the whole complementarian position in this regard hangs on the idea that Christ is indeed functionally subordinate to God. Egalitarians (naturally) don’t agree, and have accused complementarians of espousing a neo-Arian Christology. Consequently, both sides have sought to recruit the church Fathers to their side. Did the church Fathers recognize a functional subordination between the members of the Godhead (Christ to God, and the Holy Spirit to both God and Christ)? Or is any form of subordination beyond the pale of Trinitarian orthodoxy?

Ad Fontes!
It seemed to me that a profitable way of determining the Church Father’s position on this subject  was to examine the ways in which the Fathers handled the key texts of the current debate, most notably 1 Corinthians 11:3, John 14:6, 1 Corinthians 15:28-29, and the various passages which speak about the Father sending the Son. Key to this whole discussion is the extent to which the Son as God submits to the Father. Everyone (I think) generally agrees that the Son voluntarily subordinated himself to the Father during his brief sojourn on earth. But egalitarians insists that this subordination was a mere thirty-three year ordeal, and that upon Christ’s ascension he returned to “equal footing” with the Father, so to speak. What do the Fathers say? We may here profitably consult the Trinitarian writings of Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory of Nanzianus, and Gregory of Nyssa—arguably the four most important early Church Fathers regarding Trinitarian theology. Generally speaking, here’s how they handled the passages noted above. . .

When the Scriptures speak of Christ submitting to the Father, we should understand this to be a submission of Christ’s humanity. Gregory of Nazianzus writes:

What is lofty you are to apply to the Godhead, and to that nature in him which is superior to suffering and incorporeal: but all that is lowly to the composite condition of him who for your sakes made himself of no reputation and was incarnate—yes, for it is no worse thing to say—was made man, and afterwards was also exalted (Theological Orations, 18).

And Augustine agrees,

But because, on account of the incarnation of the Word of God for the working out of our salvation, that the man Christ Jesus might be the Mediator between God and men, many things are so said in the sacred books as to signify, or even most expressly declare, the Father to be greater than the Son; men have erred through a want of careful examination or consideration of the whole tenor of the Scriptures, and have endeavored to transfer those things which are said of Jesus Christ according to the flesh, to that substance of His which was eternal before the incarnation, and is eternal (De Trinitate, 1.7).

Likewise Athanasius, in describing the root error of Arian exegesis,

“They…expound of Christ’s divinity that which belongs to his manhood” (First Discourse Against the Arians, 13.55)

Thus, according to patristic exegesis, whenever Scripture speaks about Christ being somehow “less” than the Father, we are to understand this as a reference to Christ’s humanity. Thus, the Son does not submit to the Father qua Son, but rather submits to the Father as the incarnate God-man—the theanthropos. This interpretive framework is seen pretty clearly in the way the Augustine handles 1 Corinthians 15:28-29. In this passage, Paul states that Christ will subject himself to God in order that God may be all in all (the time frame of this passage is clearly eschatological). Augustine interprets this to mean that Christ as theanthropos submits himself as anthropos—and thus all of humanity with him—to God the Father (of whom the Son as theos is an equal).

A Synthesis
At first pass, this reading of the Fathers seems to support the egalitarian position. The Son doesn’t submit to the Father qua Son, but only as man. But hold on. In as much as the incarnation is an eternal reality, a perpetual inequality of nature is present in the relationship between God the Father and Christ’s human nature. While the Son remains homousia with the Father in his divinity (he is eternally God of very God, begotten not made, etc.), the Son as theanthropos—in as much as he is now also fully human—is also ontologically inferior to the Father in his humanity. In short, the Son is ontologically equal to God in his divine nature, and ontologically inferior to God in his human nature. Which is to say that the Son is both equal to, and less then, himself!

While its true the Fathers don’t like to ascribe any kind of subjection (functional or otherwise) to Christ’s divinity, they are quite ready to acknowledge that Christ’s human nature is inferior to God’s nature. And here’s where egalitarian Christology stumbles a bit. The egalitarian position fails to reckon with a perpetual incarnation; the incarnation was not a mere thirty-three year sojourn. Christ remains eternally theanthropos. Thus even if the Son as Son does not subordinate himself to the Father, the Son as theanthropos does voluntarily submit himself to the Father—and even now continues to do so. The Son is now and forever theanthropos, and thus in some fashion his human nature is in perpetual subjection to the Father (and indeed to the Son’s own divine nature). Christ, as the everlasting theanthropos, shows us eternally what true human obedience to the Father looks like.

Thus, in as much as the man/woman relationship of 1 Corinthians 11:3  runs parallel with the God/Christ relationship, it does in this sense does appropriately entail both love and respect, as a reflection of the love and respect inherent within the God/Christ relationship.  Pragmatically speaking, this way of framing things gives us the same result as the standard complementarian typology—deference and authority are viewed as everlasting elements of the Godhead, and as beautiful aspects of creation. And going this route grounds the complementarian typology more adequately in the Fathers.

A Few Loose Ends
It should be pointed out that the Fathers were battling against Arianism, and thus were very hesitant in any way to suggest that the Son was subordinate to the Father. One wonders if they would have been more favorable to complementarian exegesis under less polemical circumstances. One gets this sense in at least two areas where the Fathers affirm at least some form of priority to God the Father. In the first instance, the sending of the Son by the Father speaks of  the Father’s superior position within the Godhead. God the Father sends God the Son qua Son, not merely as theanthropos. It was fitting, Augustine says, that the Father would send the Son and not the Son send the Father. (Augustine seems to be working from the assumption that the greater sends the lesser. His explanation in all of this gets pretty convoluted, and frankly, I’m not sure I follow his logic.)  Additionally, the Fathers interpret John 14:6 as a reference to the Father’s generation of the Son as Son; the Father is “greater” than the Son in as much as the Father generates the Son and not vice versa (Athanasius, First Discourse Against the Arians, 13.58).

In all of this, though, I’m wondering how to think about person-hood. It seems to me that obedience/submission is rendered by a person, not by a nature. In as much as Christ’s person is divine, in what way does that factor into his submission to his heavenly Father? In what sense can the Son submit his “nature” to the Father without submitting his person? And if if he is submitting his person, than isn’t that one divine person submitting to another divine person?

Categories: Gender | General | Gerald Hiestand | Trinity