The solution to the problem of the eternal relations of authority and submission is…to say that the one Lord Jesus Christ is always the subject of the actions that he does, and in his incarnate humanity, he became the only mediator between God and man, “the man Jesus Christ.”

This article examines the (incorrect) notion of eternal relations of authority and submission (EFAS) in God, and why solutions that separate Christ’s divine and human natures fail to satisfactorily defeat EFAS.

Put simply, do not argue against eternal relations of authority and submission by saying that Christ’s divinity does some things and his humanity does other things. That is Nestorian. Instead, say that Christ, the only Mediator between God and man, submits to the Father in all things for us and for our salvation.

The Trinity Debate of 2016

In 2016, Christian theologians debated the doctrine of the Trinity. Some felt that the way in which the Father relates to the Son from all eternity was through a relation of authority and a relation of submission. This view held that the Father was authoritative and the Son was submissive according to the relational properties of the one nature of God.

No one went so far as to say that this submission implied an ontological inferiority of the Son to the Father, but the arguments paralleled Arianism so clearly that it became evident this was an inappropriate way to describe the eternal relations of the Father to the Son.

The Orthodox Solution

The basic solution to this problem is to say that the way in which the Father relates to the Son from all eternity is simply by being a Father, and the way in which the Son relates to the Father from eternity is by being a Son.

The biblical words or verbs to describe this eternal relation is to say that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Father eternally begets the Son. The word “beget” or “begotten” is the old-fashioned word that we don’t have an equivalent for today, but that describes how children descend from parents.

The Incarnational Submission Question

But there is some confusion on the matter still. When the Word of God the Father became flesh as John 1:14 says, he takes it upon himself to do whatever the Father does. He submits his will to the Father in his incarnation for our salvation.

And so some people might say the simple solution to the problem is that when the Word from the Father took human flesh to himself, he added humanity to himself, and for this reason we can say that the humanity of Jesus obeyed the Father while the divinity of Jesus was equal to the Father.

Perhaps at first blush this seems entirely reasonable, except this argument parallels the teaching of Nestorianism.

Nestorius taught that the two natures of Christ should be highly distinguishable and preserve the properties of each, and he underplayed the importance of saying that the single subject (the one Lord Jesus Christ) is the single subject of all the actions that he does. Whether that means the one Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary or even suffered under Pontius Pilate, for Nestorius both of these terms were unacceptable because God himself is impassible—unable to suffer or change through transformations like being born or suffering on the cross.

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