Theology Proper

I posted these on Twitter earlier, but I think I’ll leave them here in a more permanent place.

We all need to ask some very serious questions at this point, it appears (although there are 2000 years of work addressing these already…).

Are we now willing, given ERAS/EFS/ESS, to assert three wills in the Godhead? How does “submission and authority” occur in the life of God if not via distinct wills, one for each person?
If yes to #1, are we now willing to either a) deny inseparable operations or b) so alter it that it is a matter of unity in agreement, not unity in action?
If yes to #1, are we willing to so alter the doctrine of God that unity of essence does not equal unity of will?
If yes to #1, are we now willing to posit monothelitism, the Apollinarian position that posits that the Son’s will in Garden is his divine will struggling with and ultimatley submitting to the Father’s divine will?
If yes to #4, are we willing to assert not only that there are three wills in Godhead but that, in the Garden, they are struggling with one another?

These questions are not merely speculative, only for theo-nerds, and application-less for the layperson. These questions are *vital.* For example, regarding the doctrine of salvation: if we assert monothelitism (Christ’s incarnate will is only his divine will) instead of dyothelitism (the incarnate Christ has two wills, human & divine) we lose the clear connection between Christ’s redemptive obedience and his healing of our *human* wills, returning them to obedience.

Think of your own heart: do you obey readily? Not in your flesh you don’t. Traditional Trinitarian and Christological doctrine says there is one will in the Godhead, two in Christ – human and divine. The *human* will of Jesus obeys *for us* and thereby redeems our own wills. You can obey because Christ, the second Adam, obeyed *in his humanity by his human will* and now restores your *human* will through his Spirit.

Another applicational point – when you contemplate God, who are you contemplating? An accurate portrait or a distortion? If God has one will, but you posit three, you are not contemplating God rightly. Vice versa, if God has three wills, but I posit one, I am not contemplating God rightly. That is no laughing matter, nor is it merely a third order question.

Let’s be very clear about what’s at stake in this debate – a right understanding of Christ’s salvific work and a right contemplation of God.

I’m a classic complementarian who affirms classic orthodoxy regarding the eternal relations of the persons of the Trinity (i.e. that the eternal relations of origin distinguish the persons, not a social schema). I also believe that what the Bible says about gender is enough to support complementarianism without comparing the relationship between male and female to the inner life of the Godhead. Additionally, I don’t believe the relations of the persons of the Godhead are comparable to relations between male and female. I therefore disagree with those who wish to bolster their position on gender with a social Trinitarian schema, whether it be from an egalitarian or complementarian perspective. I thus disagree with Bruce Ware, Wayne Grudem, and other complementarians who attempt to support complementarianism via the doctrinal innovation known as eternal functional subordination. I disagree not only with tying in gender roles to God’s inner life but also with the social Trinitarian understanding of the relations between the persons of God upon which such a claim is based.

That being said, I’ve seen many on social media and on blogs willing to throw around phrases comparing Ware, Grudem, et al.’s position to heresy. This is unfair, careless, and a straw man. If you read Ware’s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or Grudem’s systematic theology, both of these theologians strongly and clearly affirm the unity of the Godhead in essence. According to them, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all equally and fully share in the one divine being. They are homoousions. They also, though, posit that the Son willingly and volitionally submits to the Father ad intra. While I have serious disagreements with this latter position, both biblically and historically, this is not a classic heresy by any means. It is an innovation, in my opinion, but one that incorrectly understands eternal relations rather than one that departs from classic orthodoxy regarding the unity of the Godhead.

I’m not sure evangelicals can disagree without someone throwing out a heresy bomb at some point, but we should at least give it a good old college try.