1. Biblical Trinitarians teach that the Divine, eternally pre-existent Jesus, is subordinate to the Father.
2. They misrepresent Grant by failing to note that he clearly states Jesus is divine.
3. Anti-Trinitarians create a false dilemma in the mind of the reader by projecting the false illusion that if Jesus is subordinate to the Father, that he cannot be God! A wife is subordinate to her husband, but is equal in nature. Her rank is lower, but she is made of the identical stuff as the man!

"An anonymous author of the late second century discusses some of the apologists among those who held doctrines like his. Since he himself refers to "our compassionate God and Lord, Jesus Christ" as well as to "the compassionate Church of the merciful Christ," he obviously represents a "high" Christology. He claims that Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, and Clement spoke of Christ as God, while Irenaeus and Melito called him God and man. He says nothing about the Logos doctrines of these authors but notes their teaching about Christ's divine nature. In Philo a Logos doctrine had bridged the gap between his transcendent, abstract God and the world. It also explained how theophanies could be included in the Old Testament revelation. The point was picked up in John 1: 18: "No one has ever seen God; the Only-begotten God at the Father's bosom has interpreted [or revealed] him." Among the apologists too the Logos is the one who appears in the theophanies. But Justin describes this Logos as a second God, one who proceeded from the Father before creation in the manner of word or fire or spring water. "The Father of the Universe has a Son, who also, being the first-born Logos of God, is God." Tatian too has a Logos doctrine but speaks of Christ as "the God who suffered." Similarly, Clement refers to Christ as God. In spite of these points, the Christology of the apologies, like that of the New Testament, is essentially subordinationist. The Son is always subordinate to the Father, who is the one God of the Old Testament. This is related to the fact that in the apologists there is generally no clear distinction between Logos and Sophia or between either of them and Spirit." (Gods and the One God, Robert M. Grant, p109)

"Various expressions from this passage [Philippians 2:5-11], perhaps a hymn, occur among later theologians, but as a whole it did not win special favor before the rise of the kenotic theologies of the late nineteenth century. There may be echoes in Gnostic myths, always concerned with the preexistent Christ. In any event, the passage makes it plain that before Christ Jesus emptied himself he was not human but divine." (Gods and the One God, Robert M. Grant, p105)

"What we find in these early authors, then, is not a doctrine of the Trinity- a term we reserve for a doctrine that tries to explain the relation of the three Persons to the one God-but a depiction of the three Persons. In other words, we find the materials for such a doctrine but not a doctrine as such. Indeed, it might not be completely wrong to suggest that the Christian triad developed out of three different categories of being: the Father who creates, preserves, redeems, judges; the Son, the historical and human revealer and redeemer who somehow transcends humanity; and the Holy Spirit, essentially a spiritual experience that came to be personified. Even if this could be viewed as a correct picture of the earliest stages of doctrinal development, the meaning of the doctrine was not necessarily-or one might say '.necessarily not"-expressed in its initial stages. We cannot apply some sort of cultural primitivism to the history of Christian doctrine. To be sure, trinitarian doctrine has continued to provide difficulties, but again, simplicity is not the criterion we should wish to apply in dealing with them. The Three in One: The doctrine of the trinity in unity is not a product of the earliest Christian period, and we do not find it carefully expressed before the end of the second century." (Gods and the One God, Robert M. Grant, p156)

"Arianism: Before Nicaea, Christian theology was almost universally subordinationist. Theology almost universally taught that the Son was subordinate to the Father (see, for example, chapter 8), but Arius expressed this kind of Christology in a provocative way. It was especially offensive at Alexandria, where Origen had tried to overcome subordinationism even though he shared many aspects of it. Presumably Arius' true views can be seen in his letter to his ally Eusebius of Nicomedia. He objected to the slogans of his own bishop, Alexander of Alexandria, such as: 'Ever God ever Son, together Father with Son, the Son exists unbegottenly with God, ever begotten, unbegotten in kind, not by a thought or a moment does God precede the Son, ever God ever Son, from God himself the Son.' Arius vigorously criticized contemporaries who called the Son a "belch" (presumably in reference to Ps. 45:2; see chapter 10) or an emanation" or "alike [to the Father] ungenerated."

More soberly, Arius claimed to "say and think and have taught and teach that the Son is not ungenerated nor a portion of anything ungenerated in any way or out of any substratum. Instead, by choice and will he originated before times and before ages, fully God, only begotten, immutable. And before he was begotten [Ps. 2:7] or created [Prov. 8:22] or defined [Rom. 1:4] or founded [Prov. 8:23], he was not. He was not ungenerated. We are persecuted because we say, The Son has a beginning but God is without beginning." The bishop of Nicomedia agreed with him. "It is obvious to anyone that what has been made was not before coming into existence. What comes into existence has a beginning of being." The slogan of Arius and his allies soon came to be this: "There was when he was not." (Gods and the One God, Robert M. Grant, p160)

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Written By Steve Rudd, Used by permission at: www.bible.ca