God in Three Persons - Part 5

This priority of the Father (or leadership role, or authority, of the Father) with respect to the Son is a consistent pattern in Scripture that is true prior to creation (in the eternal predestining of believers and in the names Father and Son) and continues far into the future, beyond the final judgment. The pattern is never reversed. The Son does not eternally beget the Father. The Son does not predestine us in the Father in the eternal councils of the Trinity. The Son does not create through the Father. The Son does not send the Father into the world. We never read that the Son so loved the world that he gave his only Father. Never does the Father pray to the Son or intercede for us before the Son. The Father does not receive authority from the Son to pour out the Holy Spirit. The Father did not receive revelation from the Son to give to the church in the book of Revelation. Never does the Father sit at the right hand of the Son. Never does the Son give the Father authority to execute final judgment. Never is it said that the Father will after the final judgment be subjected to the Son who put all things under him. This pattern of Father-Son interaction in Scripture is one-directional, from the Father and through the Son.

To deny these unidirectional relationships between Father and Son is to fail to speak the way the Scripture speaks about the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. No single text or biblical teaching anywhere in Scripture suggests or teaches that the Father is ever, in any instance, under the authority of the Son or carries out any single action or set of actions in obedience to the Son. Every biblical text on this question shows the Father in the position of preeminence in authority, and the Son always and only carrying out the will of the Father.

Authority & Submission

Are these the right terms to describe the relationship of the Father and the Son?

I would caution those who object to the terms authority and submission to realize that we live in an age where unbelievers deeply despise any kind of authority, even the legitimate authority of parents or governments—and most of all the authority of God

Surely in the age to come, we will willingly and joyfully submit to the greater authority of God, even though with sinless hearts we will never disagree with his directions. And among the sinless angels there seem to be positions of greater and lesser authority, since there are angels and archangels. Therefore, authority and submission seem to be positive qualities that we should delight in and affirm (while recognizing, of course, that they can be wrongfully used by sinful human beings).

For those who are still uncomfortable with the terms authority and submission, several other pairs of terms could also be used to describe this consistent pattern of action that we see throughout Scripture. We could say that there is an unchanging “order” (Greek taxis) of Father-Son-Holy Spirit within the Trinity and that this order is reflected in the works of God in creation and redemption. Or we could use other pairs of terms such as saying that the Father always “initiates” and the Son always “responds.” Or that the Father always “leads” and the Son always “follows” that leadership, or that the Father “directs” and the Son “obeys.” We could also say that, in the works of God, the Father is always “first” and the Son is always “second,” or that the Father is always “primary” and the Son is always “secondary.”

No matter which terms we use, it is a mistake to insist that the Father-Son relationship in Scripture is always perfectly symmetrical. It would be unfaithful to the consistent pattern of Scriptural language to deny the primary role of the Father.

However, if in the Trinity the Son is always subject to the authority of the Father yet also equal to the Father in deity and in honor, then it is understandable that, in various kinds of relationships between persons, the existence of authority and submission within the relationship is compatible with both persons being equal in importance and honor. This has important implications for authority and submission relationships among human beings, such as the submission of citizens to the authority of governments

Romans 13:1 ESV

1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

of employees to employers

Ephesians 6:5 ESV

5 Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ,

of children to parents

Ephesians 6:1 ESV

1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

of students to teachers and school administrators,

of church members to elders

1 Peter 5:5 ESV

5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

and of wives to husbands

Ephesians 5:22 ESV

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

In these relationships, the person who submits to a rightful authority should not think that submission implies lesser importance, nor should the person in authority think that this authority implies greater importance, and the example that proves this is the submission of the Son to the authority of the Father.

The Unified Will of God and the Three Distinctive Expressions of That Will

Is the will of God agreed upon by the Trinity?

I think we can all agree the attributes of God are not divided into parts, and so in speaking about the will of God as an attribute of his nature, there is one will. In addition, we must insist, of course, that there has never been a disagreement between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They have always been in complete agreement. In that sense also, there is one will in God.

On the other hand, within the one unified will of God, we must say that there have been three distinctive expressions of that will by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, it is difficult to see how we can do justice to statements such as John 6:38

John 6:38 (ESV)

38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.

The “I” in this verse cannot be the human nature of Christ, for the human nature of Christ did not “come down from heaven,” but rather the divine nature of the Son did this. And yet he distinguishes “my own will” from “the will of him who sent me,” which must imply that there are different expressions of the unified will of God among the three persons of the Trinity.

Recent Objections to the Eternal Submission of the Son

On what grounds is there objection to the eternal submission of the Son?

Matthew Emerson and Luke Stamps in the 2019 book Trinitarian Theology claim:

They object that “if the persons are distinguished in terms of authority and submission, does this not require distinct wills in the Godhead?”

D. Glenn Butner Jr.

Objects to the idea that the Son eternally submits to the authority of the Father because, he claimed, that would require that the Son has his own will, distinct from the will of the Father. But Butner claims that would mean that the wills belong to each person in the Trinity and not to the nature of God.

Grudem’s Reply to Objections

These authors objections are based not directly on Scripture or even on major creeds but on several writers, such as Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, who defended the doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth century AD.

it is important to remember that the writings of the early church fathers do not come to us with the same authority as Scripture or even the same authority as the early creeds.

If we deny that there is any sense in which there can be three distinctive expressions of one will among the three persons of the Trinity, it is difficult to understand how we really have three persons. Michael J. Ovey rightly observes, “Eternal subordination involves a distinction of ‘wills’ between Father and Son at the level of personal relation and not a distinction at the level of nature.”

No creed or confession of faith known to me in the history of the church has ever said that the view that the Son is eternally subject to the Father is an unorthodox doctrine. We are dealing here with a matter of great complexity and substantial mystery, and advocates on both sides are sincerely seeking to faithfully represent the teachings of Scripture about a topic that we can never fully understand in this lifetime, and probably not even in the age to come.

Should We Say That the Submission of the Son to the Father Is Eternal but Not Necessary?

Is eternal submission of the Son necessary?

We must be cautious here because the eternal relationships among the three members of the Trinity are largely a matter of mystery, with little explicit testimony from Scripture.

I think we can say at least that

(1) the names Father and Son (and Spirit) are eternal names and suggest some kind of priority for the Father in the relationship;

(2) all of God’s works outside himself (his opera ad extra) are voluntary, not necessary, and therefore all the works of God in creation and redemption that show a pattern of the Son’s submission to the Father were entirely voluntary, not necessary;

(3) what Scripture reveals to us about God’s works in creation and redemption is the primary way we have of knowing what God is like in himself;

(4) the eternal generation of the Son is necessary to the very nature of God and this suggests the appropriateness of some kind of internal ordering of the relationship; and

(5) many of those who deny an eternal relationship of authority and submission end up supporting a kind of equal relationship among the members of the Trinity for which there is no explicit support in Scripture while also claiming that everything revealed in Scripture about the Father-Son relationship does not really tell us who God is in himself.

Father-Son Relationship in the Trinity and the Husband-Wife Relationship in Marriage?

Is there a valid analogy between Father/Son in the Trinity and Husband/Wife relationship in Marriage?

Since “God created man in his own image … male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27), there are numerous ways in which we see analogies to the Trinitarian God in our human lives.

Yes, Scripture does point to an analogy between marriage and the relationship between Christ and the church (Eph. 5:22–33), but elsewhere it also points to an analogy between marriage and the relationship of Christ and the Father (1 Cor. 11:3), and there should be no objection to our using this analogy and pointing out both the similarities and the differences. One important similarity is that just as Christ is equal to the Father in his deity and also subject to the Father in their relationship, so a wife is equal to her husband in her humanity and importance and also subject to his leadership in the relationship.

What Is the Relationship between the Three Persons and the Being of God?

What is the difference between “person” and “being” in this discussion?

First, it is important to affirm that each person is completely and fully God; that is, that each person has the whole fullness of God’s being in himself. The Son is not partly God or just one-third of God, but the Son is wholly and fully God, and so is the Father and the Holy Spirit. Each person of the Trinity has all of the attributes of God, and no one person has any attributes that are not possessed by the others.

Because the existence of three persons in one God is something beyond our understanding, Christian theology has come to use the word person to speak of these differences in relationship, not because we fully understand what is meant by the word person when referring to the Trinity, but rather so that we might say something instead of saying nothing at all.

Can We Understand the Doctrine of the Trinity?

We should be warned by the errors that have been made in the past. They have all come about through attempts to simplify the doctrine of the Trinity and make it completely understandable, removing all mystery from it. This we can never do. However, it is not correct to say that we cannot understand the doctrine of the Trinity at all. Certainly we can understand and know that God is three persons, and that each person is fully God, and that there is one God. We can know these things because the Bible teaches them.

What we cannot understand fully is how to fit together those distinct biblical teachings. We wonder how there can be three distinct persons, and each person have the whole being of God in himself, and yet God is only one undivided being. This we are unable to understand. In fact, it is spiritually healthy for us to acknowledge openly that God’s very being is far greater than we can ever comprehend. This humbles us before God and draws us to worship him without reservation.

God’s purpose in the history of the universe has frequently been to display unity in diversity—and thus to display his glory. Eventually the entire universe will partake of this unity of purpose with every diverse part contributing to the worship of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for one day, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow “in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”

Philippians 2:10–11 ESV

10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Though we will never fully comprehend the mystery of the Trinity, we can worship God for who he is both in our songs of praise and in our words and actions as they reflect something of his excellent character.

Grudem, W. (2020). Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Second Edition, p. 325). Zondervan Academic.

Related Media

Related Sermons