By Angus Harley

1 Corinthians 11:3, along with 1 Corinthians 15:24-28, are considered two pivotal texts that prove the doctrine of the eternal subordination of the Son (ESS).

Back in 1991, Wayne Grudem made a few comments on 1 Corinthians 11:3- the job of exegeting that text was assigned to Thomas Schreiner- but Grudem’s intention there is merely to defend that the Greek term kephale means ‘head’ not ‘source’. There is no exegesis of any depth going on. He cites older theologians who hold the same headship theology in reading 1 Corinthians 11:3.[1]

In 2000, within his Systematic Theology, Grudem says of 1 Corinthians 11:3, “just as the Father has authority over the Son in the Trinity”,[2] and, “Just as God the Father has authority over the Son, though the two are equal in deity”.[3] Grudem is surprised that “recent evangelical writings have denied an eternal subordination in the role among members of the Trinity”.[4]

Grudem repeats the same theology in the book Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood in 2002.[5] His quote there is worthwhile drawing attention to:

“Egalitarians today use it as an argument to deny the unique, eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. But in both cases the fundamental assumption is that the Son cannot be both equal in deity and subordinate in role.

Chrysostom replies, however, that both are true. The Son is equal in deity (he, the “body,” is oJmoouvsio~, of the same substance, as the “head”), and He also is subordinate to the authority of the head, and yet His submission is not forced (as a slave) but is voluntary, as a Son, and is similar to the submission of a wife to her husband.”[6]

This is an important supporting quote, for it plainly asserts not just the idea of subordination, but of being under authority and submitting to it. See how subordination in eternity and submission in time are blurred into one. Moreover, the quote is indicative of how Grudem himself sees 1 Corinthians 11:3, as he ties it in with fathers who supported his reading.[7]

Grudem’s work in both Systematic Theology and Biblical Foundations are put in the typical proof-texting style of a Systematic Theology, there being no serious attempt at an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 11:3.

Grudem’s 2005 book Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth has the subtitle, An Analysis of 118 Disputed Questions. I was truly expecting an exegetical analysis of some measure of 1 Corinthians 11:3, but, once again, his analysis is based on historical sources who support his reading.[8]

In 2006, there is the republication of the key Complementarian book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The same as before applies, however.

In 2012, he wrote an article defending more rigorously the doctrine of eternal subordination, yet, curiously, nothing is mentioned about 1 Corinthians 11:3. Moreover, the article covers so many texts that there is the most limited of contextual comments.[9]

Some comments

Why?

It is apparent that Grudem is ‘keeping within his lane’ of Systematic Theology and allowing others, such as Schreiner, to go down the purely exegetical route. It does mean that his work is a compilation of three factors: prooftexts, multiple theological assertions, and citations of theologians who agree with this theology.

It might be considered unfair, therefore, to assess Grudem on the basis of exegesis. Yet, only a bit. He is the figurehead of Complementarianism, which considers 1 Corinthians 11:3 a key text for ESS. On many different occasions, however, Grudem glances at the verse, and on the rare occasion doesn’t even refer to it. We are allowed to ask, why is this? Does he perhaps feel some tension in regard to that text? Or is his theological model controlling his limited exegetical comments? I think it is.

Misappropriation

On a theological level, there are questions. Whilst it is true that early assembly fathers believed in a form of eternal subordination, not all rendered it as Grudem. He explicitly defines it as a form of eternal subjection to the Father’s authority. Harrison Perkins has already done the hard work for us, for he critiques Grudem’s reading of Charles Hodge that conflates Hodge with the early fathers. Hodge, unlike many of the ancients, believed that eternal subordination applied merely to the Father-Son relationship and its existence: they are two different persons who have different roles. The Father was not ‘first’ in any sense, according to Hodge. This is in contrast to the ancients that did believe the Father alone had in himself ‘Godness’, and he, in the act of eternal generation, passed ‘Godness’ on to the Son. This made the Father preeminent, first. Hodge and Augustine rejected that model, stating that the Son, too, was God-in-himself, or autotheos. The ramification of that view was that there could be no hint of actual subordination in status, no idea of the Father ‘over’ the Son, or the Son under the Father’s authority. I will let Perkins conclude for us:

“Hodge may indeed use the terminology of subordination in some sense, but proof-texting is never acceptable and it has been shown that the way Hodge implements the term “subordination” has nothing to do with the nature of the Son and only to do with the way we describe a filial relationship.”[10]

Perkins has the same concerns as stressed in this article. Why proof-texting? His evaluation pinpoints another weakness of ESS: it superimposes its view upon theologians. There is far, far more to say on the different attitudes of fathers and theologians over the centuries, for I do not believe in any form of eternal subordination, but I will leave this issue at that.

No hard questions

As to his own position, Grudem asks no hard questions on the theological level. What path does ESS take us down? It says that the Son was eternally submissive to the Father. To what end? What possible reason could there have been for the Father to have had authority over the Son from all eternity? Which commands was the Son eternally submitting to?  Which tasks was he performing? What about the Holy Spirit? If the Son, from the NT evidence, is said ‘obviously’ to be subordinate to the Father in authority, what then of the Spirit who was sent by the Father and the Son? Using Grudem’s own theological-extrapolation model, the Spirit being sent entails that the Son was eternally subordinate to the Father and also to the Son! What was the Spirit doing in eternity that required executing? Which commandments was he following? There is another major factor. Just how does one evade the ideas of hierarchy and superiority? To be ‘over’ someone in authority naturally implies a hierarchy, of one being ‘over’ someone else. “The Father is head of the the Son; the Son is head of the Spirit” (1 Cor.11:3, Grudem Theological-Extrapolation Version). ESSers strenuously and vigorously, with all their might, seek to avoid this accusation, but they need to own it, as they cannot escape it, no matter how much they cry out. Lastly, have Complementarians ever asked themselves if their zeal is potentially blinding them? Are they aware of the danger that they might be a bit too committed to a particular agenda? Finally, is Grudem too reliant on Systematic Theology? Have ESSers self-reflected on these issues?

Difficulties

There are difficulties my own view faces. Are the terms ‘Father’, ‘Son’, ‘Spirit’ utterly devoid of any hint of subordination when used of the divine persons in their natural, eternal, relations? In fact, can we even use those titles to refer to their eternal relations? Surely, for these titles to have eternal validity, they have to carry some import back from our time into eternity past; ‘Father’, ‘Son’, and ‘Spirit’ are not just made up titles for the purposes of creation and redemption in our time. What is that import? What does it look like? Does the Sonship of Jesus Christ, as we know it from Scripture, require that even after he hands over the kingdom to the Father (1 Cor.15), he will continue as subordinate? Many think so; others, like Calvin, do not. These are very tough questions.

Yet, in answering all theological questions, we must not default to a theological model for an exegesis. We should honestly state what is in the text; and if we think something is implied, but not stated, we should make that plain, too. Theology bows to Scripture, not the other way round.

[1] Wayne Grudem, “”, 457-458.

[2] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 304.

[3] ibid., 561.

[4] Ibid., 298.

[5] Wayne Grudem, “The Key Issues in the Manhood-Womanhood Controversy , and the Way Forward”, in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, ed. Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002), 49.

[6] Wayne Grudem, “The Meaning of kefalhv(“Head”): An Evaluation of 145 New Evidence, Real and Alleged”, in Biblical Foundations, 148.

[7] Ibid., 157ff..

[8] Wayne Grudem, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth: an Analysis of 118 Disputed Questions (Leicester, England: IVP, 2005), 568-572.

[9] Wayne Grudem, “Biblical Evidence for the Eternal Submission of the Son to the Father”, in The New Evangelical Subordinationism?, eds. Dennis W. Jowers and H. Wayne House, (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 223-261.

[10] Harrison Perkins, “A Response To Grudem’s Appeal To Hodge On Eternal Subordination”, Heidelblog, June 23, 2016, https://heidelblog.net/2016/06/a-response-to-grudems-appeal-to-hodge-on-eternal-subordination/#:~:text=A%20Response%20To%20Grudem%E2%80%99s%20Appeal%20To%20Hodge%20On%20Eternal%20Subordination