Recently, the Books at a Glance website released a podcast in which Fred Zaspel conducted
an interview on the current Trinity debates within evangelicalism. The featured
a panel of the following theologians:
- Dr. Mike Ovey, Oak Hill College, London, UK
- Dr. Fred Sanders, Torey Honors Institute,
Biola University, La Marida, CA
- Dr. Scott Swain, Reformed Theological
Seminary, Orlando, FL
- Dr. Steve Wellum. The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY
Of the names mentioned above, I am most
familiar with Dr. Wellum. As a new student at the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, I ended up taking Dr. Wellum’s course in Biblical Hermeneutics. I had
previously given serious attention to biblical hermeneutics on my own, so I was
quite surprised at how much I learned from Dr. Wellum, who taught me a great
deal about typology, analogical vs. univocal language concerning God, and
Biblical Theology: areas I had never explored before. After that Biblical
Hermeneutics class, I took as many classes from Dr. Wellum as I could; I took
his class on the Person of Christ, his class on the Work of Christ, and two sections
of classes on “Issues in Biblical and Systematic Theology.” Though I do have a
couple of areas of disagreement with Dr. Wellum—specifically regarding his “ProgressiveCovenantalism” —in general, I have learned to trust him as a teacher, having seen how he
carefully works through the details of biblical texts, then puts them in a
whole-Bible context, drawing sound theological conclusions.
For this reason, in the panel discussion
linked above, I was most interested in hearing what Dr. Wellum had to say.
(Plus: Dr. Richard Barcellos, who I also respect, recommended Dr. Wellum’s
contribution to this discussion.) The following is a transcript of Dr. Wellum’s
contributions to the discussion, with some headings I’ve added:
3:57, Introduction
“Great to be with you. I'm professor of
Theology at [the] Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and my interest in
this [trinitarian discussion] is obviously just tied to the knowledge of God,
and who God is as the triune God, as well as just finishing a work on
Christology, so I've tried to get at these issues, thinking of who Jesus is,
and then tied obviously to the triune relations. And so that's where I've come
in. And also I've had plenty of conversations with one of the individuals who
is sort of at the center of the debate: my friend Bruce Ware. So I come from
that end of things.”
8:50, Person/Nature
Distinction; “Authority” and “Will”
"It seems to me that there's a lot going
on in the [current trinitarian] debate, but there's a larger question of the
entire person/nature distinction. What constitutes 'person'? What constitutes
'divine nature'? There is the historic position of how to distinguish the
persons and the definition of 'person'. [But now there's] sort of a newer view
that may be tied to some social trinitarian understandings, and some of the
acceptance or rejections of that. Particularly with Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware
and others there's sort of a problem with the traditional way of distinguishing
persons-and thus the definition of [divine] persons as 'paternity,' 'eternal
generation,' 'procession'-and then substituting that for another way of
distinguishing the persons, thus coming up with somewhat of a different sense
of what 'person' is, and particularly the difference of 'person' [according to
Grudem, Ware, et al.] is that you have authority: authority now
becomes the primary way of distinguishing the persons, where historically I
would say that wasn't the case. [However,] there's been some taking back in the
current discussion (particularly I'll speak on behalf of Bruce Ware), that
there was this sort of flirting with loading up in person the notion of will,
so that we then have three wills in the Godhead, and that's different than has
been historically conceived of 'will' as tied to nature. So that's
part of the mix as well: how you distinguish the persons, what a 'person' is,
and how that has implications for the understanding of 'nature' as well."
23:30, The
Classic Distinction of Divine Persons vs. a Contemporary Model
"Clearly, we have to [articulate] how
we're going to distinguish the divine persons; there's a mixing of ways of
doing so. Speaking in terms of 'paternity' [and] 'sonship/generation'-relations
of origin-that's been the historic ways of doing that, and [now] we're mixing authority in
there... It's one thing to say, 'Relations of origin: sonship; it's fitting
that the Son obeys, and now you have from the pactum to ad
extra relations in the economy,' and so on, to then say, 'Oh, I'm not
going to hold [to], or I have problems with that [classical] way of
distinguishing persons, and instead I'm going to
substitute authority relations as the way of distinguishing Father from Son
from Spirit: so the Father has ultimacy, the Father has authority more
than the Son has authority,' and then say, 'Authority just is simply a
person/role relation; it's not tied to the divine nature and divine
attributes,' which is the argument that's made. But the problem with that is:
[divine] authority is very difficult to conceive of apart from divine
omnipotence, divine omniscience, [etc.]. So when you start saying, 'Ultimate
authority or ultimate glory is tied to authority,' this muddies the waters, and
you have to have a clear discussion of: how do we distinguish the persons, and
how has the Church thought to do so on the basis of Scripture? And then: how
does authority fit in there? So for myself, I think it's wiser
to stick with the history of the Church here and then speak of Father, Son, and
Spirit have equal authority, yet they express that authority in terms of
Father, Son, and Spirit: in terms of eternal relation of origin. And that's
what's getting muddied in this entire discussion, so that many people on the
'functional subordination' issue, they're having problems with relations of
origin, modes of subsistence, as ways of distinguishing the persons, and
they're substituting, I don't think a grammar that the Church has used, and
it's leading to talking past one another instead of clarity in terms of the
entire discussion."
43:25, Ad
Extra/Ad Intra and Taxis
"Clearly, the economy reveals something
of who God is, yet there has to be a distinction between ad intra/ad
extra, and carefully; we do not have exhaustive knowledge, but we have true
knowledge. And then you have analogical revelation, so the emphasis on not
being univocal, but analogical, especially as it comes over into human
relationships, has to be preserved. And in terms of the incarnation: you can't
read back into Christ's humanity in incarnation back into eternal relations.
So, I mean, as I've tried to put these together and be faithful to what the
history of the Church has said about the nature of the incarnation, the nature
of Christ's mission, active obedience, and a strong defender of penal
substitution. It seems to me we have to, say out of John 5, speak of Christ the
Son in His humanity and yet it's pushing back in terms of Father, Son, and then
Spirit, but particularly Father/Son relationship; so there is an ordering of
persons. Now, there is a taxis, there is an ordering: God in
Himself necessarily, it's eternal, it's necessary, it's not just voluntary (the
Son could do this/the Father could do that). They inseparably act together: the
Father's the Father; the Son is from the Father is how we distinguish. Yet the
problem is when we start reading these authority relations in terms of the way
of distinguishing the persons. So you can argue that the Son is the Son; He's
always from the Father, He never acts independently of the Father and
vice-versa, yet the Father as Father acts as Father, the Son as Son, the Spirit
as Spirit. So it's fitting that the Son is the one who becomes incarnate, the
one who does the Father's will, and so on, in those relations. Yet to then say
that the Father has more authority: my problem is that authority isn't just a
personal property that distinguishes the persons; authority is tied ultimately
to the very nature of who God is. So you want to preserve the distinction of
persons; the ordering, the taxis, from ad intra shows
itself ad extra, yet you want to be very, very careful of mixing,
then, authority relations as the way of saying one [divine person] has more
authority or less. I think it's being corrected recently, but even some of the
discussion where you have [people saying], 'Well, the Father could have
unilaterally acted independent of the Son and the Spirit' [in that case], you
have some real problems of how the persons are eternally and necessarily
related: you have problems of inseparable operations. So it's one thing to
say the Son is from the Father: we have to [say that] that's the way you
distinguish: eternal generation. And it's fitting that He is the obedient one;
He does the will of the Father, and so on, without then reading in everything
of authority. And tying authority then carefully to the plan of divine decrees
ad extra, and what God is in Himself. What does it mean for the Son to
submit to the Father from eternity? Those are difficult, difficult areas that
we have to be very, very careful on."
48:15, “What
Does Sonship Entail?” and the Question of Authority
"There's debate as to [the question]
'what does sonship entail?' and 'how does it work itself out?' and so on,
without having any notion of subordination that's brought in. I think that's a
legitimate debate, and that's where I defend my colleague [Bruce Ware] in
saying, 'He's not Arian or semi-Arian,' and he's describing things I don't
think in a wise way of distinguishing persons, yet he's trying to get at those
further Father-Sonship-Spirit relations. But we do have to exercise great
caution and the authority relation-what authority is within God versus what's
authority in human relationships and it's outworking, even in terms of the
incarnation I think must be carefully thought through as well, because there's
a creaturely kind of authority in relationships that doesn't pertain to the
relations in divine persons as well. And so that's not only ad intra/ad
extra, but also Creator/creature distinction that seems to-if we're not
careful-I know in some of the discussion here, especially as it gets sometimes
tied to (often tied to) the complementarian issue, it looks pretty univocal,
and we have to be very careful while we preserve [exploration of] what sonship
is, and the obedience of the Son (active obedience), imputation: all those
areas I want to affirm as well. I'm just leery of putting too much of the
distinction of persons in terms of higher/lesser authority."
58:20, Divine
Will
"We have one divine will tied to the
divine nature, defined more in terms (I think) of its capacity, so that all
three persons share the one divine will and act through that one divine will...
and they act inseparably, but that does not remove the distinction of persons,
so the Father as Father acts through the Son by Spirit, yet they inseparably
act together. so that in creation, providence, revelation, redemption, all
three persons are active as Father, Son, and Spirit. So you're keeping
distinction of three-ness of person in the one-ness of nature, yet it’s in and
through the divine nature that they share that they act... [This] is crucial to
the debate because some of, not all, but some of the previous discussion of
functional subordination has tended to assume or not carefully lay out the
assumption of three wills, and they were loading up in terms of 'person' a
different concept of 'will,' and capacity, agency, everything is put in terms
of person, and that's going to create problems both Christologically in terms
of two wills in Christ and also [in] this whole discussion of the relation of
person."
1:03:25, Christ
and Human Obedience
"Obviously, the Son become incarnate, He
does the work of the last Adam and obeys, yet He has the very identity of
YHWH... How does He have the identity of YHWH? He is God co-equal with the
Father, and yet He is the Son: the Son who comes, and He is the one who obeys
as a man. And you have to keep all of that together without too much of this
notion of hierarchy ad intra. And that [hierarchy within God ad
intra] does lead to some wrong directions."
1:04:55, Christ
is One Person
"Obviously, you can't separate the one
who's become Savior in His humanity apart from the one who is Lord as well.
Otherwise, you have no penal substitution, you have no Savior, and you have no
Jesus of the Bible, right?"
1:10:28, Sola
Scriptura and the Creeds
"I want to say sola Scriptura. Sola
Scriptura is not independent of the creeds. Creeds are secondary
standards. Yet, through the history of the Church-not every creed and
confession is legitimate, it has to be put under the authority of Scripture, we
have lots of creeds that people have propounded in the history of the Church
that we reject: the Roman Catholic creeds, the Eastern Orthodox creeds, and so
on-on these particular issues (particularly 'Trinity' and then as it impacts
Christology) there is a weight to these creeds, and the way the Church has put
this together, because it has stood the test of time, it has been universally
accepted in the Church, as so on... On these particular issues, you're going to
have to be very, very careful [about] substitut[ing] other grammars, other ways
of speaking, without careful. careful argument. And that's some of the problem
here: that sort of cavalier sense that you get from some that [indicates],
'Well, we'll just get rid of eternal generation because it's oxymoronic to us,
and we don't understand it, and therefore we'll just put something else in its
place. And that, to me, is dangerous, even though we would say the creeds are
secondary standards. So that on the basis of these trinitarian and
Christological formulations, one has to be very, very careful. And then I'd
want to make the case, even on atonement issues, that through development of
the history of the Church-[especially] Reformation, post-Reformation
era-there's been clarity that's come in those matters as well (that often we
don't argue, the same way that we do for trinity and Christology). The creeds
are secondary, Scripture is in authority over them, yet they do give direction
to our thinking and they have been through the test of time, and to depart from
them, you're going to have to be very careful."
Labels: Reformation Theology
In discussing the Christology of John Calvin on an episode of Reformed Forum, Scott Oliphint observed:
