In this book and its companion volume, The Subordinate Substitute, Peter Carnley unpicks logical knots and entanglements of argument found today in contemporary expressions of belief in the "eternal functional submissiveness" of the Son to the Father. "Trinitarian subordinationism" and "complementarianism" is characteristically found, along with associated conservative evangelical beliefs in the subordination of women to men, and the theology of redemption known as the "penal substitutionary theory" of the atonement.
This theological package is energetically promoted amongst conservative evangelical Christians--most notably members of the Southern Baptist Church, and Presbyterians of the Westminster Tradition in the United States and Britain, and very significantly, amongst conservatively minded Anglicans of the Diocese of Sydney and elsewhere across Australia.
All the while the argument of this book is driven by the question of whether this popular phenomenon of contemporary evangelical Christianity is fairly and legitimately categorized as a modern form of the ancient heresy of Arianism.
Peter Carnley was Anglican archbishop of Perth from 1981 to 2005 and primate of Australia for the last five of those years. He is an honorary fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Trinity College, Melbourne, and holds a first degree from the University of Melbourne, a research degree from Cambridge UK, a Lambeth DD, and a number of honorary doctorates. He is author of The Structure of Resurrection Belief (1987), Reflections in Glass (2004), and the companion volumes Resurrection in Retrospect and The Reconstruction of Resurrection Belief (2019). He and his wife Ann now live in Fremantle, Western Australia.
“Peter Carnley reflects on a theological controversy that started in the early 2000s. He brings a characteristic rigor to his analysis that is only assisted by his reflections over the intervening two decades. As a witness to some of the debate at the time I am grateful for the debate to be explored so systematically. As Carnley says, ‘We cannot fail to grasp a clearer definition of what is to be believed than by discerning what is certainly not to be believed.’”
—Philip Freier, Anglican archbishop of Melbourne
“This learned work of Peter Carnley has proven immensely helpful to me. He has introduced me to the intricacies of the Australian debate on eternal submission and provided a compelling and expansive study of why divine monarchy does not entail eternal submission. Even where he criticizes my own work, his charitable pushback prompts me to improve my own thinking and communication. I am thankful for this engaging contribution to an ongoing and important debate.”
—D. Glenn Butner Jr., associate professor of theology and Christian ministry, Sterling College
“With characteristic learning and insight, Peter Carnley explores the curious and problematic rise of a tendency in evangelical theology to foreground power and hierarchy, heavenly and ecclesial, in a way that threatens the very integrity of Christian witness to the God of self-giving love. Provocative as well as circumspect, this book amounts to a whistle-blowing exercise on the subversion of the doctrine of the Trinity going on behind the smoke machines and praise bands of contemporary evangelical Anglicanism.”
—Andrew McGowan, dean and president, Berkeley Divinity School
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