Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

The second question I asked Moscow’s most well-known pastor is whether or not he believes and teaches that Jesus Christ, the Second Person in the Trinity, is eternally subordinate to the Father — not just subordinate to God the Father in the Incarnation (his time on earth as fully God and fully man), but eternally. I don’t have an answer yet, and I can’t guess how he feels about the issue, in the same way most of you can’t guess why in the world it is that I would ask such an arcane question.

But the doctrine of eternal subordination (Christ to God the Father) is, in fact, the primary theological defense employed by those complementarians who believe that women are to be eternally subordinate to men in church and at home. I’ll write more on the subject in subsequent posts, but evangelicalism is split these days between subordinationist complementarians and non-subordinationist egalitarians. The former believe that while Jesus and God are equal, of the same substance, both God, etc., Jesus is forever subordinate to God the Father in what they call “role” and “function,” as an earthly son is to his father. This is the essence of the Arian heresy, newly packaged in the last few decades to defend the subordination of women. It allows them to argue that “just as” Jesus is equal-but-subordinate, women are equal to men, and emulate Christ in being forever subordinate to them. I and a good number of evangelical scholars reject this out of hand — both the theology and the application.

Egalitarians, though, in denying the eternal subordination of Jesus to the Father, argue that “Father” and “Son” are metaphorical terms, not literal counterparts to the father-son hierarchy that naturally occurs within families. Further, I contend from Scripture and from the creeds, particularly the Athanasian, that God exists eternally and equally, of equal substance and honor and with one will, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (By the way, “Father” here is less gendered than positional; God the Father has no body and we are created male and female in the image of our creator). There is no vertical hierarchy, no obedience, no ordering; the relationship in the Trinity is entirely mutual, with no Person ontologically or functionally subordinate to the other two Persons. Lamentably, this is another case where bad theology leads to bad practice. The initial argument is wrong, and the application — that women should “follow the pattern of Jesus” in willingly submitting in role and function to their ontological equals — is especially pernicious. Pastors of centuries past could simply defend female subordination by describing women as ontologically “less than” and functionally inferior; no pastor could hope to prosper with that message today, so a re-tooling of Trinitarian doctrine, an old heresy resurrected with a new purpose, is thought to be a better backdrop to the teaching of female subordination.

But what was heresy then is heresy now, and the application of bad theology will always result in bad practice. I hardly need to point out that women have suffered from un-Biblical subordination to men, and telling them that they are imitators of Jesus in accepting subordinate status always defames Him and too often destroys them. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are ontologically, in their very being and substance, entirely equal of worship and entirely possessing of Lordship. There is no hierarchy in the Trinity. Likewise, men and women are ontologically, in being and substance, completely equal and capable of gifted service to the Lord. There should be no automatic, gender-based hierarchy, which is an effect of the Fall and doesn’t reflect God’s original intent.

Women who serve humbly and bravely alongside men, using all of their Spirit-given gifts, imitate Jesus much better than those who’ve been told that while they’re “equal,” they’re just going to always be a bit lower than their men. In the Kingdom of God, biology isn’t destiny, and relationship isn’t vertical. Implementing those ideas in our homes and churches would be an excellent start in developing the Reign of God on earth as it is in heaven.