Friday, November 05, 2021

Contra Barrett (Part 11): Subordinationism, Attributes and persons

Third, EFS has robbed the divine essence of power and authority and segregated power and authority to the persons, but the Father above all, violating the simplicity of the Trinity. Nicene orthodoxy was very careful in its affirmation of simplicity: essence and attributes are not different things; attributes are not parts of God's essence. Rather, God's essence is his attributes and his attributes his essence. As subsistences of the same divine esssence, no one person possess one attribute more or less than another—God's power and authority included. (Matthew Barrett, Simply Trinity, 237)

What do we mean by the term "attributes"? We talk about the attributes of God because that is the way we can describe and know God. God possess these attributes in the sense that God has these things in His being. In other words, God logically procedes His atttributes. There is a God, and we come to know God through the revelation of His attributes. We do not come to know attributes first, then come to know God. Now, what does this mean for us in our knowledge of God? The logical precedence of God to His attributes mean that atttributes are primarily descriptive rather than substantive. They are words used to describe, to express God. Therefore, the words in themselves are not tied to the attributes of God, since descriptions are not tied to the substance/ subsistences they describe.

How does that tie in with Matthew Barrett and EFS? Barrett, in his final accusation of subordinationism, supports his case with a variety of arguments. The first two shows Barrrett's confusion over the functional, since he wrongly thinks that functional is in the immanent Trinity. In this final attack, he claims that power and authority are attributes of the one divine essence, and thus any talk about power and authority in the persons is a violation of divine simplicity and espouses ontological subordinationism. But if we take attributes as primarily descriptive, then we can agree that the divine attribute of power and authority is indeed equal among all persons of the Trinity, such that there are not three almighties but one almighty, AND at the same time state that there is personal properties of power and authority that are distributed differently between the persons. The power and authority of the divine persons as personal properties are NOT the same power and authority that is equally shared among the persons of the Trinity in their subsistences! The former is the Trinity in action ad extra; the latter the Trinity in being ad intra.

In this final attack, Barrett continues with his ignorant attack upon EFS. EFS does not rob the divine essence of power and authority, neither does it segregate power and authority over the divie subsistences, nor violate the simplicity of the Trinity. Rather, EFS differentiates between power and authority as attributes, and power and authority as personal properties. By refusing to see the attributes as primarily descriptive, and only substantive when used to describe the one essence, Barrett continues to fail in his misguided quest to destroy EFS.

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