Hierarchy Among Equals? A Response to Paul Molnar’s Torrance-Inspired Critique of Karl Barth’s Trinitarian Theology

Abstract

This essay responds to Paul Molnar’s Torrance-inspired critique that Barth inappropriately read back elements of subordination into the immanent trinity, improperly introducing a notion of hierarchy within God’s life. It proposes that Nicene and pro-Nicene engagement with John 14:28 permits the kind of trinitarian negotiation Barth undertook and that Barth’s interpretation is to be preferred for exegetical and hermeneutical reasons and concludes with an implication for systematic theology.

1. The Problem

In three pieces within the past ten years, Paul Molnar has compared Karl Barth’s and T. F. Torrance’s trinitarian theologies, each time contending that Barth inappropriately read features of the economy back into intra-trinitarian relations, thereby introducing an element of subordination within the immanent trinity.1

In making his argument, Molnar echoes a criticism Torrance himself once made of Barth. “[M]y chief difference with Barth relates to the element of ‘subordinationism’ in his doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which I regard as a hang-over from Latin theology but also from St Basil’s doctrine of the Trinity”.2 Torrance’s difference from Barth was thus also his difference from the trinitarian theology of Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa.3 Like Adolf von Harnack before him,4 Torrance thought Basil and Nyssen focused too much attention on the “concept of causality in God” by referring the Son and Spirit to the Father as sole cause, rather than, like Athanasius, or even their friend Gregory Nazianzen, paying more attention to God’s co-inherent wholeness in which each person is conceived as equally God.5 Nazianzen did, Torrance admits, speak of the Father as the cause, source, and principle of the Son and Spirit, but “actually he thought of them as referring to relations … subsisting in God”, which were beyond all time, origin, and cause.6 Nazianzen was thus closer in trinitarian conviction to Athanasius than Basil or Nyssen vis-à-vis the unity of God and the centrality of homoousios,7 and he was ultimately interpreted by Torrance as teaching that the monarchy resides not in the Father alone, but in the Trinity as a whole.8 Normatively speaking, for Torrance, the Father is best not taken as “the Source … or Cause … of the divine Being … of the Son and the Spirit”.9 In support of these claims Torrance repeatedly adduced the witness of the likes of Alexander, Athanasius, Nazianzen, Cyril, and Augustine, for whom the notion of paternal causality was suspect at best, if not something to be rejected outright.10 Their reading of scripture, especially of passages like John 14:28, showed that elements of subordination in the Son’s economy were not to be projected backward into the immanent trinity. Thus, Torrance claims, “The statement of Jesus, ‘My Father is greater than I’, is to be interpreted not ontologically but soteriologically, or ‘economically (οἰκονομικῶς)’, as Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine all understood it. In other words, the subjection of Christ to the Father in his incarnate economy as the suffering and obedient Servant cannot be read back into the eternal hypostatic relations … subsisting in the Holy Trinity”.11

Paul Molnar has made this insistence by Torrance the fundamental building block of his criticism of Barth. While appreciating Barth’s concern to retain a connection between God’s inner life and economic activity, Molnar argues that Torrance was able to maintain this connection in a robust way without concluding what Barth concluded: the Son’s obedience to the Father is not simply a function of his activity for us in time, but also a feature of God’s inner life itself, indeed, the basis (Grund) of God’s activity ad extra.12

This is where the key problem lies for Molnar. After all, as Barth himself admits in volume four of the Church Dogmatics, obedience implies “an above and below, a prius and a posterius, a before and an after and an under-ordered (einen Vorund einen Nach und Untergeordneten)”.13 Barth always speaks negatively of Subordinationismus and subordinatianischen Stellung, associating these concepts with Arius’s arguments, which the church rightly rejected.14 But, in order to safeguard the identity of the Son of God with the human Jesus and take seriously the Son’s revelation as God in the history of his obedience in Jesus of Nazareth, Barth did find it necessary to speak of an Unterordnung, Nachordnung, and Gehorsam in God’s immanent life. He therefore affirms that the unity and equality of the three consists not of an undifferentiated and non-hierarchical unity but of a unity “in more than one mode of being (Seinsweise), a unity of the One with Another, of a first with a second, an above with a below, an origin with its result (eines Ursprungs mit einer Folge)”.15 There is thus in God’s life a causal “under-ordering” that does not exclude but preserves the substantial unity of the three while also recognizing the particular dignity of each, a dignity which is as visible in a mode of being that is “ordered-underneath” a source by virtue of being the source’s result (Folge) as much as it is visible in a mode of being that is superior as the source (Ursprung).16

Molnar knows that Barth was “no subordinationist”, of course, but he faults Barth for introducing aspects of subordination into the immanent trinity, thereby causing conceptual confusion for his readers and ultimately allowing a “sort of hierarchy” to mark God’s inner life.17 Better is Torrance, who also spoke of an “order” within the immanent trinity but worked through this order with the concept of perichoresis and without introducing any element of hierarchy into the mix. For Molnar and Torrance, articulations of the Son’s subjection to the Father are to be restricted to God’s work ad extra so that the distinction, though not separation, of the economic and immanent Trinity can be maintained and the free and gracious character of God’s activity in the economy receives its due.18

In an article that partially responds to Benjamin Dean’s criticism of Torrance and appreciation for Barth,19 Molnar has doubled down on his position, contending that Dean does not address the criticism that Barth read elements of the economy back into the immanent trinity and insisting that “any claim that the Father is cause of the Son and Spirit has to involve an element of subordinationism and to that extent a negation of the homoousion of the three persons”.20

Thus, Molnar and Torrance are, broadly speaking, of one mind on three points: first, the Son’s economic subordination to the Father should not be projected backward into the immanent trinity; second, the Father should not be conceived as the cause of the Son and Spirit, since such a move introduces a hierarchy within God’s life that undermines the substantial unity of the three; and third, Karl Barth was wrong to do both of these things.

This essay questions Molnar and Torrance on each of these points by way of an investigation of Nicene and pro-Nicene readings of John 14:28. This text is chosen principally because, as previously discussed, its fourth-century patristic interpretation served as the basis upon which Torrance claimed that the economic subordination of the Son should not be read back into the immanent trinity. My discussion will show, to the contrary, that both Nicene and pro-Nicene theologians, including Nazianzen, Cyril, and Augustine, read or were open to reading words about the Father’s superiority to the Son (John 14:28) not only in reference to the economy but also back into intra-trinitarian relations. Indeed, the text was often interpreted among these theologians to indicate the Father’s greatness vis-à-vis the Son qua cause as an alternative to a reading that interpreted it as indicating the Father’s superiority qua substance, nature, or godness. Thus, in a manner that puts pressure on the theological presuppositions of Torrance, Molnar, and others,21 theologians committed to Nicaea did not oppose but in fact retained a notion of causal hierarchy within God’s life while simultaneously insisting on the substantial unity of Father and Son. On this basis, my thesis is that, contra Molnar and Torrance, Barth’s trinitarian interpretive moves and formulations should not be rejected as inappropriate but can be seen to be an extension of this way of reading John 14:28 to other biblical statements bearing witness to claims and events related to the Son’s subjection to the Father. Ultimately, I argue that Barth’s trinitarian negotiation is in fact more adequate than Torrance’s and Molnar’s because it engages in more consistent exegesis of New Testament texts, which denote both the Son’s subjection to and equality with the Father, and because it carries forward the Nicene and pro-Nicene conviction about the Father’s greatness over the Son qua cause.

This essay proceeds first by displaying Nicene and pro-Nicene engagement with John 14:28, then by arguing that this evidence permits the kind of trinitarian negotiation Barth undertook, then by contending that Barth’s approach is in fact to be preferred for exegetical and hermeneutical reasons, and finally by concluding with an implication for theology.

2. Nicene and Pro-Nicene Readings of John 14:28

A key reason Torrance argues that the subjection of the Son to the Father in his enfleshed economy should not be read back into God’s immanent life is because central fourth-century pro-Nicenes like Nazianzen, Cyril of Alexandria, and Augustine interpreted John 14:28 along economic lines.22 This claim is misleading. While it is true that some of these figures sometimes read John 14:28 in reference to the Son’s economic mode, all of them also read or were open to reading John 14:28 in reference to intra-trinitarian relations. This is as much the case with respect to Nicene theologians like Alexander and Athanasius of Alexandria as it is of pro-Nicenes like Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril of Alexandria, Marius Victorinus, Augustine, and John of Damascus.

We begin with the Nicenes. As Alexander of Alexandria gives reasons for his disagreement with Arius and articulates his own confession of faith in a letter to Alexander of Byzantium, he writes,

‘Surely then, the particular dignity (οἰκεῖον ἀξίωμα) belonging to the unbegotten (ἀγεννήτῳ) Father is to be guarded (φυλακτέον), saying that no one is the cause of his being (μηδένα τοῦ εἶναι αὐτῷ τὸν αἴτιον). And the corresponding honor (τιμήν) is to be assigned to the Son, attributing to him a generation (γέννησιν) from the Father which is without beginning (ἄναρχον), and, as we said, assigning worship (σέβας) to him, only being sure to say piously and reverently of him that ‘He was’ and ‘ever’ and ‘before the ages’; not refusing him godness (θεότητα), however, but attributing to the one who is image and impress of the Father a most exact likeness (ἀπηκριβωμένην ἐμφέρειαν) in every way; and, on the other hand, holding that the peculiarity (ἰδίωμα) of being unbegotten (ἀγέννητον) is the Father’s alone, insofar as the Savior himself says, ‘My Father is greater than I’.

Alexander reads John 14:28 to say that the Father is greater than the Son in the sense that the Father alone is unbegotten, or, as Alexander puts it earlier in the quotation, because no one is the cause of his being: unbegotten and uncaused run in parallel in Alexander’s grammar. But, the Son has a particular honor corresponding to the Father’s peculiar dignity: the Son’s being begotten has no beginning in time; it was eternal, and therefore, “He was ever before the ages”, is rightfully confessed of him. Just a few lines earlier in the same text, in fact, Alexander cites John 14:28 to support his claim that the Son qua image is filled up with everything that makes up the Father’s greater likeness. The truth about the Son being caused does not, therefore, detract from the Son’s godness, eternality, worthiness of worship, and exactness of likeness to the Father in every way. Alexander argues for the unity and equality of the Father and Son while simultaneously affirming the Father’s greatness vis-à-vis the Son qua cause, and he does this through a careful attribution of John 14:28 both to the fundamental likeness shared between the Father and Son and to the causal hierarchy within God’s immanent life.

Athanasius walks a similar line in Orations against the Arians 1.58.23 “The Son has not said, ‘My Father is better (κρείττων) than I’, lest someone think him to be a foreigner (ξένον) to the Father’s nature (φύσεως). But he says ‘greater’ (μείζων), not in reference to a certain magnitude (μεγέθει), nor time, but on account of the generation from his Father (διὰ τὴν ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Πατρὸς γέννησιν)”. For Athanasius, the fact that Jesus chose to use μείζων rather than κρείττων of the Son’s relation to the Father shows that the Son is at home in God’s nature, not a stranger to it. Athanasius also denies that “greater” connotes some difference between Father and Son with respect to magnitude—probably spatial—and time. But, he ultimately indicates that Jesus’s words in John 14:28 do point toward a certain kind of paternal greatness by virtue of the Son’s being generated from the Father—that is, they refer to God’s inner life. Athanasius does not use the language of “cause” as Alexander did, but the concept is implicit in his discussion. Like his predecessor Alexander, there remains for Athanasius a relation of greater and lower which obtains within the life of God by virtue of the begetting, at the same time that there is a familiarity of nature that renders impossible temporal and magnitudinous ways of construing the relation of greater and lower. John 14:28 indicates both truths for Athanasius, but in neither case is the scriptural reference restricted to the Son’s incarnate economy.

Readers find more of the same in Basil of Caesarea’s interpretation. In paragraph five of Letter 8, Basil fills out more fully what Athanasius had adumbrated: John 14:28, Basil says, actually sets forth the substantial unity of Father and Son. This is because comparisons are properly (κυρίως) made between things of the same nature (φύσεως): “Thus if comparisons take place between things of the same kind (ὁμοειδῶν), and the Father is said to be greater than the Son by comparison (σύγκρισιν), the Son is the same substance (ὁμοούσιος) with the Father”. In the same passage, Basil envisages another reading: that the Father’s greatness to the Son is a function of the Son’s enfleshed lowliness. “On account of this the Son is less than (ἐλάττων) the Father, for on account of you he became dead, so that you would be delivered from death, and be made a participant of heavenly life”.

But, a few years later, Basil could display yet another reading of John 14:28 that clearly referred it to the causal relation of the modes of being within God’s inner life. In Against Eunomius 1.25, Basil entertains a number of interpretive options—considering that the “greater than” of John 14:28 might be said according to cause, excess of power, pre-eminence of dignity, or superabundance of mass—but ultimately, he rejects every interpretation except the one related to causation in the immanent trinity. “Since the Son’s principle (ἡ ἀρχή) comes from the Father, it is in this that the Father is greater, as cause (αἴτιος) and principle (ἀρχή). Therefore indeed the Lord also said, ‘My Father is greater than I’…”.24

What becomes clear thus far is that Alexander, Athanasius, and Basil each find a way to absorb the witness of John 14:28 to support their conviction that the Father and Son share a substantial unity, but they also read the text to show that the Father, qua cause, is greater than the Son.

For our purposes, it is critically important that this same line of reasoning persists as a possibility among pro-Nicene theologians whom Torrance claimed as normative guides in distinguishing between the Son’s economic subjection to the Father and the eternal hypostatic relations.25 Gregory of Nazianzus represents an important first example, especially because his position on the matter seems to be not infrequently misunderstood.26 To be sure, one of the reasons Nazianzen is open to misunderstanding is that different passages seem to say different things. In Or. 29.18, after all, Nazianzen includes the word about the Father being “greater” than the Son among the lowlier expressions (ταπεινότερα) in scripture that are to be predicated of the enfleshed composite (συνθέτῳ), not of his godness (θεότητι). This seems to support Torrance’s interpretation of Nazianzen. But, when Gregory actually comes to a more detailed examination of John 14:28 in Or. 30.7, he argues that Jesus’s words can properly refer to the Son’s causal relation to the Father.27 “Is it not clear that the superiority is with respect to cause (τὸ μεῖζον μέν ἐστι τῆς αἰτίας) and the equality is with respect to nature (τὸ δὲ ἴσον, τῆς φύσεως)? And we confess this with much good judgment (πολλῆς εὐγνωμοσύνης)”. Gregory goes on to suggest that it is sensible that “someone else” might go further with the argument and contend that being from such a cause (ἐκ τοιαύτης αἰτίας) does not entail inferiority (ἔλαττον) to the uncaused (ἀναιτίου), since, by virtue of being from the unsourced (ἀνάρχου), the Son shares in the glory of the unsourced (ἀνάρχου). In other words, like Alexander, Athanasius, and Basil, Gregory finds it reasonable to read John 14:28 in such a way that the Son’s causation by the Father is turned to result in the Son’s glory. But, this does not keep Gregory from maintaining that the “greater” of John 14:28 does in fact have its most sensible reference in the immanent causal relation between Father and Son. That the Father is greater than the Son considered as a human (κατὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπον νουμένου) is true, admits Gregory, but it is an insignificant matter (οὐ μέγα δέ), since no one thinks it incredible that God is greater than a human.

Torrance points to Or. 40.31, 43, and 43.30 as indicating Gregory interpreted John 14:28 exclusively in relation to the economy, but closer inspection of those texts shows either that they do not actually address the issue at hand or that they maintain the view Gregory articulates in Or. 30.7.28 Or. 40.31 actually does not contribute to the discussion one way or the other. Nor does Or. 43.30: here, Gregory simply articulates his opposition to the subordinationism espoused by Arius but does not relate this point to the meaning of John 14:28 or to the question of the reference of the Father’s greatness. In Or. 40.43 (though not elsewhere29), Gregory does express concern about calling the Father source or principle (ἀρχὴν) of the Son and Spirit, since he does not want to make the Father the source of “inferiors” (ἐλαττόνων) nor give occasion for his audience to make use of “greater” in order to divide God’s nature. But, as his discussion proceeds, it becomes apparent that the particular problem he is addressing concerns referring to the Father as “greater” in every sense of the term, that is, in calling Father greater with respect to nature rather than cause alone. “For the ‘greater’ is not said with respect to nature (φύσιν), but cause (αἰτίαν). For nothing of things that are of the same substance (ὁμοουσίων) is greater or lesser by substance (οὐσίᾳ)”. As long as the “greatness” of John 14:28 does not move beyond referring to the Father’s causation of the Son and Spirit into the illegitimate realm of referring to substance or nature, Gregory has no qualms.30

A similar case can be made for the language of “source” or “principle” (ἀρχήν) in Gregory’s grammar: Gregory everywhere rejects the notion that the Son and Spirit have a beginning/source with respect to time, and everywhere affirms that they have a beginning/source with respect to cause.31 In sum, contra Torrance, it must be said that Gregory’s preferred way of reading John 14:28 was to refer it to inner-trinitarian relations. There is, for Gregory, a greater and lower in God’s life with respect to cause, but this greater and lower can ultimately redound to a glory for the Son qua substance, for his causation from the one God means his substantial sharing in, and therefore equality with, the Father’s godness.

Unlike Gregory, it cannot be said that attributing the Father’s greatness vis-à-vis the Son to the Father’s causal superiority within the immanent trinity is Augustine’s or Cyril of Alexandria’s preferred reading of John 14:28.32 But, it just as equally cannot be said that they denied this interpretive option altogether. It is surprising, then, that both theologians are cited by Torrance as supporting his claim that John 14:28 is not to be projected backward into God’s inner life, especially since Torrance cites the very passage in Augustine where the latter expresses openness to such a reading.33 As Augustine discusses various passages in scripture, including John 14:28, which “impious intellects (inpias … mentes)” have taken to imply the Son’s lack of equality and substantial unity with the Father, Augustine writes that such things were written partially on account of the Son’s economic existence (partim ergo propter hanc administrationem) and partially to account for the fact that “the Son owes that which he is to the Father (quia filius patri debet quod est), owing indeed this also to the Father, that he is equal to or on par with the Father (eidem patri aequalis aut par est), but the Father, whatever he is, owes it to no one”.34 Augustine may not make use of this second way to account for the Father’s greatness in the many other places where he reads John 14:28, but he does in fact remain open to it here. For Augustine, as for Basil and Nazianzen, part of the reason the Father is greater than the Son is because the Son has what he is from the begetter and cause that the Father is, whereas the Father has what he is from no one but himself.

Finally, Cyril: as he takes issue with Eunomius’ exegesis of John 14:28, he contends what at this point will appear as a common trope among pro-Nicenes.35 “Therefore, while the Son is equal (ἵσος) to the Father according to substance (οὐσίας) and is like in everything (ὅμοιος κατά πάντα), he calls the Father greater as being without beginning (ὡς ἄναρχον), the Son himself having a beginning (ἀρχήν) in the sole sense that he is from the Father, even if he has his existence concurrent (σύνδρομον) with the Father”. Cyril can attribute the Father’s greatness vis-à-vis the Son to the Son’s enfleshed economy elsewhere in his writings, but this passage shows that he has no difficulty referring it to the eternal hypostatic relations as well.

The foregoing foray into Nicene and pro-Nicene interpretation of John 14:28 shows that the historical–theological claims of Torrance and the normative claims of both Torrance and Molnar about God’s intra-trinitarian life stand in need of significant revision. For all the ancient theologians surveyed here, there is a relation of greater and lower between the Father and Son manifested in the economy, which unveils something true not just about the economy but also about God’s life ad intra. Affirming the Father’s causation of the Son on the basis of the Son’s revelation in the economy was not inimical to the confession of the substantial unity and equality of Father and Son. It was, rather, the consistent Nicene and pro-Nicene response to the exegesis of Arius, Sirmium 357, Eunomius, and so on. Those favorable to Nicaea agreed with their interlocuters that texts like John 14:28 could indicate something true about God’s immanent life. But, they disagreed over precisely what it indicated, with the pro-Nicenes contending that the “greater” of John 14:28 bore reference, within God’s life, solely to the causal hierarchy among the three. Molnar’s conviction that “any claim that the Father is cause of the Son and Spirit has to involve an element of subordinationism and to that extent a negation of the homoousion of the three persons”36 is stated with considerable force, but it fails to conform with the views of theologians whom Torrance (and presumably Molnar) take to be normative guides in trinitarian theology. Put otherwise, if Torrance and Molnar are right that elements of the Son’s subjection to the Father are not to be “read back” into God’s inner life and that notions of causal hierarchy should not therefore be introduced into the immanent trinity, it is not just Barth that stands under question. The Nicene and pro-Nicene theologians investigated here do as well.

3. The Permissibility and Superiority of Barth’s Trinitarian Negotiation

A different way to make the preceding point is to say that the Nicene and pro-Nicene interpretation of John 14:28 permits Barth’s trinitarian negotiation in section 59 of his Church Dogmatics. To be sure, the latter is not identical to the former. A first distinguishing mark is that Barth’s overall reasoning shows him most concerned with maintaining the identification of God the Son with Jesus of Nazareth, and the interconnection between the immanent and economic being/act of God. A second is that Barth incorporates the specific concept of the Son’s obedience to the Father within this intra-trinitarian causal hierarchy.37

These, among others, are important differences, but they do not undermine Barth’s material conformity with these Nicene and pro-Nicene theologians in terms of theological reasoning and conviction. For Barth, as for Alexander, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, Augustine, and Cyril, it is legitimate to “read back” elements of the economy, even those speaking of the Son’s lowliness, into the immanent trinity. Indeed, similar to his theological forebears, Barth finds a support in John 14:28 in making this affirmation.38 The biblical witness to the Son’s subjection to the Father in the economy thus finds a corresponding counterpart in a greater and lower that exists within God’s inner life. But, this greater and lower within God is not to be related to substance, but to cause. This, too, is how Barth puts the matter, writing that God’s is a unity “in more than one mode of being (Seinsweise), a unity of the One with Another, of a first with a second, an above with a below, an origin with its result (eines Ursprungs mit einer Folge)”.39 It should be noted, however, that Barth insists along with his fourth-century predecessors that the Son’s under-ordering (Unterordnung), his derivation from the Father, does not entail a gradation (Abstufung), degradation (Degradation), or inferiority (Inferiorität) of the Son in a sense that undermines his equality with the Father. Instead, it indicates a “particular being in the glory of the one equal godness (besonderes Sein in der Herrlichkeit der einen gleichen Gottheit), in whose inner order there is also this true and actual dimension, the direction downwards (die Richtung nach unten) which has its own highest dignity (höchste Würde)”.40 Being caused, being begotten, and being sourced—these do not subvert the Son’s godness but exhibit another dignity, indeed, another highest dignity of God in the mode of the Son of God. In other words, like his Nicene and pro-Nicene forebears, Barth discovers a way to acknowledge a causal hierarchy within God while simultaneously affirming the Son’s substantial unity and equality with the Father.

Barth’s trinitarian negotiation can, then, be interpreted as a traditioned extension of an uncompromising pro-Nicene faith, an extension that leads to the incorporation of other elements of the Son’s subjection—like obedience—into the causal hierarchy in God. The trinitarian theology of the figures we’ve engaged in discussion here does not exclude Barth’s proposal but permits it—in some cases, even encourages it.

But, in my estimation, something more can be said. Barth’s negotiation, along with the interpretation that takes John 14:28 to indicate a causal hierarchy in God, may not just be something permitted or encouraged in the tradition. It may be that, vis-à-vis the “economic” interpretation represented by Torrance and Molnar, among others, the “immanent” reading of the Son’s subjection to the Father is to be preferred as the better reading. This is not only because, as Gregory Nazianzen put it, the Father’s greatness over the Son in his enfleshed mode is at best a trivial truth.41 It is more that interpreting the Son’s lowliness as having a point of reference within God’s immanent life is the more hermeneutically consistent exegetical posture to take toward the New Testament witness about the identity of the Son and his relation to the Father. If, in other words, it is right to receive the enfleshed Jesus’s claims about his unity with the Father (John 10:20, 38; 14:10) and others’ claims about the enfleshed Jesus as God (John 20:28) as indicating an intra-trinitarian unity that the Son shares with the Father, it would seem odd to deny this possibility to other claims the enfleshed Jesus makes about his hierarchically ordered relation with the Father (John 14:28). Why should the former set of texts be made to refer properly to relations existing in God’s life ad intra and the latter set of texts be made to refer properly to relations existing in God’s life ad extra? My point, let it be noted, is not that every witness about Jesus (given either by others about him or by him about himself) in his incarnate mode finds an antecedent counterpart in God’s life ad intra. The claim concerns hermeneutical consistency: if one set of descriptors should be interpreted as saying something about intra-trinitarian relations, other sets of the same kind should be interpreted in this way as well. In other words, just as the identity and relational descriptor “I and the Father are one” can be interpreted as indicating something true about God’s immanent life, so should the identity and relational descriptor “The Father is greater than I”. The one saying “I” is in both cases the enfleshed Son, and in both cases, the claim extends beyond what is true about the Son’s “economic” relation to the Father and articulates something true about their intra-trinitarian relation.

It might be objected that such an exegetical procedure runs contrary to the hermeneutical advice of, e.g., Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine, both of whom encourage readers to refer the lowlier expressions in scripture to the enfleshed Son and the more elevated expressions to the Son’s godness.42 This is true, but, as displayed above, in Gregory’s actual engagement with John 14:28 in Or. 30.7 and in Augustine’s admission in De fide et symbolo 18, they offer another hermeneutical possibility, which, I am arguing, is in fact the more consistent practice.

Barth had his own reasons for preferring a trinitarian theology that incorporated indications of the Son’s lowliness into God’s immanent life. I have offered another reason here: it represents the more consistent exegetical practice.

4. Conclusions

This essay has responded to Torrance’s and Molnar’s criticism that Barth inappropriately read back elements of the Son’s subjection to the Father into the immanent trinity, thus introducing a hierarchy within God’s inner life. It has shown that Barth’s reading is in fact permitted by Nicene and pro-Nicene theological reasoning and conviction, and it has argued further that the interpretation of those who incorporate the Son’s lowliness into God’s life ad intra is to be preferred over the interpretation that refuses this reading (e.g., Torrance and Molnar).

Several implications could be discussed in conclusion, but I highlight just one. It is that systematic theologies need not find Karl Barth’s hierarchical description of the triune God fundamentally problematic, as if it constituted a departure from pro-Nicene tradition. In her recent magisterial volume on the triune God, Katherine Sonderegger expresses reserve at following Barth’s negotiation. The attempt to hold together unity/equality on the one hand and hierarchy/obedience on the other, to argue that God’s unity is in fact constituted by a hierarchy, is too questionable, on her view, stretching conceptual coherence to a breaking point.43 Better, Sonderegger argues, is the way the Nicenes worked through scripture on the question: “… the Nicenes, when they took up Scripture, read a metaphysics directly contrary to Barth’s: Christology and Trinitarian Processions taught them—unlike Barth—that the Son could never be subordinate or posterior to the Father”.44 Our discussion has shown that such an interpretation of Nicene tradition is overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary. Barth’s trinitarian negotiation is not a simple rehearsal of the pro-Nicene tradition, of course, but his interpretation does extend that tradition’s textured insights in a traditioned, if innovative, manner. To put the point sharply, Barth’s trinitarian interpretation points theologians and exegetes in a pro-Nicene direction, not despite but because of his incorporation of a hierarchical relation into God’s substantially equal and united modes of being. Barth thus reminds theology that it need not resign itself to affirming trivial truths about the Son’s subjection to the Father. Instead, it can, in good conscience and full commitment to Nicaea’s reception, teach that the Son’s economic subjection to the Father has a ground in God’s inner life, for the Father is the cause of the Son and is, as such, greater.