A Necessary Distinction: Christ As God And Christ As Mediator -- By: James M. Renihan
Journal: Journal of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies
Volume: JIRBS 08:1 (NA 2023)
Article: A Necessary Distinction: Christ As God And Christ As Mediator
Author: James M. Renihan
JIRBS 8 (2023) p. 1
A Necessary Distinction: Christ As God And Christ As Mediator
*James. M. Renihan, Ph.D., is President of International Reformed Baptist Seminary, Mansfield, TX.
Some post-Reformation contributions to the current debate over Eternal Subordination of the Son, Eternal Functional Subordination, Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission and human role relationships
During the Westminster Assembly (1643–1648), a controversy over the nature of the relationship between church and state produced several significant published contributions to the debate. On one side were the Erastians, who argued for “the ascendancy of the state over the church in ecclesiastical matters.”1 Thomas Coleman, a member of the Assembly, argued for this view. He was supported in print by a Church of England clergyman, William Hussey.2 Their most noteworthy opponent was the Scottish commissioner to the Westminster Assembly, George Gillespie.3 An important issue in dispute was the nature
JIRBS 8 (2023) p. 2
of Christ’s mediatorship. Coleman and Hussey argued that there was no distinction between his divine authority and his mediatorial authority, thus his kingship was universal. The magistrate was to be God’s instrument for authority in the state and church. Gillespie responded by arguing that the failure to make a distinction between Christ’s authority by virtue of his divinity and his authority according to his incarnate mediatorial rule was disastrous to Christian theology as a whole. With implications reaching well beyond the controversies of his own day, Gillespie’s arguments have a direct relationship to the currently debated question of matters often labeled Eternal Subordination of the Son (ESS), Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS), or Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission (ERAS). Gillespie’s insistence upon the distinction between Christ’s divine and mediatorial rule, and his argument that confusion or conflation of the two has always led to serious error, likewise demonstrates that these modern views which rest upon the same failure to make distinctions are beyond the pale of post-Reformation orthodoxy and of the Confession. So that readers may understand, I will provide several quotations to make this point. The first is from Gillespie’s reply to Coleman, the second very lengthy quotation is from his famous Aaron’s Rod Blossoming. These are followed by a number of other citations from seventeenth-century authors.