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

Trinity Journal, Spring 1999 by Keener, Craig S

At that point, God will be "all in all" (1 Cor 15:28). This refers to his unchallenged authority over all else, in this context presumably including the Son. Although some appeal to various later Gnostic sources for Paul's "all in all" language,41 such an appeal is both unnecessary and improbable. Without reference to Gnosticism some of Paul's Greek contemporaries may have misunderstood him pantheistically, because some used "the all" as a term for "the universe."42 More to the point, however, Jewish people could speak of God as "all" without a hint of pantheism (4Q266; Sir 43:27).43 Instead, even more hellenized Jews recognized God as the author and source of "all things."4 Probably Paul means that God will count as everything among all peoples or in all creation.

Despite some thorny questions about the meaning of some of Paul's language here, which we have not endeavored to resolve, this passage appears to affirm the Son's willing and loving subordination to the Father in the future era. For Paul, then, Jesus' deity (e.g., 1 Cor 8:6) is presumably not incompatible with his recognition of the Father's higher rank, even in the eternal future. Paul's wording does not indicate the sense in which the Son submits to the Father-it surely differs from the sense in which the rest of creation submits to both of them (Rev 22:3). But it does suggest that the Father and Son embrace roles that remain distinct in some respects even in eternity.

Implications for the Current Gender Roles Debate?

Although some of my complementarian friends may wish to hail this article as a "concession" by a scholar who does not share all their views on gender, and will undoubtedly argue that I balk at the "logical" conclusion, I think that the complementarian conclusionor for that matter, the egalitarian one-does not truly necessarily follow from the foregoing evidence. To be sure, a conclusion does follow that is not incompatible with the modern complementarian position: equality in being is compatible with distinctions in rank. (I distinguish this modern complementarian position from the usual traditional position, held through most of church history, in which women's rank is inferior because women are ontologically inferior, a view which some interpreters on both sides of the current debate would regard as more logically consistent.45)

Since few evangelicals, to my knowledge, argue today for an eternal subordination of any redeemed person to other redeemed persons, even the temporary subordination of the Son in the plan of redemption would be sufficient to make the case that equality of being is compatible with temporal distinctions in authority. But the value of such a claim for the current debate seems as minimal as the claim is uncontroversial: to my knowledge no evangelical, egalitarian or complementarian, denies that functional human rank (e.g., employers, leaders, professors who must assign grades) exists and should be respected where possible in this age.

What does not necessarily follow from the potential compatibility of temporal rank and equality of nature is that rank must necessarily be determined by gender.46 An association of rank with gender does not follow any more than its association with race or other factors held at some times in history to be divinely inseparable from rank.47 Even if one were inclined to seek such a parallel, all of us recognize that there is some sense in which relations within the Trinity differ from relations among human beings; most human analogies of rank we could offer in society or the church are determined by society, circumstances, calling, or other factors that do not simply subordinate a whole group of people to another whole group of people.48