Modeling the Trinity, Part 5
Monarchical Trinitarianism
This is my fifth article in the series “Modeling the Trinity.” I provided an explanation of the basic concepts and vocabulary for doing trinitarian theology in my first entry. You can read that entry here. In the second article, I discussed the classical way that the church has gone about modeling and making sense of the Trinity. You can read that article here. In the third entry, I discussed and explained social trinitarianism. That article is available here. My fourth entry discussed relative identity, material constitution, and the Trinity. You can read that entry here. In this fifth article, I will be presenting and explaining another strategy of making sense of the Trinity, one that has strong ties to many fathers of Christianity who wrote on the Trinity: Monarchical Trinitarianism.
This model of the Trinity isn’t a new model per se, and it’s not all that helpful to see it necessarily as a competitor of the trinitarian models that I have already discussed in this series. Similar to how the relative-identity and material-constitution models can work with either a classical or a social understanding of the Trinity, so can the monarchical model. One can affirm the monarchical model whilst holding to either concept of person put forth by both classical and social models of the Trinity. What distinguishes the monarchical model from the others, rather, is a certain emphasis that it places on one of the divine persons, namely the Father.[1]
The monarchical model has found a home notably amongst Eastern-Orthodox Christian theologians and philosophers, and many of them claim that this model was the view of the majority of the Eastern pro-Nicene theologians in the 4th century, e.g., the Cappadocians. Perhaps the best-known contemporary defenders of the monarchical model in the contemporary philosophical-theology literature are Beau Branson and Joshua Sijuwade.[2]
Per Sijuwade, “According to the doctrine of the monarchy of the Father . . ., the one ‘God’ is numerically identical to the first person of the Trinity, the Father, in such a manner as to establish a ‘hierarchical’ structure within the trinitarian life” (Sijuwade 2021, 436). Now, at first glance, Sijuwade seems to say that only the Father, properly speaking, is God, which initially might sound subordinationist—the claim that the Son and the Spirit are ontologically subordinate, i.e., subordinate in being, to the Father. However, he goes to great lengths to clarify that this is not what the monarchy of the Father teaches.
Sijuwade and Branson both affirm that all three divine persons are divine and equally so. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit equally have the divine nature. Yet, both also insist that only the Father is properly called “God.” But how can this be if each possesses the divine nature equally? Wouldn’t this make all three of them “God?” Since “God” is not primarily a name of the Triune deity, Sijuwade and Branson both answer in the negative.
According to Sijuwade, “the referring expression for the Father is ‘God’, while the Son and the Spirit, though ontologically equal to the Father, are designated with different expressions based on the fact that the one ‘God’ is not the [divine] nature (essence or substance) shared between them, but is identified as a person, the Father” (Sijuwade 2021, 437; italics mine). Sijuwade then claims that, though all three persons are fully equal in terms of ontology, they are not so in terms of names. That is to say, the persons are ontologically equal though they are not nominalogically equal. “God” functions as the name of a person, not as the name for the divine nature. And as such, “God” only refers to one person, namely the Father, and it does not refer to the Son or the Spirit—even though all three persons equally have the divine nature. Hence, the Apostles’ Creed begins, “I believe in God the Father Almighty.”
Branson and Sijuwade both highlight that the majority of the pro-Nicene fathers seemed to affirm something quite like this view. All three of the Cappadocians, they highlight, use “God” almost exclusively to refer to the Father, as well do the New-Testament authors. Yet, the biblical authors and the pro-Nicenes all agreed that all three persons were equally divine and worthy of our worship, praise, and life dedication. What makes the monarchical model unique is that it claims that, when it comes to names (not natures), only the Father is properly called “God.” The Son and the Holy Spirit cannot properly be called “God” wherein “God” designates a proper name rather than the divine nature.
But why say that the name “God” is only fitting for the Father? If the Son, for example, is the one through whom all creation has come into being (as claimed by the apostles John and Paul), then why is it not appropriate to give the name “God” to the Son as well? The reason for this has to do with the doctrine of the eternal relations of origin, which I discussed in the second entry in this series as it pertained to classical Trinitarianism. According to this doctrine, the Father eternally causes the Son and the Spirit to exist. The Father is the only divine person that does not have a cause for his being. The Cappadocians preferred to refer to the Father as ingenerate as his person is not produced. Since the Father alone is the “fount” of divinity, and since “God” typically refers to that person who is the source of all that exists that is not designated by “God,” then “God” most properly refers to the Father. Since the Son and Spirit are caused to exist by the Father, then they are not properly the source of all that is that is not identical to them; rather, the Father is. Such is what “grounds” the monarchy of the Father, according to Sijuwade.
Both Branson and Sijuwade flesh out more of the metaphysics of this model, but I think that what I have provided here is sufficient for you the reader to get the big picture of the model. Though each divine person is fully divine, only the Father can properly be called “God,” since he alone is the source of all that is not himself. “God” on this view does not designate the being that is the source of all that is, but rather the person that is the source of all that is. This distinction between a being and a person is an important one. I encourage readers to re-visit the first entry in this series wherein I discuss the technical terminology of such terms for doing trinitarian doctrine to help them better grasp this distinction.
The next articles in this series will take up the task of critically analyzing each of the models presented in this series, and I will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each model—yes, all of the models have their weaknesses as well as their strengths.
Bibliography
Branson, Beau. 2022. “One God, the Father: The Neglected Doctrine of the Monarchy of the Father, and Its Implications for the Analytic Debate about the Trinity.” TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 6.2: 6-58. https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v6i2.67603.
Sijuwade, Joshua R. 2021. “Building the monarchy of the Father.” Religious Studies 58.2: 436-455. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412521000020.
[1] However, Beau Branson does argue that the monarchical model is distinct from social and relative-identity models. He claims that social Trinitarianism “identifies God with all of the divine persons (taken together),” that relative-identity Trinitariansism “identifies God with each of the divine persons (taken individually),” and he claims that monarchical trinitarianism “identifies God with one of the divine persons (namely, the Father) (Branson 2022, 8; italics original). However, such a view of social Trinitarianism, for example, is deficient, for not all social trinitarians claim that it is the Trinity as a whole that is “God” rather than each individual person. Also, the logic of relative identity can work for social models of the Trinity as well as classical ones, so I don’t find Branson’s distinctions here to be all that helpful. Thus, I stand by my original point that monarchical models can work with both classical, social, relative-identity, and material-constitution models. What makes this model distinct is a matter of emphasis.
[2] See (Sijuwade 2021) and (Branson 2022).