EFS / ERS again

I assume I would have read this at the time as it was on my bookshelves, but the review article was until today suspiciously clear of annotations.

https://churchsociety.org/blog/entry/churchman_autumn_2017

Review Article: Your Will Be Done: Exploring Eternal Subordination, Divine Monarchy and Divine Humility (Latimer Study 83) London: Latimer Trust (2016) by Michel J. Ovey
Mark Smith with response from Nick Tucker

Mark Smith summarises the argument in some detail and gives Mike Ovey's book two cheers. It is clearly not Arian and it gives a fresh and stimulating account of divine Sonship.

However:

 "We may certainly say that the incarnate Son submits to the Father as man; we may go further, and suggest that this submission reflects *something* of the way the Son relates in eternity to the Father. But the shape that such a "submission" might take in the eternal and unchanging life of the one God is pretty hard to conceive of, let alone dissect systematically. This is precisely why, on the whole, the church fathers had little interest in exploring the question of the Son's eternal submission. They generally neither condemn it, not explicitly affirm it - they just don't go there. They are instead content to define the distinct relation of the Son to the Father in terms of the Son's begottenness (that is, his mode of eternal generation from the Father), and to leave it at that - lest in saying any more they unwittingly import ianppropriately creaturely or temporal concepts into the Godhead (cf. Gr. Naz. Or. 29. 30; Aug. De Trin. I-IV). In this way, whilst Ovey's position is not straightforwardly contrary to the patristic witness, it does rather go against the grain of pro-Nicene thought as it developed from the Cappadocians onwards." Churchman 2017 131/3 p270f

Arguing that the Son submits to the Father in eternity risks tritheism and we must not read the Bible as if we believe there can only be one will in the incarnate Christ.

Eternal Relational Sumbission would probably be a better term than Eternal Functional Subordination. Or Eternal Filial Submission might be nice. 

But it is best to think that whilst there is order / taxis in the Trinity it is probably confusing and not sensible to speak of eternal submission. 

Nick Tucker (Churchman p274) thinks that Mike found Maximus the Confessor's distinction between will as faculty and actualised personal will helpful. Also, it is persons who act, not natures, he says.