Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 32:1 (Winter 2018)
Article: Book Review "The Rise And Fall Of The Complementarian Doctrine Of The Trinity" By Kevin Giles (Cascade, 2017)
Author: Denise Cooper-Clarke

PP 32:1 (Winter 2018) p. 29

Book Review
The Rise And Fall Of The Complementarian Doctrine Of The Trinity By Kevin Giles (Cascade, 2017)

Denise Cooper-Clarke

Denise Cooper-Clarke holds a PhD in medical ethics. She is a tutor in medical ethics at the University of Melbourne (Australia), an adjunct lecturer in ethics at Ridley Melbourne, and a researcher with Ethos (the Evangelical Alliance’s Centre for Christianity and Society). Dr. Cooper-Clarke is a fellow of the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology and is active with the Melbourne chapter of Christians for Biblical Equality.

The terms “page turner” and “doctrine of the Trinity” would not often be found in the same sentence, but they are appropriate in the case of Kevin Giles’s most recent book on the issue. I found this five-chapter account of a recent theological dispute absolutely riveting, even though I already knew how it would end! It is an extraordinary story, told by a major player in the drama.

Like many good stories, this one begins with a puzzling question: how was it that a majority of Reformed evangelical theologians changed their minds on an aspect of the doctrine of the Trinity, almost overnight? As Giles says, “On 1 June 2016 it seemed that the complementarian hierarchical doctrine of the Trinity had won the day” (8). The few dissenters, of whom Giles was the most vocal, were dismissed as “evangelical feminists” and accused of framing the co-equality of the three persons of the Trinity and thereby providing a foundation for their egalitarian views on gender. But everything changed two days later when “a deep and sharp split among those who call themselves complementarians suddenly and unexpectedly appeared” (35).

The split was not about the subordination of women to men, but about their understanding of the Trinity. Some complementarians (including, ironically, two women theologians, Rachel Miller and Aimee Byrd, who both wrote endorsements for Giles’s book) had been raising concerns about the doctrine of the eternal (functional) subordination of the Son to the Father. But the real crisis arose when Liam Goligher, a self-described “biblical complementarian,” denounced the teaching of the most well-known proponents of this view, Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem, accusing them of “reinventing the doctrine of God” and departing from “biblical Christianity as expressed in our creeds and confessions.” What complementarians had not been able to hear from Giles for years was at last being heard, and “the evangelical blogosphere exploded” (37).

If the fall of the complementarian doctrine of the Trinity took place in 2016, when was its rise? Giles dates its genesis to George Knight III’s 1977 book, New T...