The Trinity Argument

To round off these essays on biblical affirmations of women, I want to give a brief outline and criticism of the now often heard argument among evangelicals that just as the Father rules over the Son in the Trinity in heaven so men are to rule over women on earth; the former is prescriptive of the latter. As the so called "biblical case" for the subordination of women has become more problematic, this argument has come to the fore. It is an attempt to ground the subordination of women in the deepest theology possible, the life of God in eternity! Since this argument is predicated on what its exponents claim is the historic orthodox doctrine of the Trinity spelt out in the Creeds and Reformation confessions, what these documents actually teach is the crucial issue.

Faulty reasoning

Before we explore what orthodoxy says the Bible teaches on the Trinity we should note the illogicality of this argument for the subordination of women and the false basis on which it rests. First, the faulty reasoning The argument is this; in eternity the Father rules over the Son and the Son must obey him. Likewise on earth men are to rule over women and they must obey. The problem is that this correlation is arbitrary and mistaken.

There does not seem to be any necessary correlation between the doctrine of the Trinity and the man-woman relationship. The Trinity is a threefold relationship; the man-woman relationship is a twofold one. If God's threefoldness is affirmed, and it is believed that the Trinity is prescriptive of human relations, then threesomes would be the ideal! Furthermore, the Father-Son relationship is a picture of a male-male relationship, not a male-female relationship. Most evangelicals would not want to say that a male-male relationship is the ideal! Finally, if the divine Father-Son relationship prescribes human relationships we would think it first applied to the human father-son relationship or the parent-child relationship. It seems the correlation between the Trinity and the man-woman relationship simply does not make sense. It looks like special pleading.

In reply, those who make this argument say, "But in 1 Corinthians 11:3 Paul has the Father 'head over' the Son and men 'head over' women. This proves our correlation is 'biblical". I think not. The Greek word kephale in the first instance literally refers to the top part of the body, the head, and in 1 Corinthians 11:3 virtually all commentators agree it could bear the metaphorical meaning of either 'head over' or 'source' The context in which this verse is found is the best indicator of the right understanding of the word in this instance. Because Paul immediately goes on to speak of men and women leading the church in prophecy and prayer (VV 4-5), the word in this context can hardly mean men are "head over" women. It seems rather that it carries the sense of 'source' , because later in this passage, alluding to Genesis chapter 2, Paul says woman came 'from' man (vy 8, 12) - he is the source of woman. However this is just one problem for those who want to appeal to 1 Corinthians 11:3 to prove that their hierarchical understanding of the Trinity prescribes the hierarchical ordering of the sexes. In 1 Corinthians 11:3 we do not have a fourfold hierarchy, God the Father - God the Son - man - woman, but a list of three related pairs, God the Son the kephale of humankind, man the kephale of women, and God the Father the kephale of Christ, the Son of God. In this play on the word kephale, Paul is saying little more than we human beings are 'from' Christ, the co-creator, woman is from' man (Genesis 2) and the Son is 'from' the Father in his eternal generation or incarnation. Lastly, I point out that 1 Corinthians is not a trinitarian text. The Holy Spirit is not mentioned.

The great danger in appealing to the Trinity to support any of our concerns on earth is projection. We first read our earthly agenda into the triune life of God and then appeal to the Trinity in support for what we already believe. This is what it seems evangelicals who want to uphold the subordination of women have done.

The false basis on which this hierarchical doctrine of the Trinity rests Evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians should base their theology on the Bible. Evangelicals who incessantly speak of the eternal subordination of the Son quote many texts, but undeniably they predicate their doctrine of the Trinity on the argument that the divine Father and the divine Son are a "real' father and a 'real' son. On this basis they argue that like all fathers the Father rules over the Son and like all sons the Son must obey his Father. Virtually every significant theologian across the centuries has taken the opposite view; human terms and human relationships cannot define God. The Father is not like any human father. He has no father, no wife, he does not create by sexual intercourse and he never tires or hungers. And the divine son is not like any human son. He has no mother, he was not created in time, and as "the Lord" he is subordinate to no one. John in his Gospel insists that Jesus Christ is "the Son" like no human son. Five times he speaks of Jesus as the monogenes Son, the unique Son (John 1:14, 18, 3:16, 18, 1 John 4:9).

To define God in creaturely terms is idolatry, depicting God in our own image.

The Bible, not human experience, reveals how we should understand Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the New Testament Jesus Christ is called the Son of God to speak of him as the messianic King, the fulfilment of the prophecies that God will send a ruler to justly rule his people, not to indicate his subordination. To be a Christian is to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the supreme ruler. In Scripture, the titles Father and Son are used of the first two persons of the Trinity in order to differentiate them, to speak of their intimacy, and to indicate that they are of the one divine being. The Son has the same divine being or nature as the Father. They are alike God without any caveats.

The Bible

Possibly the most important passage in the New Testament for rightly understanding what the Scriptures teach on the Father-Son relationship is Philippians 2:5-11. Here Paul says that in eternity Christ, the Son of God, had 'equality' with God the Father. Of his own free will and in complete harmony with the Father, he freely laid aside his divine glory, emptied himself, took human form, even the form of a servant and obediently, as the second Adam, went to the cross for our salvation. In response to his self-humbling, God the Father raised him to rule in heaven once more in all glory, might, majesty and authority. Now Christ rules as Lord. This passage, Athanasius helpfully said, gives a "double account of the saviour" - one as Cod in all might, majesty and power, and one as God become human with all the limitations this entailed. In understanding Jesus Christ as God we must not read these human traits, limited to his incarnate existence on earth, back into his divine life in heaven. If we were to do this consistently, we would have the Lord of Glory in eternity getting hungry and thirsty in the late afternoon and sleeping at nights! On earth, Jesus did obey the Father and was dependent on him as he lived out what it means to be a human being in perfect obedience and submission to God, but since his resurrection and ascension he is no longer the obedient, suffering and frail Son of Man. He now reigns as God Almighty with the Father and the Spirit.

The epistle to the Hebrews explicitly limits the Son's obedience to "the days of his flesh" (Heb 5:7-8) as does Paul Phil 2:8). Yes, Jesus gladly chose subordination in becoming human, identified as the second Adam who lived perfectly obediently and so won our salvation. But the Bible makes it plain that before and after his incarnation, the Son of God is fully one with the Father and the Spirit, co-equal God in all might, majesty, dominion and authority, worthy to be worshipped with the Father and the Spirit.

In seeking to rightly grasp and explain how the God revealed in Scripture can be one and three at the same time, the early Christians debated long and hard on this matter. First, they rejected the opinion that God is basically unitary and the three 'persons' are the one God in three differing manifestations (Modalism). Second, they rejected the idea that the Trinity is to be likened to three members of a family united in perfect love, because it was thought this breached divine unity (Tritheism). And third, in the bitterest and longest lasting debate, they rejected the idea that the Father, Son and Spirit are ordered hierarchically: the Father was God in the fullest sense, the Son a little less so and the Spirit less so again (Subordinationism). The consensus in the end was that God is eternally triune and cannot be otherwise; the one God is three coequal persons for all eternity.

The creeds and confessions

What the best theologians in the early Church concluded the Bible taught, read from cover to cover, on the Father, Son and Spirit relationship is codified in the Nicene and Athanasian creeds, and later in the sixteenth century Reformation and Post-Reformation confessions. These statements of faith define orthodoxy. They spell out what Christians should believe about the tri-unity of God and how they should rightly understand the Scriptures. No evangelical sets the creeds or any confession equal to or above Scripture in authority. This is not possible because the creeds and the confessions are understood to reflect what the church has agreed is the teaching of Scripture. In the Nicene Creed the Son is communally confessed in these words (note the 'we'- we Christians):

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only (monogenes) Son of God, eternally begotten (gennao) of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten (genna), not made, of one being (homoousios) with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, by the power of the Spirit he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became truly human.

Reflecting 1 Corinthians 8:6 exactly, we confess first of all "one Lord Jesus Christ". If Jesus is 'Lord' - the supreme ruler - then he is not subordinate to anyone. Next he is confessed as "the only Son of God" again exactly following Scripture. The Greek word translated 'only' is monogenés. It means, as we noted earlier, 'unique'. What the creed is saying is that the Son is not like any human Son. His Sonship cannot be likened to human sonship. Then the Son is confessed to be eternally "begotten of the Father", reflecting biblical imagery (Ps 2:7, Prov 8:24). The biblical metaphor of 'begetting' is brought in to explain eternal divine self-differentiation within the life of God. On the basis of his "begetting' the creed says the Son is "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, one in being (homoousios) with the Father". other words, he is God in exactly the same way as the Father, but he is the Son, not the Father. Finally, the Nicene Creed, reflecting Philippians 2:4-11, speaks of the Son "for our salvation" "coming down" from heaven and becoming human. The Nicene Creed is binding on all Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestant Christians, two billion believers, and it categorically excludes the eternal subordination of the Son in any way.

In the Athanasian Creed the unity of the three divine 'persons' in the Trinity is to the fore, and any suggestion that the Son or Spirit are subordinated and thus separated in being or authority from the Father, IS unambiguously excluded. Three clauses specifically deny that the Father rules over the Son:

1. "So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Spirit Almighty. And yet there are not three Almighties but one Almighty".

2. "So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord and the Holy Spirit is Lord. And yet not three Lords but one Lord".

3."In this Trinity none is before or after another: none is greater or less than another..all are co-equal" (no hierarchical ordering of any kind).

The Athanasian Creed is emphatic. The Father, Son, and Spirit are 'co-eternal' and 'co-equal' God, indivisibly one in divinity, being, and authority. Thus this creed asserts, "Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit". What is more, nothing in this creed gives any support whatsoever to the idea that the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity prescribes or models fixed hierarchical ordering on earth among citizens, races or men and women.

All the Reformation and Post-Reformation Protestant confessions of faith (the Augsburg Confession, the 39 Articles, the Helvetic Confession, The Belgic Confession, the Westminster Confession, etc.) speak of the divine three as one in being and power. The Belgic Confession, article 8, is the most explicit. It says, "All three [are] co-eternal and co-essential. There is neither first nor last: for all three are one in truth, in power, in goodness, and in mercy". The Son is neither 'subordinate' nor 'subservient'. The words 'power' and 'authority' are both divine attributes shared by all three divine persons and thus the two words in trinitarian discourse are virtual synonyms. What this means is that all the Protestant confessions rule out completely eternally subordinating the Son in authority or anything else. It seems therefore that if one wants to be deemed an orthodox evangelical Christian one cannot argue that women are permanently subordinated to men in authority because the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father in authority.

And to conclude

Evangelical egalitarians do not appeal to the doctrine of the Trinity in support of their belief in the substantial equality of the sexes. I cannot say that no egalitarian has ever done so, but Christians for Biblical Equality do not in their statement of faith, I never have, and none of the informed egalitarians I know have. Appeal to the Trinity to define the man-woman relationship was first made in 1977 by George Knight, and then the idea was popularised in the last twenty years by Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware. But who appeals to the Trinity to define the male-female relationship is not the issue. What we have to recognise is that the Trinity does not set a social agenda for this world. It is, rather, our distinctive Christian doctrine of God. Whoever appeals to the Trinity in support of their view of the sexes is mistaken and in error. This article was first published in Giles, K. and Cooper-Clarke, D. (2017) Women & Men: One in Christ: CBE National Conference ‘Better together 2017’, Melbourne, Australia Denise Cooper-Clarke & Kevin Giles, editors. Melbourne, VIC: Christians for Biblical Equality.

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1. See more fully my book, Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.

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Rev Dr Kevin Giles (Th.D.) is a graduate of Moore Theological College, Sydney and has completed post graduate study in England and Germany. He was in parish ministry for forty years in various ways; associate minister, church Planter, university chaplain, rector of a large multi-staff parish, and in "rebirthing' an inner city church. He has published widely on what the Bible says on the church, ministry, women and the Trinity. He writes with a passion to see the renewal of the church.