Category Archives: Complementarians

Packer denies the Trinity?

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The following passage from J.I. Packer’s 1973 classic Knowing God was quoted by Marilyn in a comment on the Complegalitarian blog, and I have checked and slightly corrected it from my 1975 copy (p.64):

It is the nature of the second person of the Trinity to acknowledge the authority and submit to the good pleasure of the first. That is why He declares Himself to be the Son, and the first person to be His Father. Though co-equal with the Father in eternity, power, and glory, it is natural to Him to play the Son’s part, and find all His joy in doing His Father’s will, just as it is natural to the first person of the Trinity to plan and initiate the works of the Godhead and natural to the third person to proceed from the Father and the Son to do their joint bidding. Thus the obedience of the God-man to the Father while He was on earth was not a new relationship occasioned by the incarnation, but the continuation in time of the eternal relationship between the Son and the Father in heaven. As in heaven, so on earth, the Son was utterly dependent upon the Father’s will.

Thus Packer’s way of teaching the eternal subordination of the Son is to claim that the Son has a “nature” which is different from that of the Father, according to which it is “natural” for him to do one thing and “natural” for the Father to do something else. Note that in the context Packer is clearly referring to the divine nature of the Son, not his incarnate human nature.

Doesn’t that conflict with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, according to which the Father and the Son have the same divine nature (homoousios)? Doesn’t it contradict these extracts from the Athanasian Creed?

we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world. … Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, … One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person.

Doesn’t it go against Philippians 2:6, where we read that Christ Jesus was “in very nature God” (TNIV)? In orthodox Trinitarian thought, the pre-incarnate divine nature of Christ is not some second-class divinity, not a “nature … to acknowledge the authority and submit to the good pleasure of the first [person]”. No, it is the same nature, substance or essence (ousia) as that of the Father.

Perhaps Bishop Ingham is right to accuse Packer that “that he has publicly renounced the doctrine … of the Anglican Church of Canada”, which presumably still requires him to ascribe to the Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. In fact, of course, Packer wrote the words in question long before he moved to Canada, so perhaps he should never have been licensed to minister there.

For the orthodox view, I quote the church father Basil as quoted here:

We perceive the operation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be one and the same, in no respect showing differences or variation; from this identity of operation we necessarily infer the unity of nature.

Phantaz Sunlyk on the Eternal Subordination of the Son

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Nick Norelli continues his discussion of eternal subordinationism in the Trinity, which I reported earlier, by posting a link to a critique of Kevin Giles’ work by Phantaz Sunlyk (a.k.a. Matt Paulson). In fact the link that Nick posts is incorrect; this is the correct link.

Sunlyk’s paper is long and complex. I have skimmed a large part of it, although I skipped most of part III and part VI. At this point I can make the following necessarily provisional comments. To summarise, Sunlyk has made some telling criticisms of Giles’ work, although he fails to understand its thrust because of his unfamiliarity with the viewpoint Giles is interacting with. But in fact Sunlyk upholds Giles’ main point concerning the Trinity, that the relationship between the Father and the Son should not be understood in terms like “The Father commands, and the Son obeys.”

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Packer threatened with suspension from ministry

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As reported on Michael Daley’s unofficial Lambeth Conference blog, the renowned Bible scholar and teacher Dr JI Packer, aged 81, yesterday

received a letter threatening suspension from ministry by the controversial Bishop of New Westminster, Michael Ingham.

Two weeks ago, as I reported here, the Anglican church of which Packer is a member, St John’s Shaughnessy, decided to leave Bishop Ingham’s diocese and affiliate to the Province of the Southern Cone. Several other congregations have also voted to leave this and other dioceses of the “official” Anglican Church of Canada.

It is not clear what the bishop’s charge is against Packer. It has not been reported that he took any active part in the decision at St John’s, even that he was among the overwhelming 475 to 11 majority (9 abstentions) who voted to join the Southern Cone. In Packer’s only public comment on the issue that I know about, he did not, despite his strong criticisms, announce any intention to leave the Anglican Church of Canada.

It is also not clear what Ingham’s threats can actually mean in practice. Ingham cannot strip Packer of his priesthood. He can formally prohibit Packer from ministering in those churches remaining loyal to him – but then such a prohibition could hardly be enforced in the current climate, and most of these churches would not have invited Packer anyway.

So Ingham’s threat is in fact not much more than a gesture. But what kind of gesture is it? Not a polite one, I think. It seems that Bishop Ingham, in his zeal to purge his diocese of those who disagree with his theologically liberal agenda, which includes promotion of same-sex marriage, is not prepared even to show common courtesy to an Anglican elder statesman.

Meanwhile there have been so many developments in Anglican churches in Canada, congregations leaving their dioceses and diocesan authorities attempting to stop them, that Michael Daley has set up a special blog to keep track of them. The latest news just in is excellent for at least two of the parishes that have voted to join the Southern Cone: an Ontario judge has ruled that “the parishioners … shall have exclusive use of the buildings” at least until the next hearing on 20th March.

St John's Shaughnessy leaves the Anglican Church of Canada

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Last November I wrote two posts about St John’s church, Shaughnessy, in Vancouver, the largest congregation in the Anglican Church of Canada, and its controversial Rector David Short. Today the news has broken that this church, of which J.I. Packer is a member, has voted overwhelmingly to leave the official Anglican Church and affiliate to the Province of the Southern Cone. This decision is hardly a surprise, given that Short is a director of the Anglican Network in Canada which has as a whole affiliated to the Southern Cone, and Packer has given a presentation supporting this move. Nevertheless it is significant that the congregation has overwhelmingly accepted their position, even under the threat of legal action from their diocese to appropriate their church buildings.

Thanks to Michael Daley and Anglican Mainstream for the tip.

Justification: metaphor or the real thing?

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Henry Neufeld, at his Participatory Bible Study Blog, has entered the fray about John Piper’s criticism of N.T. Wright’s approach to justification. I cannot claim to understand the whole post because I have not read the chapter by Piper which it refers to (although I have read the Wright article in question). But Henry makes this interesting point in the first part of his post:

There is a fundamental assumption that Piper makes, that there is one, and only one way to understand justification. For him, justification is a fact, not a metaphor. It is the core reality. Metaphors can be used to describe it, but it is the real thing. I emphasize this repeatedly, because it underlies many of the arguments that Piper makes. For him, it would be quite inadequate to suggest that a different metaphor was in play in a different verse, and thus perhaps it might be understood differently.

This is a significant point because it brings out what I see as one of the major weaknesses in Reformed theology, alongside the reliance on tradition which I have also criticised recently.

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Piper has answered Adrian's question: Wright is not preaching another gospel

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A few weeks ago I wrote about what is wrong with John Piper’s theology. But in fact it turns out that in at least one respect his beliefs have been misinterpreted by Adrian Warnock.

I mentioned in my post a post of Adrian’s entitled John Piper: Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel? (See also the 31 comments on this post, now deleted from Adrian’s blog but saved here.) This was part of Adrian’s series on Piper’s book The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright, available online free of charge (PDF format).

Adrian’s title suggests that Piper is claiming that Wright is “preaching another gospel”, and the content of the post seems to confirm this suggestion. But in fact, as I will show here, this suggestion is incorrect: Piper does not consider Wright’s teaching to be “another gospel”.

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Complementarianism: Sola Scriptura or Sola Traditio?

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I don’t often read materials from the so-called “Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” (CBMW). They promote a complementarian position, that is (to put it rather tendentiously), that whereas men and women are supposedly equal in status, all of the roles in the church and the family which are generally considered to be of high status are reserved for men only. As my regular readers know, this is not my position. Authors associated with CBMW, such as Wayne Grudem, often try to justify their position from Scripture, but in my opinion, explained further below, their arguments are generally seriously deficient.

But my attention was drawn to a series of posts on the CBMW blog in which David Kotter, Executive Director of CBMW, responds to my blogger friend Molly Aley. See also the discussion here, and Molly’s response to the series (which includes an excellent account by Elijah McKnight of how he moved from complementarianism to egalitarianism when he learned a proper approach to the Scriptures).

In part 2 of the series Kotter seeks to root CBMW’s complementarian position in the doctrine of Sola Scriptura:

The complementary nature of manhood and womanhood and its implications for the home and church can only be defended from the Scripture alone.

But in fact neither his logic nor CBMW’s arguments for complementarianism support this conclusion.

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Driscoll's Horrible Histories

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Dave Warnock (no relation to Adrian) has posted on What Driscoll really said about God and hate, partly in response to my own post on the matter, whose title, in the sincerest form of flattery no doubt, he has simply copied.

Alastair, in an update to his original post, gave links to audio files of three of Driscoll’s talks from his visit to Edinburgh:

But I note that the talks from the MenMakers conference are not available online, at least not from this site. These include the second talk on which I posted, the one in which, according to Adrian, Driscoll said a single man “cannot fully reflect God”.

Unlike me, Dave has in fact listened to one of Driscoll’s talks, the one on sex. He writes:

An interesting review of Church History, more akin to the Horrible Histories genre than anything else I have heard. … This is definitely not something you want to listen to if you are a single man.

Well, in that case, as a single man, I won’t listen to it, I will just recommend that you read Dave’s not exactly positive response. “Horrible Histories” indeed! I will copy that line, to flatter Dave.

What Driscoll really said about God and hate

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Thanks to Alastair Roberts, who was there and has presumably now transcribed a recording, we can now read what Mark Driscoll really had to say at the Edinburgh conference about God and hate, as part of his talk on the atonement. Previously we had to rely on Adrian Warnock’s summary of his words. And it turns out that Adrian’s summary was rather misleading.

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"Children of wrath" and a puzzle over Calvinism

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I have been following, and occasionally contributing to, an interesting comment thread on Alastair Roberts’ post Does God Love or Hate You? This discussion arose out of my own post about Mark Driscoll’s teaching “God hates you”. In comments today on Alastair’s post the issue has come up of what it what it means to be “children of wrath”, the traditional wording at Ephesians 2:3.

I realised that there is something puzzling about the meaning of this phrase. This is basically a Hebrew idiom, “children of …” meaning “people characterised by …”. More fully, a literal translation is “by nature children of wrath” (RSV). TNIV interprets as “by nature deserving of wrath”. But Alastair seems to understand the phrase as meaning “destined for wrath”.

The puzzle is what this means, especially for those who take a Calvinist position. For this phrase is a description not of unbelievers, but of the past state of the believers to whom the letter is addressed. So Calvinists, who believe that God predestined and foreknew that these people would become believers, can hardly understand the phrase as meaning “destined for wrath”. Continue reading →