Wedding Attendees Are Covenant Participants, Not Inquisitive Spectators
What Alistair Begg should have said about attending a "gay [or 'trans'] marriage," and what Herman Bavinck did in fact say about Patriarchal Subordinationism.
Dear Friends and Supporters:
The Alastair Begg controversy was sparked by his advice about a Christian’s attending a “trans” wedding ceremony. He counseled an inquiring grandmother that as long as her Christian position was made known (that is, opposing the “marriage”), it was permissible, even preferable, to attend. In the face of withering criticism, Begg has reasserted this advice.
One of several important facts frequently missing from the analysis of this controversy is that in the Bible (and outside the Bible, for that matter) marriage is a covenant (Mal. 2:14). Unfortunately, in our secular age, understanding of covenant has dissipated in both culture and church. Covenant is a central theme of the Bible, and in fact you can’t really understand biblical theology (or the ancient world in general) without understanding the covenant. (See O. Palmer Robertson’s The Christ of the Covenants.)
If you understand covenant, you know that every covenant requires witnesses, and what we today call attendees at a wedding are actually witnesses to a covenant-making. This is clearly evidenced in traditional weddings, in which something like this was often said by the officiant: “Does anybody know any reason why this man and woman should not be joined together in marriage?” The witnesses are a vital part of the covenant ceremony. Wedding attendees aren’t inquisitive spectators; they are covenant participants.
It’s simply illogical, therefore, to argue that one may disapprove of “gay [or ‘trans’] marriage” (it is no such thing) while attending the ceremony. If you want to watch the ceremony, get a copy of the DVD.
By the way, this covenant truth applies equally to other public covenant acts like baptism and the Lord’s Table. If a compromising church wishes the curry favor by baptizing a well-known multimillionaire atheist, or serves communion to a known devout Muslin to avoid offending him, a Christian may not attend ( = participate). To attend a covenant act is to be party to it. In the case of “gay/trans marriage,” the fact that the marriage is invalid doesn’t excuse Christian attendance, which attempts (knowingly or not), to validate it.
How do we answer those whose relative is sinfully “marrying” someone of the same sex (or a “transsexual”) but who (rightly) want to show Christian love in the face of this abhorrent act? How do we express our love to the sinning individual while concurrently disapproving of this abomination? While our love of one or more faux “spouses” that participate in such sinful public events doesn’t demand approval, we may obviously love those of whose actions we cannot approve. Love is not approval, and approval is not love. (This principle is equally true of sinful heterosexual marriages, as between a believer and an unbeliever: don’t attend.)
We’re not unloving just because we refuse to witness and therefore condone an unrighteous covenant ceremony.
That’s what Alistair Begg should have said.
Early Reformed Repudiation of Patriarachal Subordinationism
In 2016, some major scholarly supporters of the doctrine known as the Eternal Subordination of the Son (ESS) at the Evangelical Theological Society abandoned their heresy1 (akin to ancient semi-Arianism) and returned to the orthodox Trinitarian fold. This heresy, which I call Patriarchal Subordinationism, holds that Jesus wasn’t just subordinate to the Father’s will in his earthly ministry (this is called the work of the economic Trinity) but also in his eternal relation to the Father (labeled the ontological Trinity).
I use the expression Patriarchal Subordinationism to draw attention to the reason for this revival of ESS — it has been pressed into service during our chaotic times of sexual egalitarianism to support the entirely biblical idea that wives should submit to their own husbands.
Unfortunately, holding that the Son is eternally submissive to the Father is a heretical (and wholly unnecessary) way to defend an entirely orthodox doctrine. This is an ironic move, because if there’s anything more theologically injurious than sexual egalitarianism, it’s the unpeeling of the orthodox Trinity. It’s to go from the frying pan into the lake of fire.
Orthodox Trinitarianism found in the early Christian creeds all orthodox Christians affirm holds that the Father, Son and Spirit are (in the memorable words of a later Reformed catechism) “the same in substance, equal in power and glory,” all with a single will, none subordinate to the other.
This doctrine was hammered out in the great controversy with the ancient heretic Arius, who claimed that Jesus Christ was deity, but was created by, and ever afterward subordinate to, the Father. Unlike Arius, today's Patriarchal Subordinationists do not argue Jesus Christ was created, but like Arius they believe he was and is and forever will be subordinate to the Father. This is why I term them semi-Arians.
The subordination of the Son to the Father in the ontological Trinity is an impossibility, and in the economic Trinity is a necessity.
Unlike today’s Reformed Trinitarian revisionists, towering predecessors like Herman Bavinck (as well as Banjamin Warfield and Cornelius Van Til) understood the orthodox (biblical) Trinity. Here’s Bavinck (invoking Augustine):
Every person is as great as the entire Trinity…. Present in each person is the entire self-same divine being…. [T]he distinction between the persons cannot arise from attributes or accidents that one person has in distinction from another but stems from the interpersonal relations of the members of the Trinity…. The Father can only be called Father because it is as person, not as God, that he is the Father of the Son. (emphasis supplied)
That last sentence in particular has great explanatory power. Bavinck is saying that the Father is the Father of the Son as relates to the personhood of each. He is not the Father as God. He is not the Father of the Trinity. This might seem like a fine theological and philosophical point, but it is a vital distinction. The Father is not Father by virtue of being God. He is Father by virtue of his relation to the Son, both of whom, with the Spirit, constitute God.
This reinforces the truth that there is no hierarchy in the eternal Trinity, simply because there is only one being in the Trinity, one being in three persons with a single will. Since there is one being with a single will, there’s not a second being or will to submit to another. In humanity, every person is a new being. This is not true of the Trinity, which is a single being in three persons. It’s also why the eternal (ontological) Trinity is not a pattern for marriage or other human relationships. The eternal intratrinitarian relation is not symmetrical to any human relations.
The hierarchy comes in at the economic (redemptive) Trinity (1 Cor. 11:1f.), because in that case, the Son takes to himself a human nature. The Creator (the eternal Son) joins the creation, without mixing or diminishing either (this is what the Chalcedonian creed is all about). There can, and in fact must, be hierarchy in the economic Trinity (earthly work of redemption), because the creation is always subordinate to the Creator.
In short: the subordination of the Son to the Father in the ontological Trinity is an impossibility, and in the economic Trinity is a necessity.
Conclusion
This controversy shows it’s not only true that bad theology leads to bad practice, but that even good practice can lead to bad theology, when the practice and not the theology is given priority.
Personal
In the next few weeks I intend to write on “Three Bad Ways to Interpret the Bible,” “Three Short Movie Reviews,” “Guard Your Influence,” and “Truth-Tellers versus Peacemakers.”
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The book to which I link is written by Kevin Giles, a sexual egalitarian. I disagree with him strongly on that point, of course, but he has done yeoman’s work in exposing the false views of ESS and Patriarchal Subordinationism. You don’t need to subvert the Trinity to defend the biblical truth the wife submitting to her own husband.