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Barth and subordinationism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 June 2011
Abstract
This article examines claims that Barth teaches the eternal subordination and obedience of the Son to the Father which some mainline theologians think leads Barth into the error of subordinationism. This reading of Barth has had a revival in recent times among socially and theologically conservative evangelicals who have found support in Barth for their thesis that, just as the Son is set under the authority of the Father, so too are women set under the authority of men. In reply I argue that Barth's stress on divine unity and on the full divinity of Christ and his explicit rejection of ‘every form of subordinationism’ makes this thesis untenable. When the evidence for this view is examined none of it proves the point. Rather, it highlights Barth's innovative and mind-expanding understanding of the triune God who is high and humble and of the Son who is forever both Lord and servant at one and the same time. However, this is not to say that Barth's doctrine of the Trinity is not without its problems.
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2011
References
1 So Moltmann, J., The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, trans. Kohl, M. (London: SCM, 1981), p. 139Google Scholar, Pannenberg, W., Systematic Theology, vol. 1, trans. Bromiley, G. W. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), pp. 282, 295Google Scholar, etc. In reply see Jowers, D. V., ‘The Reproach of Modalism: A Difficulty for Karl Barth's Doctrine of the Trinity’, Scottish Journal of Theology 56/2 (2003), pp. 231–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ovey, M. J., ‘A Private Love? Karl Barth and the Triune God’, in Gibson, D. and Strange, D. (eds), Engaging with Barth (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008), pp. 198–231Google Scholar, renews the charge in moderate form and responds to Jowers’ defence of Barth.
2 I will outline what has been said and by whom on this in due course.
3 I am an exception to this. In The Trinity and Subordinationism: The Doctrine of God and the Contemporary Gender Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), pp. 86–9, I make a first brief attempt at answering this charge against Barth and later in more detail I take up this matter again in my Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), pp. 275–305.
4 See , Athanasius, ‘Discourses Against the Arians’, The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Schaff, P. and Wace, H. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1971), 4.1.6Google Scholar. See also Pelikan, J., The Christian Tradition, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 200Google Scholar.
5 See Giles, Jesus and the Father, pp. 178–85.
6 As is seen in his Confession of Faith to the Emperor Theodosius, see Giles, Jesus and the Father, p. 185.
7 Ibid., pp. 185–90. See also Barnes, M., The Power of God in Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
8 Giles, K., ‘The Evangelical Theological Society and the Doctrine of the Trinity’, EQ 80/4 (2008), p. 337Google Scholar.
9 The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth (London: Paternoster, 1956), pp. 303–13.
10 Ibid., p. 304.
11 The Trinity in German Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 223.
12 ‘Directed, Ordered and Related: The Male and Female Interpersonal Relation in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 61/4 (2008), pp. 443, 445.
13 Persons in Communion (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), p. 111.
14 Karl Barth's Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2006), p. 83.
15 This trinitarian argument was first promulgated by George Knight III in his The Role Relationship of Men and Women: New Testament Teaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1977). This teaching now finds wide dissemination through Wayne Grudem's, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester: IVP; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), the best-selling evangelical theology text in the English-speaking world.
16 Robert Doyle, ‘Are we Heretics? A Review of The Trinity and Subordinationism by Kevin Giles’, Briefing (April 2004), p. 15.
17 ‘The Trinity and Subordinationism’, Reformed Theological Review, 63/1 (2004), pp. 3–6.
18 Ibid., p. 6.
19 Ibid.
20 Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005. For the same interpretation of Barth on the Trinity see his earlier book, The Forgotten Father (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).
21 Like Father, like Son, pp. 76–7, 245, 267.
22 Ibid., pp. 102–4.
23 Ibid., pp. 105, 107, 169
24 Ibid., p. 161.
25 Letham, Robert, The Holy Trinity in Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2004), pp. 271–90Google Scholar. I sent this article to Letham to read before submitting it for publication. He replied, ‘I think it is an excellent article’. It says what ‘I had been imperfectly attempting to say myself’. ‘I shy away from using the term subordination’ (personal email, 17 Feb. 2009).
26 Ibid., pp. 392–404. I add the word ‘immanent’ with complete confidence because this is clearly what Letham means. Absolutely no one disputes that the Son was subordinate and submissive in the incarnation.
27 Ibid., p. 398.
28 Ibid., p. 392.
29 Ibid., p. 279.
30 Ibid., p. 397; emphasis added.
31 Ibid., pp. 392 and 397–8.
32 Ibid., p. 403.
33 So Overy, ‘A Private Love’; Letham, The Holy Trinity, pp. 271–90. Webster, John, Barth, 2nd edn (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 71Google Scholar, says Barth gives ‘divine unity priority over divine triunity’.
34 Church Dogmatics, ed. G. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), I/1, p. 350.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., p. 353.
37 Ibid., p. 381.
38 Ibid., p. 351.
39 Ibid., p. 359.
40 Ibid., p. 370.
41 Ibid., p. 396.
42 Ibid., pp. 372–5.
43 Ibid., p. 360.
44 Ibid., p. 369.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., p. 355.
47 Ibid., p. 363.
48 Ibid., p. 362.
49 Ibid., p. 406.
50 Ibid., p. 376.
51 Ibid., p. 383.
52 Ibid., p. 423; emphasis added.
53 However, on reading CD I/2, I noted that Barth can speak emphatically of Christ's humanity.
54 Ibid., p. 479.
55 Ibid., p. 172.
56 Ibid., p. 166.
57 Ibid., pp. 165–6, 316–26.
58 Ibid., pp. 316, 321, 323, CD II/1, p. 55.
59 CD I/1, p. 323.
60 Ibid., p. 382.
61 Ibid., p. 381.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid., p. 353.
65 Ibid., p. 393.
66 Ibid., p. 382.
67 See my Jesus and the Father, pp. 134, 136–7, 187–8. The logic of this argument is of course totally unconvincing. Why should divine relations which are threefold in the first place inform a twofold relationship, man and woman, or the divine Father–Son relationship the human husband–wife relationship?
68 Ibid., pp. 63–4. And see most recently, Kostenberger, A. and Swain, S., Father, Son and Spirit: The Trinity in John's Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: Apollos, 2008), pp. 62, 88, 124Google Scholar. Letham is one notable exception.
69 CD I/1, p. 389.
70 E.g. Jewett, P. K., Man as Male and Female (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975)Google Scholar; McKelway, A. J., ‘The Conception of Subordination in Barth's Social Ethics’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 32 (1979), pp. 345–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and most recently Stephenson, ‘Directed, Ordered and Related’.
71 CD I/1, p. 384. See also ibid., pp. 432–4.
72 Ibid., p. 389.
73 Ibid., p. 390.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid., p. 393.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid., p. 399.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid., pp. 406–10.
80 Ibid., p. 412.
81 Ibid., p. 413.
82 Ibid.
83 Ibid., p. 423.
84 CD IV/1, p. 195.
85 Barth, 2nd edn, p. 88.
86 CD II/2, pp. 103, 145.
87 Ibid., pp. 162–3.
88 Ibid., pp. 121–2.
89 Ibid., p. 187.
90 Ibid., p. 157.
91 Ibid., pp. 132–5.
92 CD IV/1, p. 192.
93 Ibid., p. 193.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid., p. 195.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid., p. 196.
99 Ibid., p. 197.
100 Ibid., p. 199.
101 Ibid., pp. 200–1.
102 Ibid., p. 201.
103 Ibid.
104 Ibid., p. 202.
105 CD IV/2, p. 84.
106 CD IV/1, p. 209.
107 Williams, R. D., ‘Barth on the Triune God’, in Sykes, S. W. (ed.), Karl Barth: Studies of his Theological Method (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), p. 175Google Scholar, uses stronger language. He says this paragraph is an ‘unhelpful bit’ of ‘hermetic mystification’.
108 So Ovey, ‘A Private Love’.