Theopedia

Wayne Grudem

Overview

Wayne A. Grudem (b. 1948) is an American evangelical theologian, Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary, and author of the best-selling Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine.12 A co-founder of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and co-editor, with John Piper, of a foundational statement of complementarianism, he is also, alongside Bruce Ware, one of the “primary proponents” of the view that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father “in role and function,” a position theologians call eternal relations of authority and submission (ERAS) or eternal functional subordination (EFS).34

Life and Ministry

Grudem was born February 11, 1948, in Jim Falls, Wisconsin.1 He earned a BA in economics from Harvard University and an MDiv and DD from Westminster Theological Seminary, then completed a PhD in New Testament at the University of Cambridge in 1982 under C. F. D. Moule, with a dissertation on 1 Corinthians’ gift of prophecy that he later published.15 He taught for twenty years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he chaired the Department of Biblical and Systematic Theology, before moving to Phoenix Seminary as Research Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies in 2001.1 He served on the translation committee for the English Standard Version and as general editor of the ESV Study Bible (2005-2008), was president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 1999, and is a co-founder and past president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.1

Theological Contribution

Systematic Theology

Grudem defines systematic theology as “any study that answers the question, ‘What does the whole Bible teach us today?’ about any given topic,” and describes the discipline in practical terms: finding the relevant verses with a concordance, summarizing what they teach, and stating the result as points the Bible affirms.67 Systematic Theology (1994; 2nd ed. 2020) is cited by other scholars on subjects well beyond Grudem’s own specialty, including Christ’s active obedience and church eldership.89 Craig Carter counts it among the evangelical systematics whose heavy reliance on prooftexting “is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough” toward a fuller retrieval of classical theism.2

Complementarianism

Grudem co-edited, with John Piper, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism (1991), a foundational statement of the complementarian position that men and women are equal in worth before God but created for distinct roles in the home and the church.10 He later edited Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood (2002) and wrote Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions (2004), answering Gilbert Bilezikian’s case against role distinctions grounded in the Trinity.114

Opposition to gender-neutral Bible translation

Grudem, together with Vern Poythress, was a central figure in the debate over gender-neutral Bible translation at its peak around the turn of the millennium, when the TNIV’s move toward gender-inclusive renderings of masculine Hebrew and Greek terms drew sustained evangelical opposition.12

Eternal relations of authority and submission

Grudem is, with Ware, one of the “primary proponents” of a position on how the Son relates to the Father that Keith Goad calls the “subordinationist” model.3 Grudem writes: “The Father and the Son relate to one another as a father and a son relate to one another in a human family: the Father directs and has authority over the Son and the Son obeys.”13 He distinguishes this from the ancient heresy of the same name: “The heresy of subordinationism, which holds that the Son is inferior in being to the Father, should be distinguished from the orthodox doctrine that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father in role and function.”4 D. Glenn Butner Jr. defines the resulting position, which theologians also call Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission (ERAS) or the Eternal Submission of the Son (ESS): “A common evangelical theology of the Trinity that argues that the Son eternally submits to the Father, being subordinate in role or function but not in ontology or being.”14 In the Systematic Theology’s second edition, Grudem affirms that the Father is homoousios with the Son and the Spirit, yet holds that the Father, as first person of the Godhead, “leads, possesses authority, and has priority in relation to the Son,” that the Son “obeys and functionally submits to the Father,” and that the Spirit obeys and submits to both, reflecting the Spirit’s own eternal procession “from Father and Son.”15

On one related point, Grudem’s position shifted. He and Ware once questioned whether Scripture itself teaches the Son’s eternal generation from the Father, even while affirming the doctrine’s formal, creedal significance; both later affirmed eternal generation outright, persuaded by Charles Lee Irons’s lexical case that the Johannine term monogenēs means “only begotten.”16

Historical Significance

Grudem and Ware’s account of the Trinity became, in Keith Goad’s words, one of “the most vigorous contemporary debates and arguments concerning the Trinity” among evangelicals, a debate Goad traces to the wider argument over gender roles that both proponents and critics of ERAS were also engaged in.3 Critics defending the Nicene tradition’s own account of the Father-Son distinction through eternal generation answered at length, including Fred Sanders and Scott Swain’s edited volume Retrieving Eternal Generation (2017), Robert Letham, and several contributors to Michael Bird and Scott Harrower’s Trinity without Hierarchy: Reclaiming Nicene Orthodoxy in Evangelical Theology (2019).1617 Stephen R. Holmes, on hearing that Ware and Grudem had affirmed eternal generation after all, wrote: “I sincerely hope it is true, as all heaven rejoices when a sinner repents.”18

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Wikipedia, s.v. “Wayne Grudem,” accessed September 21, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Grudem. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Craig A. Carter, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 1, n. 35: “A great deal of contemporary systematic theology in conservative evangelicalism stops at this point and fails to take the next step. Wayne Grudem’s best-selling Systematic Theology is an example. The collection of prooftexts in support of doctrinal statements is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Keith Wesley Goad, “Contemporary Subordinationist and Equivalence Models: Tampering with the Trinity,” in “Trinitarian Grammars: A Comparison of Gregory of Nazianzus and Some Contemporary Models” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 263: “Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem are the primary proponents of the subordinationist model.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Wayne A. Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2004), 47, quoted in Goad, “Trinitarian Grammars,” 273. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Wayne A. Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000). ↩

  6. Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 21. ↩

  7. Grudem, Systematic Theology, 36-37. ↩

  8. Jonathan McCormick, “The Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Foreshadowed,” in “Active Obedience” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), citing Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 516-18. ↩

  9. Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth, 2017), chap. 27, citing Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology. ↩

  10. Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1991). ↩

  11. Bruce A. Ware, “Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God,” in Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood, ed. Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 71-92, cited in Oren R. Martin, “Bound for the Promised Land: The Land Promise in God’s Redemptive Plan” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2013), 54. ↩

  12. Dave Brunn, “Gender in Bible Translation: A Crucial Issue Still Mired in Misunderstanding,” Themelios 49, no. 1 (2024): 13. ↩

  13. Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 249, quoted in Goad, “Trinitarian Grammars,” 272. ↩

  14. D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022), 223, quoted in Samantha Ming Sum Cheng, “Contemporary Challenges to, and Defense of, the Eternal Procession of the Holy Spirit,” in “Retrieving Eternal Procession: A Dogmatic Western Account of the Holy Spirit’s Relation to the Father and the Son in the Triune God’s Divine Life” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2025), 270n59. ↩

  15. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), chap. 14, 269-337, 302, cited in Cheng, “Retrieving Eternal Procession,” 270n59. ↩

  16. Kyle William Bagwell, “The Minority Position: One Absolute Divine Authority and the Three Relative Authorities of the Persons,” in “The Command from His Father: Begotten not Made, Submissive not Subservient, Assigned not Subjected” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2023), 95-96, 95n69. ↩ ↩2

  17. Goad, “Trinitarian Grammars,” 273n51. ↩

  18. Stephen R. Holmes, “Classical Trinitarianism and Eternal Functional Subordination: Some Historical and Dogmatic Reflections,” in Trinity without Hierarchy: Reclaiming Nicene Orthodoxy in Evangelical Theology, ed. Michael F. Bird and Scott Harrower (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2019), 268n25, quoted in Bagwell, “The Command from His Father,” 95n69. ↩