Heresy

(NOTE FROM TB: In response to concern with my use of the phrase "economic subordination," I have added a footnote responding to that concern.)

Over on Carl Trueman's blog hosted by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, my friend Liam Goligher, senior minister of Philly's Tenth Presbyterian Church, has been joining Trueman in an attack upon the historic, Biblical doctrine of our Lord's economic subordination1 to His Father. Liam claims those who believe and teach that Jesus submitted to His Father before His incarnation deny the orthodox Christian faith. He tells his readers that men who hold to economic subordination cannot at the same time affirm the Nicene Creed's declaration of our Lord's equality with His Father.

Of course, Liam's declaration concerning the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is wrong. Here, though, I simply want to correct Liam's abuse of John Calvin in support of his error.

Liam writes:

I am an unashamed biblical complementarian. The original use of that word took its cue from the biblical teaching about the differences yet complementarity of human beings made in the image of God while not running away from the challenges of applying biblical exhortations for wives to submit to their own husbands in the Lord or the prohibition on ordination for women in the church. With only those two caveats, as Calvin told John Knox, women may be princes in the state, but not pastors in the church.

John Calvin said no such thing. Rather, Calvin was consistent in declaring the teaching of Scripture concerning...