The
passages you adduce—Matthew 28:18, 1 Corinthians 15:24-28, the “greater-than”
logia of John, and the Son’s ignorance in Mark 13:32—have been marshalled
against Nicene Christology since the fourth century. Yet they do not refute the
doctrine of Christ’s consubstantiality with the Father; rather, when read in
their literary and theological context they illustrate the classical distinction,
already implicit in the New Testament, between the immanent Trinity (who God is
in se) and the economic Trinity (how the one God acts in salvation history). A
Thomist analysis clarifies why the texts you cite, far from disproving Christ’s
divinity, actually presuppose it.
Matthew 28:18
is programmatic. Ἐδόθη μοι πᾶσα ἐξουσία—“all authority has been given to me.” The participle denotes a
once-for-all eschatological bestowal upon the incarnate, now-risen Jesus. Two
observations follow. First, Jesus speaks as the Son who has become obedient
unto death (Phil 2:6-11). The grant of universal authority is the Father’s
public vindication of the obedient Servant; it presupposes the economical
mission, not an ontological deficiency in the Son’s deity. Second, the text
echoes Daniel 7:13-14, where the “one like a son of man” receives an
everlasting dominion from the Ancient of Days. Second-Temple Jewish exegesis
understood that figure to share in God’s own prerogatives, including the
reception of universal worship. Matthew presents Jesus as the fulfilment of
that vision; the “given” authority is therefore not a concession to a creature
but the public enthronement of the God-man who already possesses divine
authority “by nature” (κατὰ φύσιν) and now receives it “by right of conquest” (κατὰ ἔργον) as the second Adam (cf.
Aquinas, ST III q. 58 a. 4).
The divine
essence is one and indivisible, shared equally by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Nevertheless, within the Trinity there exists an order of relations—relations
not of inequality or subordination in essence, but of origin and procession.
Thus, when Christ speaks of authority given to Him (Matt 28:18), He speaks in
reference to His incarnational role, that is, in His assumed human nature. The
"giving" or "delegation" of power does not imply any
ontological limitation within the divine nature, but rather reflects the
economic role Christ freely assumed as mediator between God and humanity. The
distinction between the immanent Trinity (God’s inner life and essence) and the
economic Trinity (God’s actions in salvation history) is crucial here. In the
divine economy, the Son voluntarily receives authority from the Father as part
of His mission, not due to any intrinsic inferiority or inadequacy of His
divine nature.
The appeal
to 1 Corinthians 15 overlooks Paul’s deliberate oscillation between Christ’s
mediatorial office and his eternal sonship. Verses 24-28 describe the telos of
history: when the risen Christ, having subdued every hostile power, “hands over
the kingdom to God the Father.” The final “subjection” (ὑποταγήσεται) is not the capitulation
of an inferior deity to a superior; it is the eschatological completion of the
Son’s mediatorial mission. The logic is covenantal and liturgical, not
ontological. As Aquinas remarks (In 1 Cor 15, lect. 7), the Son
“subjects himself” in the sense that he presents the redeemed creation—himself
as its head and the Church as his body—to the Father, so that “God may be all
in all,” i.e., that the triune God may transparently reign without the provisional
structures of redemptive history. The act presupposes that Christ is the
universal Lord who alone can deliver the kingdom; it does not demote him to the
status of a creature.
The Son’s
subjection to the Father is not indicative of an ontological inferiority but
reveals the consummation of Christ’s mediatorial role. Aquinas, following the
Church Fathers (especially Augustine and Gregory of Nazianzus), emphasizes that
the submission described is specifically tied to Christ’s incarnate mission.
Once Christ has brought creation to its perfection, He hands the kingdom to the
Father as a completed task. This act of subjection does not compromise His
eternal divinity, because the subordination described is not within the
immanent Trinity but in the economy of salvation. Thus, the Son’s submission is
not one of essence or nature, but a voluntary and economic submission in His
incarnational capacity as Redeemer and Mediator.
Hence, when
the New Testament says “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to
me” (Matthew 28:18), or when Paul writes that God “put all things under
his feet” (1 Cor 15:27), it refers to the Son’s incarnate and messianic
role as the God-man, the new Adam, the one in whom all things are recapitulated
and through whom redemption is accomplished. The language of “giving” and
“subjection” pertains to Christ as mediator, as the Second Adam, not to his
eternal divine identity as the Logos. The same is true when Paul writes that
the Son will be “subject” so that “God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28): this
is an eschatological statement about the fulfillment of Christ’s mediatorial
work, after which, as Aquinas explains (ST I, q.42, a.4 ad 1), “the humanity
will cease to reign,” that is, the mission of the Incarnate Word as
redeemer will be complete, and the order of salvation will return to the Father
as source. None of this entails an inferiority of essence but rather expresses
the fitting order of salvation history (economia), in which the
incarnate Son, in his assumed humanity, offers all things to the Father.
Furthermore,
the assertion that God cannot “give Himself” authority or power fundamentally
misunderstands the Trinitarian distinction of persons. The Father and Son are
distinct persons sharing a single, indivisible divine essence. The Father
giving authority to the Son is an eternal relational reality within the Godhead
itself—an expression of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father, who
receives everything from the Father eternally and fully. This is not a temporal
acquisition or delegation of something previously lacking, but rather a
reflection of their eternal relational distinctions. Such eternal relational
distinctions do not create hierarchy or inequality in essence, as the Arians
mistakenly conclude.
This distinction is manifest throughout the New Testament.
When Jesus says, “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), he is not denying
his own divinity, but referencing his incarnate state—his voluntary assumption
of the limitations and lowliness of human nature (cf. Philippians 2:6-8:
“though he was in the form of God… he emptied himself, taking the form of a
servant”). In Trinitarian theology, the “greater” refers to rank or role within
the redemptive economy, not to essence or nature. As Athanasius himself writes
(Against the Arians, III.33): “The Son is not the Father, for the Father is
Father, and the Son is Son; but the nature is one, and all things that are the
Father’s are the Son’s.” Thus, “given,” “sent,” and “subject” are terms that
describe the Son’s relation within the economy of salvation and his eternal
relation of origin, not his ontological status as God.
The
syllogism about omniscience repeats the fourth-century Agnoete error. Classical
Christology distinguishes three modes of human knowing in Christ—beatific,
infused, and acquired—none of which diminishes the omniscience of the Logos.
When Jesus says the Son does not know the day or the hour (Mark 13:32), he
speaks qua homo and qua legatus, not qua Deus. Athanasius,
Gregory Nazianzen, and Augustine all insist that if the Logos created time
(John 1:3; Col 1:16-17), he necessarily comprehends every temporal moment. The
“ignorance” therefore belongs to the economy of revelation: the Son, in the
posture of the servant, withholds a datum not assigned to his prophetic office.
Isaiah 40:14, invoked to prove that God can learn nothing, actually undergirds
the Nicene position: the Son, who is the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24), is
precisely the One through whom the Father teaches and enlightens. To deny the
Son’s omniscience is to bifurcate divine wisdom, which Scripture refuses to do
(John 16:15).
The
classical, Chalcedonian understanding of the Incarnation clearly states that
Christ is fully God and fully man—possessing both divine and human natures
united in a single hypostasis or person. Thus, when Scripture describes Christ
as not knowing something—such as in Mark 13:32 (“the Son does not know the
hour”)—it refers explicitly to Christ’s human knowledge, subject to genuine
human limitations due to the authentic humanity He assumed. Christ’s divine
intellect, being identical with the divine essence itself, is omniscient.
Simultaneously, His human intellect possesses human limitations. This dual
reality—fully divine and fully human—is neither contradictory nor paradoxical,
but theologically coherent, precisely safeguarded by Chalcedonian and Thomistic
distinctions between nature (what something is) and person (who someone is).
Isaiah
40:14 highlights God’s incomprehensible divine wisdom as Creator. Yet, it says
nothing about the voluntary, economic, incarnational limitations freely
embraced by the Son. In classical Christology, the voluntary assumption of
human limitations by the Son (Philippians 2:6-7: “He emptied himself, taking
the form of a servant”) does not entail ontological inferiority or loss of
divine omniscience. Rather, it affirms that God the Son fully entered into
human conditions, including learning and growth, without compromising His
eternal divine nature and omniscience as God. Christ’s human soul
possesses both infused and acquired knowledge (ST III, q.9-12), and is capable
of experiencing human development while remaining united to the divine Person
who is omniscient. Thus, any “ignorance” or learning ascribed to Jesus is not
to the divine nature, but to his assumed human nature—freely accepted for our
sake.
Nor does
the Johannine language of mission imply ontological subordination. In
Second-Temple Judaism a shaliaḥ (emissary) bears the authority of
the sender without diminution of his personal dignity. John’s Gospel
intensifies the metaphor: the Son is sent from the Father because he
eternally “proceeds” from the Father (John 8:42). The sending manifests
the begetting; it does not inaugurate it. Thus, when Jesus says, “the Father is
greater than I” (John 14:28), he speaks relationally, not essentially—the
Father is the fons divinitatis, the principle without principle, while
the Son is eternally from the Father. Augustine’s axiom remains decisive: greater
refers to the mode of origin, equal to the unity of nature (Trin.
I .15). To confuse taxis (order) with natura (essence) is to
revive the very Arian logic condemned at Nicaea.
The
objection that “God cannot be given power” misconstrues Nicene theology. Per
modum naturae, the Son possesses omnipotence eternally; per modum
dispensationis, the Father publicly “gives” that same omnipotence to the
incarnate Son in his mediatorial role. The two assertions are perfectly
compatible once one distinguishes between the Son’s eternal generation and his
temporal mission. The Apostles themselves articulate this twofold pattern: the
risen Christ is both “designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit
of holiness” (Rom 1:4) and already the eternal Son by whose agency all
things were made (Col 1:16).
The
citation of Johannine passages wherein Christ speaks deferentially of “the
one who sent Him” fails to recognize John’s robust Trinitarian theology. In
the Fourth Gospel, Christ’s being “sent” does indeed signify His role as
divine emissary, but it never implies ontological inferiority. Instead,
Johannine theology consistently affirms Christ’s divinity (John 1:1; 8:58;
10:30; 20:28). The emphasis upon being “sent” highlights the relational
and economic dimensions of Christ’s incarnation, not a hierarchical
subordination within the Trinity. Christ’s identification as “sent”
serves rather to stress His intimate unity of mission and essence with the
Father: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). Thus, far
from undermining Trinitarianism, Johannine language reinforces the profound
relational unity and equality of Father and Son.
In John’s Gospel, the sending of the Son by the Father is
the outward expression (missio) of the Son’s eternal origin (processio).
The One who sends is not superior by nature to the One sent; rather, the
mission manifests the Son’s eternal begottenness, not his createdness. When the
risen Christ says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21), the
apostles are not made less human by being sent; their mission reflects the
dignity and trust bestowed by Christ. Similarly, the Son’s being sent in the
economy of salvation manifests his eternal relation of origin—begotten, not
made, true God from true God.
The Father
is the principium, or source, of the Son and Spirit—not as a greater or
older deity, but as the eternal fount of divinity, from whom the Son is
begotten and the Spirit proceeds. This procession is not a temporal event but
an eternal relation. The Son is from the Father, not after the Father; the
Father gives all that He is—including His essence, authority, and knowledge—to
the Son, who receives it eternally, not as a creature receives from its
creator, but as Light from Light, God from God (cf. Nicene Creed). Aquinas states
(ST I, q.42, a.4): “The Son is said to be less than the Father in His humanity,
but not in His divinity; for the divine nature is one and the same in Father
and Son.” In the order of nature, the Son is consubstantial, co-equal,
co-eternal with the Father; in the order of relation, the Son is from
the Father, and so it is proper to speak of Him “receiving” from the Father
without this implying any lack or inferiority in being.
Finally, to
claim that the Nicene Fathers rested their case on an “exact wording” fallacy
is historically inaccurate. Athanasius’ argument in Contra Arianos is
not that Scripture must contain the precise term ὁμοούσιος; it is that Scripture bears
witness to the realities the term safeguards—namely that whatever is said of
the Father as God is said of the Son in the same sense, save only that
the Father is unoriginate principle and the Son begotten. The homoousion, like
Chalcedon’s “two natures,” is a hermeneutical fence erected to protect the data
of revelation from inconsistent inference. Remove that fence and the New Testament’s
christological claims collapse into contradiction: either Christ shares
Yahweh’s prerogatives (forgiveness of sins, creation, worship, final judgment)
or the New Testament authors blasphemously ascribe to a creature what belongs
to God alone.
Athanasius’s
hermeneutical method was precisely not founded on an arbitrary insistence on
exact wording, but rather on careful theological discernment of scriptural
context and intent. Athanasius differentiated carefully between passages
referring to the economy of salvation—Christ’s mission as incarnate
mediator—and those revealing His eternal, ontological nature as divine Logos.
This distinction is fundamental to Trinitarian theology and provides clarity
when interpreting seemingly contrasting scriptural texts. Athanasius’s
apologetic is not that the word “homoousios” or “Trinity” appears verbatim in
the text, but that the substantive content of these doctrines is
necessitated by the data of revelation. Athanasius contends for the real,
consubstantial divinity of the Son, precisely because the language and actions
ascribed to Christ in Scripture cannot be reconciled with mere creatureliness,
no matter how exalted. He reasons not from the presence or absence of exact
words, but from the revealed economy and the metaphysics of divine generation.
The Arian attempt to reduce these mysteries to a simple hierarchy of beings is
foreign to the logic of the biblical text and the patristic consensus.
Hene, all the passages cited (Matthew 28:18, 1 Corinthians
15:27-28, John 14:28) are fully explicable within the Trinitarian framework, as
referring to the Son in his incarnate mission and mediatorial role. They do not
suggest an inferiority of essence, but a distinction of relation and function
within the Godhead. The distinction between being “sent” and “sender” is not a
distinction of nature, but of person and mission. The subjection of the Son at
the consummation of history is the completion of his salvific office, not a
surrender of divinity. Thus, the doctrine of the Trinity, rooted in Scripture
and clarified in the Fathers, preserves the full equality of the divine persons
while respecting the richness and depth of the biblical revelation—a richness
that Arian and Unitarian readings can neither account for nor do justice to.
In sum, these
texts pose no threat to Nicene faith once the economic-immanent distinction,
the hypostatic union, and the eternal processions are properly understood. They
reveal the paradoxical glory of the Incarnation: the very One who, as Son by
nature, possesses all authority, knowledge, and life communicates these gifts
in history through the assumed humanity, so that “at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow” and, when the mission is consummated, “God shall be all in
all.”
