There is no doubt in my mind that the Great Church as a whole (both East and West including the magisterial Protestant Reformers) believed in a hierarchy within the immanent Trinity. “Where the reality exists there must also be the corresponding possibility” (Barth). If in the economic Trinity we see (e.g., in John 14-17) a subordination of the Son to the Father there must also be subordination of the Son to the Father in the immanent Trinity. The monarchy of the Father is clear in the Cappadocian Fathers and has always been taught by the Eastern churches. Moltmann is one contemporary theologian who has tried to soften this hierarchical notion of the Trinity by speculating about different patterns of relationships (including of authority) within the Godhead tied to the stages of the Kingdom of God in history. He emphasizes ways in which the Father is dependent on the Son and the Spirit which is true enough but does nothing to undo what the church fathers meant by hierarchy within the immanent Trinity.
So what did they mean? What did the Cappadocian Fathers and what does the Eastern Church (or churches) mean by the “monarchy of the Father?” And how did they/do they avoid Arianism or Semi-Arianism (heresies that deny the equality of the Son with the Father in terms of divinity)? That’s a very long and complicated story, of course, so I can only answer in a nutshell. By the “monarchy of the Father” the Cappadocian Fathers meant only that the Father is the source or “fount” of divinity within the Godhead; the Son and the Spirit derive their deity from the Father eternally (so there is no question of inequality of being). Their favorite analogy was the sun and its light and heat. There is no imagining the sun without its light and heat and yet it is the source of them. So the Son, who became Jesus Christ in the incarnation, is begotten of the Father from eternity (not in time) (the technical term is generated but it means the same) and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (and the Western church added filioque—“and the Son). (I happen to think the filioque addition to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was a mistake and it should be undone or revised to say “through the Son” although that has its problems as well.) In brief, then (without going into all the ins and outs of the filioque controversy or even the debates about the generation and procession of the Son and the Spirit), the “monarchy of the Father” in traditional, orthodox doctrine means only that the Father is the eternal, ontological source, fount, origin of the Son and the Spirit. It has nothing to do with authority over which, if imported into the immanent Trinity, would imply a kind of subordinationism.
So why is it important to have a monarchy of the Father within the immanent Trinity? The Cappadocian Fathers argued it is necessary to preserve and protect the distinctiveness of the three hypostases. Some also argue it is necessary to preserve and protect the connection between the economic Trinity (in which there is clearly subordination) and the immanent Trinity.
Now, there are so many issues here that I can’t even begin to discuss them all! But it is absolutely crucial to understand this distinction between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity before diving into the current evangelical controversy over the Trinity.
My suspicion is that many evangelicals who write about the subject are not properly or carefully enough making this distinction. My theses going into this discussion are that 1) There is subordination of the Son and Spirit within the economic Trinity including in terms of authority over, and 2) The subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father within the immanent Trinity has only to do with source, fount, origin of the divinity of the Son and the Spirit which does not automatically include a hierarchy of authority (i.e., obedience to). And I will argue that we cannot claim to know very much about the immanent Trinity, so even that (thesis 2) is arguable so long as we do affirm the immanent Trinity. In sum and in brief, I will argue that it is possible (if not necessary) to believe in the “monarchy of the Father” even within the immanent Trinity without making the Son and Spirit subordinate to the Father in terms of authority (i.e., obedience).
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