Is subordination within the Trinity really heresy? A study of John 5:18 in context

Trinity Journal, Spring 1999 by Keener, Craig S

To affirm that Jesus is God is not to deny that he was sent by God. By analogy, although they did not go so far, John's Jewish contemporaries could affirm that God sent divine Wisdom forth from his holy heavens to instruct the wise (Wis 9:10).30 As various scholars have noted, although John's Christology is incarnational, it is also a "sending" Christology.31 Jesus and his followers had already portrayed Jesus as the Father's agent long before John wrote his gospel (e.g., Mark 9:37; 12:6; Matt 10:40; 15:24; 21:37; Luke 4:18, 43; 10:16; Acts 3:26; Rom 8:3; Gal 4:4).

Agency represented commission and authorization, the sense of the concept which provides a broad conceptual background for early Christian agency. In many cases, at least in our later sources, the agent's own legal status was comparatively low. Indeed, under rabbinic rulings, even slaves were permitted to fill the position.32 Yet agents bore representative authority, because they acted on the authority of the one who sent them. Thus perhaps the most common rabbinic maxim concerning a person's agent is that "he is equivalent to the person himself."33 In the broader Mediterranean world envoys or messengers were backed by the full authority of those they represented.?

Probably the best OT analogy for the Father's sending of Jesus and Jesus' sending his apostles is that of God sending the prophets, especially the prophet-leaders. Although God "sent" others in the LXX, he particularly sent Moses (Exod 3:10, 13-15; 4:28; 7:16; Deut 34:11; cf. Exod 4:13; 5:22) and the prophets, whether individually (2 Sam 12:1; 2 Chr 25:15; cf. 2 Sam 12:25) or collectively (2 Kgs 17:13; 2 Chr 24:19; Bar 1:21). Especially noteworthy here are 2 Chr 36:15 (God sent word by his (...), "messengers"; apparently (...), the noun cognate of (...), was unavailable), and the language of Jeremiah (Jer 7:25; 24:4; 26:5; 28:9; 35:15; 44:4), where unsent prophets are evil Jer 14:14-15; 23:21, 32; 27:15 [36:15-16 LXX]).

It is thus not at all surprising that some later Jewish teachers viewed as agents Moses, Aaron, the OT prophets or, most generally, anyone who carried out God's will.35 Jewish teachers who saw the prophets as God's commissioned messengers were faithful to the portrait of the prophets in their Scriptures. For Israel's prophetic messenger formulas echo ancient Near Eastern royal messenger formulas such as, "Thus says the great king," often addressing Israel's vassal kings for the suzerain king Yahweh.36 OT perspectives on prophets inform the early Christian view of apostleship, although they do not exhaust its meaning.37 Early Christians maintained the prophetic office, while seeming to apply to apostles the special sort of position accorded only certain prophets in the OT (such as prophet-judges like Deborah and Samuel, and other leaders of prophetic schools like Elijah and Elisha).

Another important element in the significance of the sending motif is that messengers even in the OT were often servants.31 The servant of a king held a high position relative to those the servant addressed (albeit a sometimes uncomfortable one when the people were in rebellion [see, e.g., 2 Kgs 12:18]) but was always subordinate to the king. Although commissioned agents in the first century were not always of lower social status (especially in betrothal arrangements), they relinquished their own status for the commission given them, in which they were authorized by the status of their senders. Even when one sent one's son (Mark 12:6), the messenger position was necessarily one of subordination to the sender. Although the concept of agency implies subordination, it also stresses Jesus' functional equality with the Father in terms of humanity's required response: he must be honored and believed in the same way as must be the Father whose representative he is (e.g., Tohn 5:23; 6:29).