John Owen and the Question of the Eternal Submission of the Son within the Ontological Trinity

By Benedict Bird

[Benedict Bird is currently a PhD student at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, England.]

ABSTRACT

Scripture plainly attests to the subordination of the Son of God to his Father. But throughout church history it has been recognized that some expressions of that subordination border on, or fall into heresy. The glory properly due to the Son is at stake. The essential question is whether the subordination is ontological (within God’s being) or purely economic (relating to what he decrees and does concerning things that are outside of himself). If we wish to argue—as we ought—that the subordination only occurs in the economy, there is a difficulty to be addressed. How are we to understand the scriptural expressions of subordination that refer to the Son’s submission in eternity as well as in time? If the Son is in some sense eternally submissive to the Father, not only temporally in his incarnation, how can we maintain that the subordination is purely economic? This article examines Bruce Ware’s response to these questions, explaining why his answers unavoidably imply ontological subordination while simultaneously denying that inference. It then brings to bear the teaching of John Owen upon the matter. With characteristic precision Owen locates the eternal aspect of the Son’s subordination in the covenant of redemption, in the divine economy. It is this eternal ad extra locus that many contemporary writers have overlooked. An important contribution of Owen’s teaching is that the order of operations in the divine economy follows and truly reflects the order of subsistence in the ontology; and the order of subsistence follows and truly reflects the Son’s eternal generation. Owen thereby upholds the ontological equality of the divine persons and hence the glory of the Son; and he teaches how far it is legitimate to go, in “reading back into the ontological order” the submission of the Son to the Father that we see in the economical order.

I. Introduction

Location, location, location. Where are we to locate the submission of the Son of God within the loci of our Trinitarian theological system? In this article I will argue that three putative locations must be considered, and that Scripture teaches in which of these we should place the Son’s submission. I will suggest that the writing of John Owen helps us to avoid a misplacement that has serious theological implications.

In recent years, the question of intra-Trinitarian relations, and within that the submission of the Son to the Father, has been the subject of considerable debate.[1] Among others, Bruce Ware has affirmed “the full essential equality of the three Trinitarian persons”[2] while also arguing that a “hierarchical structure of authority” and an “eternal authority-submission relationship”[3] exists between the Father and the Son within the “very nature of the eternal Being.”[4] His arguments for eternal submission have been rejected by others as an unwarranted importation into the ontological Trinity of the Son-to-Father submission that is evident in the redemptive-historical outworking of God’s salvation plan.

At the heart of the question is the distinction between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity. This distinction yields several putative locations for the submission of the Son to the Father, which can be described using the vocabulary of the Protestant scholastic orthodoxy of Owen’s time.[5] One possibility is that the doctrine lies within the ontological Trinity, meaning God as he is in himself, that is, immanently. This “ontological locus” includes the opera Dei personalia, also called the opera immanentia per se.[6] Two further possible sub-locations are to be found within the economic Trinity, that is to say, within the opera Dei essentialia: first, the “eternal ad extra locus,” comprising what God decrees or plans in eternity to do in time in relation to things that are outside himself (the opera immanentia donec exeunt, also referred to as the opera Dei essentialia ad intra);[7] and secondly, the “temporal ad extra locus,” comprising what God does in time in relation to things that are outside himself (the opera exeuntia and operationes externae, also referred to as the opera Dei essentialia ad extra).[8] The semantic relationship between these terms is depicted below.[9]

Figure 1: A taxonomy of the opera Dei, including some Latin terms and the three loci referred to in this article.

It is the eternal ad extra locus that is most likely to be overlooked, when seeking to locate and explain the Son’s submission to the Father. This is what Ware appears to have done, with the result that he is confined to working within a bi-locational paradigm—in other words, having to choose whether to locate the Son’s submission in one or the other or both of the eternal ontological locus and the temporal ad extra locus.[10]

Arguments for eternal submission that evince an essentially bi-locational paradigm have been made by many others besides Ware, notably Wayne Grudem[11] and Mike Ovey.[12] I have focussed in this article on just Ware’s writings in order to be able to engage with his arguments in some detail.

One aspect of this debate—for some, a significant motivating aspect—concerns an application of the notion of eternal submission in the complementarian-egalitarian debate. Pro-feminist voices have argued for egalitarianism in gender relations on the basis of inter-personal egality within the Trinity.

Conservatives—including Ware—have responded by arguing for filial submission within the Trinity, with corresponding implications not only in the gender debate but also in relation to marriage, parenting, pastoring, and other human authority-submission scenarios.[13] “Those in authority need to be more like the Father … those under authority need to be more like the Son.”[14] In turn, other conservatives have denied intra-Trinitarian submission, though not from any desire to support feminists and egalitarians in matters of social order. It is beyond the scope of this article to consider this aspect, except to say that eternal submission arguments can obviously be of no assistance in the complementarian-egalitarian debate (in fact, quite the opposite) if they are invalid or misconceived.[15]

I will begin by presenting a summary of Ware’s position, in the course of which I elicit—but for the most part refrain from evaluating—four controversial propositions. Next I will explain Owen’s position in relation to these four propositions. I then draw conclusions as to the coherence or otherwise of Ware’s position.

II. Ware’s Argument for Eternal Submission

1. Submission in Eternity and in the Economy

In Ware’s view, the Son’s submission is to be located in eternity, not just in his temporal incarnation. He warns that if the Son’s submission “is restricted to the incarnate state” then we are “at odds with orthodox christologies.”[16] Instead we must also affirm that “the human obedience of Christ has a basis in the eternal Son of God.”[17] He is here rejecting the argument of some egalitarians that the obedience of Christ is to be found only in the course of his incarnation. More particularly and more controversially, regarding the Son’s submission in eternity, he speaks in expressly ontological terms.

An authority-submission structure marks the very nature of the eternal Being of the one who is three. In this authority-submission structure, the three Persons understand the rightful place each has … the Son submits to the Father just as the Father … exercises authority over the Son.… This hierarchical structure of authority exists in the eternal Godhead.[18]

At the same time he says that this opinion is entirely consistent with the view that “each Person is fully equal to each other in their commonly possessed essence”:[19]

Each possesses the identically same one, undivided, and co-eternal divine nature. There is no hint of Arian subordinationism or of tri-theism in what is being proposed.… We reject all forms of ontological subordinationism in affirming the full, unqualified, co-eternal deity of the Son, with the Father and the Spirit.[20] 

Authority and submission describe merely the manner by which these persons relate to one another, not what is true of the nature of the Father or the Son. In other words, authority and submission are functional and hypostatic, not essential (i.e., of the divine essence) or ontological categories, and hence they cannot rightly be invoked as a basis of declaring one’s ontology (nature) greater and the other’s lesser.[21]

But is it coherent to affirm both an authority-submission structure within the “very nature of the eternal being” and that this does not entail any form of ontological subordination within the “co-eternal divine nature”? Is such a double affirmation, undoubtedly sincerely made, both internally and biblically consistent? Ware believes that it is, and builds his argument by considering: first, the Son’s submission during his earthly ministry; secondly, his submission being implicit in the Father’s role as “grand architect” of creation and salvation; thirdly, his submission being inherent in the Father-Son-Spirit taxis; fourthly, his submission in “eternity past”; and fifthly, his submission in “eternity future.” I will consider these aspects of his argument in turn.[22]

2. Submission of the Son in His Earthly Ministry

First, Ware argues that the Father’s “supremacy” among the persons of the Godhead is demonstrated by the “attitude of bowing to the authority and position of the Father [that] marked Jesus’ own life and ministry.”[23] He says that Ps 2 and John 6:38 speak of the “Father’s supremacy … over the king whom he places over the nations,” who during his earthly ministry came to do his Father’s will.[24] As the incarnate Son he became “obedient to the point of death” before being exalted to the right hand of his Father, but even then “the ultimate glory is extended to God the Father,” Phil 2:8–11.[25] The “primacy of the Father … could not be clearer” from the statements in Heb 1:1–2 that it is the Father who did all the activities involved in creation and salvation “through the agency of the Son and Spirit.”[26] These Scriptures demonstrate that

whenever Scripture specifies actions that occur between two or more members of the Trinity, the position of greater authority is always held by the Father, while the position of submission to that authority is always held by the Son and the Spirit. This principle is simply inviolable in Scripture.[27]

The Father’s greater authority over the Son is therefore not just a matter of what God does; it represents a supremacy residing within the Godhead itself, and has implications for how we are to worship him:

It is the Father, then, who is supreme in the Godhead.… The Father gets top billing, as it were.… [He is] the highest in authority and the one deserving of ultimate praise. Here … Scripture indicates the supremacy of the Father within the very Godhead itself.[28]

Accordingly, Ware is in no doubt that the submission that was evident in Christ’s incarnation is but a reflection of an eternal truth about the Son:

Clearly … what we see in the incarnational mission of Christ over and over again is simply the manifestation, here and now, of what is eternally true in the relationship between the Father and the Son.… Authority and submission reside eternally in this Father-Son relationship, as taught clearly in Scripture.[29]

But is it right to assume that the incarnational economy represents a “simple manifestation” of supremacy “within the very Godhead”? Is it as small a step of straight-line logic as Ware appears to believe?[30] Perhaps his next argument will go some way towards bridging what might appear to be a rather large leap.

3. Submission of the Son Implicit in the Father’s Role as “Grand Architect”

Secondly, according to Ware, the Father alone is the “Grand Architect [and] Wise Designer of all that has occurred in the created order.”[31] Christ appears in due course “at center stage” of that creation; but it is “the Father [who] actually plans and accomplishes absolutely everything.”[32] The attribution of this role to the Father alone is surprising, if one holds to the axiom opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa,[33] discussed further below. Was not the planning of the creation and incarnation the work of the indivisible Godhead in eternity? Would that not necessarily be the case if God has one divine mind and will?

Ware does speak of the involvement of the Son and the Spirit in the divine plan, but only really in the execution of it—and then, not as a matter of necessity, and not always. He says:

Though the Father is supreme, he often provides and works through his Son and Spirit to accomplish his work.… I am amazed when I consider here the humility of the Father. For, though … supreme, though he has in the trinitarian order the place of highest authority, the place of highest honor, yet he chooses to do his work in many cases through the Son and through the Spirit rather than unilaterally.[34] 

It is not as though the Father is unable to work unilaterally, but rather, he chooses to involve the Son and the Spirit.[35]

The suggestion is that the Father does not always work indivisibly with the Son and Spirit, in the temporal execution of the plan which he designed, but he often does so—and by doing so he is expressing his humility. Hence we are to find it “astonishing [that] God the Father … who can do anything he wants, by himself and without any assistance … instead determines to do so much of his work through … his Son.”[36]

If then the plan belongs exclusively to the Father, and the Father’s implementation of it using the Son and Spirit is in some sense a gracious condescension, then this is consistent with and supportive of the eternal authority-submission thesis. But it would appear to come at some cost, or at least to raise some difficult questions. Is it really the case that the Father could have chosen to work ad extra “without any assistance” from the Son and the Spirit? And if it is God’s intention that elect sinners should be redeemed and forgiven, is that part of the “anything” that the Father could “do by himself,” even without the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son? Could he have bestowed salvation upon his people otherwise than through the sending and indwelling of the Holy Spirit?

Ware has subsequently sought to clarify what he says about the Father’s ability to act unilaterally, having presumably realized that the cost of the argument would be ruinous. In an online article published in July 2016 he says:

I wish here to clarify just how I see our position as consistent with the pro-Nicene tradition.… I gladly affirm my commitment to the doctrine of the inseparable operations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because each person of the Trinity possesses the identically same divine nature, each uses the same power and relies on the same knowledge and wisdom in conducting the various works that each does. So, there cannot be a separation or division in the work of the One God since each person participates fully in the One nature of God. But this does not preclude each person accessing, as it were, those qualities of the divine nature (e.g., power, knowledge, wisdom) distinctively yet harmoniously, according to their own hypostatic identities.[37]

While the language of “accessing the qualities of the divine nature” is questionable, in so far as it suggests that the οὐσία is some kind of shared repository of divine attributes which the persons may draw upon as the need arises, even so this “clarification” appears to be a positive move back in the direction of opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa. In a subsequent on-line article, the clarification continued:

My point here is very simple: since the Father is omnipotent, there simply is nothing that could hinder him by nature from doing anything he would choose to do. Of course, this is purely hypothetical and I acknowledge that my wording here could be made more precise. I did not intend to suggest that the Father ever would act in such an independent manner, or could act independently, strictly speaking, in light of the Trinitarian union of persons. Indeed, he acts always and only inseparably with the Son and the Spirit.… The work of God is inseparable, as the church has long held, but the work of the one God is also hypostatically distinguishable.[38]

It seems therefore that this argument in favor of the eternal authority-submission thesis has been largely abandoned—with the exception, perhaps, of the assertion that in terms of personal relations the Father still occupies the “place of highest honour” and deserves “ultimate praise” for the humility that he shows in always employing the Son and Spirit in the execution of his plan.

4. Submission Inherent in the Father-Son-Spirit Taxis

Thirdly, Ware argues that eternal submission is inherent in the Son being the eternal Son of the eternal Father. He says that Scripture discloses a taxis or order within the Godhead, as revealed in Matt 28:19 and 1 Cor 11:3.

There is an ordering in the Godhead, a “built-in” structure of authority and submission that marks a significant respect in which the Persons of the Godhead are distinguished from one another. Surely, they are not distinct in essence, for each shares fully the identically same divine nature. Their distinction, rather, is constituted, in part, by taxis.… For all eternity, the order establishes that God is the head of Christ.… Intrinsic to God’s own nature is a fundamental taxis, and he has so designed creation to reflect his own being, his own internal and eternal relationships.[39]

While the Father-Son-Spirit taxis may not be controversial, it is no small assertion to say that this must automatically express authority and submission. Sometimes τάξις implies some form of subordination; sometimes it merely implies an ordered arrangement, depending on the context.[40] Ware argues that, in the case of the Godhead, the taxis is rather more than a numerical ordering. Authority and submission are inherent in the terms “Father” and “Son”:

Why is the first person of the Trinity the eternal “Father” and the second person the eternal “Son”? Must this not be the language God has chosen to indicate the type of eternal relationship that exists between the first and second persons?... Does it not stand to reason that God wishes by this language to indicate something of the authority and submission that exist within the relationships of the members of the immanent Trinity?[41]

But is this not begging the question? Without doubting that fathers should hold a position of authority over their sons in human society, and assuming that we may project that back onto the Trinity or infer it from God’s choice of terms that he gives us in Scripture, then perhaps this does “stand to reason.” But that is not a small assumption, given the necessarily analogical language of scriptural references to the Father and the Son. Is the authority-entailment of the taxis a “good and necessary consequence” of the verses upon which Ware relies?[42] He is sufficiently sure of it to be able to say that it “must be grieving in God’s sight” for anyone to reject “the very authority-submission structures that characterize who God is.”[43]

It is convenient under this heading to consider Ware’s response to the argument of Millard Erickson and Tom McCall, who allege that the “eternal authority-submission relationship” position must “entail a denial of the homoousios.”[44] The argument of Erickson and McCall, as summarized by Ware, is that if the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father, then he has this property essentially while the Father does not. Such a difference must entail that Father and Son are different in essence, hence not ὁμοούσιος. Ware responds by differentiating between an “essential property” and a “property of the essence.”[45] Sonship is an essential property of the Son. But it is not a property of the divine essence (οὐσία) because it is not a shared attribute of Father and Spirit. Father, Son, and Spirit have different ontological properties in their different ὑπόστασεις, but this is not a denial that they are of one common οὐσία. The writers of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed were not denying the one common οὐσία when they said that the Son was “begotten not made” (γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα), and thereby—says Ware—declared that characteristic to be a distinct “essential property” in the Son.[46]

His argument is that it is possible to affirm essential-yet-relational properties of each ὑπόστασις without denying that the three persons are ὁμοούσιος. He says that he is doing no more than those who wrote the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. By saying that the Son is γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα, they were thereby affirming that distinguishing property to be “essential to who he is as the Son … such that his possession of it is with a de re (in principle) and not merely a de dicto (in fact) necessity.”[47] Eternal submission, he says, is just as much a de re and non-contingent necessity as eternal begottenness.[48] It is an “essential property of the person,” and one that would be eternally true of the Son as “a property that he possesses in every possible world” that God might choose to create.[49]

But is not Ware’s “built-in authority-and-submission structure” an “essential property” of a rather different order, compared with eternal begetting and begottenness? What is “eternal submission”? Can it be anything less than a necessary and non-contingent disposition in the will of the Son to submit to the will of the Father? Kyle Claunch, in his chapter of the book edited by Ware, says:

This understanding of the eternal relationship between Father and Son seems to entail a commitment to three distinct wills in the immanent Trinity. In order for the Son to submit willingly to the will of the Father, the two must possess distinct wills. This way of understanding the immanent Trinity does run counter to the pro-Nicene tradition, as well as the medieval, Reformation, and post-Reformation Reformed traditions that grew with it.[50]

Although this does seem to be the implication of Ware’s earlier writing, in one of the online clarificatory articles that he wrote in 2016 he denied that his idea of submission implies three distinct wills. In accordance with Nicene orthodoxy he affirms that the divine will is a common property of the one divine nature. There is only one such will.[51] But each divine person

is able to activate that volitional capacity … in distinct yet unified ways according to their distinct hypostatic identities.… So, while the Father may activate the common divine will to initiate, the Son may activate the divine will to carry out, e.g., “from” the Father, “through” the Son.… Given this, one might even speak of one unified will of God, as the volitional capacity common to all three, along with three “inflections” [or] hypostatically distinct expressions of that one divine will, or even three distinguishable acts of willing which together bring to light the fullness of that one unified will.[52]

Ware is therefore saying that the Son’s inherent submissiveness is an essential property of his ὑπόστασις which determines how he will activate the single divine will. It is an eternally true necessity because it is a property of who he is.

At the same time, he wants to say that the Son’s activation of the single divine will is nonetheless “free and unconstrained,” not forced or compelled.[53]

These conclusions are “strengthened” for Ware by the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, which he once regarded as “highly speculative” but now accepts as a “church doctrine,” though still not persuaded that it is well supported exegetically.[54] He says:

Precisely because the Father eternally begets the Son, the Father … has the intrinsic paternal hypostatic position of having authority over his Son; and precisely because the Son is eternally begotten from the Father, the Son … has the intrinsic filial hypostatic position of being in submission to his Father. The eternal modes of subsistence, then, ground the eternal distinction between Father and Son (and Spirit), while the eternal relations of authority and submission then flow out from and are expressive of those eternal modes of subsistence.[55]

Again, Ware seems to be begging the question. The Son’s relationship to the Father depends on his eternal passive generation (generatio passiva). But here he wants us to accept that eternal submission—which one might expect to involve an active exercizing of will—is a “precise” corollary and necessary efflux of passive generation. It is a rather different concept.

Even so, there are a number of helpful points in these 2016 clarificatory writings: in particular, the denial that the eternal submission that he advocates must require multiple wills in the Godhead and his endorsement of the eternal generation of the Son. Questions remain. Is it coherent to speak of one divine will and three “inflections” or “expressions” of it that “activate” it? Can one divine person’s “expression” of it necessarily and invariably involve authoritative command, and another person’s expression necessarily and invariably involve submission? Is the Son’s submission or submissiveness truly an “essential property” of the Son that must necessarily follow from his eternal begetting?[56] Or is this a speculative assertion that goes a long way beyond the established idea of eternal generation? Furthermore, if this property of submission is “necessary” and “essential” how is it still “free and unconstrained”?

5. Submission of the Son in “Eternity Past”

Fourthly, Ware argues that the Son’s submission is demonstrated by Scripture’s testimony to the submission of the Son in “eternity past.”[57] He returns to 1 Cor 11:3 and the words “the head of Christ is God,” arguing that it is a “truth-claim about the relationship between the Father and Son that reflects an eternal verity.” Paul’s argument draws a triple parallel: “man is to wife” as “Christ is to man” as “God is to Christ.” The second of each pair should submit to the first of each pair as head, κεφαλή. Ware rejects the idea that the authority hierarchy of which the verse speaks is only “an ad hoc relationship for Christ’s mission during the incarnation”; hence it must instead be true “in the very Godhead.”[58] Once again, the bi-locational paradigm within which he appears to be working seems to be “incarnation only” (rejected) or “eternity only” (rejected) or “both incarnation and eternity” (affirmed); and he speaks of the “in eternity” option synonymously with “in the very Godhead.”

In refutation of the idea that his argument concerning “the priority of the Father over the Son and the Spirit” is novel, Ware quotes with approval a passage in Augustine’s De Trinitate.[59] Augustine explains that the Father’s sending of the Son, rather than vice versa, was not arbitrary; nor was it because “one is greater and the other less”; rather, it was an eternal consequence of the Father being “the begetter, the [Son being] begotten.”[60] Augustine is using the doctrine of eternal generation to explain why the Son, rather than the Father, was sent.

But what Ware takes from Augustine is that the Son has an eternal “responsibility of carrying out the will of the Father,” and that this “functional subordination of the Son” does not entail inferiority: “It is not a mark of inferiority to be subordinate.”[61] Nor is the subordination evident only in the Son’s incarnate state: the sending happened in eternity and is a reflection of the “eternal subordination of the Son to do the will of the Father.”[62] His conclusion is that the Son’s submission in “eternity past” is relationally ontological, though that is not his expression:

Authority and submission, then, seem clearly to be built into the eternal relationship of the Father and the Son, by virtue of their being who they eternally are: God the Father, and God the Son.[63]

All of Ware’s arguments so far have located the Son’s submission within the nature and being of the Godhead. In this part of his argument he goes a little further, in expressly referring not only to submission but “subordination” within the very Godhead. We noted previously his statement rejecting “all forms of ontological subordinationism.”[64] Allowing for a possible difference between subordination and subordinationism, the question remains whether there is really a valid distinction between that which is ontological in the divine persons and “who they eternally are” in the relatio personalis. The consistency of Ware’s position would appear to depend on it.

6. Submission of the Son in “Eternity Future”

Fifthly, Ware says that the Son’s submission to the Father that began in “eternity past” and continued during the incarnation will then continue into “eternity future.” First Corinthians 15:28 says that at the end of Christ’s reign, when all things have been put under his feet, “the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him.” Then “God the Father … may be shown to be supreme … over all” even “as he stands over the Son,” says Ware.[65]

There is no question that this passage indicates the eternal future submission of the Son to the Father, in keeping with his submission to the Father both in the incarnation and in eternity past. Clearly, then, Scripture teaches that Jesus’ submission to the Father extends from eternity past to eternity future, and what we see in the incarnational mission of Christ over and over again is simply the manifestation, here and now, of what is eternally true in the relationship between the Father and the Son.[66]

Once again, Ware indicates that this submission is not merely concerned with the economic acts that the Trinity might or might not choose to do. He cites with approval the words of Colin Gunton, who argues that this verse “would seem to suggest a subordination of taxis—of ordering within the divine life—but not one of deity or regard.”[67] Ware concludes by saying that “it is the nature of God both to exert authority and obey in submission.”[68] Thus the Son’s submission must be seen as an essential property of the eternal taxis that is intrinsic to who he is relative to the Father.

7. Summary of Propositions Underlying Ware’s Argument

Ware’s most controversial points flow from his assertions that unavoidably locate the Son’s submission within the divine ontology, following his denial that it resides only in the temporal economy. He avoids simply and expressly affirming that the Son’s submission is ontological per se. He locates it in the Son’s ὑπόστασις and the relatio personalis rather than the οὐσία. Even so, by insisting that the Son’s submission is essential to “who the Son is,” his allocation is unavoidably ontological. If he has misplaced it, and if that mislocation has led him into making statements about the Father and Son that in practice (though unintentionally) have a tendency to detract from the glory due to the Son and Spirit, then the resulting theology is problematic.

I summarize below four major propositions which underlie Ware’s case, so that we may next bring Owen’s teaching to bear upon them:

(i) Scripture attests to the Son’s submission not only in the incarnation but also in eternity. His submission to the Father in the incarnation is simply the temporal manifestation of his submission to the Father in eternity. 

(ii) The Father’s authority and Son’s submission are “essential properties of the persons,” albeit residing in their ὑπόστασεις rather than the divine οὐσία, such that the ὁμοούσιος is not undermined. These properties reside in “the very nature of the eternal Being” and are “grounded” in the eternal generation of the Son. 

(iii) Though the Son’s submission consists of an eternal willingness to obey the Father’s will, there are not two wills in the Godhead. Rather, each person freely and without compulsion “activates” the one will in the course of performing his respective role. 

(iv) Though the Father could hypothetically do all things by himself, in practice he works through his Son and the Spirit; therefore, the opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa axiom is affirmed.

III. Owen’s Position vis-à-vis These Propositions

I will take each of these propositions in turn and consider what Owen has to say about them. For the most part I am constrained by space to summarize his arguments without setting out his exegetical workings, which are expansive and careful. As Robert Letham has commented, his approach to defending classic orthodox Trinitarianism is “overwhelmingly biblical,” involving “a profusion of biblical exegesis.”[69]

1. Did the Son display submission to the Father in both the incarnation and eternity? Was his temporal submission simply a manifestation of his eternal submission?

For Owen, the Son’s submission to the Father begins in eternity, “before the world was,”[70] and is manifested in his incarnation. He submitted in eternity to being sent by his Father “in the likeness of sinful flesh … made flesh of a pure virgin … to dwell among us, that he might be obedient unto death.”[71] According to Owen, he submitted to this mission in the divine pactum salutis, that is, the “eternal counsel for the setting apart of his Son incarnate” for the office of mediator, which was “an act eternally established in the mind and will of God.”[72]

Owen emphasizes both the authority of the Father in establishing the terms of the pactum salutis and the willingness of the Son in submitting to these terms. He does not shy away from asserting that this is a work evincing a “kind of superiority” of the Father relative to the Son. It was

an authoritative imposition of the office of Mediator, which Christ closed withal by his voluntary susception of it, willingly undergoing the office, wherein by dispensation the Father had and exercised a kind of superiority, which the Son, though “in the form of God,” humbled himself unto, Philippians 2:6–8.[73]

This he wrote in one of his earliest works, The Death of Death, published in 1648. He returned to the pactum salutis theme frequently and with consistency, though with an increasing degree of explication, throughout his works. By 1655, in Vindiciae Evangelicae, he was referring to this “eternal counsel” by a variety of descriptive terms, which included the words “covenant” and “redemption”[74] and asserting it to be the “great foundation” of the whole work of Christ.[75] By the time he concluded his Hebrews commentary he was describing it expressly as “the covenant of redemption.”[76]

That said, Owen was never insistent upon the use of the term “covenant,” though he was in no doubt that it represented a resolute plan determined in eternity for the salvation of the elect. It was a Trinitarian plan. Prescription of its terms he ascribes particularly to the Father; acceptance (or “susception”) thereof he ascribes to the Son; concurrence therewith he ascribes to all three persons.[77] The plan was necessarily interpersonal and transactional, motivated by divine love but with the purpose of maximally displaying the divine glory.[78] To Owen’s mind that required the concurring—or covenanting even—of the three persons.

The language of “divine decree” does not, of course, preclude this work of God being tri-personal: indeed it could not, for Owen held that opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa, as we shall consider further below. But he regarded it important to emphasize the necessarily consensual nature of the plan. Whereas “decrees” are God’s purposes expressed in a manner “conformable to his nature and essence,”[79] the eternal counsel of the pactum salutis must involve the distinct personal acts of the Son in consenting to the “infinite condescension” that his mission would involve, and of the Father in accepting his obedience, atoning sacrifice, and surety on behalf of the elect.[80] To that end, with the parties’ consent, it would eternally bring into being a new relationship between the Godhead and the to-be-incarnate Son who in time would thereby become the mediator of the New Covenant between God and the elect. For these reasons, Owen considered the arrangement to have “the proper nature of a covenant or compact” and to be “more than a decree.”[81] Hence the covenant of redemption involved the Son’s submission to its terms in eternity and creaturely submission throughout its execution in time. The temporal outworking must not only manifest but conform to the eternal planning.

Owen does not hesitate to use the term “subordination” in describing the Son’s submission in both eternity and time. This covenant indispensably introduceth an inequality and subordination in the covenanters as to the common ends of the covenant, however on other accounts they be equal.… Of this nature is that divine transaction that was between the Father and Son about the redemption of mankind.[82]

It is important to notice that the subordination is “introduced” by the covenant. The resulting inequality and subordination then follow simply and unavoidably from the Father being the prescriber of duties and the Son being the undertaker. Those passages in Scripture that speak of the subordination of the Son to the Father, such as Ps 16:2, are “expressions [which] argue both a covenant and a subordination therein.”[83]

Although settled upon in eternity, the subordination of the Son is inseparable from Christ’s mission in time: “God takes this counsel with him … only with respect unto his future incarnation.”[84] In other words the subordination is intrinsic to the office that the Son bound himself in eternity to undertake, and then did undertake throughout his earthly ministry.

It was an office of ministry that the LORD Christ undertook.… He holds his office in subordination unto God, being “faithful unto him that appointed him.”… The whole office of Christ was designed unto the accomplishment of the will and dispensation of the grace of God.… The condescension of the Son of God to undertake the office of the ministry on our behalf is unspeakable, and for ever to be admired. Especially will it appear so to be, when we consider who it was who undertook it, what it cost him, what he did and underwent in the pursuance and discharge of it, as it is all expressed, Phil. 2:6–8.[85]

Ware cites 1 Cor 11:3 as evidence of the Son’s eternal submissiveness to the Father. But Owen says that this verse refers not to the Son as “the ultimate formal object of our worship, being God,” but as he holds office as head of the church, as the covenantally appointed mediator:

In this state, as he is the head of angels and of his whole church, so is he in subordination to the Father.… In this respect, then … eyeing Christ as our mediator, advocate, intercessor … through whom we have admission to God … he is not eyed nor addressed to in our worship as the ultimate, adequate, formal object of it, but as the meritorious cause of our approach and acceptance.… And these two distinct respects have we to Jesus Christ, our mediator, who is Θεάνθρωπος, God and man, in our religious worship, and all acts of communion with him: [1] As one with the Father, we honour him, believe in him, worship him, as we do the Father; [2] as mediator, depending on the Father, in subordination to him, so our faith regards him ... as the way, means, and meritorious cause, of our acceptance with the Father.[86]

In other words it was the Son, qua Christ the mediator, who was subordinate to the Father. This ministry of subordination he did not only undertake in heaven and carry out on earth. To continue with Ware’s subdivisions, it also continues in “eternity future.” “What he continueth to do in heaven at the right hand of God belongeth unto this ministry.”[87]

Thus far we can see that Owen and Ware are agreed that the Son’s submission is both temporal in the incarnation, and eternal; and that the submission in time is the outworking and manifestation of the submission in eternity. It is perhaps the case that Ware is a little more wary of the term “subordination” than was Owen, though as we have seen he does use it. But the greatest difference between them lies in Owen’s consistent location of that subordination in the Son’s acceptation and performance of the covenant of redemption. The significance of this we consider next.

2. Are we to regard the Father’s authority and Son’s submission as essential properties of their ὑπόστασεις, residing in “the very nature of the eternal Being”? Are they necessary entailments of the Father’s eternal generation of the Son?

How are we to explain Owen’s willingness to speak of the Son’s subordination to the Father in both time and eternity? Is it that this term has only in our era become controversial, to the point of inviting accusations of heresy if applied to eternal intra-Trinitarian relations? Was Owen oblivious of the Arian subordinationism that was condemned as heresy throughout the preceding centuries? Far from it. He deals expressly with Arian ideas in many places.

Owen can safely speak in these terms because he does not locate the eternal aspect of the Son’s submission in the divine ontology, whether in the οὐσία or the ὑπόστασεις. He locates it in the divine economy—that is to say, within the opera immanentia donec exeunt of the eternal ad extra locus; and subsequently in the opera exeuntia and operationes externae of the temporal ad extra locus.[88] Accordingly, as we shall see, and unlike Ware, he answers the above questions “no” and “no.”

I will seek to explain Owen’s thinking by beginning with the summary of eternal generation of the Son found in his Greater Catechism of 1645, then seeing what he adds to that summary in three later works: The Doctrine of the Trinity Vindicated, published in 1669; Πνευματολογία, published in 1674; and Χριστολογία, published in 1679. First we will see that in Owen’s view, all that we know about the mysterious doctrine of eternal generation will lead us to expect the essential properties of the Father and the Son to be the same; beyond that, we need to be cautious in our pronouncements. Secondly, we will see that Owen does regard the eternal generation as entailing a hypostatical-ontological “order of subsistence,” and that that order in turn entails, in the divine economy, an “order of operations.” Thirdly, as he considers the outworking of this order of operations in the sending of the Son pursuant to the covenant of redemption, Owen finds ample evidence here, within the economy, of filial submission.

First, we look at eternal generation in the divine ontology. Owen affirms in his Greater Catechism that there is one God, who subsists in three persons. The chief attributes of the divine οὐσία include eternity, infiniteness, simplicity, all sufficiency, perfectness, immutability, life, will, and understanding.[89] These are attributes of the three mutually indwelling persons. The distinguishing property of the Father is “to be of himself only the fountain of the Godhead”; the distinguishing property of the Son is “to be begotten of the Father from eternity”; the distinguishing property of the Holy Spirit is “to proceed from the Father and the Son.”[90] These are the eternal relations, or relatio personalis. Accordingly, the three persons are “one in every way, in nature, will, and essential properties, distinguished only in their personal manner of subsistence.” Beyond this, we cannot “conceive these things as they are in themselves … these secrets, as they are internally in God.”[91]

In later works, careful biblical exegesis gave him a little more to say, but the incomprehensibility and mystery of the ontological Trinity were recurring themes in his writing.[92] For example, in The Doctrine of the Trinity Vindicated he emphasizes the identity of nature that the divine persons must share as a result of the eternal generation and procession:

The distinction which the Scripture reveals between Father, Son, and Spirit, is that whereby they are three hypostases or persons, distinctly subsisting in the same divine essence or being. A divine person is nothing but the divine essence … subsisting in an especial manner. [Because each person—Father, Son, or Spirit] hath the whole divine nature, all the essential properties of that nature are in that person. The wisdom, the understanding of God, the will of God, the immensity of God, is in that person, not as that person, but as the person is God.[93]

Owen is in no doubt that the three persons cannot have different “essential properties of nature,” because they are (and each of them is) the divine essence consisting of those properties. Even so, he cautions: “these sacred mysteries of God and the gospel are not lightly to be made the subject of men’s contests and disputations.”[94]

In Πνευματολογία he explains that it is because the Father is the fons et origo—fount and origin—of the Trinity that, through the eternal generation, the Son has “life in himself [and] all other essential properties of the Godhead.”[95] The three persons naturally and necessarily participate in these essential properties “ad intra [in] mutual knowledge and love.”[96] But he also describes these mysteries as being within “the infinite abyss of the divine essence and existence.”[97]

Similarly, in Χριστολογία he says that the Son’s “eternal generation [was] a necessary internal act … of the Father.”[98] His “distinct personality and subsistence was by an internal and eternal act of the Divine Being in the person of the Father, [that is, by] eternal generation … whereby nothing anew was outwardly wrought or did exist.”[99] In other words:

Receiving his personal subsistence, and therewithal the divine nature, with all its essential properties, from the Father by eternal generation, he was thereon the express image of his person, and the brightness of his glory. Whatever is in the person of the Father is in the person of the Son, and being all received from the Father, he is his essential image.[100]

But again, he prefaces these findings with an extended warning against “men of subtile heads and unsanctified hearts [giving] themselves up to inquire into things infinitely above their understanding and capacity,”[101] and entering into speculations beyond the bounds of Scripture. Better to “lay thy hand on thy mouth [than] search into these heavenly mysteries.”[102]

Ontologically speaking, then, everything that the Son “is” he derives eternally from the Father. All of his “essential properties” he derives from the Father. So also with the Spirit. That is why they have the same essential nature. These properties are necessary properties; they are not voluntary or variable. They are exercised mutually by and within the immanent Trinity. Excepting only that the Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten and the Spirit spirated, Scripture does not give us warrant to speculate about other “essential properties” wherein the divine persons are said to differ. In his discussions of eternal generation, Owen gives us no grounds for thinking we have warrant to entertain notions of filial submissiveness as an “essential property of Sonship,” neither as a necessary entailment of being eternally begotten nor otherwise.

Secondly, we observe an entailment: “order of operations” follows “order of subsistence.” This is not to say that the eternal generation has no entailments. In the volume of the Hebrews commentary published in 1674, we see how far Owen is (and is not) willing to go, in linking the Son’s ontology, as “image” of the Father, and the Son’s role in the economy.

The Son was the essential and eternal image of the Father antecedent unto all consideration of his incarnation. He is in his divine person “the image of the invisible God,” Col. i. 15; “… and the express image of his person,” Heb. i. 3: for having his essence and subsistence from the Father by eternal generation, or the communication of the whole divine nature and all its infinite perfections, he is the perfect and essential representation of him. 

The order of operation in the blessed Trinity, as unto outward works, answereth unto and followeth the order of their subsistence. Hence the Son is considered as the next and immediate operator of them. Thus, as he is said to have made all things, John i. 3, Col. i. 16, so the Father is said to make all things by him, Eph. iii. 9; not as an inferior, subordinate, instrumental cause, but as acting his wisdom and power in him, to whom they were communicated by eternal generation.[103]

In this passage Owen is not only denying that the Son is in any ontological sense subordinate to the Father, but also making two vital links between the divine ontology and the divine economy. The first is that the Son, as the perfect ontological image of the Father, can thereby serve as a faithful image and representation of the Father towards men.[104] The second is a link between the ontological “order of subsistence” (meaning the Father as the fount and origin, the Son as the eternally begotten, and the Spirit as the eternally proceeding) and the economical “order of operations.” The one taxis follows the order of the other.[105]

But how tightly drawn are these links? How much may we discern of the immanent Trinity from the economic? How much archetypal knowledge of God has he chosen to display ectypically and analogically, through the Scriptures that he has condescended to give us? To evaluate this we shall consider how Owen applies this “operations-follows-subsistence” principle in his examination of the Trinitarian work of sending the Son in time, pursuant to the covenant of redemption.

Thirdly, then, we examine the outworking of the “operations-follows-subsistence” principle in the sending of the Son. In Χριστολογία, Owen applies this principle with reference to the divine plan to send the Son to redeem the church. He says:

It became the wisdom of God that the Son, the second person, should undertake this work, and be incarnate.… The sum of what we can comprehend in this great mystery ariseth from the consideration of the order of the holy persons of the blessed Trinity in their operations; for their order herein doth follow that of their subsistence.[106]

He explains that this great work of God was an act of authority, love, and power, and that the Father is “the original fountain and spring … from whom … are all these things.”[107] Being first in order of subsistence, it is the Father who originated the exercise of these attributes in the work of salvation. So it was he who sent the Son. Then it is the Son, being “the second person in the order of subsistence,” who “in the order of operation puts the whole authority, love, and power of the Father in execution.” Then it is the Spirit, being “the third person in order of subsistence,” who “made a perfecting application of the whole unto all its proper ends.”[108] Thus the order of subsistence explains why, in the order of operations, it was not the Father or the Spirit who would become incarnate:

Hence it became not the person of the Father to assume our nature; it belonged not thereunto in the order of subsistence and operation in the blessed Trinity.… Nor did this belong unto the person of the Holy Spirit, who, in order of divine operation following that of his subsistence, was to perfect the whole work, in making application of it unto the church when it was wrought.[109]

Hence it follows that the ontological order of subsistence is directly entailed by the eternal generation, and the economical order of operations is entailed by the order of subsistence. This double-entailment means that it was “in every way suited unto divine wisdom” for the Father, in the economy, to be the person who sends the Son; and for the Son to be sent; and for the Spirit to apply the benefits of the Son’s work to the church for its ultimate perfection. The ontology-economy link explains this much. But it does not entitle us to go further, such as to say that the Son’s place in the order requires us to infer that he must be inherently submissive, however much that might “stand to reason” in our own thinking. Owen cautions: “What is farther must be referred unto another world.”[110]

We have seen already that, in covenantal terms, Owen locates the sending of the Son—and the Son’s submission-in-eternity to that end—within the covenant of redemption. In his discussion of this covenant in his Hebrews commentary, we see the “operations-follows-subsistence” principle reflected in the roles of the Father and the Son as covenanting parties. With reference to John 14:28, where Jesus says, “I am going to the Father for the Father is greater than I,” Owen denies that Jesus is there simply speaking of his human nature. The Son is not said to submit merely in the temporal way that an ordinary man must, who is a mere creature of God. Instead:

Our Saviour speaks with respect unto the covenant engagement that was between the Father and himself as to the work which he had to do: for therein, as we shall further manifest, the Father was the prescriber, the promiser, and lawgiver; and the Son was the undertaker upon his prescription, law, and promises. 

He is, indeed, in respect of his divine personality, said to be “God of God.”… [The] person of the Son, as to his personality, was of the person of the Father, who communicated his nature and life unto him by eternal generation. But the Father on that account is not said to be his God, or to be a God unto him, which includes the acting of divine properties on his behalf.… [The reference to “God being God” to the Son] hath its sole foundation on that covenant [of redemption] and the execution of it which we are in the consideration of.[111]

Owen is saying here that because the Father is first in order of subsistence, as eternal begetter of the Son, he is the prescriber of the terms of the covenant—as well as the promiser of assistance and reward upon fulfillment. Because the Son is second in the order of subsistence, it was fitting for him to be the undertaker of those terms. It is within this covenantal frame of reference that Jesus calls his Father “greater than I.” Again, the link between the two “orders” explains this much. But it does not entitle us to go further and say that the Father is ontologically “greater” than the Son, or that as a result the Son must be ontologically submissive to the Father. The Father cannot be ontologically greater than the Son, because the “the person of the Son, as to his personality, was of the person of the Father.” According to Owen, the Father’s greatness relative to the Son—as affirmed by Jesus himself—is solely covenantal. To put it another way: “This authority of the Father doth immediately respect the work itself, and not the person working.”[112] The Son’s abasement is his designated work in the covenantal mission to which he willingly submits.

The covenant relationships are then consistent with the “operations-follows-subsistence” principle. But that does not entitle us to apply the principle in such a way that the link with the ontology destroys the freedom of the Son in his acts in the economy. It is vital for his mission that the Son should submit freely and willingly to undertake it. The Son was not compelled to submit to the covenantal arrangement—either in time or eternity. The covenant must have been “founded on a free election of the terms of it, upon due consideration and a right judgment made of them”; the persons must not have been “forced … to accept” the terms on the basis of any necessity.[113] The element of consent was vital for the Son’s work as the mediator to be efficacious. As the mediator of the Covenant of Grace appointed pursuant to the covenant of redemption he must be the king over and prophet towards the covenant people, but also their priest. A priest’s offering is valueless if given grudgingly: “[without] his own voluntary giving up himself to be an oblation and a sacrifice … it would not have been of any value (for if the will of Christ had not been in it, it could never have purged our sins).… He might have been cruciated on the part of God; but his death could not have been an oblation and offering had not his will concurred.”[114]

Therefore, while the roles of the Father and the Son in entering into the covenant of redemption must follow the order of operations, which in turn in some way reflects the order of subsistence of the persons, we cannot conclude that the Son was ontologically constrained to submit to its terms.

Let none … once imagine that this work of entering into covenant about the salvation of mankind was any way necessary unto God, or that it was required by virtue of any of the essential properties of his nature, so that he must have done against them in doing otherwise. God was herein absolutely free, as he was also in his making of all things out of nothing.[115] 

The covenant whereof we treat differeth from a pure decree; for from these distinct actings of the will of God in the Father and the Son there doth arise a new habitude or relation, which is not natural or necessary unto them, but freely taken on them. And by virtue hereof were all believers saved from the foundation of the world.[116]

God cannot be other than who he is ontologically—and that is true both as to his essential nature and the hypostatical relatio personalis. Yet he is entirely free in all of his works ad extra, both in their planning and execution. He was under no compulsion to settle upon the pactum salutis or to save a single sinner, any more than he was to create the world.[117] If the Son’s submission is relocated to the ontology, his freedom is contradicted and his acts ad extra become a matter of necessity and compulsion. Such compulsion can only detract from the gloriousness of the divine plan, born of God’s love and the Son’s real willingness to subordinate himself to the Father therein.

In the economy of our salvation, the acting of no one person does prejudice the freedom and liberty of any other: so the love of the Father in sending the Son is free, and his sending doth no ways prejudice the liberty and love of the Son, but that he lays down his life freely also; so the satisfaction and purchase made by the Son doth no way prejudice the freedom of the Father’s grace in pardoning and accepting us thereupon; so the Father’s and Son’s sending of the Spirit does not derogate from [the Spirit’s] freedom in his workings, but he gives freely what he gives. And the reason of this is, because the will of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is essentially the same; so that in the acting of one there is the counsel of all and each freely therein.[118]

In summary, we have seen that, according to Owen, the Son’s eternal generation entails an order of subsistence in which he exists as second person of the Trinity. That order of subsistence entails an order of operations in the economy. The connection between those two orders is explanatory of the Father being the “originator” of each divine act in the economy, the Son being the “executor,” and the Spirit being the “perfecter.” But beyond that we have no warrant to “read back into the ontological order” the submission of the Son to the Father that we see in the economical order. Indeed, we may not do so, because to do so is to make necessities out of acts that must be free. Neither the making of the covenant of redemption nor the sending of the Son pursuant to it was required by virtue of any of the essential properties of the Son’s nature. The Son submitted to the terms that the Father saw fit to lay down therein, including the infinite condescension that incarnation and self-oblation would involve. He did so willingly and “officially”—that is to say, pursuant to the mediatorial office that he took upon himself[119]—unconstrained by any essential property of his natural ontology.

Returning, then, to the questions with which we began this discussion, it follows that Owen would not regard the Father’s authority and Son’s submission to be essential properties of their ὑπόστασεις, residing in “the very nature of the eternal Being”; nor would he regard that authority and submission as necessary entailments of the Father’s eternal generation of the Son.

By not speaking of the covenant of redemption, so far as I have read,[120] Ware appears to have deprived himself of the possibility of locating the Son’s submission and submissiveness, that are spoken of in many parts of Scripture,[121] where it properly belongs. Having rightly seen that it began in eternity, he finds himself constrained to locate it in the Son’s immanent nature per se, albeit κατὰ ὑπόστασιν rather than κατὰ οὐσίαν. His distinction between “essential properties” and “properties of the essence” does not redeem his argument. In either case, an inequality must be introduced into the “very nature of the eternal Being.” Any such inequality Owen denies: the Son “was equal with God, in authority, dignity and power.… There is order in the Divine Persons, but no inequality in the Divine Being.”[122] Owen does not deny that the Son’s submission began in eternity; but by locating it in the eternal ad extra locus he avoids trespassing upon the divine ontology and the mysteries which must remain therein.

3. Does it follow from the Son’s submission to the Father that there must be at least two wills in the Godhead?

We have noted that in Owen’s view the covenant of redemption involved the concurrence of the three divine persons. He was aware that some would object, arguing that the divine will is a property of the divine nature, which must therefore mean that there is but one will in God. When the Son took to himself human nature he acquired also a human will; but that was pursuant to the covenant of redemption, not “prior” to it. In 1674 Owen expressed the objection in these terms:

The Father, Son, and Spirit, have not distinct wills. They are one God, and God’s will is one, as being an essential property of his nature; and therefore are there two wills in the one person of Christ, whereas there is but one will in the three persons of the Trinity. How, then, can it be said that the will of the Father and the will of the Son did concur distinctly in the making of this covenant?[123]

His answer is that each divine person subsists distinctly; accordingly, each person acts distinctly as he performs his personally appropriated part in each and every act of God ad extra. In so doing each person is applying the single divine will to that personal action. The will is not divided, but it is distinctly appropriated to each person as he prepares to act or acts.

This difficulty may be solved [by having regard to] the distinction of the persons in the unity of the divine essence, as … they act in natural and essential acts reciprocally one towards another.… As they subsist distinctly, so they also act distinctly in those works which are of external operation.… The will of God as to the peculiar actings of the Father is the will of the Father, and the will of God with regard unto the peculiar actings of the Son is the will of the Son; not by a distinction of sundry wills, but by the distinct application of the same will unto its distinct acts in the persons of the Father and the Son.[124]

Owen’s reasoning here, invoking the doctrine of appropriations and applying it to the divine will, is consistent with the explanation that he gave on the same point in 1655:

The will of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is but one. It is a natural property, and where there is but one nature there is but one will: but in respect of their distinct personal actings, this will is appropriated to them respectively, so that the will of the Father and the will of the Son may be considered [distinctly] in this business.[125]

The explanation noted above that Ware gave in 2016, in response to urging to clarify his position, is not wholly dissimilar to Owen’s. There is probably not a great difference between Owen’s distinct “applications” or “appropriations,” and Ware’s “three ‘inflections’ [or] hypostatically distinct expressions of that one divine will,” as seen from the perspective of each person.[126] That said, there is some difference in their choice of words. We do not find in Owen the language used by Ware describing the divine will as a “volitional capacity” which the three persons can choose to “activate” as they go about their work. That makes it sound somewhat like a shared external resource which each person can draw upon, rather than an attribute of God’s very being which must therefore be the necessary basis of every act of God.[127] And unlike Ware, Owen does not suggest that the Son’s “inflection” of the divine will is inherently submissive to the Father’s “inflection” of that will. By introducing that distinction-according-to-person feature into the single will, Ware is moving away from the idea of personal appropriation of the same essential property, and away from divine simplicity, towards a difference in the essential properties that each person possesses or “activates.”

Ware follows Owen in likening the personally-distinct appropriation of the will to the way in which the three persons act reciprocally towards each other in love and understanding.[128] God is love. It is a single attribute of the Godhead. The Father, Son, and Spirit love each other mutually, reciprocally, perfectly as they mutually in-dwell each other. That does not mean that there are three “loves” in the Godhead, or that the divine simplicity is fractured in consequence. Mutuality and reciprocity are essential to what perfect love is. A Father-directed love and a Son-directed love and a Spirit-directed love can represent personal inflections of a single intra-Trinitarian love. These “loves” represent the highest possible regard and desire for the other persons. The only difference, in the mutual relationships, is the identity of that “other” (Father, Son, or Spirit, respectively). Similarly, the divine will has a reciprocal aspect to it, since each person concurs perfectly with each other person as he appropriates it in carrying out acts for the benefit and glory of the others. But just as the Father’s love for the Son is not of a fundamentally different nature compared with the Son’s love for the Father, so it cannot be the case that the Father’s will towards the Son is of a fundamentally different nature compared with the Son’s will towards the Father. In other words, the divine will cannot be intrinsically and essentially “a will of authority” when “activated” by the Father, and intrinsically and essentially “a will of submission” when “activated” by the Son, if they are truly to be regarded as ὁμοούσιος.[129] Unlike mutual reciprocal love, an authoritative will and a submissive will are intrinsically different. They do not represent the same attribute such that only the identity of the “other” (Father or Son, respectively) is different. There is here an inconsistency in Ware’s thinking, and he will look in vain for Owen’s support.

Owen and Ware agree that the Son’s submission to the Father must be a free and voluntary choice in relation to acts ad extra. We have seen already that Owen regards it as vital, for the Son to perform his mission, that he should undertake it freely. Ware says “The Son’s willing submission is his free and unconstrained expression of what he most wants to do when he receives the authoritative will of the Father, which is always, without exception, to embrace and carry out precisely what the Father gives him to do.”[130] Ware rightly says that it is not necessary for the Son to be able to disagree with the Father for him to have freedom of choice.[131] It is no argument against the notion of “one will, three distinct applications thereof” to say “but the Son must have freedom to contradict the Father if he is really to be free.” But Ware does introduce an argument against his own explanation of free choice when he locates the Son’s submission in the hypostatical ontology. On Ware’s formulation, the Father’s will is to be viewed as unvaryingly “authoritative,” and the Son’s as unvaryingly “submissive,” as “built-in” properties of their ὑπόστασεις. Much as Ware wants to assert that the Son’s will is truly “unconstrained,” he wants at the same time to insist that the Son’s will is necessarily constrained towards submission. There is an inconsistency in his position. If you wish to speak of a voluntary act of God, you can only—with any consistency—be speaking of the economy.

Letham rightly argues that the language of subordination is inconsistent with free choice and is “typical of the Arian heresy.”[132] He also argues, however, that “the idea of submission is compatible with an order among the Trinitarian persons and with their equality of status and identity of being.”[133] Owen would not disagree with that assertion, so long as one is talking of a voluntary act of submission, in accordance with the order of operations, by the Son within the opera Dei essentialia locus. He would disagree with Ware’s implicit location of that submission within opera immanentia per se. There is a difference between freely choosing to submit and being intrinsically and necessarily submissive.

Therefore, while there are similarities between Owen’s and Ware’s answers to this question, Owen’s mode of expression is to be preferred, as is his clear location of the personal-appropriation of the divine will within the pactum salutis of the divine economy.

4. Do distinct acts by each person of the Trinity entail rejection of opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa?

We noted that part of Ware’s explanation for the submissiveness of the Son consists in arguing that “the Father actually plans and accomplishes absolutely everything”; and that he has the ability to “work unilaterally.”[134] We saw that Ware later sought to clarify his statements by explaining that he was speaking hypothetically and that, in practice, the Father “acts always and only inseparably with the Son and the Spirit”; yet nonetheless, the Father still has a “supremacy of personal relations” that makes him “rightfully the recipient of ultimate glory that attaches to his personhood and work.”[135] Despite a degree of ambivalence in these statements, it is clear that Ware does wish to affirm that opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa.

There is no ambivalence in Owen’s adherence to the doctrine. He says:

It is a saying generally admitted, that Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa. There is no … division in the external operations of God that any one of them should be the act of one person, without the concurrence of the others; and the reason of it is, because the nature of God, which is the principle of all divine operations, is one and the same, undivided in them all.[136]

That same “nature of God” which renders every act to be an undivided act of God, contains an undivided and indivisible “principle of authority”—not a greater principle of authority for the Father and a lesser or subordinate principle of authority for the Son:

Each person doth the same work in the order of their subsistence; not one as the instrument of the other, or merely employed by the other, but as one common principle of authority, wisdom, love, and power.[137]

But despite that indivisibility, it does not follow that the distinct acts of Father, Son, and Spirit within that common work might interchangeably be done by any of them. We have already considered the way that the “order of subsistence” leads to the incarnation being the particular role of the Son. Similarly, even within each divine act, the order of subsistence indicates which aspect of that act is appropriated to which person.[138] Owen says: “There is such a distinction in their operations, that one divine act may produce a peculiar respect and relation unto one person, and not unto another; as the assumption of the human nature did to the Son, for he only was incarnate.”[139]

Owen is here expressing the doctrine of appropriations as a necessary qualification of the indivisibility axiom.[140] He does not say so, but perhaps it might better be expressed as opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa tamen ascripta sunt.[141] The indivisibility and appropriation aspects within the economy correlate with the oneness and threeness of God within the ontology. His application of the doctrine is far-reaching. Even in the case of a divine work that would appear to be the work of just one person, it allows him to ascribe it to that person while still upholding the indivisibility of the work. Again, in the case of the incarnation, drawing on some words of John of Damascus, he says:

The only singular immediate act of the person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself. Herein the Father and the Spirit had no interest nor concurrence, εἰ μὴ κατ’ εὐδοκίαν καὶ βούλησιν, “but by approbation and consent,” as Damascen speaks.[142]

In other words the divine Son took into hypostatical union with himself the human nature as created for him by the Spirit from the substance of Mary; and that was an act in which the Son did everything; and yet his work was nonetheless indivisible from the “counsel and approbation” of the Father and Spirit.[143] So Owen affirms that “every part of every divine work is the work of God, that is, of the whole Trinity, inseparably and undividedly.”[144]

It follows that, in Owen’s view, there is no possibility of ascribing the most glorious divine acts such as “planning everything” to the Father and only second- or third-order acts to the Son and Spirit. Everything that God plans to do and does ad extra is a work of the indivisible God and the product of his single mind, will, authority, wisdom, love, and power. There is no lesser glory to be ascribed to the Son for the executory-character of his appropriated works than to the Father for the originatory-character of his appropriated works. The opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa axiom that has been consistently upheld within Reformed orthodoxy provides a useful and necessary extra guard against drawing inappropriate inferences as to the divine ontology, including the immanent relations, on the basis of revealed distinctions between the distinctly personal actions that together constitute any act of God ad extra.[145] Owen does not support the notion that we can infer from these revealed distinctions that the Trinity exists as a “hierarchical structure” wherein “ultimate glory, praise and honour” are due to one divine person rather than another, as Ware appears to do.

IV. Conclusion

Ware rightly teaches that the submission of the Son to the Father cannot be confined to the temporal ad extra locus. Scripture abundantly attests to it being evident, to use Ware’s terminology, in both “eternity past” and “eternity future.” There is therefore a sense in which the Father-Son relationship can properly be said to involve “eternal authority and submission.”

Ware is also rightly cautious about locating his “eternal authority-submission structure” within the ontology per se. He expressly rejects “all forms of ontological subordinationism.” So he locates his structure within the intra-Trinitarian hypostatic relations, and believes that by so doing he has thereby avoided locating it in any “essential (i.e., of the divine essence) or ontological categories.”[146] Accordingly, he believes that he has avoided any suggestion that the Father’s ontological nature is superior to the Son’s.[147]

But he has failed to avoid using the language of ontology in his descriptions of where the Son’s submission is to be located. Again and again he speaks of the Son’s submission, and even subordination, as being “intrinsic to his nature,” “within the very nature of the eternal Being,” “in the eternal Godhead,” “within the very Godhead,” and so on. He speaks of a Father who exercises “primacy” and “hypostatic supremacy,” and occupies a “position of greater authority” over the Son; and in consequence deserves “greater glory” and “ultimate praise” relative to the Son; all on the basis of a superior “essential property” compared with the Son. This property consists of an intrinsically and de re authoritative will within the Father, distinguishable from a correspondingly submissive will within the Son. The conclusion is unavoidable that he is arguing for some form of ontological subordination, however unintentionally, while insisting that he is not doing so. It is incoherent to argue that a subordination κατὰ ὑπόστασιν is non-ontological.

Furthermore, he is arguing that the Father’s authoritative will and the Son’s submissive will are merely “inflections” of the single divine will. A Father-directed love and a Son-directed love can represent personal inflections of a single intra-Trinitarian love. Both “loves” represent the highest possible regard and desire for the other person. The only difference, in the mutual relationship, is the identity of that “other” to whom the love is directed. But an authoritative will and a submissive will are essentially different. They do not represent the same interchangeable attribute such that only the identity of the “other” (Father or Son, respectively) is different. Furthermore, locating the Son’s submissive will “within the very Godhead” must necessarily detract from his absolute freedom to undertake the mission that was set before him. None of these incoherencies can be remedied without relocating the Son’s submission outside the ontology.[148]

Owen’s solution is to locate the Son’s eternal submission within the covenant of redemption, within the “eternal ad extra locus” of the divine economy. This is consistent with affirming the eternal generation and procession, and affirming “begetter-begotten” as the only distinction between Father and Son that Scripture gives us warrant to draw.[149] Beyond that, Owen endeavors to heed his own cautions against speculating about what goes on within the ontological Trinity. He does not try to draw distinctions between the essential nature of the Father’s will and the essential nature of the Son’s will. There is one divine will that, in the economy, is appropriated to each person. The legitimate point of connection between the economic Trinity and the ontological Trinity is the principle that the order of operations follows the order of subsistence. This makes sense of the distinction of roles of Father, Son, and Spirit, and how they can and do concur in the pactum salutis. He maintains that opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa, again using the orthodox language of appropriations to explain the distinct workings of each person in every divine act ad extra. By proceeding in this way he “subsumes all the Scriptural references … about the inferiority or subordination of the Son to the Father under this … covenant relation, not just under the fact of his humanity, to defend the essential divinity of Christ.”[150] Within the covenantally established economy he identifies a “voluntary hierarchy within the Trinity whereby the Son is officially subordinate to the Father while remaining equal to him in terms of his being or substance [and] in no essential way subordinate to him.”[151] He avoids novelty, as he takes the doctrine of the Trinity as expressed in the great ecumenical creeds and brings it to bear on the erroneous thinking of his age—in particular that of the anti-Trinitarian Socinians.[152] In all this, as Letham puts it, he demonstrates that he is “not so much an innovator as a brilliant synthesizer.”[153]

Some will no doubt consider the difference between the positions of Ware and Owen to be slight and rather theoretical. They both affirm the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, including the equal deity of Father, Son, and Spirit, after all. But a Trinitarian theology that contains incoherencies such as those identified herein provides an unstable foundation for whatever is built upon it—including second-order teaching such as complementarianism. Furthermore, there is a risk that a subsequent generation of theologians, less committed to orthodox objectives than Ware and Owen, may take a relatively subtle error and turn it into a more blatant one. Time and again in the history of the church, a small error in one generation has led to a more egregious one in the next. To avoid this danger, Ware should be encouraged to take his Father, Son, and Holy Spirit book, which contains many helpful insights, and add a chapter on the covenant of redemption as expounded by Owen, and then revise the rest of it so that the whole “eternal authority-submission structure” is relocated where it belongs: in the eternal ad extra locus.

Notes

1. In just three weeks of June 2016, at least 67 articles about this single issue were posted on the Internet. See John Jeffery, “The 2016 Trinity Debate: A Bibliography,” accessed March 14, 2016, www.booksataglance.com/blog/2016-trinity-debate-bibliography-okay-teach-complementarianism-based-eternal-subordination/. For a list of articles on the matter going back to 1990, see Philip Gons and Andrew Naselli, “An Examination of Three Recent Philosophical Arguments against Hierarchy in the Immanent Trinity,” in One God in Three Persons: Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life, ed. Bruce Ware and John Starke (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 195.
2. Bruce Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 79.
3. Ibid., 21, 160; Bruce Ware, “Does Affirming an Eternal Authority-Submission Relationship in the Trinity Entail a Denial of Homoousios?,” in One God in Three Persons, 237. While his preference is to refer to an eternal authority-submission relationship or structure between Father and Son, he does not dissent from the expressions “eternal functional submission” and “eternal subordination of the Son” (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 81).
4. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 21.
5. The translations of the Latin terms in this paragraph, given in the footnotes, are taken from Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 211–13.
6. “Personal works of God,” “works remaining in him as he is in himself.”
7. “Essential works of God,” which include the “works which remain within him until they go out from him” or “internal essential works of God.” The latter term, opera Dei essentialia ad intra, can be confusing because of the words ad intra, which refer to his internal (ad intra) planning in eternity of works which will take place ad extra.
8. “Outgoing works,” “external operations,” “external essential works of God.”
9. Owen uses these categories in his writings, though he does not refer expressly to all of the terms as they are used here in my article. See, for example, John Owen, Πνευματολογία, or a Discourse on the Holy Spirit, in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Johnstone & Hunter, 1850–1855; repr. in 16 vols., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1966–1967, 1991), 3:66–67, where he refers to the ad intra locus (what I am calling the ontological locus) in which “are those internal acts in one person whereof another person is the object [being] natural and necessary, inseparable from the being and existence of God,” and the ad extra locus comprising the “external acts of one person towards another” (which I am referring to as the eternal ad extra locus) and the “acts, ad extra, towards the creatures” (which I am referring to as the temporal ad extra locus). Owen’s use of these terms is discussed further in Brian Kay, Trinitarian Spirituality: John Owen and the Doctrine of God in Western Devotion (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007), 35–36; and Edwin Tay, The Priesthood of Christ: Atonement in the Theology of John Owen (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2014), 27–29.
10. One might alternatively say that Ware has divided the ontological locus in two, rather than the economic locus, as will be explained herein.
11. Wayne Grudem’s reliance upon a bi-locational paradigm is apparent throughout his writing on eternal submission in sections 10.2–4 of Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2004), 405–37. The argument proceeds on the basis that feminists affirm submission only in Christ’s incarnation, whereas Grudem affirms it both in the incarnation and in eternity: “before the Son came to earth as a man … there was an eternal subordination of the Son to the Father”; “Why was the Son eternally subject to the Father? Simply because he eternally existed as Son, and submission to the Father was inherent in that relationship.” He does not appear to distinguish between the eternal ontology and the eternal economy.
12. Mike Ovey’s reliance upon a bi-locational paradigm is apparent throughout Your Will Be Done: Exploring Eternal Subordination, Divine Monarchy and Divine Humility, Latimer Studies (London: Latimer Trust, 2016). His analysis proceeds on the assumption that the Son’s submission must be located either “in the incarnation” (which he says is the egalitarian position) or both “inside and outside the incarnation,” that is, in eternity (which is his position). Like Grudem, he does not appear to distinguish between the eternal ontology and the eternal economy. So he rejects the arguments of egalitarians who “[assert] that the Son only obeys in his human nature,” and argues that the alternative must be that “the Son’s subordination arises from the reality of his sonship,” because only “an eternal subordination affirms the eternal true sonship of the Son” (p. 142; my emphasis). The same binary alternative is presented in Ovey, “True Worship: Where Dignity and Submission Meet,” in One God in Three Persons, 145–49. For example, he finds support in Hilary of Poitiers’s work De Synodis, saying that Hilary locates “filial subordination” and the “Father’s superiority” in the divine ontology (“it arises from the reality of the relationship in which the Father begets the Son”). He endorses the view that this is necessary for the Son to be a “true Son.” Thus Ovey endorses eternal subordination, while distancing himself from Arian subordinationism.
13. Ware, preface to One God in Three Persons, 12–13. As for marriage, parenting, and pastoring, see all of the “application” sections of Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
14. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 67.
15. Ware explains that his ideas on intra-Trinitarian submission have a “correspondence” in human relations, but denies that he is “reformulating the doctrine of the Trinity to serve our social purposes”; see Bruce Ware, “God the Son—at once Eternally God with His Father, and Eternally Son of the Father,” June 9, 2016, accessed March 14, 2017, www.reformation21.org/blog/2016/06/god-the-sonat-once-eternally-g.php.
16. Ware, preface, 14.
17. Ibid., 11.
18. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 21; my emphasis.
19. Ibid., 21, 69.
20. Ware, “God the Son.” See also Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 79.
21. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God Who Is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” July 4, 2016, accessed March 24, 2017, https://secundumscripturas.com/2016/07/04/knowing-the-self-revealed-god-who-is-father-son-and-holy-spirit/.
22. I am here following the broad structure of Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 43–59 and 71–85, but also interweaving correlative points that he makes in his other writings.
23. Ibid., 47.
24. Ibid., 46.
25. Ibid., 50.
26. Ware, “God the Son.”
27. Ibid.
28. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 51. In an online article Ware has subsequently tempered what he means by the Father’s supremacy, saying that he was not referring to supremacy as a matter of God’s nature, but to “a hypostatic supremacy of relationship.… The Father [has] a kind of supremacy of personal relations that is not a supremacy of nature.… There simply is no distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit when considering each of them as divine” (Ware, “An Open Letter to Liam Goligher, Carl Trueman, and Todd Pruitt on Trinitarian Equality and Distinctions,” July 8, 2016, accessed March 24, 2017, https://secundumscripturas.com/2016/07/08/an-open-letter-to-liam-goligher-carl-trueman-and-todd-pruitt-ontrinitarian-equality-and-distinctions-guest-post-by-bruce-ware/). It is not entirely clear whether or how he would wish to amend his previous statements, quoted above, in the light of this apparent reformulation.
29. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 84–85.
30. The alacrity with which Ware moves from economy to ontology calls to mind Karl Rahner’s axiom: “The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.” The axiom contains some truth, in declaring that what God does truly reveals something about who he is, as discussed by Robert Letham in The Holy Trinity in Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2004), 296. But the axiom can also be read as suggesting that God is what he does. It is debatable to what extent Rahner was suggesting this idea. Letham says that he comes close to it, even to the extent that “general human experience [becomes] the basis for an understanding of God” (p. 298: in extremis “the result is pantheism or panentheism”). Kay’s understanding of Rahner’s axiom is expressed more narrowly, but also in two ways: Rahner may have meant that God revealed himself as triune in himself by means of his Trinitarian work ad extra; or he may have been “overly equat[ing] the triune missions in the world with the ad extra processions” (Trinitarian Spirituality, 20–21). Considering these possibilities, where is Ware? While not wholly collapsing the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity, he perhaps comes close to Dennis Jowers’s summary of Rahner’s axiom, which is that the immanent Trinity “forms a kind of a priori law for the divine self-communication ad extra such that the structure of the latter cannot but correspond to the structure of the former” (“An Exposition and Critique of Karl Rahner’s Axiom,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 15 [2004]: 168). On that basis, while there is more to the immanent Trinity than we see disclosed by the economic Trinity, the connection between the two is so close that we can confidently move from evidence of filial submission in the incarnation to a clear inference of submission in the Godhead. Ware seems to be following Karl Barth’s thinking here, consciously or unconsciously; see John Fesko, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2016), 153–54, 183–84, 190.
31. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 51.
32. Ibid., 52.
33. “The external works of the Trinity are undivided.”
34. Ibid., 55; my emphasis.
35. Ibid., 57.
36. Ibid., 64.
37. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.”
38. Ware, “An Open Letter.”
39. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 72; my emphasis.
40. Τάξις: “an arrangement of things in sequence…; a state of good order…; an assigned station or rank…; an arrangement in which someone or something functions…” (BDAG 989). See also the distinction between the Arian and orthodox understandings of Τάξις given in Geoffrey Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 1373.
41. Bruce Ware, The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Reflections on the Humanity of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 96.
42. Westminster Confession of Faith 1.6.
43. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 73; my emphasis. Fred Sanders rightly warns that Trinitarian theology “is most dangerous where it is most commonsensical” (“18 Theses on the Father and the Son,” June 13, 2016, accessed April 21, 2017, http://scriptoriumdaily.com/18-theses-on-the-father-and-the-son/).
44. Ware, One God in Three Persons, 237–48.
45. Ibid., esp. 246.
46. Ibid., 242.
47. Ibid., 241.
48. Ibid., 246.
49. Ibid.
50. Kyle Claunch, “God Is the Head of Christ: 1 Cor 11:3, ” in One God in Three Persons, 88, original emphasis. Claunch proceeds in this chapter to argue for a possible finding of subordination in the ontology, based on this verse. The speculative nature of Claunch’s argument is well analyzed by Paul Maxwell, “Is There an Authority Analogy between the Trinity and Marriage? Untangling Arguments of Subordination and Ontology in Egalitarian-Complementarian Discourse,” JETS 59 (2016): 559. See also Glenn Butner, “Eternal Functional Subordination and the Problem of the Divine Will,” JETS 58 (2015): 135–38.
51. Ware differs from Ovey on this. Ovey argues that Christ in Gethsemane was praying “in his unified coherent Person … using [his] two different faculties in [his] two different natures,” when he said, “Father … not my will but yours” (Ovey, Your Will Be Done, 112). Ovey appears to be asserting that Christ was praying simultaneously using his divine will and his human will, as he presented his petition to the Father’s divine will. Ovey wants to say that the Son was eternally subordinate to the Father not only in his humanity but also in his divine person. But it seems that he is necessarily assuming a dichotomy between what the Son might desire in his divine will and what the Father might desire in his divine will. Implicitly if not expressly he divides the divine will.
52. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.” He cites Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 220, for the language of “distinct inflections.”
53. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.” Ware explains that the Son’s free submission is not the result of “libertarian freedom,” that is, the ability to choose to obey or disobey the Father; rather, it is the result of “freedom of inclination,” that is, the freedom to choose what he most desires to do—“which is always, without exception, to embrace and carry out precisely what the Father gives him to do.”
54. He says “though I have never denied [the doctrine of eternal generation] I have been reluctant to embrace it” on the basis that “I remain unconvinced that specific texts in Scripture [relied on by others] teach this doctrine” (ibid.). Ware’s position in 2005 was: “The conceptions of both the ‘eternal begetting of the Son’ and ‘eternal procession of the Spirit’ seem to me highly speculative and not grounded in biblical teaching” (Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 162).
55. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.”
56. Ware has also said, in one of his 2016 clarifications, that the Father’s authority and Son’s submission “should [not] be thought of as attributes of God, per se.… [They] are ways of relating, not attributes of one’s being … not ontological attributes attaching to the one commonly shared divine nature” (ibid.). He seems to be saying that authority-submission are ontological attributes of the person, not ontological attributes of the divine nature.
57. Owen avoids such expressions as “eternity past” and “eternity future.” They suggest another threefold taxis: “eternity past,” “time,” “eternity future.” Suffice it to say that there can be no “past” or “future” aspect to eternity. It is perhaps better to speak of the temporal and atemporal spheres. That said, we can understand what is meant by the analogical language used by Ware and others.
58. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 77.
59. Ibid., 79–80; quoting from Augustine, Trin. 4.20.27.
60. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 80.
61. Ibid., 80–81.
62. Ware quotes with approval P. T. Forsyth’s description of the Son’s “eternal subordination” (ibid., 81). Though he usually prefers the term “submission” to “subordination”—understandably given the Arian connotations of the latter term—he makes no objection to Forsyth’s use of “subordination” and sometimes uses it himself.
63. Ibid., 83; my emphasis.
64. Ware, “God the Son.” Grudem appears even less concerned to avoid the language of ontological subordination. For example, he “proudly” endorses a quotation by Norman Geisler, who says “this functional subordination in the Godhead [is] not just temporal and economical; it is essential and eternal” (Wayne Grudem, “Another Thirteen Evangelical Theologians Who Affirm the Eternal Submission of the Son to the Father,” accessed April 12, 2017, www.reformation21.org/blog/2016/06/another-thirteen-evangelical-t.php).
65. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 49. See also p. 65.
66. Ibid., 84.
67. Ibid., 85.
68. Ibid.; my emphasis.
69. Robert Letham, “John Owen’s Doctrine of the Trinity in Its Catholic Context,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen’s Theology, ed. Kelly Kapic and Mark Jones (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 190.
70. John Owen, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in Works, 18:78.
71. John Owen, Two Short Catechisms Wherein the Principles of the Doctrine of Christ Are Unfolded and Explained, in Works, 1:478.
72. John Owen, Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu, or the Death of Death in the Death of Christ, in Works, 10:164–65. Owen himself does not use the term pactum salutis.
73. Ibid., 10:164.
74. He refers to “that compact, covenant, convention or agreement that was between the Father and the Son for the accomplishment of the work of our redemption by the mediation of Christ, to the praise of the glorious grace of God” (my emphasis) (Vindiciae Evangelicae, in Works, 12:497).
75. Ibid., 12:507.
76. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 23:240, 475. In the second folio volume of the commentary, first published in 1674, he described this covenant as “a personal transaction, before the creation of the world, between the Father and the Son, acting mutually by their one Spirit, concerning the state and condition of mankind” (ibid., 18:67).
77. I discuss elsewhere the suggestion that the covenant of redemption is “binitarian” rather than Trinitarian in nature; see Benedict Bird, “The Covenant of Redemption according to John Owen and Patrick Gillespie,” Foundations 70, no. 1 (2016): 5–30.
78. John Owen, Of Communion with God, in Works, 2:89.
79. John Owen, A Display of Arminianism, in Works, 10:19. Cf. Tay, Priesthood of Christ, 30.
80. Owen refers in numerous places to the “infinite condescension” to which the Son would submit pursuant to the covenant of redemption; see, for example, The Glory of Christ, in Works, 1:322–33; Hebrews, in Works, 18:94. For Owen, the Son’s condescension is all the more to be marvelled at because his eternal state is so infinitely high compared with his incarnational state. The incarnation involved “a coalescency of infinite power with infinite condescension” (Glory of Christ, in Works, 1:331). By relocating the Son’s submissiveness into the Godhead, Ware is in a sense diminishing the extent of the condescension, and thereby making it less marvellous.
81. Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae, in Works, 12:497. See also Hebrews, in Works, 18:86, 88.
82. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 18:83.
83. Ibid., 18:84; my emphasis.
84. Ibid., 18:85.
85. Ibid., 22:51; my emphasis.
86. Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae, in Works, 12:387–88; my enumeration.
87. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 22:51.
88. See nn. 7 and 8 above. Owen does not use these terms expressly, but they correspond with his thinking.
89. Owen, Two Short Catechisms, in Works, 1:471.
90. Ibid., 1:472. The Spirit’s procession is not the focus of this article, but for a longer discussion of this matter, see Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:67, 91–92.
91. Owen, Two Short Catechisms, in Works, 1:473.
92. A search of Owen’s Works identifies 66 express references to “eternal generation,” most of them in Χριστολογία (vol. 1), Πνευματολογία (vol. 3), Vindiciae Evangelicae (vol. 12), and Hebrews (vols. 18–24).
93. John Owen, The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Person and Satisfaction of Christ, in Works, 2:407.
94. Ibid., 2:409.
95. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:60, 197–98. See also Hebrews, in Works, 19:99.
96. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:66–67. These distinct “mutual actings” are the opera Dei personalia or opera immanentia per se, though Owen does not here use these terms.
97. Ibid., 3:6.
98. John Owen, Χριστολογία, in Works, 1:13.
99. Ibid., 1:45.
100. Ibid., 1:218. See also Owen, Doctrine of the Trinity and the Person and Satisfaction of Christ, in Works, 2:407.
101. Owen, Χριστολογία, in Works, 1:13.
102. Ibid., 1:14.; quoting Ambrose, De Fide, ad Gratianum. He also quotes Ephraim Syrus, who says: “Shall men of clay, full of sins, dispute of the Deity without fear? Horror doth not shake their bodies, their minds do not tremble, but being secure and prating, they speak of the Son of God, who suffered for me, unworthy sinner, and of both his nativities or generations.”
103. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 18:33–34; my emphasis.
104. See also Owen, Χριστολογία, in Works, 1:218–19.
105. Owen gave the same explanation in the first volume of Hebrews, published in 1668: “The rise and spring of this mystery was in the Father; for the order of acting in the blessed Trinity follows the order of subsistence. As the Father, therefore, is the fountain of the Trinity as to subsistence, so also as to operation. He ‘hath life in himself’; and ‘he giveth to the Son to have life in himself,’ John v. 26. And he doth it by communicating unto him his subsistence by eternal generation,” in Works, 19:34–35; my emphasis. He does note that “their numeration, because of the equality of the persons in the same nature, is sometimes varied” (Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:91)—that is, the three persons are not always referred to in the same order in Scripture, where they are referred to together; see Rev 1:4–5, 2 Cor 13:14, Col 2:2.
106. Owen, Χριστολογία, in Works, 1:218–19.
107. Ibid., 1:219.
108. Ibid. In similar terms he describes the outworking of the order of operations in relation to the creation of the world: “the beginning of divine operations is assigned unto the Father as he is fons et origo Deitatis—‘the fountain of the Deity itself’”; “the subsisting, establishing, and ‘upholding of all things’ is ascribed unto the Son”; and “the finishing and perfecting of all these works is ascribed to the Holy Spirit” (Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:94; my emphasis).
109. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 1:220.
110. Ibid.
111. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 18:84–85.
112. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:107; my emphasis.
113. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 18:82. Similarly, in Vindiciae Evangelicae, in Works, 12:499, he explains that the Father and Son in particular were “agreeing voluntarily together” in establishing the covenant of redemption without there having been “an imposition of one upon the other.”
114. Owen, Death of Death, in Works, 10:175. See also Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 18:96.
115. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 18:86.
116. Ibid., 18:88.
117. I discussed elsewhere the question of the conditional necessity of Christ’s incarnation, on the supposition that elect sinners are to be saved without God neglecting the imperatives of vindicative justice; “Did John Owen Change His Mind on the Necessity of the Atonement between 1648 and 1652?” (unpublished paper, Westminster Theological Seminary, May 22, 2015).
118. John Owen, Of Communion with God, in Works, 2:234.
119. Whereas Ware regards 1 Cor 15:28 (“when the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him”) as evidence of the Son’s eternal (future) submission to the Father, Owen is in no doubt that the verse only refers to Christ completing the work of his mediatorial office in the economy: “[regarding] 1 Cor. xv. 24, 28 … The kingdom that Christ doth now peculiarly exercise is his economical mediatory kingdom; which shall have an end put to it when the whole of his intendment in that work shall be fulfilled and accomplished. But that he is not also sharer with his Father in that universal monarchy which, as God by nature, he hath over all, this doth not at all prove” (Vindiciae Evangelicae, in Works, 12:202). Note the double negative in the last sentence.
120. I have not read everything that Ware has written by any means.
121. Ware finds indications of filial submission in Ps 2; Matt 11:25–27; 28:19; John 6:38; 1 Cor 11:3; 15:28; 2 Cor 13:14; Phil 2:8–11; Heb 1:1–2. Owen’s approach satisfactorily accounts for all of these.
122. Owen, Glory of Christ, in Works, 1:326.
123. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 18:87.
124. Ibid., 18:88; my emphasis. See also ibid., 18:77.
125. Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae, in Works, 12:497; my emphasis. The “[distinctly]” is as printed.
126. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.”
127. We noted similar language in relation to the “accessing” of the other divine attributes; see n. 37 above.
128. Owen, Hebrews, in Works, 18:87; Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.”
129. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.” Butner makes a similar point, saying, “I grant [the] point that the Father and Son may hypostatically possess an identical will in a unique way, but it seems to me that this uniqueness must be grounded in the personal properties of unbegotten and begotten.… I do not see how we can therefore say that the Son possesses this will in a submissive way” (“Eternal Functional Subordination,” 147).
130. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.”
131. Ibid. Analogously, Owen describes the true freedom of will that the Spirit gives to believers: not a freedom that makes a man “equally ready for good or evil, according as the will shall determine,” but “a gracious freedom and ability to choose, will, and do that which is spiritually good” (Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:495).
132. Robert Letham, “Eternal Generation in the Church Fathers,” in One God in Three Persons, 122.
133. Ibid.
134. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 57; Ware, “An Open Letter.”
135. Ware, “An Open Letter.” By referring to both “personhood” and “work,” Ware is implicitly referring to both hypostatic-ontology and economy. He refers to the “supremacy” that “attaches to who the Father is qua Father.” Later in the same article he says that this “is not about distinguishing supposed differences in the deity of the Father, Son, and Spirit since they all equally possess the identically same divine nature, but it is about distinguishing who they are in their persons, the work each is responsible to do, all of which flows out of the modes of subsistence from all eternity” (my emphasis). It is difficult to see how attributing greater or lesser glory according to “who they are in their persons” does not tend towards a diminution of the glory of the divine Son and Spirit.
136. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:162. See also Death of Death, in Works, 10:163.
137. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:93. See also Glory of Christ, in Works, 1:326.
138. That is, the opera certo modo personalia, or “personal works after a certain manner”; see Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 213.
139. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:162.
140. Claunch argues persuasively that Spence is wrong to regard the use of the doctrine of appropriations by Augustine and Owen as “exceptions” to the indivisa axiom. Rather, it is a necessary and consistent qualification of the statement of indivisibility; see Kyle Claunch, “What God Hath Done Together: Defending the Historic Doctrine of the Inseparable Operations of the Trinity,” JETS 56 (2013): 794. Cf. Alan J. Spence, Incarnation and Inspiration: John Owen and the Coherence of Christology (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 132–33. See also Tyler Wittman, “The End of the Incarnation: John Owen, Trinitarian Agency and Christology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 15 (2013): 286–87.
141. “The external works of the Trinity are undivided yet attributed” (or perhaps tamen assumpta, taken up). We saw previously how Owen applied the doctrine of appropriations to the single will of God; it is consistent with this understanding that he should in turn apply it to the works of God.
142. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:160. John of Damascus lived c. 675–749.
143. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 1:225. The incarnation, then, is an example of a work that was done in a “certain personal manner” (opera certo modo personalia) and “terminates on one person” of the Trinity. There is a helpful discussion of Owen’s views on this matter by Wittman in “End of the Incarnation,” 297–98.
144. Owen, Πνευματολογία, in Works, 3:94.
145. Kay rightly comments: “Owen, while emphasizing that the ad extra actions of the Trinity in the plan of salvation are unique to each divine person, also believes that they are not what actually constitute the immanent relations among the persons” (Trinitarian Spirituality, 189).
146. Ware, “Knowing the Self-Revealed God.”
147. Ibid.
148. Cf. K. Scott Oliphant, “Simplicity, Triunity, and the Incomprehensibility of God,” in One God in Three Persons, 234.
149. Cf. Stephen Holmes, The Holy Trinity: Understanding God’s Life (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2012), 200.
150. David Wong, “The Covenant Theology of John Owen” (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1998), 169–70; see also pp. 272, 383.
151. Carl Trueman, The Claims of Truth (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 134; my emphasis.
152. I refer in particular to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan, Apostles’, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian Creeds, and the Creed of the Sixth Ecumenical Council of 680–681.
153. Letham, “John Owen’s Doctrine of the Trinity in Its Catholic Context,” 190.