Honour the Son Even as the Father

Article 3 of 13 in the series “The Old Paths of Trinitarian Doctrine: Reading Edmund Calamy’s Thirteen Sermons.”

Edmund Calamy’s third sermon begins his extended answer to arguments for an inferior or subordinate deity in the Son. His governing text is John 5:23:

“That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.”

The word translated “even as” is καθώς (kathōs): “as,” “just as,” or “in the same manner as.” Calamy treats it as the controlling comparison. Christ does not ask for a reduced religious respect proportioned to a created dignity. The Father wills that the Son receive the honour given to the Father.

That demand forces the doctrinal question. If the Son is one God with the Father, equal divine honour follows. If he is not one God with the Father, worshipping him as Scripture commands becomes an apparent transfer of the Creator’s glory to a creature.

The Setting of John 5

The command to honour the Son arises from Christ’s healing at Bethesda and his ensuing controversy with the Jewish leaders. Jesus does not answer their accusation by retreating into the role of a mere prophetic agent. He declares that the Son does whatever the Father does, gives life to whom he will, and exercises judgment so that all may honour him as they honour the Father.

Calamy observes that the sequence joins divine work and divine worship. The Son’s claim is not that he imitates a distant superior with limited delegated power. “What things soever” the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father raises and quickens; the Son raises and quickens. The Father judges; the Son judges. The equality of operation grounds the equality of honour.

This does not erase personal order. The Father sends and the Son is sent. The Father loves the Son and shows him all things. Yet the Son’s works are not those of a creature carrying out a small commission. They are the universal works of life and judgment.

Honour Belongs to the Godhead

Calamy makes a necessary distinction: divine honour is due to the Godhead, not to Fatherhood considered in isolation. The Father is worshipped because he is God. If the Son possesses the same Godhead, he possesses the same right to worship.

This exposes the instability of “subordinate deity.” One may distinguish civil honours among created ranks. A king, magistrate, parent, and teacher may receive different kinds of respect. Divine worship is different. It acknowledges the infinite Creator as the final object of trust, prayer, obedience, and adoration. There cannot be two levels of proper deity without two levels of gods.

The New Testament does not hesitate. It commands faith in Christ, invocation of his name, obedience to his commandments, total self-devotion to his lordship, and praise that reaches into eternity. The Lamb receives the worship of heaven alongside the one seated upon the throne. Either this is divine honour or the distinction has lost its meaning.

“My Father Is Greater Than I”

The standard objection appeals to passages in which the Father is called Christ’s God, Christ prays, or Jesus says, “My Father is greater than I.” Calamy’s answer is Christological. The one person of Christ possesses a divine nature and a human nature. He also undertakes the office of mediator.

According to his humanity, the Son is truly less than the Father. He is born, grows, learns obedience, hungers, suffers, and dies. According to his mediatorial office, he is sent, receives commandment, and carries out the covenant purpose of redemption. None of this is theatrical. His obedience and humiliation are real.

According to his divine nature, however, he is equal to the Father. The Father has no perfection that the Son lacks. Calamy summarizes the distinction: considered as God, all that the Father has belongs to the Son; considered as mediator, the Son occupies an office the Father did not assume.

The incarnate Son can therefore say things that are true according to one nature or office without denying what Scripture says according to the other. “The Father is greater than I” belongs to the condition of humiliation and mission. “I and my Father are one” and “what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise” disclose equality of divine power and operation.

The Father as Christ’s God

Jesus calls the Father “my God,” and the apostles speak similarly after the resurrection. Calamy refuses both easy extremes. These texts cannot mean that Christ only appears human, because his humanity is real. Nor can they mean that his divine nature is a lesser deity, because Scripture elsewhere identifies him as the true God.

The Father is Christ’s God with respect to the human nature and mediatorial relation the Son assumed. The mediator represents his people before God, obeys in their place, and receives the promised inheritance. This relation belongs to the economy of salvation.

The incarnation is therefore indispensable to interpretation. A method that gathers only the texts of humiliation will produce a creaturely Christ. A method that neglects them will produce a Christ who did not truly become man. Nicene Christology exists to let the whole scriptural witness speak.

“The Son Can Do Nothing of Himself”

John 5 also says that the Son can do nothing of himself. Is this an admission of impotence? The rest of the sentence rules that out: whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.

Calamy interprets the inability as the impossibility of independent or contrary action within the one Godhead. The Son does not act from a separate will that might conflict with the Father. Father and Son possess one divine power and operation. The statement signifies inseparability, not deficiency.

At the level of the mediatorial mission, the Son likewise acts in perfect obedience to the Father who sent him. But even there, his works disclose a power no creature possesses. He gives life “to whom he will.” The will is personal; the power is divine.

Do Not Magnify the Father by Diminishing the Son

Calamy’s pastoral warning is one of the sermon’s strongest passages. Christians can react against one error so strongly that they fall into its opposite. A professed zeal for the Father may become a denial of the Son’s glory.

No honour is added to the Father by contradicting his testimony about the Son. The Father commands that the Son be honoured. To refuse that honour under the pretext of defending divine supremacy is to resist the Father’s own will.

Calamy therefore cautions against imagining that one can “court the Father” by making the Son inferior. The Father is glorified in the Son, and whoever refuses the Son’s honour dishonours the Father who sent him.

Precision without Reckless Accusation

The sermon also exhibits an important moral balance. Calamy will not minimize a doctrine that governs Christian worship, but neither will he infer a person’s inward motives merely from unfamiliar wording. He says he is unwilling to suspect people of dangerous error without good reason. Different expressions do not always conceal different faiths.

That restraint does not produce doctrinal neutrality. Calamy distinguishes patient judgment about persons from exact judgment about propositions. The proposition that the Son is a lesser deity is false and dangerous because it changes the object of Christian worship. Whether a particular person understands, embraces, or consistently follows that proposition requires further evidence.

This distinction anticipates the final sermon’s union of truth and love. Charity does not make theology indefinite; it governs how definite theology is applied to neighbours.

The Worship Test

John 5:23 finally brings every theory to the church’s worship. Can Christians pray to Christ, entrust their souls to him, sing eternal praise to him, and expect him to raise their bodies without committing idolatry?

Calamy’s answer is yes, because the Son is not a second or inferior God. He is personally distinct from the Father and possesses the same undivided divine nature. The honour reaches the one God, personally given to the Son.

This is why the doctrine cannot be reduced to metaphysical terminology. It determines whether the church’s worship is true. A Christ who is less than God cannot bear the honour Scripture commands; the Christ revealed in Scripture can bear it because he is one with the Father.

Previous: Article 2, “The Son Is the True God and Eternal Life.”
Next: Article 4, “The Mystery of God, the Father, and Christ.”