'The divine Monarchy and Subordination in the Blessed Trinity': Nelson's 'Life of Bull' and Nicene subordinationism

We left Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull before Advent, considering how Bull's chief concern in Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (1685) was to refute Socinian and some advanced Remonstrant critiques of Nicaea. Having pointed to Bull's defence of Nicaea's understanding of the Son's pre-existence, divine substantiality, and eternity, we now turn to another but much more controversial "pillar" of Nicene teaching for Bull - the Son's subordination to the Father. Nelson quotes a lengthy extract from Bull, contending that the pre-Nicene and Nicene Fathers were agreed on the Son's subordination:

For they all with one consent have taught, that the divine Nature and Perfections do agree to the Father and Son, not Collaterally or Co-ordinately, but Subordinately: that is, That the Son hath indeed the same divine Nature in common with the Father, but hath it communicated from the Father, so as the Father alone hath that divine Nature from himself, or from no other besides, but the Son from the Father; and consequently, that the Father is the Fountain, Original and Principle of the Divinity, which is in the Son. The Catholick Writers, both they that were before, and they that were after the Council of Nice, have unanimously declared, God the Father to be greater than the Son; even according to his Divinity: yet this not by Nature indeed, or by any essential Perfection, which is in the Father, and is wanting in the Son; but only by Fatherhood, or his being the Author and Original; for as much as the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son. The Doctrine of the Subordination of the Son to the Father, as to his Origination and Principiation, the Ancients thought to be most useful, and even altogether necessary to be known and believed, that by this means, the Godhead of the Son might be so asserted, as that the Unity of God, nevertheless, and the divine Monarchy might still be preserved inviolate. For as much as not withstanding the Name and Nature are common to Two, that is, to the Father and to the Son, yet because one is the Principle of the other, from whom he is propagated, and that by internal not external Production; it thence followeth, That God may rightly be said to be but one God. And the same Ancients believed more over, that the very same Reason did hold likewise as to the Godhead of the Holy Ghost. 

Bull's robust defence of the Son's subordination as inherent to Nicene faith was, of course, attacked by critics for being incipient Socinianism. A rejection of the Son's subordination was indeed a key part of anti-Remonstrant theology; Reformed dogmatics were emphatically antisubordinationist.  Bull's understanding of the Son's subordination, however, not only had a significant heritage in the Church of England - the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth and the Laudian Jeremy Taylor shared this view of subordination. It was also the case that Bull regarded the Son's subordination as definitively part of Nicaea 's confession. 

This is evident in the structure of the Nicene Creed:

I believe in one God the Father Almighty ... And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God.

It is likewise evident in the discourse of the New Testament. Think, for example, of The Grace, said daily at Matins and Evensong:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.

The liturgy also reflects this more widely, with the Te Deum being a significant example:

We praise thee, O God : we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.

All the earth doth worship thee : the Father everlasting.

To thee all Angels cry aloud : the heavens, and all the powers therein.

In each of these statements the divine monarchy is implied, for "the Father is the Fountain, Original and Principle of the Divinity". Both statements made clear that there are not 'two - or three - Unbegottens'. The Father alone is unbegotten. It is this which is reflected in the structure and terminology of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, in the discourse of the New Testament, and in many examples from the liturgy.

As Nelson went on to expound, Bull's understanding of the divine monarchy and the subordination of the Son served and protected the fundamental affirmations of the Trinitarian faith:

This is the Sum of his Doctrine, concerning the divine Monarchy and Subordination in the Blessed Trinity, so as not to lessen either the Consubstantiality or Coeternity of the Son and Spirit with the Father. For tho' he maintained that there are in the Deity Three really distinct Hypostases or Persons, he no less strenuously insisteth, that there is and can be but  One God; first, because there is but one Fountain or Principle of  the Godhead, viz. The Father, who only is God of and from himself, the Son and Holy Ghost deriving from him their Divinity: And then because the Son and Holy Ghost so derived from the Fountain of the Divinity, as not to be separate or separable from it, but always to exist therein most intimately united.

The Son and the Holy Spirit are truly and fully God precisely because of the divine monarchy. The three Persons of the Holy Trinity are One God precisely because of the divine monarchy. It is this which challenges and rejects the interpretation offered by Samuel Fornecker in his excellent study of Arminian Conformity, Bisschop's Bench. Whereas Fornecker proposes that Bull's "soft subordinationism" - with that of Cudworth - found "expression in Samuel Clarke", through "multiple observable continuities", Nelson demonstrates that this is not so. The concerns of the anti-Trinitarian Clarke are entirely removed from Bull, whose affirmation of a patristic vision of divine monarchy, maintained by the East, was for the same purpose that the East adhered to this understanding: in the service of the faith of Nicaea.