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In orthodox Christianity, the Son is equal to the Father in power, in glory, and in being. This is called ontological equality (ontology – the study of being and essence). In the Catholic understanding of the Trinity, as explained by Aquinas, the only difference between the Persons are their "relations," namely that the Son is begotten by the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Son (in Western catholic thinking). However, Orthodox Christianity accepts that the Son is subordinate to the Father in terms of relations, namely that the Son was begotten by the Father and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and/or the Son. Subordinationism asserts that the Son and the Holy Spirit are subordinate to God the Father ontologically (in terms of nature and being).
Ted Peters says that if anything, contemporary mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic trinitarian thinking is “antisubordinationist.”
Subordinationism began within early Christianity. Virtually all orthodox theologians prior to the Arian controversy in the latter half of the fourth century were subordinationists to some extent (Badcock, p. 43.). This also applies to Irenaeus and Tertullian and to Origen
Until the fourth century, various forms of subordinationism were believed or condemned. The Nicene Creed declared the Son to be equal with the Father:
The issue before the council, it is virtually universally agreed, was not the unity of the Godhead but rather the coeternity of the Son with the Father, and his full divinity, as contrasted with the creaturehood that the Arians attributed to him. (God in Three Persons, Millard J. Erickson, p82-85)
In 380, the Roman Emperor Theodosius, by making the Trinity doctrine the State Religion, outlawed all forms of subordination:
By 379, when Theodosius I succeeded Valens, Arianism was widespread in the eastern half of the Empire, while the west had remained steadfastly Nicene. (Williams, Stephen; Friell, Gerard (1994). Theodosius: The Empire at Bay. B.T. Batsford Ltd. ISBN 0-300-06173-0, pp. 46–53)
On 28 February 380, (prior to the Council of Constantinople of 381) Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica, determining that only Christians who believed in the consubstantiality of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit could style themselves "catholic" and have their own places of worship officially recognized as "churches"; deviants were labeled heretics and described as "out of their minds and insane". (Errington, R. Malcolm (2006). Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-3038-0, p. 217).
This edict is the first known secular Roman law to positively define a religious orthodoxy. (Errington, R. Malcolm (2006). Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-3038-0, p. 217.)
In the traditional understanding of the Trinity, the Son is ontologically co-equal with the Father. The Nicene Creed describes the Son as homoousion with the Father. This means that He is of the "same substance" as the Father (The Free Dictionary or Liddell & Scott). This does not necessarily mean that the Son is ontologivally equal to the Father. For example, Tertullian wrote:
“The Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as He Himself acknowledges: My Father is greater than I (John 14:28).” (Against Praxeas 9).
In other words, although Tertullian regarded the Father and the Son as of the same substance, he also regarded the Son as subordinate (ontologically subordinate) to the Father.
However, in the traditional understanding of the Trinity, homoousiom is understood to mean that the Father and the Son share one single substance (numerically the same substance, as opposed to qualitatively the same). Consequently, homoousion is sometime translated as "one substance" (e.g. Merriam-Webster). For a discussion of the views, see, for example Erickson).
As indicated by names of the sides in the Arian Controversy, that controversy was not about the entire Nicene Creed, but specifically about the key word in the creed: Homoousion. By disputing that the Son is homoousion with the Father, the various factions of Arianism disputed that the Son is equal with the Father. In other words, the various factions of Arianism during the fourth century were subordinationists.
In various forms it thrived at the same time as Arianism, and long survived Arianism. Its chief proponents in the 4th century were Arius of Alexandria, with whom the view is most commonly associated, and with Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia. Two patriarchs of Alexandria, Athanasius of Alexandria and his mentor and predecessor, Alexander of Alexandria, battled Arian subordinationism.
Subordinationism continues in various forms today principally among Unitarians, who reject the creeds and confessions of the Nicean Churches.
History
Ante-Nicean
The Didache (c. 1st century) refers to Jesus as the Servant of the Father, indicating that He is subordinate to the Father:
"We thank you, our Father, for the holy vine of David your servant, which you have made known unto us through Jesus your Servant." We thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge, which you have made known to us through Jesus your Servant."
The Epistle of Barnabas (c. 100) claimed that "God" spoke to "the Son" when He said, "Let Us make man in Our image" (Gen 1:26). In other words, this epistle makes a distinction between the Son and God, which implies that the Son is not God which, in turn, means that the Son is subordinate to God:
"If the Lord endured to suffer for our soul, He being Lord of all the world, to whom God said at the foundation of the world, 'Let us make man after our image, and after our likeness,' ... " "For the Scripture says concerning us, while He speaks to the Son, 'Let Us make man after Our image, and after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the beasts of the earth, and the fowls of heaven, and the fishes of the sea.' And the Lord said, on beholding the fair creature man, 'Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth.' These things to the Son."
This also shows that this epistle believed that Christ existed before He was born - even before the world was created. Clement of Rome (composed late 1st or early 2nd century) stated that "Jesus Christ was sent from God:"
"The apostles received the gospel for us from Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was sent from God. So Christ is from God, and the apostles are from Christ: thus both came in proper order by the will of God."
Ignatius of Antioch (50-115) described Jesus Christ as "the expressed purpose of the Father," "in the flesh ... subject to the Father," and "follows the Father:"
"Jesus Christ ... is the expressed purpose of the Father, just as the bishops who have been appointed throughout the world exist by the purpose of Jesus Christ."
"Be subject to the bishop and to one another, as Jesus Christ in the flesh was subject to the Father and the apostles were subject to Christ and the Father, so that there may be unity both fleshly and spiritual."
"All of you are to follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father, and the presbytery as the apostles."
Justin Martyr (100-165) described Jesus as "God" but also as "subject to the Maker of all things;" taking messages from "the Maker" to men. The reason is that the words theos and deus, which is translated "God," for the first four centuries of the existence of Christianity had a wide variety of meanings. There were many different types and grades of deity in popular thought and religion and even in philosophical thought:
"... there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things; who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the Maker of all things ... wishes to announce to them."
Justin also believed that the Son existed before He was born; "begotten" before the world was created. But he distinguishes between the "unbegotten" Father, which means that the Father has not been caused by any other being, and the "begotten" Son:
"But to the Father of all, who is unbegotten, there is no name given. ... And His Son, ... the Word, who also was with Him and was begotten before the works, when at first He created and arranged all things by Him, is called Christ, in reference to His being anointed and God's ordering all things through Him; ... But 'Jesus', His name as man and Saviour, has ... significance. For He was made man ... having been conceived according to the will of God the Father."
Irenaeus (AD 115-200) is the earliest surviving witness to recognize all four gospels as essential. He described the Father alone as God; "the one God and the one Father:"
"... the Father himself is alone called God ... the Scriptures acknowledge him alone as God ... the Lord confesses him alone as his own Father, and knows no other."
" ... no other God or Lord was announced by the Spirit, except him who, as God, rules over all, together with his Word ... those who receive the spirit of adoption, that is, those who believe in the one and true God, and in Jesus Christ the Son of God ... our Lord acted likewise ... command us to confess no one as Father, except he who is in the heavens, who is the one God and the one Father."
"... neither the prophets, nor the apostles, nor the Lord Christ in His own person, did acknowledge any other Lord or God, but the God and Lord supreme: the prophets and the apostles confessing the Father and the Son; but naming no other as God, and confessing no other as Lord: and the Lord Himself handing down to His disciples, that He, the Father, is the only God and Lord, who alone is God and ruler of all;"
Irenaeus also refers to John "proclaiming one God, the Almighty, and one Jesus Christ, the only-begotten, by whom all things were made." Tertullian (AD 165-225), in Against Praxeas 9, stated that:
"The Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole."
Consequently, Tertullian professed that the Father, Son, and Spirit "are inseparable from each other" but that they are also "distinct from each other." He stated that they differ “by distribution,” “by distinction,” and “in the mode of their being.” Since "the Son is a ... portion of the whole," they have the same substance, but since he states that "the Father is ... greater than the Son," they do not have the same substance numerically but qualitatively.
Origen (184-253) taught that Jesus was deuteros theos (secondary god), a notion borrowed from Hellenistic philosophy. He also said the Son was "distinct" from the Father however, that everybody agrees. The question is whether the Son is distinct from God. Subordinationism suggests that the Son (and Spirit) are other in substance than the Father.
Pope Dionysius (composed 265) justified the unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as follows:
"Neither, then, may we divide into three godheads the wonderful and divine unity.... Rather, we must believe in God, the Father Almighty; and in Christ Jesus, his Son; and in the Holy Spirit; and that the Word is united to the God of the universe. 'For,' he says, 'The Father and I are one,' and 'I am in the Father, and the Father in me'."
Yet, by identifying only the Father as "God" and as "Almighty," he presents the Son as subordinate to the Father.
Arius and Alexander
The dispute between Alexander and Arius, which started the Arian Controversy, arose in 318 or 319. At the beginning of the controversy nobody knew the right answer. Arius (c. 250–336), a clergyman of Alexandria in Egypt, "objected to Alexander's (the bishop of the church in that city) apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the Father and the Son by his emphasis on eternal generation". According to Socrates, Arius' position was as follows:
“If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows that he had his substance from nothing.”
As explained in the article on the First Council of Nicaea, according to Kelly, the dispute was over whether the Son had a beginning. To argue this point, the parties referred to the source of the Son's existence:
To justify his view that the Son had no beginning, Alexander argued that the Son had been 'begotten' by the Father from his own being. But Arius argued that the Son was created out of nothing, and therefore had a beginning.
Alexander, therefore, described the Son as equal with the Father while Arius described Him as subordinate to the Father.
First Council of Nicaea
Main article: First Council of NicaeaArius' friendship with powerful allies, especially Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was influential in Constantine's Imperial Court, led to the controversy being brought before Constantine. Constantine at first viewed the controversy as trivial and insisted that they settle their dispute quietly and peacefully. When it became clear that a peaceful solution was not forthcoming, Constantine summoned all Christian bishops to convene the first ecumenical council (Nicaea I) at Nicaea. From the beginning of the Arian controversy, due to the influence of Arian bishops like Eusebius of Nicomedia, Constantine initially favored the Arian position. He saw their views as being easier for the common Roman to understand, and easier for Roman pagans to accept and convert to.
Two vocal subordinationists were Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia. Of these, Eusebius of Caesarea was more moderate in his subordinationist views. Although not as extreme as the Arians in his definition of who Jesus is, he disagreed with the Modalists in equating Jesus with his Father in authority or person but he was flexible concerning ousia (substance). The Anti-Arians also opposed Modalism, but insisted on the equality of the Son and the Father by nature (though they generally allowed that the Son was relationally subordinate to the Father as to his authority). For the reasons of him being moderate in the religious and political spectrum of beliefs, Constantine I turned to Eusebius of Caesarea to try to make peace between the Arians and their opponents at Nicaea I.
Eusebius of Caesarea wrote, in On the Theology of the Church, that the Nicene Creed is a full expression of Christian theology, which begins with: "We believe in One God..." Eusebius goes on to explain how initially the goal was not to expel Arius and his supporters, but to find a Creed on which all of them could agree and unite. The Arians, led by Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia, insisted that the Son was "heteroousios" or "of a different substance/nature" from the Father. The opposition, led by Alexander, his protege Athanasius, and Hosius of Cordoba insisted that the Arian view was heretical and unacceptable. Eusebius of Caesarea suggested a compromise wording of a creed, in which the Son would be affirmed as "homoiousios", or "of similar substance/nature" with the Father. But Alexander and Athanasius saw that this compromise would allow the Arians to continue to teach their heresy, but stay technically within orthodoxy, and therefore rejected that wording. Hosius of Cordova suggested the term "homoousios" or "of the same substance/nature" with the Father. This term was found to be acceptable, though it meant the exclusion of the Arians. But it united most of those in attendance at Nicaea I. Even the "semi-Arians" such as Eusebius of Caesarea accepted the term and signed the Nicene Creed.
Constantine, though he initially backed the Arians, supported the decision of the Council in order to unify the Church and his Empire. He ordered that any bishop, including his friend Eusebius of Nicomedia, who refused to sign the Creed should be removed from their positions in the Church and exiled from the Empire.
Post-Nicean
Athanasius, while believing in the Monarchy of God the Father in which the Father is the source of the Son, rejected Arian subordinationism. Constantine, who had been sympathetic to the Arian view from the beginning of the controversy, ends up rescinding the exiles of Arius and his supporters only a few short years after Nicea. He also brings Eusebius of Nicomedia in as his personal spiritual advisor, and then turned on Athanasius, who is not only deposed from his seat as bishop of Alexandria, but also banished from the Roman Empire a total of five different times.
After the death of Constantine, his sons, Constans I and Constantius II, share joint rule in the Empire. Both sons begin to actively support the subordinationist views of Arianism, and begin to depose Trinitarian bishops in key sees throughout the empire and replace them with Arian bishops. This policy begins to change the balance of power in the Christian Church, as many of the most influential churches in the empire became Arian by the intervention of Constans I and Constantius II. To this, Saint Jerome lamented about the creed of the Synod of Ariminum: "The whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian." Ironically, after Nicaea I, Arianism actually grew in power in the Church.
The deaths of Constans I and Constantius II ended this policy, however the increased power of Arianism in the Church remained unchanged until the ascension of an Emperor friendly to the Trinitarian view. Theodosius I called the second ecumenical council, Constantinople I, in 381, 56 years after Nicaea I, to confront the Arian controversy. Constantinople I once again rejected Arian subordinationism, and affirmed Trinitarianism. In addition, the Nicene Creed of 325 was amended and expanded to include a more detailed statement about the Holy Spirit, rejecting an idea which had been advanced by the Arians during the intervening years since Nicea, termed "Macedonianism", which denied the full deity of the Holy Spirit. The Creed of 381 included an affirmation of the full deity of the Holy Spirit, calling him "the Lord, the giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father."
Cappadocian Fathers achieved final victory against Arian Subordinationism by refuting the various later versions of Arianism. Like all catholic theologians they also believed in the Monarchy of God the Father, which they interpreted as denying the subordination of the essence of the Son and Holy Spirit. (The Greek Fathers and the whole Christian Orient speak, in this regard, of the "Father's Monarchy," and the Western tradition, following Augustine of Hippo, also confesses that the Holy Spirit originates from the Father principaliter, that is, as principle. In this sense, therefore, the two traditions recognize that the "monarchy of the Father" implies that the Father is the sole Trinitarian Cause (Aitia) or Principle (principium) of the Son and the Holy Spirit.)
The origin of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone as Principle of the whole Trinity is called ekporeusis by Greek tradition, following the Cappadocian Fathers. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the Theologian, in fact, characterizes the Spirit's relationship of origin from the Father by the proper term ekporeusis, distinguishing it from that of procession (to proienai) which the Spirit has in common with the Son. "The Spirit is truly the Spirit proceeding (proion) from the Father, not by filiation, for it is not by generation, but by ekporeusis." Even if Cyril of Alexandria happens at times to apply the verb ekporeusthai to the Son's relationship of origin from the Father, he never uses it for the relationship of the Spirit to the Son. Even for Cyril, the term ekporeusis as distinct from the term "proceed" (proienai), can only characterize a relationship of origin to the principle without principle of the Trinity: the Father.
In 589, battling a resurgence of Arianism, the Third Council of Toledo, in the Kingdom of Toledo, added the term filioque ("and the Son") to the Nicene Creed. This was ostensibly to counter the Arian argument that the Son was inferior to the Father because he did not share in the Father's role as the Source of the Holy Spirit's Godhead, and so they affirmed that the Holy Spirit proceeded "from the Father and the Son". This, phrase, however, was not intended originally to change the Nicene Creed, but only used as a local creed in defense against the Arians. But its use began to spread throughout the Western Church. To many in the Eastern Church, the filioque implied that there were two sources of the Godhead, the Father and the Son, which to them meant that there were now two Gods, and the Holy Spirit was relegated to an inferior status, as the only member of the Godhead who was not the source of any other. The Western Churches, however, did not necessarily understand this clause to imply this, but understood it to mean the Holy Spirit proceeded "from the Father through the Son" or "From the Father and the Son as from one principle our source". But to the Eastern Church, it appeared to be a denial of the Monarchy of the Father and an heretical and unauthorized change of the Nicene Faith.
In the Eastern Church, the debate surrounding subordinationism was submerged into the later conflict over Monarchianism, or single-source of divinity. This idea was that the Father was the source of divinity, from whom the Son is eternally begotten and the Spirit proceeds. As the Western church seemed to implicitly deny the monarchy of the Father and explicitly assert the papacy. Disagreements about the filioque and papal primacy eventually contributed to the East-West Schism of 1054.
Sixteenth-century Reformed
In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1, chapter 13 Calvin attacks those in the Reformation family who while they confess ‘that there are three persons’ speak of the Father as ‘the essence giver’ as if he were ‘truly and properly the sole God’. This he says, ‘definitely cast the Son down from his rank.’ This is because it implies that the Father is God in a way the Son is not. Modern scholars are agreed that this was a sixteenth century form of what today is called, ‘subordinationism’. Richard Muller says Calvin recognised that what his opponents were teaching ‘amounted to a radical subordination of the second and third persons, with the result that the Father alone is truly God.’ Ellis adds that this teaching also implied tritheism, three separate Gods.
Seventeenth-century Arminianism
Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), in contrast to Calvin, argued that the begetting of the Son should be understood as the generation of the person of the Son and therefore the attribute of self-existence, or aseitas, belonged to the Father alone. His disciple, Simon Bischop (1583-1643), who assumed the name Episcopius, went further speaking openly and repeatedly of the subordination of the Son. He wrote, ‘It is certain from these same scriptures that to these people’s divinity and divine perfections are attributed, but not collaterally or co-ordinately, but subordinately.’ Ellis says: ‘His discussion of the importance of recognizing subordination among the persons takes up nearly half of the chapter on the Trinity, and the following four chapters are largely taken up with the implications of this subordination.’ In seventeenth century England Arminian subordinationism gained wide support from leading English divines, including, Bishop John Bull (1634-1710), Bishop John Pearson (1683-1689) and Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), one of the most learned biblical scholars of his day.
Current views
Eastern Orthodox
According to the Eastern Orthodox view, the Son is derived from the Father who alone is without cause or origin. In this view, the Son is co-eternal with the Father or even in terms of the co-equal uncreated nature shared by the Father and Son. This view is sometimes misunderstood by Western Christians as subordinationism. The same doctrine is asserted by western theologians such as Augustine even when not using the technical term i.e. Monarchy of the Father. Western view is often viewed by the Eastern Church as being close to Modalism.
Catholics
The Catholic Church also believes that the Son is begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit is proceeding from the Father through / and from the Son. Catholic theologian John Hardon wrote that subordinationism "denies that the second and third persons are consubstantial with the Father. Therefore it denies their true divinity." Arius "made a formal heresy of" subordinationism. The International Theological Commission wrote that "many Christian theologians borrowed from Hellenism the notion of a secondary god (deuteros theos), or of an intermediate god, or even of a demiurge." Subordinationism was "latent in some of the Apologists and in Origen." The Son was, for Arius, in "an intermediate position between the Father and the creatures." Nicaea I "defined that the Son is consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father. In so doing, the Church both repudiated the Arian compromise with Hellenism and deeply altered the shape of Greek, especially Platonist and neo-Platonist, metaphysics. In a manner of speaking, it demythicized Hellenism and effected a Christian purification of it. In the act of dismissing the notion of an intermediate being, the Church recognized only two modes of being: uncreated (nonmade) and created."
Lutherans
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Subordinationism in yet another form gained support from a number of Lutheran theologians in Germany in the nineteenth century. Stockhardt, writing in opposition, says the well-known theologians Thomasius, Frank, Delitsch, Martensen, von Hoffman and Zoeckler all argued that the Father is God in the primary sense, and the Son and the Spirit are God in second and third degree. He criticises most sharply the Leipzig theologian, Karl Friedrich Augustus Kahnis (1814-1888). For these Lutheran theologians, God was God, Jesus Christ was God in some lesser way. The American Lutheran theologian, F. Pieper (1852-1931), argues that behind this teaching lay an acceptance of ‘modernism’, or what we would call today, theological ‘liberalism’.
More recently John Kleinig, of Australian Lutheran College, promoted a form of subordinationism and concluded:
Well then, is the exalted Christ in any way subordinate to the Father right now? The answer is both "yes" and "no". It all depends on whether we are speaking about Him in His nature as God, or about Him in his office as the exalted Son of God. On the one hand, He is not subordinate to the Father in His divine essence, status, and majesty. On the other hand, He is, I hold, subordinate to the Father in His vice-regal office and His work as prophet, priest, and king. He is operationally subordinate to the Father. In the present operation of the triune God in the church and the world, He is the mediator between God the Father and humankind. The exalted Christ receives everything from His Father to deliver to us, so that in turn, He can bring us back to the Father.
New Calvinists
While contemporary Evangelicals believe the historically agreed fundamentals of the Christian faith, including the Trinity, among the New Calvinist formula, the Trinity is one God in three equal persons, among whom there is "economic subordination" (as, for example, when the Son obeys the Father). As recently as 1977, the concept of economic subordinationism has been advanced in New Calvinist circles. In The New Testament teaching on the role relationship of men and women, Presbyterian minister George W. Knight III wrote that the Son is functionally – but not ontologically – subordinate to the Father, thus positing that eternal functional subordination does not necessarily imply ontological subordination.. The reception of such doctrine among other Evangelicals has yielded certain controversies.
Nontrinitarians
Main article: NontrinitarianismThe mainstream Christian doctrine of the Trinity may be described as the teaching that God is three distinct hypostases or persons who are coeternal, coequal, and indivisibly united in one being, or essence (from the Greek ousia). The three largest denominations that do not accept the Trinity doctrine are The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("Mormons"), Jehovah's Witnesses and the Iglesia ni Cristo. The Socinians also do not accept the Trinity doctrine.
Scholars
Oxford Encyclopedia
According to the Oxford Encyclopedia:
Subordinationism means to consider Christ, as Son of God, as inferior to the Father.
This tendency was strong in the 2nd- and 3rd-century theology. It is evident in theologians like Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, Novatian, and Irenaeus. Irenaeus, for example, commenting on Christ's statement, “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), has no difficulty in considering Christ as inferior to the Father.
In those centuries subordination was developed in Logos Christology which, partly under the influence of middle platonism, explained Christ as the divine logos of Greek philosophy; mediator between the high God and this world of change and decay.
When Origen enlarged the conception of the Trinity to include the Holy Spirit, he explained the Son as inferior to the Father and the Holy Spirit as inferior to the Son.
Subordination is based on statements which Jesus made, such as (a) that “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28); (b) that, with respect to when the day of Judgment will be, “of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Mark 13:32), and that He spoke of God as somebody else (Mark 11:18).
Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church
According to Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Subordinationism "regards either the Son as subordinate to the Father or the Holy Spirit as subordinate to both. It is a characteristic tendency in much Christian teaching of the first three centuries, and is a marked feature of such otherwise orthodox Fathers as" Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Reasons for this tendency include:
Consistent with Greek philosophy, the thought that God is transcendent (that He exist beyond the normal or physical level), and therefore that He is unable to interact directly with the physical world, implies that Christ is a lesser being.
The Bible presents God as one (monotheism).
Although others interpret the New Testament differently, John 14:28 (“the Father is greater than I”) and similar texts presents Christ as subordinate.
During the Arian Controversy of the 4th century, Arius and his followers did regard the Son as divine, but the words theos or deus, for the first four centuries of the existence of Christianity had a wide variety of meanings. There were many different types and grades of deity in popular thought and religion. Arius, therefore, held that the Son was divine by grace and not by nature, and that He was created by the Father, though in a creation outside time. In response, the Nicene Creed, particularly as revised by the second ecumenical council in Constantinople I in 381, by affirming the co-equality of the Three Persons of the Trinity, condemned subordinationism.
Until the middle of the fourth century very little attention had been paid to the Holy Spirit by the theologians. The 4th century Pneumatomachi rejected the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, “God,” p. 568, states that the teaching of the three Cappadocian Fathers “made it possible for the Council of Constantinople (381) to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which up to that point had nowhere been clearly stated, not even in Scripture.”
The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology
Subordinationism. The term is a common retrospective concept used to denote theologians of the early church who affirmed the divinity of the Son or Spirit of God, but conceived it somehow as a lesser form of divinity than that of the Father. It is a modern concept that is so vague that is that it does not illuminate much of the theology of the pre-Nicene teachers, where a subordinationist presupposition was widely and unreflectively shared.
This handbook refers to subordination as "retrospective" and a "modern concept" because it is only able to define this term with the hindsight of the developments of the fourth century.
Kevin Giles
Further information: Kevin GilesAnte-Nicene subordinationism. It is generally conceded that the ante-Nicene Fathers were subordinationists. This is clearly evident in the writings of the second-century "Apologists.". …Irenaeus follows a similar path… The theological enterprise begun by the Apologists and Irenaeus was continued in the West by Hippolytus and Tertullian… The ante-Nicene Fathers did their best to explain how the one God could be a Trinity of three persons. It was the way they approached this dilemma that caused them insoluble problems and led them into subordinationism. They began with the premise that there was one God who was the Father, and then tried to explain how the Son and the Spirit could also be God. By the fourth century it was obvious that this approach could not produce an adequate theology of the Trinity.
Mark Baddeley has criticized Giles for what he sees as a conflation of ontological and relational subordinationism, and for his supposed generalisation that "the ante-Nicene Fathers were subordinationists."
See also
Further reading
- Beeley, Christopher; Weedman, Mark, eds. (2018). The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology. ISBN 9780813229966.
References
- "What's the Difference between the Ontological and the Economic Trinity?". Ligonier Ministries. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
- Slick, Matt (2008-11-23). "The Ontological and Economic Trinity". Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
- "SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The person of the Holy Ghost (Prima Pars, Q. 36)". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2021-12-14.
- Ted Peters, God as Trinity (Louisville: Westminster, 1993), p. 45
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his so called 'non-Trinitarian' group includes the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists, Theosophists, Church of Scientology, Unification Church (Moonies), the Worldwide Church of God and so on.
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