Subordinationism
Subordinationism is a Trinitarian doctrine wherein the Son is subordinate to the Father, not only in submission and role, but with actual ontological subordination to varying degrees. It posits a hierarchical ranking of the persons of the Social Trinity, implying ontological subordination of the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit. It was condemned as heretical in the Second Council of Constantinople.
It is not to be confused with Arianism, as Subordinationism has been generally viewed as closer to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan view. While Arianism was developed out of it, it did not confess the personhood of the Holy Spirit and of the Son, both eternal.
History
Ante-Nicene
According to Badcock, virtually all orthodox theologians prior to the Arian controversy in the latter half of the fourth century were subordinationists to some extent, which also applies to Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Justin Martyr and Novatian. It was also found in the Ascension of Isaiah. However, there may have been some Ante-Nicene Christian writers who did not affirm subordinationism. Ignatius of Antioch, Athenagoras and the early Odes of Solomon seem to reflect a non-subordinationist understanding of the trinity. Additionally, theologians such as Emile Mersch have disputed the claim that Irenaeus taught any form of subordinationism.Origen of Alexandria has often been interpreted as Subordinationist. However, some modern researchers have argued that Origen might have actually been anti-Subordinationist and that his own Trinitarian theology inspired the Trinitarian theology of the later Cappadocian Fathers.
Arius and Alexander
The dispute between Alexander and Arius, which started the Arian Controversy, arose in 318 or 319. At the beginning of the controversy nobody knew the right answer. Arius, a clergyman of Alexandria in Egypt, "objected to Alexander's apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the Father and the Son by his emphasis on eternal generation". According to Socrates of Constantinople, Arius' position was as follows:"If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily follows that he had his substance from nothing."As explained in the article on the First Council of Nicaea, according to Kelly, the dispute was over whether the Son had a beginning. To argue this point, the parties referred to the source of the Son's existence:
To justify his view that the Son had no beginning, Alexander argued that the Son had been 'begotten' by the Father from his own being.Alexander, therefore, described the Son as equal with the Father while Arius described Him as subordinate to the Father.
But Arius argued that the Son was created out of nothing, and therefore had a beginning.
First Council of Nicaea
For the reasons of him being moderate in the religious and political spectrum of beliefs, Constantine I turned to Eusebius of Caesarea to try to make peace between the Arians and their opponents at Nicaea I.Eusebius of Caesarea wrote, in On the Theology of the Church, that the Nicene Creed is a full expression of Christian theology, which begins with: "We believe in One God..." Eusebius goes on to explain how initially the goal was not to expel Arius and his supporters, but to find a Creed on which all of them could agree and unite.
Eusebius of Caesarea suggested a compromise wording of a creed, in which the Son would be affirmed as "homoiousios", or "of similar substance/nature" with the Father. But Alexander and Athanasius saw that this compromise would allow the Arians to continue to teach their heresy, but stay technically within orthodoxy, and therefore rejected that wording.
"The decisive catchword of the Nicene confession, namely, homoousios... comes from no less a person than the emperor himself. To the present day no one has cleared up the problem of where the emperor got the term. Homoousios means "of the same substance/nature" with the Father. Many theologians were uncomfortable with this term. "Their objection to the term homoousian was that it was considered to be un-scriptural, suspicious, and "of a Sabellian tendency". "But the emperor exerted considerable influence. Consequently, the statement was approved by all except three."
Post-Nicene
opposed subordinationism and was highly hostile to hierarchical rankings of the divine persons. It was also opposed by Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa. It was condemned in the 6th century along with other doctrines taught by Origen.Epiphanius, writing against Origen, attacked his views of subordinationism.
Sixteenth-century Reformed
In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1, chapter 13, Calvin attacks those in the Reformation family who while they confess "that there are three persons" speak of the Father as "the essence giver" as if he were "truly and properly the sole God". This, he says, "definitely cast the Son down from his rank". This is because it implies that the Father is God in a way the Son is not. Modern scholars are agreed that this was a sixteenth-century form of what today is called "subordinationism". Richard Muller says Calvin recognised that what his opponents were teaching "amounted to a radical subordination of the second and third persons, with the result that the Father alone is truly God". Ellis adds that this teaching also implied tritheism, three separate Gods.Seventeenth-century Arminianism
, in contrast to Calvin, argued that the begetting of the Son should be understood as the generation of the person of the Son and therefore the attribute of self-existence, or aseitas, belonged to the Father alone. His disciple, Simon Bisschop, who assumed the name Episcopius, went further speaking openly and repeatedly of the subordination of the Son. He wrote, "It is certain from these same scriptures that to these people's divinity and divine perfections are attributed, but not collaterally or co-ordinately, but subordinately." Ellis says: "His discussion of the importance of recognizing subordination among the persons takes up nearly half of the chapter on the Trinity, and the following four chapters are largely taken up with the implications of this subordination." In seventeenth-century England, Arminian subordinationism gained wide support from leading English divines, including Bishop George Bull, Bishop John Pearson and Samuel Clarke, one of the most learned biblical scholars of his day.Current views
Eastern Orthodox
According to the Eastern Orthodox view, the Son is derived from the Father who alone is without cause or origin. In this view, the Son is co-eternal with the Father or even in terms of the co-equal uncreated nature shared by the Father and Son. This view is sometimes misunderstood by Western Christians as subordinationism. The same doctrine is asserted by western theologians such as Augustine even when not using the technical term i.e. Monarchy of the Father. Western view is often viewed by the Eastern Church as being close to Modalism.Catholics
The Catholic Church also believes that the Son is begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit is proceeding from the Father through / and from the Son. Catholic theologian John Hardon wrote that subordinationism "denies that the second and third persons are consubstantial with the Father. Therefore it denies their true divinity." Arius "made a formal heresy of" subordinationism. The International Theological Commission wrote that "many Christian theologians borrowed from Hellenism the notion of a secondary god, or of an intermediate god, or even of a demiurge." Subordinationism was "latent in some of the Apologists and in Origen." The Son was, for Arius, in "an intermediate position between the Father and the creatures." Nicaea I "defined that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. In so doing, the Church both repudiated the Arian compromise with Hellenism and deeply altered the shape of Greek, especially Platonist and neo-Platonist, metaphysics. In a manner of speaking, it demythicized Hellenism and effected a Christian purification of it. In the act of dismissing the notion of an intermediate being, the Church recognized only two modes of being: uncreated and created."Lutherans
Subordinationism in yet another form gained support from a number of Lutheran theologians in Germany in the nineteenth century. Stockhardt, writing in opposition, says the well-known theologians Thomasius, Frank, Delitsch, Martensen, von Hoffman and Zoeckler all argued that the Father is God in the primary sense, and the Son and the Spirit are God in second and third degree. He criticises most sharply the Leipzig theologian, Karl Friedrich Augustus Kahnis. For these Lutheran theologians, God was God, Jesus Christ was God in some lesser way. The American Lutheran theologian, F. Pieper, argues that behind this teaching lay an acceptance of ‘modernism’, or what we would call today, theological ‘liberalism’.More recently John Kleinig, of Australian Lutheran College, promoted a form of subordinationism and concluded: