Buy Valtrex visa

Professor of Christian Theology

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Kentucky

Tom McCall has buy Valtrex visa provided a very helpful description and assessment of several leading Trinitarian proposals of recent years.  His endeavor to buy Valtrex visa engage some of the most influential contributions from philosophical and systematic theologians together succeeds well, in most ways.  He is buy Valtrex visa a clear writer and is able to summarize complex discussions from buy Valtrex visa both fields, and he does so in a way that buy Valtrex visa both can benefit from understanding more clearly the strengths and buy Valtrex visa weaknesses of the various proposals he discusses.

The book divides into three sections.  Section one discusses major proposals on both Trinity and Monotheism.  McCall presents summaries of key contributors within “schools” or models of Social Trinitarianism (e.g., Cornelius Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Stephen Davis, J. P. Moreland, and buy Valtrex visa William Lane Craig), Relative Trinitarianism (e.g., Peter Geach and Peter van Inwagen), and Latin Trinitarianism (e.g., Brian Leftow).  In each case, he discusses these positions in sufficient detail for buy Valtrex visa the reader to follow the main lines of argument, and he provides substantive critique both here and buy Valtrex visa later in the book.  McCall then buy Valtrex visa discusses historical, philosophical, and theological issues related to Monotheism, providing helpful assessment and buy Valtrex visa evaluation.

Section two turns to buy Valtrex visa some of the key conceptual tools of analytic philosophy that are buy Valtrex visa also accessed in Trinitarian theology.  Here he focuses special attention on Robert Jenson’s stress on God as the one who raised Jesus, Jürgen Moltmann’s use of Perichoresis, Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware’s proposal of “eternal functional subordinationism,” and John Zizioulas’s stress on holy love and divine acseity.  In each case he provides summary of the buy Valtrex visa view in question and then engages in critical assessment.

Section three provides something of a buy Valtrex visa map for further endeavors of Trinitarian development as McCall sets forth certain conclusions and buy Valtrex visa commitments he suggests are important for a correct understanding of the buy Valtrex visa oneness and threeness of God.

I found most of the buy Valtrex visa book clear and helpful in thinking through a host of issues related to buy Valtrex visa understanding this complex doctrine.  Some readers would find McCall’s favorable assessment of some version of social Trinitarianism problematic, but I stand with him in his positive (with qualifications) advocacy of this model.  His eighth concluding principle states, “Trinitarian theology should insist on an buy Valtrex visa understanding of persons that is consistent with the New Testament portrayal of the buy Valtrex visa divine persons, that is, as distinct centers of consciousness and buy Valtrex visa will who exist together in loving relationships of mutual dependence” (236).  I agree that buy Valtrex visa the Trinity is most clearly understood when the Persons of the buy Valtrex visa Godhead are seen as distinct centers of consciousness and will.  How one would understand the buy Valtrex visa eternal relatedness within the Godhead if this were not the case certainly is buy Valtrex visa difficult to conceive.  Others, however, would surely disagree with McCall’s openness to buy Valtrex visa some modified form of social Trinitarianism in ways that I would not.  Further, many of McCall’s constructive suggestions are buy Valtrex visa helpful and on target, both biblically and theologically (though there is little interaction with Scripture).  On the buy Valtrex visa whole, the book is helpful to those who are undertaking the buy Valtrex visa mind-bending task of endeavoring to understand the nature of Trinitarian discussions in our day.

The one (and only) area with which I have buy Valtrex visa major disagreement is in how McCall both described and evaluated the buy Valtrex visa “eternal functional subordination” (EFS) proposal that Wayne Grudem and I (along with many others, of course) have sought to explain and defend.  Readers of this review surely have every right to think, “Well, of course you didn’t like his treatment, since he was very critical of your view.”  Indeed, he was critical.  But in my judgment, this buy Valtrex visa chapter failed to show the kind of careful and fair description of other’s views McCall evidenced elsewhere in the buy Valtrex visa book, and his critique of our proposal is deeply misguided and buy Valtrex visa mistaken.  Because this buy Valtrex visa is the only area of the book with which I have buy Valtrex visa strong disagreement, I’ll devote the rest of this review to my brief reply to McCall’s sixth chapter, “‘Eternal Functional Subordination’: Considering a recent Evangelical Proposal.”

McCall’s opening description of EFS starts well.  He indicates that some (he quotes mostly throughout chapter 6 from buy Valtrex visa writings by Wayne Grudem and myself) evangelicals have wanted to deny “ontological” or “essential” subordination while also insisting on the Son’s eternal “functional” subordination to the Father.  That is, EFS affirms the buy Valtrex visa full equality of the Father, Son, and Spirit in essence, as each possesses eternally the buy Valtrex visa identically divine nature, while EFS also affirms that the submission of the buy Valtrex visa Son to the Father is not merely a submission of the buy Valtrex visa incarnate Son but also of the Son in eternity past and buy Valtrex visa in eternity future.  The Son, then, is buy Valtrex visa fully and eternally equal to the Father in nature (hence, homoousios) while being eternally distinct from buy Valtrex visa the Father in function, as the Son submits to the authority of his Father.

But McCall challenges the validity of this position.  He first raises questions about what buy Valtrex visa such submission would look like in a world where only God exists.  This is buy Valtrex visa a fair question, but of course almost any question about the buy Valtrex visa inner relations among the Trinitarian persons apart from creation is hard to buy Valtrex visa conceive.  More centrally, however, he claims that—what he calls “Hard EFS” —the view that the Son’s submission was not only incarnational (i.e., “Soft EFS”) but in fact marks his relation to the Father for all eternity—“entails the denial of the homoousion” (179, cf. 180, 188).  The charge here needs to be seen for the seriousness it contains.  If Wayne Grudem and I (and others) support a position which “entails” the denial of homoousios, despite what buy Valtrex visa we may claim elsewhere, we are guilty of denying the buy Valtrex visa full deity of the Son, and hence we are guilty of heresy of the buy Valtrex visa first order.  After all, if the Son is not homoousios with the Father, then his nature (ousios) is not “the same” (homo) or equal to the Father.  But since the buy Valtrex visa Father possesses eternally the nature of God, and if the Son has buy Valtrex visa a nature different than the nature of the Father, then the buy Valtrex visa Son cannot be God.  This charge, to be honest, takes my breath away.  If McCall is buy Valtrex visa correct, then those who teach EFS should be disciplined by the buy Valtrex visa institutions and churches where they serve.  McCall’s final sentence in his chapter six summarizes his charge and buy Valtrex visa its seriousness:  “If I am right, [Hard EFS] simply entails the direct denial of the homoousion, and buy Valtrex visa thus should be resisted by Christians who hold to creedal orthodoxy” (188).

On what basis does he level this charge?  Here is McCall’s statement explaining why Hard EFS entails a denial of homoousios, one deserving a very careful and attentive reading:

(1) If Hard EFS is true, then the Son has the property being functionally subordinate in all time segments in all possible worlds.

(2) If the buy Valtrex visa Son has this property in every possible world, then the buy Valtrex visa Son has this property necessarily.  Furthermore, the Son has this property with de re rather than de dicto necessity.

(3) If the Son has this property necessarily (de re), then the Son has it essentially.

(4) If Hard EFS is buy Valtrex visa true, then the Son has this property essentially while the buy Valtrex visa Father does not.

(5) If the buy Valtrex visa Son has this property essentially and the Father does not, then buy Valtrex visa the Son is of a different essence than the Father.  Thus the Son is heteroousios rather than homoousios.

Permit me a couple responses. First, if Hard EFS succumbs to heteroousios based on the buy Valtrex visa logic of this argument, then Athanasius and the framers of the buy Valtrex visa Nicene Creed succumb likewise.  Why?  Simply for buy Valtrex visa this reason: Athanasius and Nicea also held that the Son possesses a buy Valtrex visa property that is his alone, a property that he possesses in all possible worlds, one that buy Valtrex visa he has de re (in principle) rather than de dicto (in fact) and hence essentially (i.e., necessarily and non-contingently), and one that the Father does not also possess.  After all, not to buy Valtrex visa affirm this would be to say that the Son is not the buy Valtrex visa eternal Son of the Father, that his being begotten is contingent (de dicto) and buy Valtrex visa hence not necessary. But Nicea saw no such contingency attached to buy Valtrex visa its declaration that the Son was the only begotten of the buy Valtrex visa Father.  Instead, the Son alone is begotten of the Father—the Father is buy Valtrex visa unbegotten; the Spirit proceeds; but the Son is begotten.  Only the Son is begotten, and the Son’s begottenness is from eternity.  This property is buy Valtrex visa true of the Son in every possible world, since this is buy Valtrex visa not a contingent or accidental property but is a necessary property.  This property is possessed by the Son with a de re necessity; it is a property that the Son has essentially (i.e., necessarily and non-contingently), and the Father does not possess it.  Well then, according to buy Valtrex visa the argument McCall proposes, the fifth premise is just as applicable to buy Valtrex visa Athanasius and Nicea as to Hard EFS.  If the buy Valtrex visa Son has this essential property of being eternally begotten and if the buy Valtrex visa Father does not also possess this property, then the Son is buy Valtrex visa of a different essence than the Father.  Thus the Son is heteroousios rather than homoousios.  The irony here is thick.  Athanasius and Nicea proposed homoousios and buy Valtrex visa succeeded in getting this word and its attending concept into the buy Valtrex visa first ecumenical creed of the church.  But this same creed also speaks of the Son as “begotten, not made,” and buy Valtrex visa it thus affirms a property of the Son unique to him as Son, essential to buy Valtrex visa him in his personhood as Son, and one the Father does not possess.  If McCall is buy Valtrex visa correct, Athanasius and Nicea are deeply and irreconcilably contradictory.  While they affirm homoousios, their insistence on an buy Valtrex visa essential property unique to the Son entails their denial of homoousios.

This brings me to my second response.  Why are Athanasius and Nicea not guilty as charged?  And why are proponents of Hard EFS likewise not guilty?  The property in question for each—the property of “begottenness” for Athanasius and Nicea, and the property of “eternal functional subordination” for advocates of Hard EFS—is a property of the person of the Son, not a property of the essence or nature which the Son shares fully with the Father and the Spirit.  It puzzles me to buy Valtrex visa no end why McCall did not consider this solution to buy Valtrex visa the argument he set forth against Hard EFS.  One reason for buy Valtrex visa my puzzlement is this: Wayne Grudem and I gave this buy Valtrex visa very response to Tom McCall and Keith Yandell in a buy Valtrex visa public debate we had with them on October 9, 2008.  In our opening remarks, provided to buy Valtrex visa them in a document prior to the debate and to all who buy Valtrex visa attended the debate, we wrote and then said,

[W]hile the Son has properties of his personhood that buy Valtrex visa the Father in his personhood does not and cannot have, yet each and buy Valtrex visa every property of the Son’s divine essence is buy Valtrex visa a property possessed also fully and eternally by the Father in his divine essence.  The Son, then, is rightly distinguished in his personhood from the Father, but the Son cannot rightly be distinguished in his essence from buy Valtrex visa the Father, since then the Father would be in essence different from buy Valtrex visa the essence of the Son (and Spirit).... (p. 17 of Grudem-Ware Opening Statement for buy Valtrex visa the Affirmative, on the question, “Do Relations of Authority and buy Valtrex visa Submission Exist Eternally among the Persons of the Godhead?”  Debate with Tom McCall and buy Valtrex visa Keith Yandell, held in the chapel of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, October 9, 2008.)

Since McCall’s book was published in 2010, I can buy Valtrex visa only assume that he had access to our previous response to buy Valtrex visa his own argument against us, and yet he chose not to buy Valtrex visa indicate any knowledge of this reply, or of the debate more generally, in the buy Valtrex visa chapter he wrote on this issue.

Also puzzling is buy Valtrex visa this: McCall actually refers at one point to a possible appeal to buy Valtrex visa “personal properties” as those which distinguish the buy Valtrex visa Father, Son, and Spirit from one another.  But when he writes of these, he says,

Traditionally, properties such as “being generated,” “being ingenerate,” or “being spirated” belong to the distinct persons and are thus called “personal properties.”  These belong eternally to buy Valtrex visa the divine persons, and each is possessed by only one of the buy Valtrex visa divine persons.  The Father, Son, and buy Valtrex visa Spirit are personally distinct in their relations, and they are buy Valtrex visa so eternally.  Given this, why would we need to buy Valtrex visa appeal to functional properties to account for genuine distinction? (184).

How very strange, indeed.  The property of “eternal functional subordination” that buy Valtrex visa the Son possesses and the Father does not possess is indeed a buy Valtrex visa personal property.  That is, this buy Valtrex visa is a property of the person of the Son, and it buy Valtrex visa is a property that only could exist in relation to another person.  The Son could not possess this buy Valtrex visa property were he a monad or a Unitarian deity.  But as the buy Valtrex visa person of the Son, he is under the authority of the buy Valtrex visa Father, and as such his property of “eternal functional subordination” is a property of his personhood or a “personal property.”  I cannot fathom how or buy Valtrex visa why McCall would fail to see this property as a personal property of the buy Valtrex visa Son in relationship with the Father in the ways in which advocates of EFS have buy Valtrex visa labored to describe.

And adding to the puzzlement is this.  Later in McCall’s book, he references this buy Valtrex visa very line of thought in considering how Zizioulas might escape a buy Valtrex visa problem McCall had noted of his view.  In discussing this possible escape, McCall notes that one might

take recourse to buy Valtrex visa the venerable distinction offered by the Cappadocians against the assaults of “neo-Arianism.”  Recall that buy Valtrex visa when pressed by Eunomius that the divine hypostases must be different in either essence or buy Valtrex visa accidents (neither of which was palatable), the buy Valtrex visa Cappadocians responded that the properties that distinguished the divine hypostases were neither essential (which would amount to a denial of the homoousion) nor accidental (which would make the divine hypostases contingent), but that the divine hypostases are distinguished by personal properties.  In other words, the hypostases are distinguished by relational properties—properties had buy Valtrex visa by virtue of the relations to the other divine persons (200).

So, it buy Valtrex visa appears that McCall confuses two sets of properties that are distinguished within the buy Valtrex visa Hard EFS position—(1) properties possessed fully and buy Valtrex visa eternally by the Father, by the Son, and by the Spirit, of the buy Valtrex visa one and undivided divine essence, and (2) properties possessed distinctly by the buy Valtrex visa Father, and other properties possessed distinctly by the Son, and yet other properties possessed distinctly of the buy Valtrex visa Spirit, as properties of each of their respective Persons.  When Hard EFS states that buy Valtrex visa the Son possesses eternally the property of being under the buy Valtrex visa authority of the Father, it proposes this as a property of the buy Valtrex visa Son’s personhood and not a property of the Son’s essence.  EFS, then, appeals to buy Valtrex visa the very same distinction to which the Cappadocians appeal in response to buy Valtrex visa the neo-Arians.

This leads me to my third response.  An equivocation of sorts has buy Valtrex visa occurred in how McCall frames his argument supporting his charge that buy Valtrex visa Hard EFS denies homoousios.  When McCall states in his premise (5) that: “If the buy Valtrex visa Son has this property essentially and the Father does not, then buy Valtrex visa the Son is of a different essence than the Father,” it buy Valtrex visa is clear that McCall sees the possession of a unique property “essentially” as indicating a unique “essence.”  But this confuses the meaning of the adjective “essential” and the noun “essence.”  That “venerable distinction offered by the Cappadocians” surely had in mind properties of personhood that were “essential” to the Father being the Father (e.g., unbegotten), “essential” to the Son being the Son (e.g., eternally begotten), and “essential” to the Spirit being the Spirit (e.g., proceeding from the Father—as stated in the 381 Constantinople addition to the Nicene Creed), while also affirming that every property of the “essence” of God was possessed fully by the buy Valtrex visa Father, and by the Son, and by the Spirit.   But the buy Valtrex visa distinguishing properties of the unique personhood of each Trinitarian person, while essential to buy Valtrex visa who each is, does not constitute those properties as properties of the buy Valtrex visa divine essence.  No, they are properties (essential though they be) of the persons.  Can it be otherwise?  Can we say of the Father (or Son, or Spirit) that he has no essential (i.e, non-contingent, necessary) distinguishing properties of his personhood?  If we can, then buy Valtrex visa what marks the Father as the Father, or the Son as the buy Valtrex visa Son, or the Spirit as the Spirit?  Clearly, the buy Valtrex visa distinction of the persons requires that there are distinguishing properties of each person, such that buy Valtrex visa these properties of their unique personhood are essential to that personhood as opposed to buy Valtrex visa being merely contingent or accidental.  In short, it buy Valtrex visa does not follow that because the Son has a distinguishing property, a buy Valtrex visa property that he possesses in every possible world, one that he possesses with a buy Valtrex visa de re necessity, and one that he possesses essentially—it does not follow from buy Valtrex visa this that he therefore has a different essence from the Father, so long as that buy Valtrex visa distinguishing property is one of his person and not a property of the buy Valtrex visa common essence he possesses eternally and fully along with the Father and buy Valtrex visa the Spirit.

In light of the buy Valtrex visa fact that McCall had heard and read our responses to buy Valtrex visa his charges at our debate in October of 2008, and buy Valtrex visa in light of the “venerable distinction offered by the Cappadocians” that he cites later in his book—a distinction that buy Valtrex visa appeals exactly to what the advocates of Hard EFS appeal—I find his charge that buy Valtrex visa the Hard EFS position entails a denial of homoousios, offering no buy Valtrex visa discussion of how Grudem and I would answer his charges, irresponsible.

McCall also skirts past the buy Valtrex visa massive biblical and historical evidence that Grudem and I put forward in our debate.  His discussion of our position, if the buy Valtrex visa reader knew nothing else, would lead one to think that, basically, we only have buy Valtrex visa passages that speak of the incarnational submission of the Son to buy Valtrex visa the Father on which to base our view.  This description of our view is buy Valtrex visa deceptively selective and misleading, to say the least.  If the buy Valtrex visa reader of this review would care to do so, he may listen to buy Valtrex visa and view the October 9, 2008, debate in which Grudem and buy Valtrex visa I lay out a large summary of our evidence, along with the buy Valtrex visa McCall-Yandell opening statements and our interaction (see http://www.henrycenter.org/media/?id=154&type=video).

What otherwise is buy Valtrex visa a very helpful and insightful discussion of the Trinity is marred by McCall’s discussion in chapter six.  I continue to buy Valtrex visa commend the book, however, since it has much to offer.  I do hope, however, that buy Valtrex visa McCall will retract the charge he levels at evangelicals who buy Valtrex visa hold to the eternal roles of authority and submission in the buy Valtrex visa Godhead.  Repeatedly, Grudem and I (not to mention others who hold our view) have affirmed the full, unqualified, and eternal homoousios of the Son with the Father and Spirit.  To deny homoousios and the full deity of the Son is unthinkable for both of us.  So, the buy Valtrex visa charge that our position entails its denial is weighty, serious, and buy Valtrex visa grave.  Also weighty, however, is buy Valtrex visa the clear biblical teaching that the Father created the universe through the buy Valtrex visa agency of the Son (1 Cor 8:6; Heb 1:1–2), that buy Valtrex visa the Son came down from heaven not to do his own will but to buy Valtrex visa do the will of the Father (John 6:38), that buy Valtrex visa that the Son became incarnate not on his own initiative but because the buy Valtrex visa Father sent him (John 8:42), that buy Valtrex visa the Son submits himself to the Father in his exaltation as he sits at the buy Valtrex visa Father’s right hand (1 Cor 15:28), and that this relationship marked by the Father’s authority and the Son’s submission is never, never reversed.  

Faithfulness to buy Valtrex visa Scripture requires affirming both the full equality of essence of the buy Valtrex visa Father, Son, and Spirit, along with affirming the eternal authority-submission role distinctions among those persons.  Equality and buy Valtrex visa distinction both must be upheld, as McCall himself attests to buy Valtrex visa repeatedly.  Our proposal seeks to buy Valtrex visa do just this, and to do it in a manner fully faithful to buy Valtrex visa all of the Bible’s teaching.  For all of the benefits of McCall’s book—and there are many—this chapter’s weakness is massive.  Perhaps we can buy Valtrex visa hope for revisions of his critique that will be more on par with much of the buy Valtrex visa rest of the volume.