Knowing the Triune God

Lesson #2

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject:

Genre: Speech

Track: 2

Dictation Name: RR10??

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

Our concern now will be with the doctrine of the trinity in relationship to the idea of subordinationism. The most common and most absurd of all heresies is subordinationism. The first is the subordination of person in the Godhead. What does this mean? When we say God we must mean - if we are Biblical in our thinking - not just God, but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The word God means the Triune God, it means, the Trinity. But many people, when they say God they mean God the Father, and for them God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are somehow lesser. The end result of such thinking has been repeatedly, in the history of the church, the abandonment of the faith. It has led to Marcionite thinking in the very early church. Marcion associated each member of the Trinity with a particular attribute - we’ll come to that in a moment, but for the moment we’ll just refer to it. Arianism, which emphasized God and ended up with the death of God, made Christ the Son of God less than God. Or Wakkimite thinking. Unitarianism, which started as a thoroughly Christian movement, and soon, like any faith that has any element of subordinationism, went outside the Christian focus.

The subordination of person ultimately means that the Biblical doctrine of God is abandoned. Then we have the subordination of attributes. First, the subordination of persons, second, the subordination of attributes. What does this mean? In the subordination of attributes, one of the oldest and most common heresies in the church, one attribute of God is emphasized, it is exalted above all others and it is the key to God.

Now I mentioned Marcion. Marcion associated God with law. The Son with love and grace. Therefore, Marcion ended by saying the old Testament is the God of hate, the God of law, and we have a higher God now, the God of love. So he ended up by dividing scripture by declaring portions of it to be improper for this dispensation, and by emphasizing one attribute to the exclusion of all others. Wakkim whose thinking is with us to this day and a number of forms, followed a similar line. He said there was first age of history with God the Father, the age of Law. The second age of history came, in which now another attribute of God predominated through God the Son. And he says too we are going to have a third age, the age of the Holy Spirit and love and brotherhood.

What did he do? He wrongly divided the Godhead. He exalted for each age one attribute above others.

Now these are extreme forms of subordinationism with attributes, but let me deal with the more common forms. For some people when talk about the Triune God, all they talk about is grace - salvation - as though the mosod is salvation! Salvation is important, his grace is important, but we cannot exalt one aspect of God over others. Others will say, over and over again, God is love. That’s the big thing. Other’s will say it is his sovereignty, or his predestinating power, or his sovereign grace, in fact. But we cannot do this. We cannot take one attribute of God and exalt it above other attributes, because then we are saying there are gradations in God. There are...degrees.

But God is perfection! Every aspect of God is equal to every other. Now, there are gradations in my being and in yours - we can say of a man, he’s a good thinker, he’s clumsy with his hands, and when he sings he croaks. Because our attributes, these creaturely attributes, will vary! In fact, among us, it’s rare that we have more than one attribute in which we excel. There are gradations in our beings. In fact, our right hand and our left are unequal in strength. Very often there are differences in our eyes - one will be a little stronger than the other.

But it is anthropomorphic thinking to attribute to God and his attributes the same kind of gradation! But it has been very commonly done. The Arminians do it, the Calvinists do it. They pick on one attribute to the exclusion of others. Now very often for homiletical purposes as a corrective we need to stress something because sovereignty is being neglected, or grace is being neglected, or law is being neglected, or righteousness, or holiness is being neglected... but we must be careful at all times to recognize that it destroys the doctrine of the Triune God when we subordinate one Person to another, or one attribute to other attributes. Then God ceases to be God.

Moreover, when we subordinate one attribute to another we imply that there is, first, the gradation of feeling in God. That God is not entirely God in some areas. And we also imply that there is a conflict. I mentioned Marcion and Wakim, and other such thinkers. And you have a (caday?) in those who believe in faith but not in works, or in grace but not in love; justice and not in forgiveness; or in forgiveness but not injustice. As though there were contradictions in the being of God! Faith without works is dead. Paul said in Romans, “Do I make void the law? Nay, I uphold the Law!” The bible doesn’t put contradictions between the attributes of God. But today people will emphasize grace as against works, or works against grace, or law against love, and love against law... What they are saying is that there is a warfare inside of God, and that’s blasphemy. You cannot do it.

Now there can be warfare in MY being, but there cannot be warfare in the being of God. So every attempt to subordinate one aspect of God to another by both gradation and warfare. It’s impossible for any part of God to be less God than any other part. God is totally God in all his being! So that whatever attribute or whichever of the three Persons of the Godhead we are dealing with we are dealing with absolute perfection. This is why there can be no gradation. No degrees in God. They are inescapable in man, they are impossible in God. As the Psalmist says in Psalm 50:21, God speaking, “thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself”. One aspect of my life is subordinate to another, sometimes I may neglect my work for something else, or neglect my family responsibilities, and so on...that sort of thing is inescapable for me because I’m a sinful and a limited creature, and so there will be gradations and subordinations in my being and my life, and it creates problems! But no such problem can exist in the Godhead. No subordination.

When you introduce subordinationism to any extent, you begin to destroy the doctrine of God.

There are two ways of looking at the Triune God. One is tne is the economical Trinity, that is, the Trinity in it’s works. Now when you’re dealing with the economical Trinity you can say that at times one function, and one is subordinate to another. But it’s not a subordination of feelings - thus, God the Father is apparently primary in the work of creation, God the Son is taking the lead in the work of redemption and atonement, and God the Spirit is taking the lead in the work of sanctification. But this is simply in the economics of the Trinity. Hence we talk of this as the economical Trinity - the Trinity and it’s workings. At a particular point one Person of the Trinity may be present and active in a particular way, and they take the lead.

But there’s no subordination of being. In the Ontological Trinity, God in himself, there is no subordination.

Now the Trinity, without subordination of being or person or attributes, gives us the answer to the one and many problems. I won’t go into that - I have a book on the subject The One and Many - but it is the basic problem of all philosophy and of all human thought. Very briefly, what is ultimate? What is basic to life? The unity of things, the oneness of things, or is it the individuality? Now, if you have a false doctrine of God you may emphasize the oneness, Unitarians for example. What happens to Unitarians? They become totalitarians. Because if you have subordinationism in the Trinity you’re going to emphasize unity and you’re going to emphasize totalitarianism. Everything has to be under one authority.

One thought. Every time in history that we have had subordinationism leading to Unitarianism, we have had totalitarianism arise. This is why {?} theology is so important! Most theology today reformed and Arminianism is subordinationism, and as a result, we see these people who claim to be Bible believers, becoming socialists! Or espousing socialistic doctrines! Why? Because unity, the oneness of things, is all important to that. On the other hand those who emphasize the particularity alone, end up as anarchists! And we have had Christian anarchists...

How you think of God, your doctrine of the Trinity, your avoidance of subordinationism, makes all the difference in your doctrine of the church, your doctrine of politics, in your doctrine of everyday life.

For example, to cite very hastily, if you have a false doctrine of the one and the many you will say marriage is more important than the people and therefore never any divorce. Or, you can say that people are more important than marriage, therefore marriage can be dissolved as the people have lost interest. Do you see happens? But if you have a true doctrine you emphasize both the unity, the oneness of the marriage, and the individuals in it.

Or, you can say that the church is everything, and the members nothing. I have viewed this in very authoritarian churches. Or you can say the members are everything, and if a member doesn’t like a preacher or the church, so much the worse for the preacher or the church. Every man has the right to his own opinion and to go his own way, and that’s the kind of anarchy you see in many churches. Or in politics, if you emphasize the oneness you have totalitarianism. If you emphasize the particularity or individuality, you have anarchism finally.

All of this stems from how men think of God! It makes all the difference. This is why subordinationism or anything that breaks up Trinitarianism is a danger. Van Til has said with regard to the the Many and I quote, “Using the language of the One and the Many question we contend that in God the One and the Many are equally ultimate. Unity in God is no more fundamental than diversity, and diversity in God is no more fundamental than unity. The Persons of the Trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another. The Son and the Spirit are ontologically on a par with the Father. It is a well known fact that all -- now notice, ALL -- heresies in the history of the church have in some form or other taught subordinationism. Similarly we believe that all sins, all heresies in apologetic methodology spring from some form of subordinationism.

Now subordinationism gives us a highly limited religion. It places the stress on one aspect of the faith and one attribute of God. Basically, subordinationism is anti theistic, anti-God. Why? Our subordinationism are often our very dedicated Arminians and dedicated Calvinists! Why do I say they are anti-God? Because the basic roots of subordinationism of persons or attributes, and especially of attributes, very openly so, is Greek philosophy.

We’re all to some degree infected by it because it’s in our atmosphere, in our education, we’ve been brought up in it. Now what did Greek philosophy believe in? Ideas. Abstract, universal ideas. So that all things were judged by ideas, so that anyone who holds to the Greek idea will say “Ah, but we must judge all things by love. I don’t feel that the God that I meet with in this book of the Bible or this episode is a loving God, therefore this part we cannot accept.” Or, God is righteousness, social justice! Therefore I cannot accept this or that aspect of the Bible because it isn’t true to the idea of God. Or God is sovereign or predestination or sovereign grace or what have you and therefore all things (judged?) in Him. Do you see what you’re doing?

You take an abstract idea, you abstract it from God, and you put it up there above God as it were! And you say, ‘this is the key’. There is no gradation of God, no change, no turning! Every aspect of God is equally God. So when we choose one thing we have an idea that rules over God, and we judge God and the world in terms of it until it is us and our idea that predominates. This is why subordinationism leads to so much trouble, to so many heresies, to such pretension. You have people finally in some forms ‘knowing the mind of God’ as it were because their idea tells them how God is thinking.

I won’t go into it, but you have some forms of the Reformed faith {?} {?} {?} which can tell you exactly how God was thinking before He created the world before all eternity. What have they done? They’ve created an abstract idea that gives them the “key” to God, so God becomes comprehensible to them, and the mind of God becomes an open book to them. And that’s idolatry.

God is God in all beings. He is the Triune God and all His persons equally God and all His attributes equally God. As Van Til has said, to quote him again, “We may therefore, speak of the system of truth contained in the scripture only if we are careful to note that its various doctrines are not to be obtained by way of deduction from some massive concept. There is no doubt confidence between the doctrine of God and the doctrine of Christ as found in scripture if even when conjoined and seen in their fullest harmony, these and other doctrines together do not begin to exalt the riches of God’s revelation to man through Christ and his Spirit.” Unquote.

There is no truth nor system of truth that is over God, or is the key to God. You cannot subordinate God to any idea of truth or to any aspect of his being. God is God. And therefore, every aspect of God and each person of the Trinity is entirely and totally God. Are there any questions now? Yes?