EFS has overlooked that the blueprint of biblical ethics is not the ineffable eternal relations of the Trinity, but the word of our Lord who is one. “The Scriptures ground ethics upon metaphysics, for God’s supreme authority to command our trust and obedience derives from his supreme being – who and what he is.” There are no scriptural texts where our duty before God is rooted in the Son’s eternal obedience to the Father in God. Scripture, however, regularly bases our moral obligations upon His simple unity as God. The Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 is the rationale for the Great Commandment to “love the LORD your God” (v. 5) and to teach His laws to succeeding generations (vv. 6-7).

Western culture today parades its rebellion against nature and our Creator, against the goodness of bearing God’s image as men and women. Christians must defend the Bible’s teaching on God’s design for both sexes and how each complements the other. Many, however, do so by arguing that our roles and relationships as men and women are patterned after the Trinity itself,[1] specifically in the Father’s authority over the Son in an “Eternal Functional Subordination” (EFS).[2] While I agree with many EFS proponents on the biblical order for the home and the church, there is a tragic irony to their method. By implicitly dividing our simple God, they undermine the foundation of the very scriptural ethics that they endeavor to preserve.
The Simple Unity of God
Scripture emphatically cuts against humanity’s penchant for polytheism.[3] The basic confession of God’s people was the Shema, “The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut 6:4). If our Lord is an exclusive, singular unity, He must therefore be a simple unity.[4] If the One who created all things is composed of any things (or parts) prior to Him, then it could not be said that He created all things (Gen 1:1; Rom 11:36). In the 17th century, Edward Leigh explained:
God is absolutely Simple, he is but one thing, and doth not consist of any parts… If he did consist of parts, there must be something before him, to put those parts together; and then he were not Eternal.[5]
Divine simplicity is why Scripture not only describes qualities God has but uses substantives to say what He is, as in “You are good” (Ps 119:68) and “God is love” (1 John 4:8).[6] When God told Moses “I AM who I AM” (Exod 3:14-15), He revealed His peerless nature by His name, “Yahweh” (usually represented by “LORD” in English), something of a pun on “I AM.”[7] God’s essential name means He is “Being itself,”[8] “an Absolute Being, nothing but Himself,” so that “whatsoever you can say of God, is God.”[9] As the One who is (cf. Rev 4:8), God is exalted above any possibility of cause, change, chronology, or categorization.[10] Creatures are divided into individual beings who can be grouped with others who share their nature, as members of a common species. How can this be true of the Creator of all natures? How could He come to exist in a category that is prior to Him with peers who are like Him? “It is thus divine simplicity that undergirds monotheism and ensures that it does not just so happen that God is one, but it must be that God cannot but be one being because of what it means to be God.”[11] There is no one like our simple God (Isa 44:8).
When He spoke to us by His Son, the Lord revealed that He is a simple being who exists as Father, Son, and Spirit. So, Paul could ascribe Israel’s Shema to the Father and the Son, who are “one” and who created “all things” (1 Cor 8:4-6; cf. Col 1:16; Jn 1:3). As the early church reflected on such texts, they understood that “[t]he generation of the Son and the breathing of the Spirit thus occur within the bounds of the divine simplicity.”[12] In other words, “The persons are not different things from that thing which is the divine essence.”[13] God simply is the Father begetting the Son and, with the Son, breathing forth the Spirit.[14] Divine simplicity, far from being inconsistent with the Trinity, is in fact its “lynchpin.”[15] How else could we be kept from thinking of the Father, Son, and Spirit as individual beings of a divine species like creatures?[16] Or even as a council of deities that we have just named “God”?[17] God is Triune, not in spite of His simplicity, but because of it. Swain put this plainly:
there was and is no need for the doctrine of the Trinity if God is not simple, for there were and are plenty of sophisticated and unsophisticated ways of conceiving how three persons may comprise one complex divine being or community.[18]
So, if we think about the Trinity in mathematical terms, we do not need to say “three” (as if the persons are individual beings of a divine species). We can always say the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. However, if we do not say that God is “one,” then we would be saying little more than polytheists say about their deities.[19] In order to count to the true and Triune God, the essential number is one.
The Divided Community of EFS
While EFS advocates undeniably affirm the exclusive unity of God, their modern revision of the Trinity endangers it. Theology requires, as Sinclair Ferguson has written, that we “point out the logical implications of presuppositions.”[20] EFS logically entails the division of our simple God in more than one way, ignoring Calvin’s warning not to “think God’s simple essence to be torn into three persons.”[21]
First, God’s indivisible unity means that whatever we say of God’s nature is equally true of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that includes His will and authority.[22] By His will and power, Scripture identifies God as God, “I am God, and there is no one like me… My purpose shall stand” (Isa 46:9-10). So, each Person exercises that divine will inseparably from the other two as God.[23]
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Male and female alike, the Bible exalts the importance of the home as our first place of leadership. What does that mean? There is no minimization of how challenging and important the task of loving your spouse is. There is no diminishment of how difficult and important the task of fathering or mothering is.

Who are the most influential leaders in your life? What made them such great leaders?
I fear that our cultural understanding of leadership is going further astray from true leadership. We Americans seem to have a bizarre attraction to two types of leaders: celebrities and powerful communicators with bold, brash opinions. We judge leaders by the size of their platform.
Some time ago I was asked to speak to the Moms Matter group in our church about healthy leadership in the home and beyond. One of the comments made by the leadership team was that many moms believe they “don’t need to be or can’t be a leader because they are just moms.” We can all similarly dismiss ourselves.
If leadership is influence, then every one of us is called to leadership. God has gifted you with influence. God has called and equipped you to influence your family. God has called and equipped you to influence your friends. God has called and equipped you to influence your church.
You are called to lead.
However, the order in which we develop as leaders is essential. We are called to lead our home first and that leadership is intended to cascade outward.
Some are captivated by the possibility of leading “out there.” That can be a holy aspiration. But if we try to lead “out there” before we lead ourselves and our families first, then we have mixed up God’s order of what leadership was designed to be.
The world gets leadership wrong. Our culture judges leadership by the size of the leaders’ platform.
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There has not just been a blurring of Reformed confessional boundaries but, also, some churches and presbyteries have intentionally erased their doctrinal walls of protection. None of this is surprising once we consider that the formal teaching of systematic theology has at many institutions been relegated to historians rather than theologians. This phenomenon has opened the door to subjective and more novel takes on settled matters of theological intricacy. Stated differences and exceptions to confessional standards are not taken seriously. Pastors and ruling elders needn’t be acquainted with their confessions, let alone be theologians, as long as their views can be accompanied by a fragile appeal to confessional standards being a “consensus document” along with citing a scattered few seventeenth century theologians who held to sometimes esoteric views that did not win the confessional day.

In recent years the debates of the Reformation period have taken priority over the theology of the debates. Somehow possessing vast acquaintance with multiple sides of doctrinal disputes has in some circles become more academically impressive and pastorally relevant than possessing an intimate working-understanding of which doctrines are theologically Reformed and defensible. Consequently, there has not just been a blurring of Reformed confessional boundaries but, also, some churches and presbyteries have intentionally erased their doctrinal walls of protection. None of this is surprising once we consider that the formal teaching of systematic theology has at many institutions been relegated to historians rather than theologians. This phenomenon has opened the door to subjective and more novel takes on settled matters of theological intricacy. Stated differences and exceptions to confessional standards are not taken seriously. Pastors and ruling elders needn’t be acquainted with their confessions, let alone be theologians, as long as their views can be accompanied by a fragile appeal to confessional standards being a “consensus document” along with citing a scattered few seventeenth century theologians who held to sometimes esoteric views that did not win the confessional day. One can now earn an honorary degree of “Reformed orthodoxy” merely by possessing an air of historical understanding without actually subscribing to much of what was once upheld as Reformed theology.
A way back?
If we are to recapture objective confessional theology, we must stop confusing Reformed theology with Reformed theologians. The former is an objective consideration whereas the latter is a subjective matter of degree. A pastor can be more or less Reformed, but a doctrine either is or is not Reformed. Conflating the two leads to recasting “Reformed” theology in terms of a multitude of broadly based theologians rather than the particular Reformed confessions that were providentially produced by and through them.
From hereafter I’ll be referring to the Westminster standards as representative of confessional Reformed theology in the context of churches that on paper subscribe to it.
In ascertaining whether a particular doctrine is Reformed or not, we mustn’t fall prey to misleading slogans that deflect and obfuscate rather than define and defend. It is irrelevant that “good men have been on both sides of the issue” or that the doctrine under consideration is “not a test of orthodoxy.” It doesn’t even matter whether the doctrine in view is correct! When determining whether a particular doctrine is Reformed or not, the only question of relevance is whether the doctrine is contained in or necessitated by the confession of faith.
Reformed theology is just that, the theology of a Reformed confession. A doctrine is Reformed if it agrees with or is implied by confessional theology. Whether one’s professed theology is Reformed must be measured against an objective standard. Otherwise, what are we even talking about? Moreover, an acceptable doctrine might not be defined or implied by the confession. We may call such doctrine extra-confessional, but not all extra-confessional doctrines are un-confessional. Amillenialism and Postmillenialism are extra-confessional because the confession doesn’t take a position (implied or otherwise) on the triumph of the gospel in the world; whereas premillennialism is not only extra-confessional, it is also un-confessional because of the general resurrection and single judgement (WLC 87, 88). So, just because William Twisse was historical premillennial doesn’t mean he or his eschatology is Reformed in this regard. Similarly, the baptismal regeneration doctrine of Cornelius Burgess, which contemplates an infusion of grace for the elect at the font, is not Reformed because it’s not confessional.
It should be apparent, if we were to allow the unfiltered theology of the Westminster Divines to define Reformed Theology for us, our confession would not be a fair representation of Reformed theology! Our confession could become contra-Reformed depending upon the particular theologian to which one might appeal for doctrinal precedent. Consequently, true Reformed theology cannot be defined by particular Divines but instead must be elucidated by the doctrinal standards they produced.
Fence posts:
A “consensus” document does not preclude certain doctrines from having won the day. Certain Divines championed what is now settled un-confessional doctrine.
Regarding confessional status, any (a) direct contradiction of the confession or (b) extra-confessional teaching that leads to intra-confessional doctrinal contradiction may be confidently rejected for being un-confessional even if not explicitly refuted by the church’s standards (regardless if a delegate to the assembly held the view in question). Otherwise, we unnecessarily introduce incoherence and confusion into our system of doctrine. Also, any doctrine that is theologically derivable from other confessional doctrines must be considered no less confessional than the doctrines from which they come. Otherwise, we would not be able to refute on confessional grounds doctrinal claims that oppose the necessary implications of our own theology!
Let’s put some meat on the bones by making the abstract practical:
Any view of free will (e.g. libertarian freedom) that by implication entails that God is contingently infallible, not exhaustively omniscient, or undermines God’s independence and aseity, must be rejected as un-confessional. Conversely, if compatibilist type freedom is the only type of freedom that comports with confessional theology proper and the theological determinism of the divine decree (WCF 3.2), then such a doctrine of free will is Reformed and none other.
Even though the Divines didn’t have the advantage of the philosophical refinements of the past three hundred years, their system of doctrine requires the compatibility of free will, moral accountability and God’s determination of all things (including the free choices of men). Consequently, adherence to the Westminster standards in toto entails a rejection of libertarian Calvinism and, therefore, requires an affirmation of something else. (Richard Muller and Oliver Crisp are simply mistaken.)
So it is with John Davenant’s hypothetical universalism, which leads to intra-confessional doctrinal incoherence. If the salvation of the non-elect is not metaphysically possible, then hypothetical universalism’s most distinguishing feature (i.e., the possibility of the salvation of “vessels of wrath”) is false. After all, if it were truly possible that the non-elect might be saved, then God who believes all truth would believe contrary truths: (a) Smith might believe and (b) Smith won’t believe. Consequently, Davenant’s view of the atonement undermines a confessional understanding of God, and on that basis alone is un-confessional and must be rejected as being outside the Reformed tradition.
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