Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

208 FEMINIST VIEWS BASED ON UNTRUTHFUL CLAIMS

Here Paul says that, just as in the Trinity the Father is the leader and has
authority over the Son, so in marriage the husband is the leader and has
authority over his wife. The remarkable thing is that the parallel with
the Trinity proves that it is possible to have equality in being but differ-
ences in roles. This then disproves the evangelical feminist argument that
“if you have different roles in marriage, then men and women are not
equal in value.” It also disproves the corresponding argument, “If men
and women are equal in value, then you can’t have different roles in mar-
riage.” In response to those arguments, the doctrine of the Trinity proves
that you can have both equality and differences.
Evangelical feminists have responded to that argument by saying
that there have not been different roles in the Trinity for all eternity, but
that the Son’s subordination to the Father’s authority was only a volun-
tary submission for a limited time (his time on earth) and for a specific
purpose (his work of redemption). They have argued that there is no
eternal subordination of the Son to the Father in the Trinity. This is what
Bilezikian tries to argue in his book Community 101.^2
Bilezikian first denies any subordination of the Son to the Father
prior to the incarnation:

Because there was no order of subordination within the Trinity prior

to the Second Person’s incarnation, there will remain no such thing

after its completion. If we must talk of subordination it is only a func-

tional or economic subordination that pertains exclusively to Christ’s

role in relation to human history.

Then he says,

Except for occasional and predictable deviations, this is the histori-

cal Biblical trinitarian doctrine that has been defined in the creeds and

generally defended by the Church, at least the western Church,

throughout the centuries.^3

But when Bilezikian denies the eternal subordination of the Son to

(^2) Gilbert Bilezikian, Community 101: Reclaiming the Church as a Community of Oneness
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1997).
(^3) Ibid., 191-192.