A Few Observations on the Trinity Discussion

On Secundum Scripturas, Bruce Ware has given a very helpful defense of his position of "Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission" (ERAS).  Remember this is a view that God the Father and God the Son have had not just relations of authority and submission during the incarnation, but there are functional relations of authority that have been a part of the inner divine life even before creation.  A few interesting arguments and responses by Matthew Emerson and Luke Stamps are worth commenting on.

Singular Will

Emerson and Stamps had raised earlier the problem this view might have with the traditional creedal statements of a singular unified will within the Trinity.  Historically, the Trinity does not have 3 wills, one for each person.  There is only one singular volitional capacity.  And it is only in the sense of Christ's human nature that Christ's will and the Father's will can actually be two distinct realities (Luke 22:42).  Emerson and Stamps have concerns that if submission in the Trinity is a reality before the incarnation than it seems to imply two wills.  A will that possesses authority (the Father) and a will that submits (the Son).  How then can there be only one will in the Trinity?  Borrowing language from Anatolios, Bruce offers a unique response: 

"While each possesses the same volitional capacity, each also is able to activate that volitional capacity in exercising the one will in distinct yet unified ways according to their distinct hypostatic identities and modes of subsistence. So, while the Father may activate the common divine will to initiate, the Son may activate the divine will to carry out, e.g., “from” the Father, “through” the Son—as has often been affirmed in Trinitarian doctrine following the pattern in Scripture itself (e.g., 1 Cor 8:6). Given this, one might even speak of one unified will of God, as the volitional capacity common to all three, along with three “inflections” of the unified divine will (borrowing Anatolios’s wording), or three hypostatically distinct expressions of that one divine will."

Very interesting.  But Emerson and Stamps are not entirely convinced.  They have additional concerns that are also helpful questions that Bruce would probably need to clarify.  Nevertheless, I wonder what a purist position about the divine will (like Stamps and Emerson) would need to say with regard to the Father's "sending" and the Son's "going" before the incarnation.  Maybe there is no distinctive authority to read in here (which would seem to me a hard bullet to bite).  But even still there must be some sort of distinctive volitional choices happening here that Ware would have the ontological resources to explain.  Yet I'm unsure how the traditional position that denies these distinctives within the divine will would address this.

On Sonship and Eternal Generation (EG)

Emerson insightfully points out that one of the problems with the discussion is a hermenuetical one.  Many people settle for trying to find proof texts instead of using the entire pattern of scripture as the foundation for how we are to understand these distinctions.  As he outlines a defense for EG, he says: "...Even beyond these particular texts, they [the Nicene fathers] saw that the scriptural pattern of speaking about the relations of the first and second persons of the Trinity are inherently related to generation. “Father” and “Son” are relational terms. If it means anything to be a son, it means to come from one’s father.”

The fatherhood of God and the sonship of man is of course a prominent theme in scripture.  And while there are scriptures that talk about God's fatherhood over all creation (Acts 17:28), the more prominent and significant biblical concept of God's fatherhood over creation has nothing to do with origin or generation.  His children are adopted into God's family as sons and daughters (John 1:13, Eph 1:4, Gal 4:6-7).  It is one of the most beautiful and central truths in all of scripture.  And in fact the Galatians passage actually clarifies exactly what the significant characteristic is regarding us being sons:  It is that "sonship" means we are adopted heirs of Christ.  If the most significant and central biblical meaning behind God's "fatherhood" and our "sonship" has nothing to do with generation, then it is hard to know the biblical warrant for saying the biblical concepts "father" and "son" inherently relate to generation.

To be fair, in another article Matt does supplement his case by bringing in a discussion of Phil 2:5-11. This a very helpful passage, and it does emphasize the incarnational submission we see in Christ's life.  But I still find myself confused how it inherently precludes any other passage that could talk about pre-incarnational submission.

By the way, I've always enjoyed my conversations with Matt and I have the utmost respect for his scholarship and his sharp mind.  I hope my thoughts and questions contribute meaningfully to the discussion.