But co-equal?  Why?  There are more than a few places which
show that Jesus is not equal with His Father - one example is John
14:28.  Some people say that
this is because when Jesus was on the earth he became fully human,
and had to give up some of His (what's the word I'm looking for)
glory and power.  But what about 1 Corinthians 11:3 which states that
the head of Christ is God?  This was written *after* Jesus had
returned to sit at His Father's right hand in heaven.

The problem is that "equality" can mean a lot of different things.  I
think it's pretty clear that Jesus is equal to the Father in some ways
and not in others.

Part of the problem comes from confusing two different doctrines: the
Trinity and the Incarnation.  The Trinity talks about the relationship
between the Father, the eternal Logos, and the Holy Spirit.  The
Incarnation talks about how the Logos became a human being.  (I'm
using the term Logos to refer to the Son as he is in eternity, one of
the three persons of the Trinity.  This is obvious based on John 1.
Unfortunately the term "Son" is used in at least three different ways
in Christian doctrine, so I try to avoid it in contexts where
confusion is likely.)

The equality is primarily between the Father and the Logos.  What's at
issue here is whether Jesus is the incarnation of God or of some
subsidiary being.  The Trinity was originally formulated in an
environment saturated with neo-Platonic thought.  In neo-Platonist
philosophy, it was thought that matter was evil.  The world wasn't
created by God himself, because God wouldn't be so silly as to create
such an evil thing.  Rather, it was created by an intermediate
entity.  The question that faced Christians was whether Jesus was the
incarnation of the real God or of something less.  One could interpret
Logos in the neo-Platonic context as being an intermediate entity.
However it's unlikely that this is what John (or any of the other NT
writers) meant.  In its original Jewish context, the Word was God's
creative power.  It was really something intrinsic to God, not some
separate and inferior entity.  Thus the Church decided -- correctly in
my opinion -- that the Logos was simply one aspect of God, and not
something separate.  Thus Jesus is the incarnation of the Real Thing,
and not of a subsidary emanation.

When people think that Jesus is obvious inferior to the Father, I
believe they're thinking of two things.  One is the obvious fact that
Jesus is a human being, and the Father is not.  The other is that
Jesus subordinates himself to the Father in obedience and prayer.  But
we're now in the arena of the Incarnation, not the Trinity.  The
Trinity says that the Logos is fully God, and equal in nature to the
Father.  But Jesus is the *incarnation of* the Logos.  The Logos is by
nature immortal.  But his human incarnation is quite visibly mortal.

However there's another sense in which Jesus is not equal to the
Father.  That's Jesus' obedience to and dependence on his Father.  Now
given the two different doctrines, it would be easy enough to say that
this is just another result of the fact that Jesus is human.  But
Christian theology goes a bit deeper than that.  The whole idea of
Jesus being the incarnation of God is that looking at Jesus is
supposed to show us God.  So if Jesus is obedient and dependent on
the Father, is it possible that this isn't just a vestige of his
humanity, but that God himself is in some way dependent?  Christian
theology asserts that this is in fact that case.

At this point it becomes very hard to explain things with complete
clarity, because we see God's nature only very dimly.  But Christian
theology claims that in some way God does experience the kind of
child-like, loving obedience that he calls on human beings to
exhibit.  This is a consequence of the fact that God is love.  We know
this by seeing Jesus' love for the Father.  If Jesus really does show
us God, we have to conclude that God is somehow capable of
experiencing the relationship of love within himself.  It's important
to see this capability as being actually part of God.  He didn't have
to create people in order to be able to love.  Love is part of his
nature.  This is why God can give us the ability to love as a gift --
because God did it first.

This ability for God to experience both the Father's love and that of
the obedient child creates a sort of distinction within God.  It's not
a physical separation, as if the north half of him obeys the south
half.  There's only one God.  But in some sense he experiences more
than one personal role.  We call these the Father and Son.  (The Holy
Spirit is not treated in as much great detail in Trinitian theology,
at least in the West.  It is somehow associated with the relationship
of love itself, and the personal presence of the Father with the Son.)
So ultimately there are three different answers to the question of
whether the Father and Son are equal.  It depends upon exactly how the
question is meant.

1. If the question is whether the Father and the eternal Logos are
equally God, the answer is yes.  They are both aspects, modes of
existence, persons, or what have you, of a single God.  They're not
separate entities.  Thus they have the same nature, and in that
sense they're equal.

2. If the question is whether Jesus -- the human incarnation of the
eternal Logos -- is equal in nature to the Father, the answer is
obviously no.  A human being is inferior to God in nature.  (Of course
this particular human being is united to God in such a way that
answering questions like this can be theologically dangerous.)

3. If the question is whether Jesus or the eternal Logos (this applies
to both of them, because in this respect Jesus is the visible, human
form of the Logos) is inferior to the Father in the sense that his
role is one of childlike obedience, the answer is yes.  This is an
inferiority of relationship (or perhaps precedence), not nature.
Human children are inferior to their parents in the same way, not
because they are different and inferior species, but because the
relationship of child to parent is one of subordination.