Heritage Baptist Church

– 4min Read

What is a proper understanding of the Trinity; particularly the nature of the relationship between the Father and the Son? In 2016, there was an explosion of debate over this in the online atmosphere. What we all discovered is that evangelicalism as a whole has been abandoning classical theism. This is due to the help of men like Wayne Grudem, Bruce Ware, Robert Letham, and John Frame. Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology has sold almost one million copies and is the most widely used systematic theology textbook.

All of these men have something in common and that is they propose a new doctrine referred to as Eternal Submission of the Son (E.S.S.) or Eternal Functional Subordination (E.F.S.). This is the understanding that God the Son has always, from eternity past, been in subordination (or submission) to the Father; not simply in His incarnation and earthly ministry, but for all time, past, and future. The downstream consequences of this new view of the Trinity are starting to come to light, and now more and more theologians are turning back to a pro-Nicene understanding of the Godhead.

In Glenn Butner’s book The Son Who Learned Obedience: A Theological Case Against the Eternal Submission of the Son he convincingly argues against the Trinitarian system of the age by bringing the reader back to the classical understanding. Butner walks the reader through the doctrine of Inseparable Operations, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian definition, the church fathers, different atonement theories, and then through the Bible. The title of Butner’s book comes from a text in the Book of Hebrews;

He, in the days of His flesh, offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. 8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. 9 And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, 10 being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
– Hebrews 5:7-10 (LSB)

One of my favorite sections of the book is when Butner takes us back in time to Maximus the Confessor. Maximus lived from 579 – 622 A.D. and devoted much of his work to understanding the two natures of Christ and how that translated to His will(s). Did Jesus Christ have two wills, since He had two natures, or just one? Considering this, Maximus would go on to argue that there must be two wills because when touching the divine nature there would be one, single, shared will amongst the three persons, and then to touch Christ’s human nature there would be a true human will.

This is important to understand because in this new controversial doctrine of E.S.S., (E.F.S.), there is a proposed three wills in the Godhead; the Father has a will, the Son has a will, and the Spirit has a will. The theologians propagating this view would deny Christ had a shared divine will with the Father and the Spirit, but one will only to His person. This is extremely problematic for many reasons and Butner does a great job addressing all the arguments and makes excellent points.

This is a great book! I enjoyed it so much I couldn’t put it down. However, this book is not for everyone. If you are a student of theology and wish to better understand the Trinity, this book is for you. But if you are a relatively new believer or even one who has had no training in systematic theology, then I recommend the books listed below before you read this one (they are listed in the recommended order).

The Son Who Learned Obedience by Glenn Butner Jr.

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