Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
What this book is not: a technical, scientific, or abstract theological treatise on the Trinity. Complex terminology is avoided, and you will not find explicit discussion of eternal generation, inseparable operations, or the double procession of the Spirit. These things can be discerned as part of the foundation, but the book is not about them.
What this book is: a devotional on why the Trinity is important and foundational to Christian faith, written in such a way as to be accessible to high schoolers.
The author's premise is pretty simple: the Trinity is foundational to our Christian faith and to our understanding of God. His three-ness is what sets him apart from all other gods and it is key to what makes him God. The book heavily stresses that God is relational and outward-looking, a self-giving and other-oriented God. This is only made possible by his tri-unity, whereas a monadic God can only be inward-looking, self-absorbed, and fundamentally uninterested in creation or anything else outside of himself.
The book has a couple weaknesses. First is the date: it was written in 2012, before the EFS debate necessitated greater clarity on Trinitarian language. The book does not explicitly push EFS, but it does speak of the Father sending and directing the Son. You will find some social Trinitarianism in here, if you go looking for it. Subjective as this may be, I get the senes that if the author had written the book 5-10 years later, he simply would have cleaned up some of the language a bit without feeling a need to recant any beliefs stated in this book. Second: it heavily emphasizes God's three-ness but I am not sure it places a balancing emphasis on his one-ness.
The positives outweigh the negatives: it's an easy and pretty enjoyable read. It makes its case well for the vital importance of God's Trinitarian nature to our faith. That said, the book's most valuable contribution came from a place that the author perhaps did not intend. He references the "99 attributes of Allah", one of which is that he is loving - and poses the question of who or what Allah loved before or outside of creation. I used this to strike up a good conversation with a Muslim friend of mine. If everything else about the book were absolutely terrible, this alone would make it worth the purchase price.
What this book is: a devotional on why the Trinity is important and foundational to Christian faith, written in such a way as to be accessible to high schoolers.
The author's premise is pretty simple: the Trinity is foundational to our Christian faith and to our understanding of God. His three-ness is what sets him apart from all other gods and it is key to what makes him God. The book heavily stresses that God is relational and outward-looking, a self-giving and other-oriented God. This is only made possible by his tri-unity, whereas a monadic God can only be inward-looking, self-absorbed, and fundamentally uninterested in creation or anything else outside of himself.
The book has a couple weaknesses. First is the date: it was written in 2012, before the EFS debate necessitated greater clarity on Trinitarian language. The book does not explicitly push EFS, but it does speak of the Father sending and directing the Son. You will find some social Trinitarianism in here, if you go looking for it. Subjective as this may be, I get the senes that if the author had written the book 5-10 years later, he simply would have cleaned up some of the language a bit without feeling a need to recant any beliefs stated in this book. Second: it heavily emphasizes God's three-ness but I am not sure it places a balancing emphasis on his one-ness.
The positives outweigh the negatives: it's an easy and pretty enjoyable read. It makes its case well for the vital importance of God's Trinitarian nature to our faith. That said, the book's most valuable contribution came from a place that the author perhaps did not intend. He references the "99 attributes of Allah", one of which is that he is loving - and poses the question of who or what Allah loved before or outside of creation. I used this to strike up a good conversation with a Muslim friend of mine. If everything else about the book were absolutely terrible, this alone would make it worth the purchase price.
