[deanberris]

What this changes

This encodes the second question of #216: do the texts of the Son's obedience make him less than the Father? No existing verdict moves. It covers part of #219 (implementation) and #220 (publishing).

The texts are John 5:19, 30; 14:28; 20:17; 1 Corinthians 11:3; and 15:28. Ken Kibbey's Living Systematic Theology (§3) says they "establish real personal and mediatorial order, but they do not by themselves establish inequality of divine nature or an eternal hierarchy of command and obedience". All three parts hold:

• The texts establish an order of Father and Son in the work of salvation (lstOrder_establishes).
• They leave open whether the Son is less than the Father in his divinity (order_texts_leave_lesser_divinity_open).
• They leave open whether the order is an eternal relationship of authority and submission (order_texts_leave_eternal_authority_open).

The parties

There are seven:

• LST, which holds only the order the texts establish.
• The Arians. Their reading is primary-sourced to the creed of Sirmium (357), which uses John 14:28; Augustine and Calvin report it.
• Augustine, who reads John 14:28 by the two forms: less in the form of a servant, equal in the form of God.
• Athanasius, who reads "greater" of the Father as the one the Son is from.
• Calvin, who reads it of the humbled Mediator. He denies that the verse speaks of either nature, which puts him against Augustine's reading.
• Grudem and Ware, for an eternal order of authority and submission.
• Giles, against it.

What the weighing finds

• The order prevails, and nothing else. LST's position is accepted however the disagreements are settled (the_order_prevails).
• On the Son's divinity, every position ties. The Arian reading and each Nicene reading defeat each other, and so do Calvin's and Augustine's. Each can be defended and none is forced, the Arian one included (arian_reading_defensible and the *_not_forced verdicts). That is because every one of those readings is rated disputed.
• On the eternal order, the two positions tie. Grudem–Ware and Giles defeat each other, and neither is forced.

Step ratings

All the steps were audited, and every one comes out wellSupported. The disagreement sits in the readings, which are cited and rated disputed:

• Athanasius's reading. The creed of Sirmium (357), and opponents Gregory of Nazianzus reports (Oration 29.15), grant "greater as the one he is from" and still conclude a greater Godhead.
• Giles's reading. Grudem grants the Son's equality in power ("equal in power and glory", the ETS basis) and denies that eternal submission contradicts it. Giles concedes the identification is his own (2008, p. 327).
• The step to the order is worded so that it does not assert two persons. The Oneness writer David Bernard grants every text and reads Father and Son as the deity and the humanity of one person.

What it does not claim

• That the Son is less than the Father, or that the Arian reading is likely. The dispute hears five verses, Philippians 2:6, and four readings of John 14:28. It does not hear John 1:1, 20:28 and the other texts LST confesses his divinity from; those are the next question. The pages say so.
• That LST's "personal" order is checked. What is checked is the order in the work of salvation. Whether the order belongs to the persons as they eternally are is the third claim, and it is left open.
• That the independence results are deep. They are checked with each verse as its own words and each reading as its own premise. Whoever holds that "greater" plainly means greater in divinity has put a reading into the verse, and that reading is the premise rated disputed.
• That Augustine or Athanasius held an eternal order of authority. Their readings stand with Grudem and Ware's position, and equally with Giles's (nicene_readings_stand_with_the_eternal_order, nicene_readings_stand_with_giles).

For the reader

There are two new chapters, "Is the Son less than the Father?" and "Weighing the readings of the order texts". The introduction and the roadmap's findings and near-term sections are updated.

The reader-review agent read the pages, and its findings are applied:

• Calvin was shown denying the two forms rather than Augustine's reading of the verse.
• "Not forced" was claimed for three readings without a theorem.
• A count was wrong.
• The Arian sourcing was second-hand.
• Glosses were missing for lay readers.

A rendering bug also turned up: the LST locus showed as "§§3". The fix covers the procession chapter already on main.

Checks run

• python3 scripts/testimony_lint.py, clean. The library is unchanged.
• in arguments/: lake build, lake lint, lake exe axiom-audit, and scripts/kernel-replay.sh TestimonyArguments bibgen argtex statusgen argdoc
• bibgen, statusgen, argdoc, argtex, each with --check; mdbook build docs
• read the generated pages

Pinned counts in Checks.lean:

Count	Before	After
packages with a model	199	206
non-entailments	101	105
bibliography entries	204	214
headline results	262	284

The AIF check also lists one new dispute.

Sources

There are ten new entries. Every identifier was verified by the source-verifier agent at Open Library or Crossref; quotations were checked in public texts.

• NPNF. First series vol. 3 (Augustine, On the Trinity); second series vol. 3 (Theodoret, Arius's letter); second series vol. 4 (Athanasius, Against the Arians, De Synodis).
• Calvin, Commentary on John, vol. 2, pp. 102–103. The existing calvinJohn entry is vol. 1, which does not contain John 14.
• Grudem, chapter in Ware & Starke (eds.), One God in Three Persons (2015), p. 40, read in the publisher's sample.
• Grudem, ETS outline (2016), on his own site.
• Giles, Evangelical Quarterly 80.4 (2008), DOI verified, pp. 323 and 327.
• Ware (2005), Giles (2006), Erickson (2009). ISBNs verified; no page of any of the three was read, so each is cited whole. Ware's words are quoted as Giles quotes them, and Erickson's as Grudem quotes them.

Named in rating prose only, with no bibliography entry: Bernard, The Oneness of God; Gregory of Nazianzus's Orations, whose NPNF volume is already an entry; and the ETS doctrinal basis.

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