Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 06:1 (Spring 2001)
Article: Tampering With the Trinity: Does the Son Submit to His Father?
Author: Bruce A. Ware

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JBMW 6:1 (Spring 2001) p. 4

Tampering With the Trinity: Does the Son Submit to His Father?1

Bruce A. Ware

President, Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood; Senior Associate Dean, School of Theology, Professor of Christian Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky

Introduction

To someone not conversant with contemporary theological writings, it may come as something of a surprise to learn that the historic doctrine of the Trinity is undergoing considerable scrutiny, reassessment, reformulation, and/or defense.2 To many, this doctrine, perhaps as much or more than any other, seems so abstract and unrelated to life that they might wonder just why the interest. What is here that would warrant and elicit such concentrated attention? What is at stake in this doctrine that would provoke such interest and concern?

To many, what is at stake is simply this: the integrity and reality of the Christian faith itself. Donald Bloesch surprised many in the theological world with the publication in 1985 of his book entitled, The Battle for the Trinity.3 He charged the feminist rejection of the Bible’s own and traditional theology’s predominantly masculine language for God as a rejection of the Trinity itself and, as such, the imposition of a different faith (i.e., not the Christian faith) onto those quarters of the church inclined to accept the feminist critique. And, such charges and concerns have continued unabated. Consider, for example, the sobering words of Duke University Professor of Systematic Theology, Geoffrey Wainwright:

The signs of our times are that, as in the fourth century, the doctrine of the Trinity occupies a pivotal position. While usually still considering themselves within the church, and in any case wanting to be loyal to their perception of truth, various thinkers and activists are seeking such revisions of the inherited doctrine of the Trinity that their success might in fact mean its abandonment, or at least such an alteration of its content, status, and function that the whole face of Christianity would be drastically changed. Once more the understanding, and perhaps the attainment, of salvation is at stake, or certainly the message of the church and the church’s visible composition.4

What are some of these contemporary proposed revisions of the doctrine of the Trinity that would provoke such strong reaction? This article proposes to focus on two dimensions of trinitarian reconstruction, both of which are the result of feminist revisionism. First, ...

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