Friday, June 5, 2009

The Son of Temporary Obedience

I am still focusing on the idea of the subordination of the Trinity, where the Son is below the Father. I discussed last time that the concept of subordination of the Son to the Father WAS NOT a concept that can be properly used to form the guidelines regarding men and women in leadership. Whenever the Son submitted to His Father, the analogy was used in regards to MUTUAL SUBMISSION of the believers in the body of Christ—not of the wife to the husband.

This is not the only theological problem with Son subordination. Rebecca Merrill
Groothuis writes more:

“Hebrews 5:7-8 states, ‘Son though he was, he LEARNED OBEDIENCE’ while He was on earth in the flesh, and God heard his prayers ‘because of his reverent submission.’ Since this was the first time the Son needed to be obedient to the Father, he had to learn how to do it. It was NOT until his earthly incarnation that the Son ‘BECAME OBEDIENT’ and ‘LEARNED OBEDIENCE.’ There is NO INDICATION OF AN ETERNAL ORDER of the Son’s obedience to the Father’s authority” (Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, “Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy,” page 331).

If the Son had ALWAYS BEEN SUBORDINATE to the Father, there would have been no need to “learn” obedience. If a child is yours, they don’t have to LEARN obedience when they’re 12 years old. Now, they might have to be disciplined for their disobedience, but they will know how to obey—they will know what is acceptable behavior in mom’s eyes and what isn’t acceptable behavior.

The fact that the complementarian would use this shows their desire to “force” eternal subordination on egalitarianism and ecclesiology. But the surprising thing is that EVEN CHILDREN must one day grow up…and so must complementarian thought.

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