I am not presenting what I think.

I am trying to find how complementarians present their beliefs as being consistent with the church fathers and the creeds.

Bruce Ware supports his thesis that the Father and Son are in an eternal authority and submission relationship in Father, Son and Holy Spirit (page 80), by citing Augustine,

Augustine affirmed, the distinction of Persons is constituted precisely by the differing relations among them, in part manifested by the inherent authority of the Father and inherent submission of the Son.

And this is the citation from Augustine,

“In the light of this we can now perceive that the Son is not just said to have been sent because the Word became flesh, but that he was sent in order for the Word to become flesh, and by his bodily presence to do all that was written. That is, we should understand that it was not just the man who the Word became that was sent, but that the Word was sent to become man. For he was not sent in virtue of some disparity of power or substance or anything in him that was not equal to the Father, but in virtue of the Son being from the Father, not the Father being from the Son.”*

Ware then comments on this quote,

If the “Son” is sent by the “Father,” and if the “Son” comes to do the will of the “Father,” does it not stand to reason that God wishes by this language to indicate something of the authority and submission that exists within the relationships of the members of the immanent trinity?

Lydia,

You are in good company here, perahps you are citing Ware.

This is how Ware claims that Christ is equal to the Father in “power” but less than the Father in “authority.”

But I am sure that anyone who knows Latin will be aware that “power” and “authority” were, in fact, the same word in Latin – potestas.

Therefore, what Augustine said was,

“For he was not sent in virtue of some disparity of authority or substance or anything in him that was not equal to the Father, but in virtue of the Son being from the Father, not the Father being from the Son.”

It appears that Augustine believed that the Son was from the Father, but still equal in authority to the Father.

Here is the citation in Latin,

Secundum hoc iam potest intellegi non tantum ideo dici missus filius quia uerbum caro factum est, sed ideo missus ut uerbum caro fieret et per praesentiam corporalem illa quae scripta sunt operaretur, id est ut non tantum homo missus intellegatur quod uerbum factum est, sed et uerbum missum ut homo fieret quia non secundum imparem potestatem uel substantiam uel aliquid quod in eo patri non sit aequale missus est, sed secundum id quod filius a patre est, non pater a filio. Verbum enim patris est filius, quod est sapientia eius dicitur.

The fact is that Ware’s teaching that God is supreme in authority over Christ, (Father, Son and Holy Spirit page 131) cannot be reconciled with traditional theology.

*St. Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. 5 of The Works of St. Augustine (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991) IV. 27

We do not need to wonder about this, the Bible gives the reason.

ESV Tit 2:4 … and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,
Tit 2:5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

The reason is that the word of God may not be reviled (or not be discredited – NET).

The culture taught and the laws assumed that a wife OBEYED her husband, Paul never endorses this, but tells wives to act in such a way in THAT 1st century culture so as to allow the gospel to spread, in other words, gospel first, social change second.

Paul is using the 6 nouns of Aristotle’s household code, but changing 4 of the verbs, this is deliberate and the contrast needs to be seen. It subverts Aristotle while seeming to conform to him and it subverts his hierarchy from the inside out, with Spirit led change of the inner person and freedom.

Your interpretation of Eph 5:21 would damage all the other “to one another” verses if applied consistently to them, such as love one another and be kind to one another, so I hope you reconsider. Also Eph 5:21 is paired with Eph 5:19 in a chiasm and 5:19 is an “everyone to everyone” verse. So Paul by the structure of his letter is making sure that “some to others” is not a viable choice.

Peter, What do you do with John 5:18?

In the unity of the Godhead head there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God Son, and God the Holy Ghost.1

In Deitatis unitate personæ tres sunt unius ejusdemque essentiæ, potential ac æternitatis; Deus Pater, Deus Filius, ac Deus Spiritus Sanctus.

Here once again potential means authority. Christ is “of one authority” with the Father.

The Athanasian Creed says,

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.

Sed Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti una est divinitas, aequalis gloria, coeterna maiestas.

Majesty means sovereignty. Christ has “coeternal sovereignty” with the Father.

I have not heard the debate, but I hope it took place in Latin. Otherwise it does not relate to historic Christianity.

I hope some day to meet a complementarian who will explain how their belief could be consistent with the Latin creeds.

Don, Let me make my question more clear: Why in Colossians 3, Titus 2 and 1 Peter 3, is it always the wife who’s told to submit to the husband and not the reverse?

Furthermore, I still don’t buy your claim that Ephesians 5:22-6:9 gives six examples of submission. If they are to clarify mutual submission (supposedly, 5:21), then there’s nothing clarified by repeating the command to submit to the woman, while giving a real clarification to the man. It’s like saying, “Here’s what it means to submit: submit.” I doubt that’s what Paul’s doing.

Also, it doesn’t explain how in the examples in 6:1-9 have one authority and one who is to be in obedience (the command to obey the other is one-way in those two examples). The husband-wife example fits the following parallels of 6:1-9 (i.e., of one way obedience) if you read 5:22-33 as saying a wife is to be obedient to her husband who is in authority.

On top of that, I’ve given an adequate translation of 5:21, “…one to another…” which fits the context.

Sue, all of the creeds are referring to the ontological equality within the Godhead, as I said before. The point is that Jesus was in essence worthy to have the same authority as the Father. But, He willingly and joyfully submitted to the Father.

I haven’t read these sources, but Dr. Bruce Ware said in the debate on eternal relations of authority and submission in the Godhead (that I linked to above), that the following figures all affirm functional subordination:

Nicene Creed (325/ 381 A.D.)
Chalcedonian Creed (451 A.D.)
Athanasian Creed (4th–5th century AD)
Thirty-nine Articles (Church of England, 1571)
Westminster Confession of Faith (1643–46)
Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742)
Geoffrey Bromiley (1984)
Novatian’s Treatise Concerning the Trinity
Hilary of Poitiers
Augustine, in De Trinitate
Anselm (1033-1109)
Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274)
John Calvin (1509–1564)
Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Augustus H. Strong (1836–1921)
B. B. Warfield (1851–1921)
Louis Berkhof (1873–1957)
Philip Schaff (1819–1893)
J. N. D. Kelley
Francis Hall
A. M. Hills
William Pope
P. T. Forsyth
Colin Gunton
Gerald O’Collins
John Frame
J. Scott Horrell

The opponents only objected to Calvin and Aquinas.

The Arians knew that the Father was an authority over the pre-incarnate Son, but their rationalism forced them to conclude that implied the Son couldn’t be ontologically equal with the Father. So Athanasius was fighting to preserve the Son’s full deity while holding that, yes, He was in submission to His Father.

Do you not think that the Father sending the Son (John 4:34; 5:23; 6:29; Galatians 4:4) implies authority? What does it mean otherwise?

You know where I stand. The “sent” passages, coupled with 1 Corinthians 11:3 are the primary reasons I think there were functional roles of submission and authority in the Godhead. Refer to the link in this comment, specifically Grudem and Ware’s position, for more details.

All my cards are on the table.

By the way, Sue. Sorry for not going back to this earlier. I forgot, I wasn’t dodging your response. When I asked earlier why God went to Adam first in Genesis 3:8-10, when it was Eve who accepted the fruit and gave it to her husband to eat (3:6), and she was the one deceived (1 Timothy 2:14; cf. 2 Corinthians 11:3), I was implying that God went to Adam because Adam was responsible for His wife. The way Christ took responsibility for His bride, the Church–dying for her and protecting her from Satan–Adam was to do for his wife and family, but he failed. (I think it’s obvious, but I disagree with Calvin.)

Thank you both for the conversation.

I wasn’t perhaps clear about the point I was questioning. You wrote,

If a Calvinistic, then God the Father ordained sending His Son to the world to die on the cross happened in eternity past. This implies eternal roles of authority in the Godhead. These eternal roles of authority are imaged by husband and wife being equal, yet there being authority-submission relations, i.e., complementarianism.

But Augustine wrote,

For he was not sent in virtue of some disparity of power or substance or anything in him that was not equal to the Father, but in virtue of the Son being from the Father, not the Father being from the Son.”*

non secundum imparem potestatem uel substantiam uel aliquid quod in eo patri non sit aequale missus est, sed secundum id quod filius a patre est, non pater a filio.

However, because postestas means authority, Augustine is saying that Christ IS NOT unequal to God in authority. There is no difference in their authority.

Since all the creeds ever since have been based on this statement of Augustine’s I have presumed that complementarians do not believe the creeds and are not orthodox Christians. So far, no complementarian has explained why they differ so greatly from the creeds they claim to uphold.

I have not read Kevin Giles, nor Groothuis so I would not have any idea what their argument against subordination is. In my view, the subordination of Christ is not a traditional Christian doctrine.

A husband is told to submit, are you not a believer? Does not Eph 5:21 apply to you?

In not the sacrifice a husband is commanded a form of submission?

I think Don’s main interest may be gender at this point, but I am curious about the ETS doctrinal statement. I don’t feel it is appropriate for me to always be arguing the marriage thing ad infinitum on the internet.

So far, it seems that the word “submit” does not require the other person to be an authority over the one who submits. However, I recognize that certain verses say that the wife or slave must submit. I am not arguing against that. I am just suggesting the word “submit” by itself does mean that there HAS TO BE a ranking in authority.

My undertanding of Augustine is that he said that the Son was not unequal to God in potestas which means authority, but is translated into English as “power.” I am claiming that in the creeds, when it says “power” in English, this means “authority” or exousia.