This morning I was reading about William Lane Craig’s rejection of the eternal begottenness of the Son. Dwelling on this, I was reminded of another recent controversy within American Evangelicalism: Eternal Functional Subordination. They represent very different conclusions, but both seem to rebalance the relationship between the immanent Trinity—who Father, Son and Spirit eternally are—and the economic Trinity—how Father, Son and Spirit relate to us and act in salvation. Eternal Functional Subordination takes the Son’s submission to the Father in the economy of salvation and reads it back into the eternal life of God, tending to collapse the distinction between the economic and immanent Trinity. Craig moves in almost the opposite direction, resisting eternal generation and placing more emphasis on the Son’s role in God’s eternal plan, tending to separate the economic Trinity from the immanent Trinity.
I wonder whether this points to a wider tendency in American Evangelical theology: particular theological concerns can sometimes lead to the relationship between the immanent and economic Trinity being adjusted to accommodate them. In one case, the economic Trinity is read back into the eternal life of God; in the other, the eternal relationships within God are separated from the way God acts in salvation. Both approaches seem to me to risk losing something important. The immanent and economic Trinity are not identical, but neither are they unrelated. What God does in Christ and the Spirit reveals who God is, while the eternal life of God cannot simply be inferred from every distinction we see in God’s work of salvation.
I think there are practical consequences to getting this balance wrong. If the economic Trinity is projected too directly into the immanent Trinity, earthly patterns of authority can acquire divine sanction. But if the immanent Trinity is separated too sharply from the economic Trinity, Jesus’ life and ministry may tell us less about who God actually is. I find the classical approach more compelling: the God revealed in the economy of salvation is genuinely the God who eternally is, while the distinctions we see in salvation should not simply be turned into a hierarchy within God.
For me, the deeper lesson is to be cautious whenever my understanding of the Trinity begins to mirror a concern I already have. The Trinity is not merely a doctrine to explain authority, gender, apologetics or metaphysics. It is a confession that the God I encounter in Jesus Christ and the Spirit is the God who eternally is. I think that should leave the Trinity free to challenge my assumptions rather than simply reinforce them.
Leave a Reply