Cassandra Speaks
Let me tell you a story. You decide how it ends.
Sometimes I feel like Cassandra, the character from Greek mythology—gifted with the foresight to see future dangers but cursed never to be believed. For the past few years, I’ve warned friends that old, false notions about the nature of God were stirring in our church body. A blog post here. A podcast there. A shift was taking place in the language used to talk about the Holy Trinity and the nature of Christ’s relationship to His Heavenly Father.
Despite the alarms I (and others) raised, these warnings went largely unheeded. And now, sure enough, these heretical beliefs are creeping back in, threatening to distort our understanding of who God is. For a growing number of influential leaders in our church body, “submission” has become the word of choice to describe the eternal posture of the Son in relation to the Father, despite the clear witness of Scripture, our Confessions, and centuries of Christian teaching.
Watching these ideas reemerge feels like watching a slow-moving disaster you’ve predicted but can’t prevent. It’s frustrating and disheartening, especially knowing how hard the church has worked to clarify these complex doctrines. We're not just dealing with academic debates; these beliefs shape the core of our faith and how we live it out. This is a matter of eternal importance.
As we navigate these challenging theological waters, the Lutheran Confessions can offer a beacon of clarity. They remind us that while Christ demonstrated submission in His incarnation, this in no way implies an eternal posture of subordination within the Trinity itself. Such an idea would not only contradict the foundations of our Lutheran doctrinal commitments but also the biblical record.
The Confessions provide profound insights into the dual nature of Christ—fully God and fully man. This theological cornerstone, articulated in documents like the Formula of Concord, Article VIII, "Concerning the Person of Christ," helps us understand that Christ's submission to the Father during His earthly ministry was an act essential to His human nature. In His divine nature, Christ remains co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, emphasizing that the human act of submission that we see Jesus fulfill in the Gospels does not reflect the eternal state of the Trinity.
This distinction between the immanent and the economic Trinity is crucial to understand. While the economic Trinity deals with God’s role in salvation history—where the incarnate Christ submitted Himself for our salvation—the immanent Trinity concerns the eternal, co-equal relationship of the three Persons within God Himself. Proper teaching regarding this distinction helps avoid misconceptions about any eternal state of subordination or posture of submission on the part of the Son, and preserves the integrity of God's triune nature.
In the Athanasian Creed, we confess:
We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.
For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is another.
But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal…
And in this Trinity none is before after another; none is greater or less than another;
But the whole three persons are coeternal with each other and coequal, so that in all things, as has been stated above, the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is to be worshiped…
This is the catholic faith; whoever does not believe it faithfully and firmly cannot be saved.
An unswerving commitment to Scripture's authority as the only rule and norm for faith and practice is at the heart of Lutheran teaching. Our Confessions assert that all doctrine must be tested by and conform to the teachings of Scripture. This principle is vital as it ensures that our understanding of the Holy Trinity and Christ’s nature remains grounded in biblical truth rather than speculative theology.
If the Son is eternally submissive to the Father, how can we believe the Gospel of John when it tells us Jesus said, "I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)
If the Son is eternally submissive to the Father, how can we believe the writer of Hebrews, who tells us that “although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8)
And if the Son is eternally submissive to the Father, how can we believe the words of Paul when he describes how Christ “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8) None of that would have been necessary – the Son would have already been emptied, humbled, and obedient from eternity. None of these Scriptures would have mattered - the cross wouldn’t have even mattered - if the Son had been in submission to the Father from eternity.1
Which is exactly why theological precision in this moment is not just an academic exercise but an urgent confessional necessity.
We must take action as we face the daunting reality of these reemerging heresies. Start by engaging more deeply with these doctrines on your own. Then discuss them openly, and equip yourselves to address these heresies as you see them pop up. Ask questions. Seek confirmation from trusted fellow believers, pastors, and other church workers when something doesn’t sound right. It’s up to the entire Christian community to ensure that core truths about the Holy Trinity and Christ’s dual nature are clearly understood and embraced. +++
“Let there be no doubt at this point; departure from the faith starts with incremental adjustments to received doctrine, those adjustments eventually lead people away from the faith altogether,” writes Dr. Liam Goligher on the blog, The Housewife Theologian.
The Lutherans are late to the Trinitarian heresy party, it seems. The evangelicals have been dealing with this since at least 2016, thanks to various leaders who are determined to anchor their ideas about male-female relationships in speculative theology about the internal workings of the Trinity instead of the clear revelation of Scripture.