The Command from His Father: Begotten not Made, Submissive not Subservient, Assigned not Subjected

Abstract

While a majority of contemporary theologians conceptualize the Trinity as ordered relations with unstructured authority (ORUA), other theologians view the Trinity as possessing eternal relations of authority and submission (ERAS). I argue ERAS offers a viable, biblically supported model within pro-Nicene orthodoxy. The following points ground this claim: (1) ERAS fully coheres with the biblically patterned, pro-Nicene Christological framework (i.e., true God begotten from true God, same essence with God, and identical in divine will and action to his Father); (2) ERAS compellingly explains the Scripture-revealed Trinitarian economy, which is best understood as expressing immanent Trinitarian relations; (3) ERAS is less vulnerable than ORUA to the misunderstanding that the persons reduce to God’s names (i.e., monarchianism) or that Christ possesses two filial relations (i.e., Nestorianism); and (4) ERAS fully answers key objections of ORUA proponents. Chapter 1 introduces the dissertation’s argument, background, methodology, and significance. Chapter 2 overviews ORUA, focusing on arguments for unstructured authority. Chapter 3 details ERAS’s understanding that authority distinctions inhere Trinitarian relations. Chapter 4 appeals to the following: (1) biblical data—the Son and Spirit express receptive dependence (i.e., submission) in the economy; (2) epistemic self-skepticism—we cannot discern, independently from Scripture, whether submission befits the transcendent Son of God; and (3) hermeneutical consistency—Christ’s economic sonship is eternal in divine equality (i.e., one God with the Father), in relational identity (i.e., Son of the Father), in constituting activity (i.e., generation from the Father), and in non-constituting disposition (i.e., submission to the Father). Chapter 5 defends ERAS’s consistency with fundamental doctrines: divine incomprehensibility, same-essence, simplicity, self-existence, freedom, etc. This chapter also shows how ORUA is susceptible to the misperceptions that the persons simply name God and that the non-submissive Son assumed a submissive person. Chapter 6 reviews the biblical and systematic conclusions in defense of ERAS’s coherence with pro-Nicene Trinitarianism.