Pulse
17 February 2025
In his article entitled ‘Is God the Son Begotten in His Divine Nature?’ published in TheoLogica (2018), the American philosopher William Lane Craig argues that the begetting of the Son by the Father ‘enjoys no clear scriptural support and threatens to introduce an objectionable ontological subordinationism into the doctrine of the Trinity.’
Craig lays the blame for this consequential theological error at the door of the early Greek Apologists such as Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus, and Athenagoras. Their fundamental blunder, according to Craig, is to ‘explain Christian doctrine in Philonic categories’, that is, they became too dependent on and influenced by Hellenistic philosophy.
This is especially manifested in the Logos Christology of the Apologists, which conflated the divine Word (Logos) of the prologue of John’s Gospel with the divine Logos (Reason) of Philo of Alexandria. The Fathers who came after the Apologists simply perpetuated this error, as did the bishops and theologians who gave us the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.
This alien logos concept has led to the subordination of the second person of the Trinity because, as the classical doctrine presents it, he is begotten of the Father. This must mean that the second person of the Godhead derives his being from and therefore is dependent on the first person, the Father.
Thus, Craig writes:
This doctrine of the generation of the Logos from the Father cannot, despite assurances to the contrary, but diminish the status of the Son because he becomes an effect contingent upon the Father. Even if this eternal procession takes place necessarily and apart from the Father’s will, the Son is less than the Father because the Father alone exists a se, whereas the Son exists through another (ab alio).
Craig examines several attempts to rescue the traditional doctrine from the charge of subordination such as Hilary of Poitier’s statement that ‘The Father therefore is greater because he is Father: but the Son, because he is Son, is not less.’ And he concludes that ‘This is to talk logical nonsense’.
Craig also takes issue with describing the second person of the Godhead as ‘eternal Son’. He argues that the description of the second person of the Godhead as ‘Son’ only makes sense in the economy, that is, in the Incarnation. Thus, Craig concludes: ‘In other words, Christ’s status of being monogenes [the only begotten One] has less to do with the Trinity than with the Incarnation’.
So, if the distinctions that were traditionally made of the three persons of the immanent Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) are in fact relevant only in the economy, what would Craig’s ontological Trinity look like?
Adopting a version of social trinitarianism Craig envisions God analogously as a soul with three distinct and complete sets of personal attributes. ‘According to the model …’, he writes:
… we are to think of God on the analogy of the human soul. What makes the human soul a person is that the human soul is equipped with rational faculties of intellect and volition which enable it to be a self-reflective agent capable of self-determination.
From this fundamental speculative ideation of God, Craig extrapolates:
I invite us, then to suppose that God is a soul which is endowed with three complete sets of rational cognitive faculties, each sufficient for personhood. Then God, though one soul would not be one person but three, for God would have three centres of self-consciousness, intentionality, and volition.
On this concept of the Trinity, any one of the persons could become incarnate. And the one who becomes incarnate is called ‘the Son’ in the economy. Craig writes:
The Son is whichever person becomes incarnate, the Spirit is he who stands in the place of and continues the ministry of the Son, and the Father is the one who sends the Son and Spirit.
In the conclusion of the article, Craig provides quite an excellent summary of his reconstruction of the Trinity:
On the view I prefer, the persons of the ontological Trinity are equal and underived. In the economic Trinity, by contrast, there is a subordination (or, perhaps better, submission) of one person to another, as the incarnate Son does the Father’s will and the Spirit speaks, not on his own account, but on behalf of the Son. The economic Trinity, while eternal, does not reflect ontological differences between the persons but rather as an expression of God’s loving condescension for the sake of our salvation. The error of Logos Christology lay in conflating the economic Trinity with the ontological Trinity, introducing subordination into the nature of the Godhead itself.
Craig’s re-envisioning of the doctrine of the Trinity is truly fascinating. But it is wrong at every turn!
It is impossible to respond to every single point that Craig makes in this brief article. However, here are some broad observations and responses which may lay bare some of the weaknesses of Craig’s critique of the traditional doctrine and his reconstruction of it.
Firstly, Craig insists that the Logos Christology of the early Christian Apologists is the result of the distorting influence of Hellenistic philosophy. Even if he is right (and I think not), it is quite remarkable that all the great theologians of Latin and Eastern Christianity did not spot this fatal error – that is, until Craig came along!
Secondly, Craig argues that the traditional doctrine has suffered distortions due to its careless use of Hellenistic philosophy. But the same challenge can be put to Craig: is his critique of the traditional doctrine and his reconstruction of it based on his own (often unexamined) philosophical assumptions?
And have these assumptions created proverbial blind spots in his assessment of the orthodox teaching which not only led him to depart from creedal statements about the Trinity but also to reject doctrines such as divine simplicity?
In the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, it seems that Craig has failed to grasp how the language of the filiation of the Son by the Father actually functions in depicting the relationship between the two.
Filiation affirms the distinct personhood of the Son vis-à-vis the Father, without ever suggesting that the Son is of an inferior ontological status. Filiation points to the relational ordering of the Father and the Son – not an ordering of essence or rank.
In Craig’s summary of his reimagined Trinity quoted above, he insisted that because Logos Christology has conflated the immanent Trinity with the economic Trinity, it has produced a form of subordinationism.
Ironically, Craig’s fundamental error, in my view, is to swing to the opposite extreme by drawing such a sharp distinction between the two that the economic Trinity can no longer serve as a basis for understanding the immanent Trinity.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are merely temporary roles or designations assumed by the three persons of the ontological Trinity in order to fulfil their functions in salvation history. They offer no insight or revelation whatsoever about what the tri-personal God is like in himself.
Thus, when the Church baptises in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it does so by appealing to the temporary designations taken up by the persons in the Godhead as they play their roles on the stage of history. In the eternal Trinity, there is no Father, Son and Holy Spirit – just three nameless persons that make up the one God.
Craig’s ontological Trinity therefore remains opaque, obscure and unknowable. But if that is indeed the case, what implications does this have for his own reconstruction of the Trinity?
Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor at Trinity Theological College (Singapore) and Theological and Research Advisor of the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.