This controversy over ESS placed MOS and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) on a collision course. CBMW had been perhaps the major purveyor of the errant doctrine of ESS among evangelicals. This doctrine maintains that the roles of leadership and submission Scripture prescribes for the family and the church are founded upon eternal relations of authority and submission within the Godhead. The problems with this doctrine are significant. For instance, ESS holds that there are different wills within the Godhead; that the Son at times has a will which differs from the will of the Father.

In the summer of 2016 the MOS team was in the center of a rather public controversy over the doctrine of the Eternal Submission of the Son (ESS). I believe strongly that this is an errant doctrine. It is a serious error because it distorts the truth of the eternal relations within the Godhead. Unfortunately, many Reformed-ish evangelicals today believe that so long as we have a proper doctrine of Scripture and of justification we are in good shape. “The doctrine of God is too esoteric to draw thick lines” I have been told. The theologians of the early church would have cringed at such an attitude. The major controversies of the first few centuries of the church were about guarding a biblical doctrine of God. We must understand that maintaining robust doctrines of Scripture and salvation are directly connected to a biblical doctrine of God. Indeed, the doctrine of God is the font from which the other doctrines flow.

Obviously, this controversy over ESS placed MOS and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) on a collision course. CBMW had been perhaps the major purveyor of the errant doctrine of ESS among evangelicals. This doctrine maintains that the roles of leadership and submission Scripture prescribes for the family and the church are founded upon eternal relations of authority and submission within the Godhead. The problems with this doctrine are significant. For instance, ESS holds that there are different wills within the Godhead; that the Son at times has a will which differs from the will of the Father. And since, according to ESS, the Father has greater authority than the Son, he must submit his will to the Greater (The proponents of ESS seem to not understand the significance of the dual natures of Christ. When he prayed in the garden, “Not my will but yours be done” our Lord was praying according to his human nature in which he fully identified with us. Christ’s human and divine natures are not confused or mixed. In his eternal divine nature there is no difference in will or authority between the Son and the Father). Not surprisingly therefore, ESS also holds that that the Father is given greater glory than the Son and Spirit (that alone puts ESS outside the simple statement of faith of the Evangelical Theological Society which holds that the Father, Son, and Spirit are equal in glory). There is precious little difference between ESS and tri-theism.

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