
How EFS Muddles Christology and the Gospel
Evangelicals today have struggled to get the Trinity right. Our doctrine of the Trinity has drifted from Nicene orthodoxy due to the influence of EFS (Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son), which redefines the Trinity in social categories in order to defend gender roles. But Sam Parkison provides a critique, demonstrating why we need not adopt EFS to hold to a biblical understanding of gender roles.
The following is an excerpt from Samuel G. Parkison’s chapter, “The Trinity is Still Not Our Social Program: The Trinity and Gender Roles,” in a new book edited by Matthew Barrett called On Classical Trinitarianism (IVP, 2024).
Revealingly, EFS advocates do not seem to grasp the relevance their trinitarian formulations have on Christology. For example, in Grudem’s new edition to his Systematic Theology, he responds to recent criticisms by D. Glenn Butner regarding the challenge of dyothelitism for EFS:
Butner’s reasoning is fatally flawed, for it takes the analysis that churches in the seventh century made regarding one topic (the God-man Jesus Christ) and improperly applies some of its categories to another topic (the Trinity). But there are monumental differences because with Christ we are talking about only one person, but with the Trinity we are talking about three persons.[1]
It is frankly surprising that Grudem does not see the relevance dyothelitism has on the EFS debate. That he does not seem to adequately grasp the connection between trinitarian dogma and Christology becomes clear when he imagines he is refuting Butner’s position by pointing out, “When God ‘did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all’ (Romans 8:32), it was the divine Son, not just Christ’s human nature, whom God did not spare.”[2] But in pitting a statement about “the divine Son” against a statement about Christ’s “human nature,” Grudem poses a false choice and thereby boxes a shadow. Every classical theologian agrees that God does not spare the divine Son in the gospel. We affirm the singularity of the Subject: everything that happens to Christ in the economy happens to the divine Son. That is not controversial. But classical theologians—in step with orthodox councils like Chalcedon—further elaborate that it is the divine Son in virtue of his human nature who is not spared.
It must be in virtue of his human nature that the divine Son is not spared and offered up in death, for that is the only nature the divine Son has that is even capable of not being spared and offered up. Share on XTo get at this further, we stress the question, “From what is the Son not spared?” Of course, the answer is death, but this presents a dilemma: the divine nature cannot die. So when we read of the single Subject of the divine Son not being spared from death, we have to ask the question, “Is this single Subject not spared from death in virtue of his human nature or in virtue of his divine nature?” It must be in virtue of his human nature that the divine Son is not spared and offered up in death, for that is the only nature the divine Son has that is even capable of not being spared and offered up. To suffer is creaturely. We can and should go a step further and insist that to obey is creaturely. If we are to say that the Son truly obeys as Son—and we must—then we must say that the Son truly obeys as Son in virtue of his creaturely nature. This obedience is not an equivocal act that is carried out arbitrarily by any divine person, since it is a fitting creaturely corollary not to the divine personal property of paternity, nor spiration, but rather filiation. Thus, the Son’s obedience to the Father ad extra cannot provide an ad intra rationale for wives to submit to their husbands. Theologically, the Son’s obedience to the Father ad extra does not bespeak the Son’s obedience to the Father ad intra but rather the Son’s eternal generation from the Father (which cannot be mapped onto social dynamics between men and women). If we go looking for “obedience” as a paradigm in the Godhead ad intra from which we can rationalize complementarianism, we will come up short, because “obedience” simply is not a category that makes sense in the Godhead ad intra; it is an entirely creaturely category.
The Second Adam: Recapitulation and obedience
In the gospel, the triune God acts to save fallen humanity. God does this when the second person of the Trinity assumes a human nature to live, suffer, die, rise again on the third day, and ascend to heaven. While there are numerous theories regarding redemption in general, and Christ’s saving atonement in particular, this much is universally agreed upon. However, the Protestant Reformed tradition offers a particularly helpful framework for integrating all the emphases of various theories regarding redemption and atonement in such a way that they all cohere. Within this framework, we find a far more preferable conception of Christ’s obedience than that of EFS: Christ’s covenantal recapitulation. Adam was covenantally disobedient, and his posterity suffered for it; Christ, by contrast, was covenantally obedient, and his posterity are thereby blessed.
Whereas Adam broke covenant with his God, and therefore condemned himself and his posterity, God the Son intervened by taking on the form of a new Adam to keep covenant with God on behalf of his posterity. Share on XIn a Reformed conception of soteriology, justification is the sturdy foundation upon which redemption lies, and communion in the beatific vision shines as redemption’s telos. Within this framework, penal substitution harmonizes well Christus Victor, recapitulation, and the participatory and restorative elements of salvation. Gregory of Nazianzus said, “that which He has not assumed He has not healed,”[3] and the Protestant-Reformed tradition agrees. Despite what some may insist upon, a Reformed soteriology is able to synthesize the biblical descriptions of forensic justification in order to cohere with, and make sense of, this “healing.” To summarize, in Adam, all humanity is corrupted, dead, guilty, put under subjection to sin and the powers of darkness, and fallen; but in Christ, a new humanity is healed, resurrected, declared righteous, liberated from sin and the powers of darkness, and restored to participatory fellowship with God. This happens through the life, death, descent, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Whereas Adam broke covenant with his God, and therefore condemned himself and his posterity, God the Son intervened by taking on the form of a new Adam to keep covenant with God on behalf of his posterity. Key soteriological elements involved in justification are therefore (a) covenant, (b) federal headship, and (c) active and passive obedience. Fallen humanity needed a covenant head to obey on our behalf where Adam and Israel (and every other Old Testament “Adam”) failed to obey on our behalf. Fallen humanity needed both the passive obedience of one who could bear up under the consequence of our (and our head’s) covenant breaking (i.e., suffering and death), and fallen humanity also needed the active obedience of one who could keep covenant with God and thereby secure the blessings of covenant keeping. This, only God could do because of sin’s ubiquitous impact on all humanity, and this, only man could do because of the covenantal shape of the task. Thus, the God-man, Jesus Christ. When covenant-breakers are united to Christ by faith, the redemption that Christ accomplished in the historia salutis is applied personally by the Spirit. This application of redemption accomplished includes, as Calvin called it, the “duplex gratia”—the double grace—of justification and sanctification, with the latter logically rooted in the former. Thus, we are “healed” in Christ at every level—both declaratively at the forensic level, and progressively at the mystical level, whereby we are transformed into Christ forever.
This much can be affirmed in good faith by EFS advocates, but the import of Christ’s covenant-keeping obedience cannot be stressed enough. This is where EFS’s consequential impact on dyothelitism comes to bear: if Christ has only one will, and it is the eternally obedient will of a Son who always obeys, then his obedience in salvation history is no longer on our behalf, but is rather on his. For EFS, Christ is not the Son who learned obedience for the economic, soteriological purpose of redemption (Hebrews 5:8); obedience is rather an essential personhood-defining feature. In this conception, within the historia salutis, Christ simply does in the economy what he always and necessarily does as the eternal Son. But this is a massive problem for our soteriology. For one thing, such a conception comes within sight of Apollinarianism. If the Son’s obedience as a human is simply an extension of his obedience as divine, does that not imply that his willful obedience is a property of his divine nature, and not his human nature? If so, what good does that do us? We do not need the obedience of a divine will, we need the obedience of a human will because it was a human will that broke the law of God, and only a human will to obey can earn a human righteousness to impute to transgressors. We need the obedience of a human will to heal us, because it is human wills that are corrupted by sin. This is why the Son of God became a Son of Man—so that he could obey. Again, to obey—just like to grow or to learn—is creaturely. The biblical description that EFS advocates rush to in order to justify their projection of economy back up onto the ad intra relations is a description of a creaturely characteristic that corresponds to a creaturely nature. In other words, “obedience” sits far more naturally within the theological loci of soteriology than within theology proper. Observes Steven J. Duby:
The Scriptures teach a distinctly human obedience of the Son, not a divine obedience. The Scriptures do this by teaching that the Son’s obedience is a novelty consequent upon his assumption of the forma servi, that his obedience has a representative character for our sake, and that his obedience tends toward a death he could not undergo as immortal God.[4]
Editor’s note: Taken from “The Trinity is Still Not Our Social Program” by Samuel G. Parkison from “On Classical Trinitarianism” edited by Matthew Barrett. Copyright (c) 2024 by Matthew Michael Barrett. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com
Notes:
[1] Grudem, Systematic Theology, Second Edition, 312.
[2] Grudem, Systematic Theology, Second Edition, 313.
[3] Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101 (Epistle 1 to Cleodonius), in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christians Church, twenty-eight vols. in two series, ed. Philip Schaff et al. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1887-1894), series 2, 7:440.
[4] Steven J. Duby, Jesus and the God of Classical Theism: Biblical Christology in Light of the Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 262.