For the majority of lay-believers, the doctrine of the Trinity is probably assumed to be shrouded in a veil of mystery that most assume is never to be peeked beneath. As a young believer in a generally uneducated atmosphere, even the most religiously devoted members of my community never broached the topic of the Trinity, choosing rather to say, "There are some things about God that are just not meant to be understood; or which cannot be comprehended by the human mind."
While there are certainly limitations to what can be understood or even what has been revealed to us regarding the Godhead, scholars from various perspectives have weighed in over the course of the last two decades over increasingly different interpretations of the Trinity. In Trinitarian Theology, four Southern Baptist professors attempt to elucidate their respective perspectives, as well as evaluate the perspectives of the others in what will certainly become an oft-cited source for any graduate student writing on the topics of Eternal Functional Subordination, Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission, the Eternal Generation of the Son, and even the relationship of God's being to the complementarian/egalitarian debate of human relations.
Bruce Ware: Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission
Bruce Ware steps out as the first to comment on this debate, defending the somewhat novel view of what he dubs "Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission" (ERAS). I say that he dubs it this, because prior to this, a previously popular view was called Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS), which is notably different from what he defends.
From Ware's perspective, the economic gleanings that we are made privy to regarding the Trinity (that is, how the members behave and relate to one another insofar as it connects to the pactus sanctum, or the Covenant of Redemption) are directly related to the ontological truths of the Trinity (that is, how the members exist eternally, or what they are). This means, from his perspective, that the titles or names, "Father and Son" are not only denotive of how the members of the Trinity have revealed themselves through action (that the Son is in a position of subjection to the Father by being the one to humble Himself, die on the cross, and ultimately give all glory back to the Father), but that the Sonship of the Son extends further back, prior to the beginning of the creative order, meaning that although the three persons of the Trinity are equal in essence, they are related to one another in a "vertical" format, with a hierarchy of authority and submission taking place amongst them, voluntarily, albeit in direct relation to their being.
Ware is much more of a Biblicist than the others in this book, relying heavily on the texts of the Bible to prove his points, and being willing to stand in opposition to the perspectives handed down through the confessions and creeds of Christendom.
While I am interested in Ware's perspective, there are some aspects in which he goes too far. For example, when discussing the roles of authority and submission in ontological terms, he refers to the Holy Spirit as "third among the trinitarian persons." This vertical perspective places the Holy Spirit in the hierarchy of the Trinity at the bottom, which prompts the question, "how can the members of the trinity be equal in all ways (assuming we except their relations of eternal origin and Ware's proposition of distinct voluntary roles) if there is an inherent hierarchy in which the Spirit is 'third among the trinitarian persons'?"
This latter point brings to light a second problem I have with his perspective, which is that (like the other members of this discussion), he is willing to posit new and hitherto historically unheard of ideas about the Trinity, as well as being willing to openly stand in opposition to the creeds and confessions on some issues, but none in this volume undertakes the task of examining the doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son with any form of skepticism whatsoever. All members of this discussion affirm this doctrine, despite it constantly being a point of exception in their arguments. On this point, Ware notes (in a footnote, but nonetheless) that he has "never in the past said that the doctrine of eternal generation is wrong, but [that he has] questioned whether Scripture teaches it, and frankly [he has] puzzled over just what it means." With that note made, why doesn't he examine this doctrine? Was this not the perfect opportunity to set the discussion in motion?
Malcolm B. Yarnell III: Trinitarian Theological Anthropology
Yarnell constitutes what is labelled as the "middle ground" in this book. He endeavors to develop an anthropology that is based on the foundation of a Trinitarian doctrine. By this, what he argues is that the fact that God has created humanity "in His image" indicates that humanity in some fundamental way mirrors the Godhead. One could take this conclusion in one of two directions. Either, (1) we can try to work backwards and look at the human race in order to understand what God is like; or (2) we can try to work forwards and look at the Godhead in order to understand what human relations ought to be like. It is this latter approach that Yarnell takes, saying, "One should look primarily to who God is before reflecting on who humanity is."
It is my opinion that Yarnell is seeks to mod-podge the perspectives of several different theologians together into a casserole that he can agree with. A more academically favorable way of describing this would be "synthesizing", but usually when a synthesis is made it is not done with a single line from one source and another single line from another, so on. This is much more piece-meal than would usually be allowed. For example, he spends a few pages discussing his problems with Stanley Grenz's perspective on the Trinity (largely because of Grenz's "horizontal view" of the Trinity against Yarnell's "vertical view"), but a few pages later wants to extract Grenz's perspective on God's self-naming. Even in this point, he disagrees with the manner in which Grenz develops the idea, saying that Grenz holds the names to be "denotive" rather than his preference for the names being "descriptive". It may be unfair, but for this reader, taking someone's idea and commenting on the novelty of the view just before deforming it to conform to your own thoughts seems to be either disingenuous in the complementing or disrespectful in the reconfiguring.
In whole, I am not entirely positive exactly what it is that Yarnell even believes. He claims to have a vertical view, and yet makes comments like "it is exegetically unnecessary to assign submission to the Son's divine nature." If the Son is not by His nature submissive to the Father, then in what way does He derive "power and authority from God..." or how is it coherent to say that "Authority, like the eternal generation of the One, proceeds from the Father to the Son"? How can one derive their authority from another previously authoritative person without being at some point or in some natural way inherently beneath that person in terms of authority, i.e. submissive?
Matthew Emerson and Luke Stamps: Developing a Trinitarian Theological Method
In developing a perspective on the Trinity, Emerson and Stamps put forward a five point method as the most tenable towards a comprehensive and coherent view. They claim that one's method ought to be "spirit led and ecclesially located", "exegetically grounded", "canonically patterned", "creedally ruled", and "dogmatically guided."
They begin their defense of this view by combatting the expected kickback they are going to get from Biblicists (what Yarnell later calls a shallow or naïve form of Biblicism), by stating that they are in favor of the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura, but then set out to claim that there are ways to supplement this by what they call "thick biblicism" which is essentially a denial of solo scriptura, rather than a different take than sola scriptura. To my knowledge, I have not encountered many Reformed Christians that hold to solo scriptura. Usually, this sort of reliance on scripture en toto is characteristic of fundamentalists that do not usually align themselves with the Reformed movement.
While their point is well-taken, as it is true that the Holy Spirit has worked through many people throughout the course of history over the last 2000+ years of scriptural examination, there is something inherently Roman Catholic about elevating these other four points of their methodology to equal ground with "exegetically grounded" or "spirit led". To say that the ecclesiological derivation of a view, or the creedal approval and dogmatic guidance of a view is equally important with it being scriptural is unavoidably against the views of even the Reformers that so many in the Reformed community cling to today, like Luther and Calvin. This despite the fact that Luther and Calvin derived many of their views from these creeds and church fathers like Augustine, the whole of the Reformation seems to show this allegiance to the past as equal with the scripture is unpalatable at best, and reprehensible at worst. They exemplify the fault in this practice by grading the perspective of Ware as not being as strong as "the stronger form... found in the pro-Nicene tradition." It is only in the footnotes that they explain their actual problems with his perspective. It seems sufficient to them to say that a view does not align with the historical creeds. I believe they will find that this allegiance to the historical creeds regardless of scriptural defense is not going to stand for long.
With that said, it should come as no surprise that their view is the most directly pro-Nicene in the book, largely clinging to the historical doctrines and definitions verbatim. This leads, in my opinion, to their failure to address the questions that are looming today because of their inability to formulate new explanations without contradicting the historical statements they hold so dearly to. For example, they give perhaps the largest explanation of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the son (pp. 113-18). And yet, they say nothing that actually answers any of the questions that are now on the minds of all those who doubt this doctrine. They simple parrot the historical statements about the doctrine.
With that said, the problems I have with their perspective (outside of their methodology) is that they seem to skirt all of the questions that are answered by differing views in Ware and Yarnell's perspective by simply saying that all of the ways in which the Son is submissive to the Father are found in the incarnation (pp. 163-64). These ad-extra submissions are not indicative of any ad-intra realities within the Godhead. This seems to be oddly distinct from the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son that they spend so much time developing! This point - the eternal origin of the Son - is the one exception that they have to hold to their rule. Even when discussing the reason that the persons of the Trinity have the names that they have, they claim, "these names simply (though ineffably) communicate the relations of origin." While this may be in line with the historical creeds, this definition is a lawyer's dodge to the whole problem that Ware is trying to address! You can't say, "Ware is wrong in that he proposes that the Son is subject to the Father in this new way; Everybody knows that the Son is only subject to the Father in the way people a long time ago said He was." This is why their whole methodology is important to introduce prior to their argument. If one does not accept the primacy of the creeds and traditions through church history, they have little to no reason to hold that their view is correct while Ware's is incorrect.
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