Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves is an accessible and thoughtful account of the Trinity and the Triune God’s relation to the Christian life. The reader will discover how understanding the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit makes all the difference for understanding discipleship in our world today.
The Trinity shapes and makes the Christian life one of great joy and delight.
When trying to explain the Trinity, it is easy to become mired in numerical conundrums (1+1+1=1) or to become simply silent before an inexplicable mystery. Yet Christians are called to give an account of their faith. This study provides an excellent guide for why the Trinity is central to Christian teaching. The reader will engage a rich theological account that is both accessible and profound.
The Trinity is more than a teaching. This Triune God is the very source of delight and joy in the life of all Christians. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit freely extend communion to all through Christ, drawing those who respond into a divine abundance of love. Far from being simply a moral code, the Christian life involves dwelling in this love and sharing it with others.
In this summary, you will learn:
- why God the Father is only known through the Son by the power of the Spirit;
- how both creation and salvation are not divine necessities but divine gifts; and
- why the Holy Spirit is not an amorphous force but the Giver of life in Christ.
To understand God as Trinity is to delight in God as love.
Most of us are comfortable with saying, “God is love.” To say “God is Trinity,” however, might leave us more perplexed. Think of the many explanations of the Trinity. It’s like an egg, a shamrock, or the three different forms of water/ice/vapor. Such illustrations can sound more desperate than true. Gone is the delight we take in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Too often, the Trinity is seen as irrelevant dogma or as a sheer mystery that no one really understands. Yet in Scripture, “mystery” refers not simply to the unknown. Paul, for example, wants all to see “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known” (Ephesians 3:9-10). God has revealed Himself to us. Though we cannot exhaust our knowledge of God, we can know God as Trinity. Such knowledge is not abstract but an invitation to participate in divine love and gaze upon infinite beauty.
Some have pointed out that the word “trinity” is not in the Bible. While this is true, it is also true that throughout the New Testament, God is addressed and described as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While other Christian beliefs – bodily resurrection, for example – are shared with other religions, the Trinity is the unique heart of Christianity.
Too often, we start with the idea of one God shared in common with others, a kind of neutral God that then takes on distinctive characteristics. From this position, it can seem as if Christians are left squeezing in two more divine persons and then defending how God is one. Yet there is no neutral, self-explanatory God. In the Qur’an, for example, Allah is already defined as one who neither begets nor is begotten. Rightly understood, Allah is not a God we share in common with Islam but a (supposed) deity who is already not a Father.
To say God is Creator differs from understanding God as triune. God did not have to create the world but did so freely and out of love. God is the Creator, but this is not essential to His identity, or else God would be dependent upon there being a creation.
Some use “Almighty” as the highest description of God. Yet the meaning of “Almighty” is not obvious. Hitler, in fact, used this term. Only through God’s revelation in Christ do we understand the true nature of power. To say that God is Father is to say that God is essentially life-giving. For the Father eternally begets and delights in the Son. God does not have love but is love.
The Son is the Son by virtue of His eternal relation to the Father and vice versa.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Father, you loved me before the creation of the world” (John 17:24). These and other passages (Colossians 1:17, for example) point to Jesus as the eternal Son. Just as there was never a time when the Son was not the Son, so also there was never a time when God the Father was not Father. From all eternity, the Father delights in the Son even as the Son loves the Father. God the Father freely offers us this love through the Son. As Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9).
It might be tempting to see the Father and Son as personal in a way that the Spirit is not. Some interpret the Spirit as a kind of amorphous divine force. Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173), however, argued that if God were only two persons, then such a god would be ungenerous. Two people in love can easily ignore others. Yet true human love opens outward. So also, argued Richard, can we speak analogously of God. Through the Spirit, the Father and Son delight in sharing their love. So understood, the triune God does not become loving but is love from all eternity. Scripture thus describes the Spirit as a real Person who grieves, teaches, sends, and so forth.
A common mistake when thinking about the Trinity is to imagine that Father, Son, and Spirit are different roles or “modes” of being that God becomes. A common version of this belief (known as “modalism”) is that God was Father in the Old Testament, the Son in the New Testament, and the Spirit in our time now. The image of God as different forms of water – ice, water, steam – communicates the same. Modalism, however, undermines the triune God. For if the Son is only a role, then adoption into the communion that the Son shares with the Father ceases to make sense…
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