It is not often you have the opportunity to review a book that effectively calls you a heretic. That is the charge Kevin Giles makes in his new book against the authors of the Sydney Diocesan Doctrine Commission report The Doctrine of the Trinity and its bearing on the relationship of men and women (1), of which I am one. According to Giles they, or rather we, ‘have in fact departed from orthodoxy at the most fundamental level’.

The issue is, once again, the role and relationship of men and women. At least, that is where it starts. But it soon enters into questions about the being of God himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It concerns whether the eternal relationship of the Father and the Son in the divine Trinity is both one of genuine equality and of subordination in relationship, and so gives us an illuminating parallel to the relationship of men and women in marriage and the church. This is what the authors of the Doctrine Commission report argued and what Kevin Giles vehemently denies.

Giles’ objection is to what he calls ‘subordinationism’, which he takes to be the teaching that the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father in function or being. He marshals a large posse of theologians ancient and modern to condemn it. Interestingly he doesn’t engage in any biblical discussion on the grounds that ‘the Bible can be read in more than one way, even on important issues’ (p.9). Instead he relies on what he calls ‘the tradition’ of mainstream theologians down the centuries. The flavour of Giles’ position is caught in this summary statement:

If some evangelicals want to hold that the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father, I do not dispute that texts can be found to ‘prove’ this opinion. What I dispute is their claim to represent historic orthodoxy, the tradition handed down to the church of our day. (p.25)

This is a very serious allegation, as I know that the Sydney Diocese Doctrine Commission is very keen to work within historic orthodoxy and strongly claims to do so. Perhaps the issue can be best put this way:

1. Historic orthodoxy rejects any idea that the Son is any less God than the Father is. In the words of the Nicene Creed, he is ‘of one being with the Father’.

2. The Christian gospel teaches that – in the words of the creed – ‘for us men and our salvation he came down from heaven and … became man’ – or in the words of Philippians 2 – ‘being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death’.

3. Giles believes that this is a temporary and voluntary subordination which ended at Jesus’ resurrection and exaltation. The Sydney Doctrine Commission believe that texts like 1 Corinthians 15:28 must be read as teaching that the Son as resurrected exalted Lord is eternally subordinate to the Father.

4. In other words, the Sydney Doctrine Commission’s view is that the Father and Son are equal and unified in their being, and yet their relationship of Father and Son involves subordination. Giles believes that is an impossible position. He holds that if someone is subordinate to another person other than in a temporary and voluntary way then it must mean ‘that they are in some way inferior in being’. To say the Son is inferior in being is, of course, heretical.

It is important to note that this premise – that non-temporary subordination in relationship must mean inferiority – is absolutely crucial to Giles’ case. If it is sound, his case is made and the Sydney Doctrine Commission’s commitment to the eternal subordination of the Son means they implicitly deny that the Son is of one being with the Father. It is unfortunate that Kevin Giles gives so little defence to this central assertion. Perhaps he thinks it is obvious. It is not.

5. To make matters worse, at least for Giles, the Sydney Doctrine Commission says the Son is equal with the Father through a ‘derived equality’ (2). (As the Nicene creed states, ‘the Son is ‘God from God, light from light, true God from true God’). Giles thinks this is an admission of the subordinationist heresy, though he says it is an admirable recognition of theological force of the commission’s own reasoning.

Archbishop Peter Carnley may not be the first person you think of as coming to the aid of the Diocese of Sydney Doctrine Commission, but he does so unwittingly in a recent paper rather provocatively entitled ‘In Praise of Hierarchy’. (3) Carnley argues that it is ‘an essential element within orthodox Trinitarianism’ that there is a kind of monarchy within the Trinity, “the monarchy of the Father with respect to the other two persons within the Divine Unity.” He has in mind the teaching that the Father ‘enjoys a certain priority as the ‘origin’ or ‘sole cause’ of the other two Persons’, the very point made by the Doctrine Commission. Peter Carnley wants to draw implications for the leadership of bishops, but his method is not dissimilar to theirs.

Despite the title, The Trinity and Subordinationism is about much more than that. In the last two thirds of the book Kevin Giles explores other issues to do with the changing use of scripture on issues concerning the place of women. His historical sketches on past biblical defence of slavery and of women’s inferiority are both interesting and especially challenging to evangelicals. For example, Giles shows that reformed evangelicals in the Southern US mounted substantial theological arguments in favour of slavery and dismissed abolitionists like the Clapham Sect as liberals. It is chilling reading. However, I do wonder if he might have overstated the biblical defence of slavery (in order to show its parallel with some arguments for the subordination of women) by not mentioning 1 Timothy 1:10 where slave traders are linked to ‘fornicators, sodomites, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching’.

However Giles shows that well-intentioned believers can get it badly wrong, and that new cultural issues inevitably force biblical re-examination. He also helps us avoid a denial of some of the real issues raised by the social order in the Bible. And he rightly emphasises the role presuppositions play in our use of Scripture.

On the other hand, I was not so convinced by Giles’ explanations of how we justify our changed conclusions of what is the mandatory teaching of Scripture. I had trouble seeing how his claim that ‘there is teaching in the Bible that cannot be applied in our day and age, indeed to do so would be wrong’ (p247) does not lead him to imply that the teaching must never have been the word of God. I am sorry that there is not enough theological reflection on the doctrine of Scripture here. Evangelicals owe Kevin Giles a vote of thanks for rightly drawing our attention to a significant problem that does need more thought. But to me his own solution is not adequate.

Endnotes
1 www.anglicanmediasydney.asn.au/doc/trinity.html
2 To use the words of E.L Mascall,. Via Media – An Essay In Theological Synthesis; Longmans Green; 1956 , an allusion Giles understandably misses.
3 P. Carnley ‘In Praise of Hierarchy’, Common Theology, Vol 1, 1 July 2002
* Available at the CMS Bookstore