Hello everyone. We are still continuing our study of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. Last night, we were in 1 Cor. 8 countering an argument of the anti-Trinitarians and saw how it got turned on its head. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at another passage that anti-Trinitarians use, which is 1 Cor. 11:3. Let’s look at the verse:
3Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
The argument in this passage is that God is the head of Christ. Since that is the case, then it is obvious that Christ is not God. I am hoping by this point that long-time readers who might never have encountered this argument can already see the problem.
The first mistake is the one that I stated at the beginning of this series. It is the assumption of unipersonalism. In this case, the assumption is being made that God is one person and since Christ submits to God, well he can’t be that one person who is God.
This is also why I’ve stated that the New Testament is often precise in its terminology to refer to the Father and the Son. The Father is most often referred to as God and the Son is referred to as Lord, which is what we saw in the passage that we looked at last night.
So, when I read a passage and I see a person spoken of as God and see Christ juxtaposed with him, it does not trouble my Trinitarian faith. It’s also why I told an anti-Trinitarian recently that I wouldn’t be surprised if the term “God” in the New Testament did not ever refer to the Trinity as a whole. Of course, I’m not ruling that out. I’m just saying that my position would not be damaged either way.
Another idea presented is that of submission, but what does that prove? We’re talking about ontology, what the Son is, and not how he functions. If the person wishes to put forward this argument seriously, then there are going to be several feminists who will be very upset with him.
Why? Look at what the text says. It says the man is the head of the woman. Now because this is the case and the woman functionally submits to the man, does that mean that the woman is inferior in her nature to the man? Is the woman less human than the man?
Not at all. However, if the anti-Trinitarian argument is to hold, it will need to be that way. Why is it that the woman and man can be equal in nature and one submit to the other and that’s okay, but the Father and Son cannot be equal in nature and one submit to the other? The reason is because of a conclusion that has been reached prior to coming to the text.
Now some might say “Well if all we had was this text you might not say the Son is God.” However, we do have much more information on the Son. If all we knew about the Son was that he submitted to the Father, we might think he was just like the angels. We know from other texts that he is not however.
Can an anti-Trinitarian use this verse? Of course they can try. Let’s just see how long they last if they’re a guy who uses this in the presence of a woman.
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