Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity [Paperback]

Kevin N. Giles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 16, 2006

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the cornerstones of Christianity. In Jesus and the Father, Kevin Giles wrestles with questions about the Trinity that are dividing the evangelical community: What is the error called 'subordinationism'? Is the Son eternally subordinated to the Father in function? Are the Father and the Son divided or undivided in power and authority? Is the Father-Son-Spirit relationship ordered hierarchical or horizontal? How should the Father and the Son be differentiated to avoid the errors of modalism and subordinationism? What is the relationship between the so-called economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity? Does the Father-Son relationship in the Trinity prescribe male-female relationships in the home and the church? 'Kevin Giles points out serious problems in the teaching that the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father and argues effectively for the full eternal equality within the Trinity. This book should be read by all who wrestle with the complex but crucial doctrine of the Trinity.'---Millard Erickson, author, Christian Theology 'By showing that subordinationism is a revival of a heresy that was systematically rejected by the non-Arian Church, the author reinstates the classical orthodox doctrine of the Trinity in all its scriptural majesty and grandeur.'---Gilbert Bilezikian, professor emeritus, Wheaton College 'Giles skillfully places before us the stark choice which each generation of theologians must face: will we allow the Bible to speak its message about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to us, or will we use the Bible to advance our own agenda? This important book deserves to be widely read and carefully considered.'---Paul D. Molnar, professor of systematic theology, St. John's University

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kevin Giles (Th.D., Australian College of Theology) is the Vicar of St. Michael's Church in North Carlton, Australia. He has been in Anglican parish ministry for over thirty years. Dr. Giles has published numerous scholarly articles and ten books including, Women and Their Ministry, Created Woman, Patterns of Ministry Among the First Christians, What on Earth is the Church?, Making Good Churches Better, and The Trinity and Subordinationism. He is a contributor to the IVP Dictionaries, Jesus and the Gospels and The Later Writings of the New Testament and Their Development. He and his wife, Lynley, have been married for 34 years. They have four grown children and five grandchildren.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Jesus and the Father 17 Chapter 1 Contemporary Evangelicals and the Doctrine of the Trinity In the past thirty years there has been an amazing resurgence of interest in the doctrine of the Trinity. Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox theologians have published numerous studies and books on the Trinity, and they are continuing to appear. Evangelicals at first were not involved, but a change is under way, as this book and others written recently by evangelicals indicate.1 After a long period of neglect, this doctrine is now on center stage as it should be, because it is nothing less than our distinctive Christian doctrine of God. Most contemporary books on the Trinity have two foci. They look back to the historical sources to see how the doctrine was developed by the best of theologians across the centuries, and they look at the present to see how this fundamental doctrine can be best expressed building on all the work and thought that has gone before. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin are the most commonly studied historical authorities. One of the most important developments in this doctrinal renaissance has been the recognition that there is much to learn from the early Greek-speaking theologians, particularly Athanasius 1 For example, Millard Erickson, God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1995); Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall, The Trinity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002); Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004); Brian Edgar, The Message of the Trinity (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 2004); Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity in Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, N.J.: PandR, 2004). and the Cappadocian Fathers, who for centuries were somewhat forgotten by Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians. Right at the heart of their doctrine of the Trinity was the belief that God's triunity was to be understood communally. The three persons are the one God in the most intimate, self-giving fellowship. This development has lead to a widespread move away from Tertullian, Augustine, and Aquinas's practice of speaking of God in unity as 'one substance,' an expression which sounds impersonal and abstract, even if this was not intended. In this prevailing 'communal model' of the Trinity, the coequality of the divine three both in unity and in relation to one another as persons is very much to the fore. Given this starting point for the doctrine of the Trinity, any suggestion that the divine three are ordered hierarchically, or divided in being, work, or authority, is unthinkable. Ted Peters in his 1993 book God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life2 describes contemporary thinking about the Christian God as 'antisubordinationist trinitarianism.' Similarly, the conservative evangelical Millard Erickson in his 1995 study, God in Three Persons, says that along with other contemporary theologians he believes in 'the complete equality of the divine three.'3 David Cunningham in his 1998 book, These Three Are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology, is of much the same opinion. He speaks of 'a radical, relational, co-equality' in modern trinitarian thinking.4 In my opinion the finest study on the Trinity in the last ten years is that by Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons.5 He too emphasizes the coequality of the differentiated divine persons. Building on the work of Athanasius and the Cappadocians, he makes the Trinity itself the monarche (sole source or origin) of the divine three and the Son the monarche of divine saving revelation. He is totally opposed to subordinationism in any form. In the light of this contemporary stress on the coequality of the divine persons who are understood to be bound together in the most intimate bond of love and self-giving, it is of no surprise that some of the best contemporary expositions of the doctrine of the Trinity see the Trinity as a charter for human liberation and emancipation. 6 If no one divine person is before or after, greater or lesser because they are 'coequal' (as the Athanasian creed says), this suggests, we are told, that all hierarchi- 18 JES US AND THE FATHER 2 Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville: Westminster, 1993). 3 Erickson, God in Three Persons, 331. 4 David Cunningham, These Three Are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 113. 5 Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons. (Edinburgh: TandT Clark, 1996). 6 Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society (New York: Orbis, 1988); Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (New York: Harper and Row, 1981); Catherine LaCugna, God for Us (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991); Erickson, God in Three Persons. cal ordering in this world is a human construct ref lecting fallen existence, not God's ideal. God would like to see every human being valued in the same way. It is thus the Christian's duty to oppose human philosophies and structures that oppress people, limiting their full potential as human beings made in the image and likeness of God. Millard Erickson is one evangelical who is sympathetic to this agenda predicated on the belief that the persons of the Trinity relate as equals in self-giving love.7 Paradoxically, in this same thirty-year period many conservative evangelicals concerned to maintain the permanent subordination of women have been developing a doctrine of a hierarchically ordered Trinity in which the Father rules over the Son just like men are to rule over women in the church and the home. We are told that the Father is eternally 'head over' the Son just as men are permanently 'head over' women in the church and the home. On this model of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity indicates that God has appointed some to rule and some to obey, and this is the ideal. It is not unfair to say that rather than being a charter for emancipation and human liberation, this doctrine of the Trinity suggests that social change and female liberation should be opposed. The conservative evangelical theologians who think of the Trinity as hierarchically ordered with the Father commanding and the Son obeying insist that what they are teaching is what the Bible teaches and historic orthodoxy endorses. I am an evangelical, but I am convinced the opposite is the truth. The Bible and the interpretative tradition summed up in the creeds and Reformation confessions speak of a coequal Trinity where there is no hierarchical ordering.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (May 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310266645
• ISBN-13: 978-0310266648
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #898,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kevin Giles (Th.D., Australian College of Theology) is the Vicar of St. Michael's Church in North Carlton, Australia. He has been in Anglican parish ministry for over thirty years. Dr. Giles has published numerous scholarly articles and ten books including, Women and Their Ministry, Created Woman, Patterns of Ministry Among the First Christians, What on Earth is the Church?, Making Good Churches Better, and The Trinity and Subordinationism. He is a contributor to the IVP Dictionaries, Jesus and the Gospels and The Later Writings of the New Testament and Their Development. He and his wife, Lynley, have been married for 34 years. They have four grown children and five grandchildren.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book sheds light on the debate on women in ministry., September 22, 2006

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ssumner "sarah sumner" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Paperback)

For anyone who cares to be orthodox in their thinking about the doctrine of the Trinity, this is a don't miss read. In this book Kevin Giles explains a number of important things: 1) that the distinctive mark of the Christian God is that God is Three in One; 2) that unless we understand that the Father, Son, and Spirit are equal in authority and power, we fail to carry forward the historic doctrine of the Trinity; 3)that much of the contemporary debate in conservative evangelical circles on the doctrine of the Trinity is really not about the Trinity, but rather about the proper role of women in the Church.

Giles rightly explains that it is heretical to think the Father has more authority than the Son. Church fathers such as Athanasius, the Cappodocians, Augustine, John of Damascus battled--on the basis of rigorous Bible study and the principles of logic--that the Father, Son, and Spirit have one authority. Yet Giles fails to make clear that it's one thing to deny Christ's deity (as the Arian heretics did), and another thing to deny the Son's equal authority with the Father (as Wayne Grudem and others are doing).

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Problem of Modern Evangelicalism., April 23, 2008

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R.E Aguirre "readingsfrommodernity.tk" (Southern Cal.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Paperback)

In 2006, Kevin Giles, Anglican scholar and vicar of St. Michael's Church in North Carlton Australia published this book, "Jesus and the Father, Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity". In many ways it is a defense and further exposition on his earlier work, "The Trinity and Subordinationism".

The importance of this book both in it's target field (the doctrine of the Trinity) and in the larger scope (the state of Evangelicalism) cannot be understated. Giles convincingly makes his case in the following points: First, that modern Evangelicals have strayed away from the historic, orthodox, Catholic, doctrinal formulation of the Trinity and have come extremely close to various Arian heretical reformulations of it. Several popular Evangelical scholars are taken to task on this point such as George Knight III, Wayne Grudem, Bruce Ware, Norman Geisler, John Frame, Robert Letham and Robert Doyle to name but a few. No denomination or Protestant tradition is safe from the penetrating analysis that Giles applies using the weapons of the historic orthodox voice, the regula fide. Evangelical, Reformed and Anglican scholars are exposed as being severly lacking in the proper understanding of historical theology.

The main point of contention is that modern scholars are defending the eternal subordination of Jesus in authority and function to the Father. If this surprising revelation is not enough, these scholars use this proposition to defend the 'hierarchical' view that a women should be subordinate to her husband, since we are told, this is the example Jesus shows us in His relationship with the Father.

In 300+ pages Giles inspects this modern innovation in painstaking detail exposing it's weakness on many grounds from both the voices of the early fathers, Calvin and modern conservative scholarship. Giles sober handling of the issues and breath of knowledge on the secondary literature is impressive and I must quote him in length on this point, "I have read all the contemporary books on the Trinity on the shelves of the university library I use, as well as other books on this topic I have borrowed elsewhere or bought, including all the conservative evangelical works that endorse the eternal sobordination of the Son" (p.169).

What we as Catholics say is that this one issue (and a major distortion it is) is but one symptom of the larger disease of modern evangelicalism. Modern Christianity has built it's house on sand rather than on the solid unshaking rock of history. And with the smallest of winds, bits and pieces fall over and exposes the emptiness inside. Imagine, what is the central piece, the very cornerstone of our faith, who our God is - is mangled and reinvented in modern garb. It is not difficult to prove then that the remaining tenets of our Catholic-historic faith have been similarly misunderstood and reinvented. To the credit of this great Anglican scholar he admits as much when he speaks very highly of Roman Catholic scholars on this issue, such as Edmund Fortman, Karl Rahner and Yves Conger to name but a few. I close tonight quoting Giles again on page 169 of this great work, "I have not found a Roman Catholic theologian who gives any support to the idea that the Son is eternally subordinated in any way".

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly important book, July 15, 2006

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Donald B. Johnson "jazzman2222" (Manassas, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Paperback)

This book discusses how the Godhead is to be conceived in Christianity. As Voltaire wrote "God made man in his image and man returned the favor." The temptation to make God in our image is always with us and results in nothing less than a false "god" and therefore is idolatrous. We see how some evangelicals (like Wayne Grudem) are rewriting history and word definitions in order to promote the Arian idea of the eternal subordination of the Son in order to promote the subordination of women in family and church.