November 5, 2021 Show with Phil Johnson on “A Critique of the Eternal Subordination of the Son Doctrine”

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Phil Johnson, who is the Executive Director of the Media Ministry of Dr. John MacArthur, grace to you. And today we're going to be addressing something that is quite controversial. We're going to be addressing a critique of the eternal subordination of the son doctrine and how to respond to brethren who embrace it.

And it's my honor and privilege and delight to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Phil Johnson.

Well, it's good to be back with you. Great.

And it is not only a joy to interview you again, but it was great to see you face to face at the G3 Conference, to hear you preach, and to interview you once again on site at the G3 Conference in Atlanta.

I considered it a great honor that you, upon greeting me when I first arrived in Atlanta, the first thing you said is, are you going to interview me? And I consider that a great honor that you brought it up before I did and loved our interview.

And then, not so long ago, even more recently, it was so great to hear you speak along with Richard D. Phillips of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at their Reformation Conference on the theme, The Providence of God.

And it was really great not only to see and hear you preach again at that conference just last week, but also I was thrilled to receive the request from Pastor Josh Miller of Grace Bible Fellowship Church to moderate the Q &A session with you, Rick Phillips, and the audience.

I just had a blast doing that. The time went by too quickly. Already an hour had went by, and I thought that it was only like ten minutes that had gone by. But I hope I didn't embarrass you in any way, Phil.

No, not at all. That was a fun conference, actually. That was good, and the Q &A was one of the highlights.

And, by the way, if anybody wants to get the audio for that conference, I strongly advise you to do that. And in particular, I mean, all of the sessions are excellent by both Richard D. Phillips and Phil Johnson.

But I was perhaps even most fascinated by Phil's lectures, both in the Sunday school hour and during the final session of the conference Sunday night, on Cotton Mather. And, in particular, especially in the evening service, Phil focused on separating fact from fiction regarding the Salem witch trials.

If you go to gracebfc .com, that's grace-b-f-c, which stands for Bible Fellowship Church, you'll be able to get those videos and audios. And you want to give a, just a, even though this is not our subject at hand, Phil, but you want to give a summary of Cotton Mather to whet the appetites of our listeners.

Because he's such a misunderstood figure, he is really, his flaws have been grossly exaggerated, including his role in the Salem witch trials has been totally, he's been totally slandered in that regard.

But if you could give us a brief summary of that.

Yeah, history has not been kind to him. He did have flaws, and they're obvious if you read his diary. But they aren't the sort of, you know, character-destroying flaws that people want to portray him as, this sort of vindictive sort of person.

He was really quite a well-respected pastor with a pastoral heart, lots of compassion for people. And he lived at a time at the end of, you know, the medieval period and, you know, classical philosophy, and just before the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment.

So he had one foot in both places. So he had some superstitious ideas, but he also was interested in the developments of science. And what a lot of people don't realize about him, because it's not as well-publicized, is that he was a key figure in introducing a smallpox vaccination into America.

He was one of the first to advocate and actually take the vaccine for smallpox. And in a day when those vaccines were more dangerous than smallpox vaccinations today. But he helped avert a major disaster when a smallpox epidemic hit.

Just a generation later, a smallpox vaccination is what killed Jonathan Edwards. There are people, even today, who are... I think Cotton Mather would have agreed with that. I don't think he gets as much credit as he deserves.

A diligent and disciplined man he was. At the same time, there was a lot of superstition, and it was a dangerous era. And one of the good guys of church history, though he did have, like all of us, flaws.

Some of them glaring flaws.

I'm looking forward to having you back on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to address Cotton Mather. I was so fascinated by it. I immediately knew I wanted to interview you on that subject, and perhaps you could even...

And since it's a two-hour interview, you could even include some things that you may have not addressed in your lectures at Grace Bible Fellowship Church.

Yeah, that whole era of New England history absolutely fascinates me. Cotton Mather was the third in three generations of Puritan pastors. He was really, you might say, America's last. And his father was Increase Mather.

His grandfathers were John Cotton and Richard Mather, both of whom had made their reputations in England but were sort of chased out of England when the Church of England issued the Act of Uniformity and required nonconformist pastors to vacate their pulpits, basically.

Now, was it John Cotton's defense of Congregationalism that converted John Owen from Presbyterian ecclesiology?

Yes. Yes, that's right. Yeah, I think I made that comment in the lecture the other day that anyone who could change the mind of John Owen on a theological issue, you know, is an intellectual and biblical powerhouse.

And that was John, a very careful, meticulous theologian. Yeah, and it's such a tragedy when I, it grieves my spirit so deeply.

Whenever I see one of these old Congregationalist churches that goes back to the 1700s, perhaps even 1600s, and now being occupied by the United Church of Christ, one of the most apostate denominations in Protestantism, to think that the thundering voices of Puritans were echoing in the halls of those buildings, and now you have sodomites and all kinds of folks donning the pulpits and preaching their heresies and blasphemies.

Right. And, you know, I'm not a Congregationalist, but I would have to say I don't think that level of apostasy is attributable to their view on church government. It wasn't Congress. If you look at any of the mainline denominations, really over the past 150 years, incredible speed, and it's interesting how quickly they go from, you know, they're ordaining on every...

It's just the nature of that. It represents a looming threat, and I think evangelicals today need to be much more aware of that than we are. If you just think across the board, how many churches can you think of that have been around for more than a century and a half and are still biblically-minded, sound evangelical churches preaching the gospel, where the gospel is preached and the authority of Scripture is respected?

There are some, but there aren't many.

You're right. And by the way, I think it'd be fair of me to mention that there is a congregational denomination. They're known as the Four Cs, Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, and there are quite a number of Bible-believing Christian pastors who were formerly in the United Church of Christ, the leftist apostate denomination, who left there and have brought their congregations into the Four Cs.

So I just thought I'd mention that unless any Four Cs folk are listening and they're getting upset because they think I'm broad-brushing all congregationalists. And of course, Baptists very often have a congregational ecclesiology, but these Four Cs churches, many of them even have adopted the Savoy Declaration, the great historic congregationalist document.

But that is not our discussion today. Our discussion today, as I mentioned at the outset, is a critique of the eternal subordination of the Son doctrine and how to respond to brethren who embrace it. This is one of those programs that I feel somewhat apprehensive about, not because I shy away from letting the chips fall where they may when it comes to biblical truth, but I just happen to know, as you do, I happen to have not only interviewed men on both sides of this debate on the Trinity, but I have friends on both sides of the debate.

It seems that there are different categories of people when it comes to eternal subordination of the Son. You have those that are vehemently opposed to it. You have those who wholeheartedly and enthusiastically embrace it.

You have those who are opposed to it but think this is an issue that brethren may differ on without causing division, without causing any kind of disfellowshipping or anything to that degree. And you have those who are opposed to it, who think it is just rank heresy and that you should have no fellowship with folks that agree with it.

And you also even have folks on the eternal subordination of the Son side who vilify all those with the traditional understanding of the Trinity as being egalitarian, meaning that they believe that women should be able to hold the same offices in the church as men because they would claim that it is because of a denial of complementarianism when it comes to gender roles that these folks deny a complementarian understanding of the Trinity where you can have subordination without a diminishment of equality.

But I've said a lot there. Why don't you define eternal subordination of the Son? What is this doctrine?

Defining Eternal Functional Submission and the Trinity

Yeah, by the way, I think this is an issue that the vast majority of evangelicals today need to study more carefully and look into more intently. I think most people in churches, and I would say perhaps even a majority of church leaders, are simply confused by the issue.

They don't know how to sort it out or where to come down. And also, you referred to it as eternal subordination of the Son. I think most of the people who hold to the view would prefer the terminology eternal submission because subordinationism has always been regarded as outside the circle of orthodoxy.

In my view, that's a fine point to make. I don't know that it really makes a difference whether you're talking about subordination or submission, but they seem to prefer the language submission, so I'll stick with that.

And there are really three acronyms by which it's known. Some would refer to it as ESS, meaning the eternal submission of the Son. Some would say EFS, meaning eternal functional submission or subordination.

And then I think it's Owen Strand who perhaps invented the longest name for it. He called it ERAS, eternal relations of authority and submission.

And I think we should quickly add that you and I both have the highest regards for Owen Strand. I have interviewed him on this program several times.

Yes, he's a friend. He was actually here. I didn't see him, but when I got back from Pennsylvania, he was here visiting the Master's Seminary. And he and I didn't connect this time other than by email, but I have to say he's a friend.

And as you said, I have friends on the opposite side of this issue from me. Don't hold to any of those. I think it opens the door to significant problems if you try to define as one of... And the view I would hold is mainstream trinitern.

I think this idea of eternal submission of the Son is a departure from what the Church has always held and confessed. And I'm all tweaks. And particularly if there's a motive behind it that maybe I don't think is necessary in this case, as you suggested.

I think partly what drives this debate is... And in fact, the main voices in this idea are all men who have valiantly defended God's design of authority and submission for men and women, both in marriage and in the Church.

I'm a complementarian, so on that I'm in absolute agreement with them. I think Scripture's clear. But I don't think complementarianism needs a novel trinitarian good way to defend.

So to summarize about eternal submission of the Son, as you prefer to call it, because most of its advocates, according to you, prefer that. Basically, they are in wholehearted agreement with Christians holding the traditional view of the Trinity that all three members of the Godhead, all three persons of the Godhead, are co-eternal and co-equal.

They're not denying that at all. But as far as the function of the Son, since he did... Everyone agrees on both sides of the debate over eternal submission of the Son that when Jesus Christ became incarnate and lived on this earth, he was in submission to the Father.

But those that believe in eternal submission of the Son believe it goes beyond merely his ministry on the planet Earth.

They would make a distinction between ontological equality, unity, and functional submission. So they're saying economically there is a hierarchy in the Trinity, but ontologically, meaning when you talk about the nature and the essence of their being, they are equal in every sense.

And so on that we agree that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally equal, co-equal, co-essential. Well, let's say co-eternal, co-essential. They would make a distinction between their equality of function.

Three distinct persons, but in one that each of the persons of the Trinity is fully divine with all of the attributes and prerogatives of God, which means by definition there cannot be subordination. In fact, Nicene Trinitarianism has always held that God is three persons in one divine being with one divine will.

There is no difference between the will of the Father and the will of the Son. And the reason you hear Jesus talking as if there is in certain places, for example, in John 5 he says, I can do nothing on my own, but I seek not my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

And of course in Gethsemane he said, not my will, but thine. That's because when Jesus took on humanity in his incarnation, he took on a new nature. And so he has a human will, and it's his human will that he is submitting to the divine will, the will of his Father.

But he and his Father were never eternally different.

So the reason that some of the advocates, proponents of eternal submission of the Son, hurl the accusation at those who disagree with them that they are egalitarian, is because it has always been the insistence of liberals and feminists that to believe in the submission of women in the church, whether it be wives submitting to husbands, or even women submitting to male leadership in the church, and never having the liberty to attain an office in the church, where they are teaching and preaching to men.

Liberals and feminists have always said that makes women less than men. It diminishes their very essence in being and makes men superior. And those who are complementarian have said, oh no, different roles, but equal before God.

So therefore the eternal submission of the Son folk say, well you guys are being inconsistent. You're saying that you're complementarian when it comes to gender roles, but you're revealing your true hand here, because you're saying that to believe that Christ is submissive means he's less, and not co-equal with the Father.

Am I making sense here?

Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of words there, but I would say it like this. You don't want to confuse the equality of essence with the inequalities of function, and that's true with men and women as well.

I mean, I'm a convinced complementarian, and I do not believe there's any inequality of value or dignity or importance or quality or even humanity. Between men and women, we share the image of God. But in the marriage relationship, there is definitely a difference in rank, in function, when it comes to leadership and responsibility.

And in my view, to imply that such a ranking like that eternally exists within the Trinity is to blur what it is we're confessing when we say the persons of the Trinity are of the same substance. They are one.

It is by definition an imbalance in the very essence of the Godhead at a fundamental level to say that there is this eternal hierarchy there.

And we're going to our first break right now, if anybody wants to join us on the air with a question for Phil Johnson on his critique of the eternal subordination or submission of the son doctrine and also how we are to respond to brothers and sisters who embrace it.

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Grace to you. And we're addressing a critique of the eternal subordination of the sun, also known as the eternal submission of the sun doctrine and how to respond to brethren who embrace it. If you have a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Chris Arnson at gmail dot com. The advocates, the proponents of eternal submission of the sun, do they use as any support? Obviously, they would consider themselves to be biblical inerratists as we are.

But do they also go to any historic figures for support, any ancient figures or early church figures or even great men of God that all reformed folk love throughout the ages?

They do. I mean, there are certain, you know, ambiguous words that are used. The discussion of the Trinity has always been fraught with problems. You have to be very precise. It's not an easy doctrine to understand.

It's not irrational, but it's easy to confuse. And a lot of the debate over, you know, between heresy and or come down and focus, it's not an easy one to understand. It's not something anybody should, you know, shoot from the hip on or decide that, you know, it just needs to be thrown out or totally revised.

People do that all the time. But the problem with any kind of subordinationism or submissionism, if you just look at the history of that, subordinationists have typically been veered towards cultism. I mean, the classic kind of subordinationism, which is the same doctrine as just under God, but not really God.

He's a created being or whatever. And to be clear, no one who is teaching this view of eternal functional subordination believes Jesus is a created being. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying the view itself tends to diminish the unity of the Trinity, which is as important as it is to see the three persons in the Trinity.

And once you make submission or subordination eternal, I don't see how you can possibly divorce that from the essence of eternally under Him. And if He's eternally submitted to His Father, then what you're suggesting, and I don't see any way to avoid it, is that there is more than one will in the Godhead.

And Mike Riccardi said, one will to another. That's what it is by definition. And therefore, it requires multiple faculties of the will, property of nature, not person. And therefore, in the Godhead is...

So those are the kinds of problems that I think the people who hold to this view need to be careful to untangle. And frankly, I'd like to see them all abandon this view. I don't think it's a necessary argument in favor of complementarianism, which is, I think, why so many of them hold to it.

So, in your opinion, from what you have heard and read by advocates of eternal submission of the Son, you think their view of gender roles is driving this?

Yeah, I do. I do. I mean, look at the main voices who have advocated this and, like, just defended it militantly. It's Bruce Ware, Wayne Grudem, Owen Stray and I think Denny Burke holds this view. It goes hand in hand with their view on...

Well, we do have a listener who has a question, happens to be somebody that I know. I don't know if you know him as well, but he's been a dear friend of mine since the late 1980s. Pastor Gary George of Sovereign Grace Chapel in Southbridge, Massachusetts.

And Gary asks, I have to bring up this question again. What changed John MacArthur's view of Jesus' Sonship? For years, John believed Jesus' Sonship was temporal, that it was a new title relationship that he acquired at the point of his incarnation.

This day I have begotten, as quoted from Psalm 2, was understood by John as referencing Jesus' conferred Sonship, not pre-temporal as indicated in his commentaries on Galatians and Hebrews. But he switched his view to Jesus' eternal Sonship.

Yeah, that's a great question. And it does sort of relate to this. One of the reasons I think John MacArthur early on denied the idea of eternal Sonship is that there is, in the way we use the words Father and Son, there is an implied inequality or hierarchy between Father and Son, right?

So if that's eternal, then I think what John MacArthur was trying to avoid was some subordination of the Son. And he keyed on that verse from Hebrews as well. And that takes place at a point in time. But as he studied it, and he took a lot of criticism for holding that view, because again, it's outside the normal circle of Orthodox theology.

And so John MacArthur's response was to go back and study the issue and restudy the doctrine of the Trinity. And realizing that the idea of being a son, and particularly in a Hebrew mind, in the biblical context, the idea of being a son to someone doesn't make you less than that person, it makes you equal to that person.

And in fact, that's explicitly stated in John 5. John 5 .18. This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Jesus, because he was even calling God his own Father, Scripture says, making himself equal with God.

So they understood, the Hebrews understood, that to be the son of someone is to say, I'm equal to him in authority and status and all of that. So when Jesus referred to God as my Father, the Jews would sometimes pray to God as our Father, but for Jesus to say he is my Father and declare that he had this unique relationship as the Son of God, was, in the minds of his hearers, correctly interpreted as a declaration of his own deity.

And I think when John MacArthur realized that you can't argue, on the one hand, that Son of God is a title of deity, and on the other hand say that Son of God is an incarnational title. It can't be both.

And so he, Christ, is the eternal Son of God. There's more to it than that. He had to study the doctrine of eternal generation, which, I don't know if you want to get into that, but it's one of the most confusing and sometimes disputed doctrines.

Spurgeon would refer to eternal generation every now and then and always say it's impossible to understand. Because the word generation implies the beginning of something. It sort of implies that that's where it originated.

And the word eternal means it had no eternally generated. And the answer, I think, is that the term generation, or the only begotten Son of God, is the same problem with that. When you beget someone in the human realm, that's their conception.

That's where they have their eternally begotten by the Father. What does that mean? Well, I'm not capable of explaining it, and I don't know that anyone is, but that is an expression that Scripture uses, that Christ is begotten of the Father, and eternally begotten.

Those words, generation and begetting, refer not to the origin of Christ, but to His equality with God. He is of the same kind. He is of the same nature. He is of the same substance as God the Father, eternally.

When Psalm 2 says, This day have I begotten thee, that's not a reference to a point in time. That is a reference to the eternal decree of God. It's from that description how confusing these things can be, because it requires us to see beyond the normal way we use language, and understand that what Scripture is presenting to us is an idea that has no parallel.

It has no analogy in all of human experience, and therefore human language is incapable of what it entails. But that's the whole nature of the Trinity. And yet, He exists in three persons. It's a defining doctrine of Christianity, really, of our view of theology proper.

Well, thank you, Pastor Gary. Thanks for listening again to Iron Shepherd and Zion Radio. Let me give Gary and Sovereign Grace Chapel of Southbridge, Massachusetts, a plug. Their website is sovereigngracema .org.

Sovereigngracema, for Massachusetts, dot org. We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, How do those that advocate this teaching you are discussing, the eternal submission of the Son, deal with Matthew 28, verse 18, which says, And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

If Jesus is always to be in the submission to the Father, this does not seem to make sense.

Yeah, that's a good argument, too. But the question is, how do they respond to that? And I'll give you one of their responses. Advocate here? That'll make my friends angry. Call it a devil's advocate.

But this is a view that I don't hold to. But they would point you, then, to 1 Corinthians 15, 28, which talks about the culmination of all history, when all things are subjected to him, that being Christ.

Then the Son himself will also be subjected to him, who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. And they would suggest that that text states that the Son himself will go into eternity future.

Well, thanks, C .J. Excellent question. Going back to a question that I asked you before the break, I believe, on the extra-biblical support that is presented by those who are advocates or proponents of eternal submission of the Son, you seem to be implying that there are quite a number of quotes and things, but you believe that they're all being taken out of context.

Did I understand that correctly? Or were there any strong advocates of this throughout history? And I might even rephrase the question. When did this teaching begin in history, according to your knowledge of history?

I think it's a fairly new flavor of subordinationism. There's been subordinationism, and people have used language that implies a kind of subordinationism. Some of them deliberately, but as I said, normally, not a lot of history they taught.

And I don't have the quotes, you know. There have been, let me see if I can find...

While you're looking, I was going to just repeat...

Yeah, go ahead.

I'm going to repeat my email address. ChrisArnsen at gmail .com, if you have a question. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Go ahead. Yeah.