Barth has often been accused of modalism, or of tending towards modalism, and there is much written on this matter.Footnote ¹ However he has also been accused of subordinationism, or of opening the door to subordinationism,Footnote ² and virtually nothing has been written in reply as far as I can see.Footnote ³ What is surprising about this charge is that modalism and subordinationism are mutually exclusive. Modalism involves denying eternal and immutable threeness in God. In modalism there is only one God in three successive manifestations. There are no eternally distinct persons so any separating and dividing of the three different modes or revelations of God is impossible. Subordinationism in its many forms, in direct contrast, always involves a separating and dividing of the divine three. From the time of Athanasius subordinationism has been recognised as a hierarchical expression of tritheism.Footnote ⁴

What is the subordinationism error?

Some think that subordinationism is the error of denying the divinity of Christ but all the fourth-century so-called Arians could confess that Jesus is God. What they could not say was that he was ‘true God’, ‘co-equal God’. Others think that subordinationism is the error of explicitly denying that the divine three are one in being (Gk, homoousios). So if oneness of being is affirmed orthodoxy is maintained. However, to say one accepts that the divine three are one in being in itself does not mean that subordinationism has been excluded. Many have said this but how they have spoken of the derived divinity of the Son or his subordination in power implies a denial of the homoousian principle. To help clarify matters we may recall that Arius taught the subordination of the Son in at least three ways, temporally (‘there was a time when he was not’), ontologically (the Son was not one in being with the Father, i.e. he was not true God, co-equal God), and in authority (the Son did not share fully the Father's omnipotence – what authority he had was a derived authority).Footnote ⁵ Later the ‘neo-Arian’ Eunomius emphasised the Son's subordination in authority seeing this as the logical consequence of the Son's subordination in being.Footnote ⁶ In reply to Eunomius the Cappadocian Fathers insisted that the Father and the Son were one in being and power. If the divine persons were one in being, they argued, they must be one in power and vice versa.Footnote ⁷ From then on the so-called ‘Arian error’, or as it is more accurately and broadly called today, ‘subordinationism’, was recognised to involve the eternal dividing and separating of the divine three in being/essence and power/authority, thereby creating a hierarchical model of the Trinity. Thus the Reformation and post-Reformation Confessions with one voice stress divine unity, explicitly speaking in terms of oneness in being/essence/substance and oneness in power/authority of the divine three in the immanent Trinity.Footnote ⁸

What the error of subordinationism implies is seen in what is stressed or categorically excluded in the Athanasian Creed. First, the creed consistently stresses divine unity to eliminate any dividing or separating of the persons. Then specific threats to divine unity are explicitly disallowed. The three divine persons are said to be ‘consubstantial’ – one in being – (Gk, homoousios), ‘almighty’ and ‘Lord’ (one in power and authority), ‘none is before or after, greater or lesser’ (no hierarchical ordering), all are ‘co-eternal’ and ‘coequal’. The persons are differentiated only in two ways, by their immutable identities, one is Father, one is Son and one is Holy Spirit, and by differing relations of origin.

The charge of subordinationism

G. C. Berkouwer argues that Barth is guilty of both the error of subordinationism and theopaschitism – the idea that ‘God Himself suffers’.Footnote ⁹ It is his view that Barth introduces these two errors when he repeatedly speaks of the suffering and obedience of the incarnate Christ as the suffering and obedience of ‘God himself’, and of subordinationism in particular, when he speaks of an ‘above’ and ‘below’ in God.Footnote ¹⁰ Others have come to the same conclusion. For example, S. M. Powell says that Barth affirms ‘an element of subordination in the eternal Trinity – obedience within God's eternal being, involving a superior and a subordinate’.Footnote ¹¹ More recently Lisa Stephenson says Barth teaches ‘a super- and subordination’ in the Trinity.Footnote ¹² Alan Torrance believes that Barth leaves ‘no room whatsoever for any form of subordinationism’ in CD I/1, but later in CD IV/1, he endorses this error,Footnote ¹³ while Peter Oh says Barth's doctrine of the Trinity envisages that ‘a fluid form of hierarchical relationships exist within the trinitarian Godhead’ – a comment which leaves me perplexed.Footnote ¹⁴

These often undeveloped and passing claims that Barth teaches the eternal subordination and obedience of the Son in the Godhead in mainline scholarly works now find frequent expression in conservative evangelical literature promulgating ‘male headship’.Footnote ¹⁵ The argument that the eternal subordination of the Son explains and theologically grounds the permanent subordination of women is now endemic in socially conservative evangelicalism, and in recent years Barth has been frequently quoted in support. For example, in Australia Robert Doyle says Barth teaches the ‘eternal relational subordination’ of the Son,Footnote ¹⁶ while Mark BaddeleyFootnote ¹⁷ says much the same. He argues that for Barth God the Father eternally commands and God the Son eternally obeys,Footnote ¹⁸ adding that ‘Barth rejects a purely economic submission as modalism’.Footnote ¹⁹ In Great Britain this appeal to Barth in support of the eternal subordination of the Son is also found in writings by evangelicals committed to the permanent subordination of women. For example, Thomas Smail in his book, Like Father, like Son,Footnote ²⁰ argues that the Son of God is eternally subordinated in function and authority to the Father, apart from ontological subordination, and he claims Barth as the basis for his views.Footnote ²¹ For him the Father is ‘sovereign’Footnote ²² and what is proper to sonship, human and divine, is ‘obedience’.Footnote ²³ He says ‘God the Father is the prototype of leadership’.Footnote ²⁴ In Smail, and most other conservative evangelicals who argue for the permanent subordination of women, the governing premise is that it is possible to have permanently ascribed functional subordination and ontological equality. I think not. If one is permanently subordinated solely because of one's sex, race or divine identity then the subordinated party is not only subordinated in role or function: they are the subordinated sex, race or divine person. Simply denying this does not alter this fact. What must be recognised is that in this usage the terms ‘role’ and ‘function’ do not refer to characteristic behaviour that can change and is not person defining, as a dictionary would suggest, but to unchanging power relations, who rules and who obeys. The terms ‘role’ and ‘function’ are used to obfuscate what is actually being argued: the Son of God is eternally subordinated in authority to the Father and this hierarchical ordering prescribes the permanent subordination in authority for women.

Writing in the United States, Robert Letham, in his substantial book, The Holy Trinity, first gives a fair and accurate account of Barth's thinking on the Trinity, arguing rightly that Barth stresses divine unity.Footnote ²⁵ However, towards the end of the book when he comes to confront the ‘feminists’, he asserts that they represent a ‘strong movement to eliminate anything appearing to give credence to submission by God the Son to the Father in the [immanent] Trinity’.Footnote ²⁶ In putting his case for ‘the submission of the Son [to the Father] eternally’Footnote ²⁷ as the basis for the subordination of womenFootnote ²⁸ Letham appeals mainly to Barth who he thinks teaches ‘a certain subordination’ in the Godhead.Footnote ²⁹ He says that for Barth ‘Christ's obedience is grounded in his being as the Son’.Footnote ³⁰ For Barth ‘the obedience of Christ [in the incarnation] reflects a comparable attitude on the divine level [in the immanent Trinity], in which the Son lives in loving submission to the Father’,Footnote ³¹ and ‘His [the Son's] human obedience reflects his divine submission’.Footnote ³² In other words, Letham is arguing that for Barth the subordination and obedience of the Son seen in the incarnation is to be read back into the immanent Trinity. The Son's obedience and submission is not limited to the incarnation, it is eternal.

What should be noted is that in this evangelical literature Barth's supposed endorsement of the eternal subordination of the Son is seen not as an error but as commendable orthodoxy!

Evidence which makes us suspect Barth does not eternally subordinate the Son to the Father

Barth introduces and makes central the doctrine of the Trinity in his first volume of Church Dogmatics where we find the most extended discussion of this doctrine. However, all of the Dogmatics is predicated on and infused by Barth's trinitarian thinking. Much of what follows is drawn from CD I/1, but in preparing this article I carefully reread other volumes, especially IV/1 where the Trinity again comes to the fore and the most often quoted subordination passage is found.

1. 1. It is generally agreed that in Barth the emphasis falls on divine unity.Footnote ³³Where the stress falls on divine unity all forms of tritheism and thus hierarchical ordering are excluded.

Barth will not allow that the ‘threeness’ in God in anyway undermines the unity of God. To say the one God is triune does not imply ‘threefold deity either in the sense of a plurality of Gods, or in the sense of the existence of a plurality of individuals or parts within the one Godhead’.Footnote ³⁴ Rather:

For Barth, ‘Only the substantial equality of Christ and the Spirit with the Father is compatible with monotheism.’Footnote ³⁶ ‘Father, Son and Spirit are one single God.’Footnote ³⁷ Or again, ‘we are speaking not of three I's, but thrice of the one I’.Footnote ³⁸

Because Barth believes the word ‘person’ necessarily implies three centres of consciousness, something that would undermine the unity of God, he chooses rather to speak of each of the divine three as a ‘mode or way of being’ of the one God (German Seinsweise).Footnote ³⁹ He says he is not seeking to change the historic doctrine of the Trinity by changing the terminology but simply seeking to express better what orthodoxy has meant by the term ‘person’ when used of Father, Son and Spirit. What he wants to exclude is the thought that the divine ‘persons’ are three separated individuals.

With this stress on divine unity we are not surprised to find Barth emphasising that the divine three cannot be separated because ‘God's essence is indeed one and even the different relations of origin do not entail separation’.Footnote ⁴⁰ The three modes of being cannot be divided because for Barth the divine three interpenetrate one another. He says:

Given his stress on divine unity we are not surprised to find Barth also endorsing the doctrine of appropriation as firmly as he does the doctrine of perichoresis.Footnote ⁴² This doctrine teaches that although certain divine acts are rightly appropriated or assigned to one of the divine three, ultimately they are actions of the one God.

Despite his stress on divine unity Barth unequivocally affirms divine differentiation. He writes, ‘this being in these three modes of being is absolutely essential to Him . . . [it is] irremovable’.Footnote ⁴³ These distinct modes of being ‘are not to be confused or confounded’.Footnote ⁴⁴ And, there is no ‘possibility that one of the modes of being might just as well be the other’.Footnote ⁴⁵ But what constitutes these differences? Barth confesses, ‘What is meant by what is distinguished and ordered in God as Father, Son and Spirit’, is one of ‘the most difficult’ matters to resolve.Footnote ⁴⁶ Following the tradition he makes the primary difference dissimilar relations of origin.

What he will not allow is that the divine differentiation is grounded in differing being, acts, attributes, or power, things which would divide and separate the divine three. He writes:

In all except his reluctance to use the term ‘person’ of each of the divine three Barth closely follows the Western theological tradition which characteristically in opposition to subordinationism and tritheism has stressed divine unity.

1. 2. In the Church Dogmatics the full divinity of Christ is constantly emphasised. When Christ's full and complete divinity is to the fore the idea that the Son is subordinated to the Father in the immanent Trinity is unthinkable.

Barth is emphatic; Christ is fully God, one with the Father and the Spirit in being and power.

For Barth, Father, Son and Spirit are all ‘Lord’. They share in equal majesty, power and authority. Barth writes, ‘“God reveals Himself as the Lord” three times in different senses.’Footnote ⁵⁰ And later he adds, ‘He can be our God because in all His modes of being He is equal to himself, one and the same Lord.’Footnote ⁵¹ Then speaking specifically of the Son he says:

Throughout CD I/1, Barth emphasises that Jesus Christ is God. Very little is said of his humanity. We thus find no mention made of the ‘double account’ of the saviour, one as God incarnate who tires, hungers, suffers and dies, and the other as equal God, or between Christ in the form of God and Christ in the form of man, contrasts made by virtually all theologians prior to Barth.Footnote ⁵³

1. 3. Barth explicitly rejects that the subordination and submission of the Son seen in the incarnation should be read back into the eternal or immanent Trinity. When what is revealed in the economy of salvation is not allowed to dictate what is true in the immanent Trinity subordinationism is unlikely.

Barth certainly predicates his doctrine of the Trinity on the economic Trinity – what God has revealed of himself. So he writes:

Nevertheless, Barth will not allow that what is revealed in history, particularly in the incarnation, is to be read back into the immanent Trinity. He makes a ‘deliberate and sharp distinction’ between the economic and immanent Trinity to preserve God's freedom – possibly his most basic concern. For him God is eternally triune, not just triune in creation, reconciliation and redemption. So Barth concludes that it is:

What Barth particularly wants to exclude is a reading back into the immanent Trinity the kenotic form of the incarnate Son. He makes the point in his characteristic bold language. He says, ‘The form of God's Word, then, is in fact the form of the cosmos which stands in contradiction to God.’Footnote ⁵⁶ In the ‘unveiling’ of revelation there is also a ‘veiling’, he repeatedly says.Footnote ⁵⁷ He can even speak of the humanity of Christ as ‘concealing’ his divinity.Footnote ⁵⁸ Thus it is of no surprise to find Barth saying, ‘The Godhead is not so immanent in Christ's humanity, that it does not also remain transcendent to it.’Footnote ⁵⁹ To hold otherwise, he believes, would blur the distinction between events in God himself and events in human history and suggest that the human limitations of the incarnate Christ, what is ‘creaturely’, be read back into the immanent Trinity.

1. 4. Barth explicitly says that he rejects ‘every form of subordinationism’.Footnote ⁶⁰When one of the most informed and astute theologians of the twentieth century says he rejects a certain error we should assume he knows what he is saying.

‘Subordinationism’, he says, posits ‘a more and less in God's being as God’.Footnote ⁶¹ It ‘rests on the intention of making the One who reveals Himself there the kind of subject we ourselves are’.Footnote ⁶² In reply he says, ‘Father, Son and Spirit are the one single and equal God’.Footnote ⁶³ Earlier he says, ‘If revelation is to be taken seriously as God's presence, if there is to be a valid belief in revelation, then in no sense can Christ and the Spirit be subordinate hypostases.’Footnote ⁶⁴ And similarly, ‘The divine essence would not be the divine essence if in it there were superiority and inferiority and also then, various quanta of deity.’Footnote ⁶⁵ To sum up he says, the church has consistently ‘rejected Arianism and every form of subordinationism’.Footnote ⁶⁶ Note, not just Arianism, but ‘every form of subordinationism’.

1. 5. For Barth human fatherhood does not explain or define divine fatherhood. If defining divine relationships univocally in terms of human relationships is proscribed then one common route to subordinationism is excluded.

In the fourth century most of the so-called Arians argued that the human father–son relationship explained the divine Father–Son relationship.Footnote ⁶⁷ Human fathers were prior and superior to their sons. Most contemporary evangelical subordinationists use exactly the same argument – human sons are set under the authority of their fathers and thus the divine Son must be understood to be forever under the authority of the divine Father.Footnote ⁶⁸ The trajectory for Barth is in the opposite direction. For him the divine Father–Son relationship informs the human father–son relationship. Barth consistently rejects knowing God through analogical correlation. Specifically he writes:

Evidence taken to indicate that Barth does teach the eternal subordination and submission of the Son to the Father

Four pieces of evidence have been cited to show that Barth eternally subordinates the Son to the Father. In this article I can only deal with three of them, not only because of journal word limitations, but also and mainly because on the fourth matter Barth's trinitarian arguments for the ongoing subordination of women have been more than adequately covered.Footnote ⁷⁰

• Jesus Christ is subordinate to the Creator, CD I/1

The first comment I found on the Son's subordination appears in CD I/1, on p. 412. Because there is some development in Barth's doctrine of God associated with his reformulating of the doctrine of election in CD II/2, I will discuss this problematic paragraph in the context of CD I/1, where it is located.

In CD I/1, section 9, Barth first discusses the ‘Triunity of God’, outlining how God can be one and three at the same time. Then in sections 10, 11 and 12 he discusses separately in sequence, ‘God the Father’, ‘God the Son’ and ‘God the Holy Spirit’. Section 10, ‘God the Father’, begins with Barth making the point that ‘God’ is revealed as Lord and ‘the climax of the Biblical witness’ is the revelation that Jesus of Nazareth is the Kyrios/Lord. ‘He is the One who approaches man in absolute superiority. He is the self-revealing God.’Footnote ⁷¹ He then stresses that Jesus Christ as Lord reveals the Father as Lord. The title ‘Father’, Barth adds yet again, is not to be understood by thinking of human fathers. God our Father is Lord over all. He is ‘the Creator’.Footnote ⁷² He is called ‘Father’, Barth says, ‘because He is Father in Himself, because fatherhood is an eternal mode of being of the divine essence’.Footnote ⁷³ In other words, it is his immutable identity. Nevertheless he adds, in ‘the One who reveals Him and yet also in distinctive fellowship with Him, we have to do with God Himself’.Footnote ⁷⁴ What ultimately distinguishes the Father, Barth argues, is that he is to be thought of primarily as the ‘Creator’ and ‘He [the Father] is the Author of His other modes of being’.Footnote ⁷⁵ However again Barth closes the door to concluding, because God the Father can be thought of as the ‘origin’ of the Son and the Spirit, that ‘a relation of super- and subordination’ is envisaged.Footnote ⁷⁶ He will not allow that differing relations of origin suggest any separation between the divine three or any subordination in being or authority.

Section 10, ‘God the Son’, begins with Barth making the point that the emphasis when speaking of Jesus Christ must lie, ‘not on the distinction of Jesus from the Father, but without denying this distinction, directly on his communion and even unity with the Father’.Footnote ⁷⁷ He says, ‘To confess Him as the revelation of His Father is to confess Him as essentially equal in deity with His Father’.Footnote ⁷⁸ What distinguishes the Son is that he is the Revealer of the Father, not the Father himself, and he is the Reconciler.Footnote ⁷⁹ Then out of left field Barth says, ‘the person of the Revealer is the person of Jesus Christ, who is subordinate to the Creator revealed by it, yet who is indissolubly co-ordinate with Him, who is with Him’.Footnote ⁸⁰ And, ‘We must distinguish them, these two, and we must obviously distinguish them in such a way that we perceive and acknowledge the relation of subordination that is present here. We must say, then, that the Reconciler is not the Creator, and as the Reconciler He follows the Creator.’Footnote ⁸¹ Nevertheless he adds, ‘this subordination and sequence cannot imply any distinction in being; it can only signify a distinction in the mode of being’.Footnote ⁸²

What is he saying? The language is elusive and perplexing but I think Barth is saying nothing that Athanasius, Augustine or Calvin could not endorse, even if they would put it differently. The Father and the Son (and the Spirit) though one in deity, being and power, the one God, are to be distinguished. The Father is to be thought of primarily as the Creator, and the Son primarily as the Revealer and Reconciler. In historical sequence the work of creation precedes the work of reconciliation and in his work of reconciliation the Son gladly subordinates himself to the Father (Phil 2:6–8). That Barth is endorsing the eternal subordination of the Son in being/essence or power/authority in these comments cannot be seriously considered because, as we have shown, Barth consistently opposes implicitly and explicitly ‘every form of subordinationism’ in CD I/1; in the immediate context in which these comments on the subordination of the Son are found he stresses the co-equality of the divine three, and in what immediately follows, where Barth explains what it means to be ‘the eternal Son’ in terms of the Nicene Creed, he unequivocally stresses the unity of the Father and the Son and specifically their oneness in being/essence and ‘authority and power’.Footnote ⁸³ To find subordinationism in this section is only possible if a few words are wrenched from the page and made to stand alone and Barth's dialectical mode of theologising is not understood.

• The obedience of Jesus Christ.

For Paul, the incarnate Christ as the Second Adam is perfectly obedient and his obedience culminates and is completed in his death on the cross (Rom 5:12–21, 1 Cor 15:22, Phil 2:6–8). For the writer to the Hebrews Christ's obedience is explicitly said to be restricted to ‘the days of his flesh’ (5:7–9). In contrast, after CD II/2, where Barth reformulates the doctrine of election, he begins speaking of the obedience of Christ as an eternal reality: ‘Of an obedience which takes place in God.’Footnote ⁸⁴ This has led some to conclude, as we have noted, that for Barth Jesus Christ is eternally subordinated in authority to the Father: as the Son he is eternally submissive and subject to the will of the Father and cannot be otherwise. To understand Barth rightly on this matter we must begin with his ground-breaking, innovative recasting of the doctrine of election in CD II/2. What he says on election takes us right to the heart of his developing and mind-expanding doctrine of God in general and christology in particular. John Webster says, Barth's ‘doctrine of election forms the centrepiece’ of his doctrine of God.Footnote ⁸⁵ What shapes Barth's doctrine of election is that Jesus Christ is both the subject of election, by which he means the acting agent, and its object. He is the sovereign electing God and the elect human.Footnote ⁸⁶ The election of Jesus Christ, Barth argues, involves both his election to life and reprobation.Footnote ⁸⁷ Christ as the object of election means on the one hand that he is chosen for grace and love and on the other hand that he is chosen to be obedient, to suffer, to be judged and to die.Footnote ⁸⁸

In this radically redrawn doctrine of God, Jesus Christ is from the beginning God identified with man. As such he is both the sovereign electing God and the elect man under grace and judgement. Historic orthodoxy has limited Christ's subordination, obedience and suffering to the time of his incarnation and specifically to his humanity. Barth, in contrast, attributes these things to ‘God’ identified with man for all eternity, but never denying for a moment that God identified with man is at the same time the sovereign omnipotent God. At no point does Barth allow or suggest that in freely electing to be man Jesus Christ is less in any way than the Father or the Spirit. He insists that Jesus Christ is eternally sovereign God, the active agent of election. He is self-determining God. He is always ‘absolute, infinite, exalted, active, impassable, transcendent . . . the Creator’.Footnote ⁸⁹

With Barth's reformulated doctrine of God briefly outlined we are equipped to understand Barth's very important extended discussion of the Trinity in CD IV/1, ‘The doctrine of reconciliation’. Barth titles his main discussion, ‘Jesus Christ as Lord and Servant’.Footnote ⁹⁰ This immediately indicates that he is going to address the paradox inherent in thinking of Christ at one and the same time as the sovereign electing God and the elect man who is humiliated, subordinated and suffers. In CD I/1, Barth refuses to ascribe some things to Jesus in ‘the form of God’ and some to him ‘in the form of man’. For him Jesus Christ from the beginning to the end is ‘God’, nothing more nothing less. In CD 1V/1, we find him taking yet another distinctive step, rejecting the Reformed sequential schema which speaks of Christ's state of humiliation in the incarnation followed by his state of exaltation after the resurrection. Barth in contrast makes the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus the Son of God simultaneous rather than successive, eternal rather than temporal.Footnote ⁹¹ The incarnation and resurrection simply reveal what is true for all eternity. Thus humiliation and exaltation are two ways of viewing the one Jesus Christ. He is sovereign God and God identified with man in humility and obedience. At one and the same time, both Lord and servant.

In the context of this article what must be noted is that, in this bold new picture of God, Lordship and humility are inherent perfections in the one (triune) God. Barth never divides or separates the divine three. He distinguishes them, yes, he allows for order or disposition within the Godhead, yes, but never allows any separating or dividing of the divine three or hierarchical ordering. Thus Jesus is never the subordinated, obedient and suffering Son simpliciter, as some superficial readings of Barth maintain. Jesus Christ is always at one and the same time both Lord and servant. Those who argue that for Barth the Father has authority over the Son, or that the Son is the eternally submissive and cannot be otherwise, completely miss this dialectic in Barth's christology. They hear only the part which supports their own preconceived ideas.

This means that for Barth, Jesus Christ as God, in his Lordship and his subordination, and in his obedience and suffering, reveals God, a God who is both ‘high and humble’. He writes:

There is here something characteristic of Barth's doctrine of the Trinity as seen in CD I/1, namely, a dominant stress on divine unity and something new in CD IV/1, namely, in the one God in ‘threefold repetition’ there is Lordship and subordination and suffering. In Jesus of Nazareth, Barth leads us to believe, we discover something about God so extraordinary that only God could reveal it.

This breathtaking picture of God stretches our mind beyond limit and raises some profound questions. How can the Christ be both the electing sovereign God and the subordinated and suffering elect man at one and the same time? And specifically for this article and this section of the article, how can Christ be the sovereign Lord and yet obedient to himself for all eternity? Surely obedience demands a superior and an inferior, as we will see in a moment Barth himself admits?

• Subordination in God, CD IV/1

Having outlined how Barth develops his doctrine of God from CD II/2, we are ready to consider what Barth says in CD IV/1, where on pp. 195–203 he does speak of subordination in the Godhead. Most claims that Barth teaches the eternal subordination or submission of the Son in being and/or authority appeal to what he says here, and usually to nothing else.

On p. 195 Barth begins by admitting:

To suggest this he then says would seem ‘to compromise the unity and then logically the equality of the divine being’.Footnote ⁹⁶ So he asks, ‘Can the one God command and obey?’Footnote ⁹⁷ This leads him to consider the options. First, that obedience and subordination is what the Son chooses for himself and this is limited to the economy,Footnote ⁹⁸ or second, that the Son's obedience and subordination is reflective of his assumed flesh,Footnote ⁹⁹ but he rejects both options. He thus comes to give his own solution. What we have to accept is that:

He goes on to say that there can be no avoiding of ‘the offensive fact that there is in God Himself an above and a below, a prius and posterius, a superiority and a subordination, . . . that it belongs to the inner life of God’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ These words at first sight might seem to unambiguously endorse the idea that the Son is eternally subordinated and set under the Father's authority. There is a division and separation between the Father and the Son. However, to avoid just this conclusion, Barth then stresses divine unity. The one God ‘is both the One obeyed and Another who obeys’.Footnote ¹⁰² ‘No, not an unequal but equal, not a divided but in the one deity, God is both One and also Another, His own counterpart, co-existent with Himself.’Footnote ¹⁰³ And then to make the point more emphatic he adds:

In these words three things should be carefully noted. Barth speaks of

1. 1. a subordination in ‘the one God’;

2. 2. of a divine subordination and obedience which is juxtaposed with a ruling and commanding in majesty; and of

3. 3. a subordination seen in Christ which reveals something about all three divine persons – of God in triune communion.

This means that he does not endorse or allow for any dividing or separating of the one God, or for a differentiating of the Father and the Son on the premise that the Father distinctively rules and the Son distinctively obeys, two things basic to subordinationism.

Rather, Barth argues that the subordination seen in the incarnate Christ actually reveals something right at the heart of what is true of the triune God. This is made explicit in a comment in CD IV/2. In words devoid of ambiguity Barth says it is ‘the Godhead’, not Christ alone, who is high and humble.

Taken in isolation, several sentences in CD IV/1, pp. 195–203, could suggest Barth is endorsing the eternal subordination of the Son, his unilateral submission to the Father's authority, but Barth must always be read holistically with a tuned ear to his checks and balances and cognisant of the dialectic basic to his theologising. Nowhere is his dialectical language more clearly seen than at the end of this discussion on the subordination and obedience in the one God. He writes:

What is actually being said in this rhetorical paragraph is elusive.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ After thinking long and hard about these words I dare to conclude that at this point Barth's breathtaking understanding of the triune God as high and humble and of the Son as the sovereign electing God and the subordinated, obedient and suffering God identified with man reaches breaking point. He has to accept that the New Testament clearly speaks of the Son's subordination and obedience to the Father in the incarnation and this must be acknowledged in his doctrine of God. However, as we have noted, he rejects that the exaltation and subordination of the Son should be understood historically and sequentially. This leaves him with a dilemma. He cannot allow that the Son is eternally subordinated and obedient to the Father simpliciter because this would envisage a separation and division in the one triune God, suggesting both the errors of subordinationism and tritheism. And yet he does not want to limit the Son's subordination and obedience to his human nature in the time of his humiliation. Faced with this dilemma Barth produces one of his most colourful pieces of abstruse rhetoric in his Church Dogmatics, suggesting that what is logically impossible is possible in God.