The God Who Is Triune: Revisioning the Christian Doctrine of God

by Allan Coppedge

"We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity." (Athanasian Creed, 6th century A.D. The triunity of the Christian God is not just one isolated doctrine among others. Allan Coppedge unfolds the implications of the trinitarian being of God for our entire understanding of the nature, character and acts of God. Building on the theology of the church from the early church fathers, tracing it through the Reformation and down to current theological treatments of the Trinity, Coppedge draws out the implications for our understanding of God's nature, attributes, roles, and relationship to creation and providence.

Genres: Theology

345 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

Reviews

[Bob]

The author does a good job laying out the New Testament evidence & the early theological developments toward understanding God as triune, making a case that understanding God as three in one & one in three, as Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, is essential to understanding who God is.

The author has a unique starting point when discussing God, the traditional four categories of attributes are discussed--personal, moral, relative, & absolute--but they are approached in a different order. Coppedge begins with God's personal attributes (discussing attributes such as God's social nature, life, heart, moral capacity, freedom, creativity, & responsibility) & moral attributes. Only then does he move on to God's relative & absolute attributes. This means that God's sociality, will, freedom, & righteousness come before & exercise a controlling role over attributes such as omnipotence. He insists that this doesn't lessen God's glory or holiness, or diminish God's transcendence, but it means that who God is isn't lost in discussions of what God is capable of.

It is here where I think we need to be careful; I believe that this approach or at least the author’s application of this approach can lead to some problems. Problems in our understanding as to who God is, as He has revealed Himself. There is always a tendency for man to make God in our image or to make God one whom we can more easily relate to, or maybe feel more comfortable with. Now I am not saying that the authors has committed heresy, but I think he is not only leaning in the wrong direction but he begins to go down a path that can lead us away from God. There are some things about God that cannot be explained comfortably & definitely some things that we simply accept as is without knowing how God’s attributes work themselves out without contradicting himself.

So the book has some value, however there are several others that should be read & considered first.

[Markevans]

I have five areas in which I deeply appreciated and loved this book and then one area, which really was at the heart of the argument of this book (and it came to the fore in the final few chapters), where I am in sharp disagreement:

1. I love that his doctrine of the Trinity begins with Jesus. For Coppedge, Jesus himself is the window into our understanding of the Trinity - love it!

2. One of the central points in this book is that the Persons (hypostases) of the tri-personal trinity are really the foundation for our understanding of the rest of God's attributes. This is an important point. We have often (especially in the wake of Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin) emphasized the oneness of God over and against the Threeness of God and what we are left with is not a triune God, but rather a God that looks more like the "god" of philosophy, or theism, or deism - omnipotent, omniscient, etc. Now, there is always going to be a tension and a paradox between the oneness and the Threeness of God, but I deeply resonated with Coppedge's desire to think more like the Eastern church and start first with the Threeness of God rather than the oneness of God and then build out our theology of God's power, providence, knowledge, attributes from that foundation. I think this is important and it reminds us that we relate to God as Father, Son, and Spirit - he is personal in his very existence - he is a being in community and on that note I also liked the emphasis this book had on "perichoresis" that the three Persons live within one another - it was good for me to get better acquainted with that historic terminology.

3. I loved the emphasis on understanding the metaphors that God uses over and over to explain himself - Father, King, Judge, Shepherd, Personal Revealer - it was helpful to think through these aspects of God and I took Coppedge's point that we need a multi-faceted approach that embraces all the metaphors God uses instead of prioritizing only one or two.

4. I think Coppedge is totally right about the centrality of both holiness and love as being the two dominant and all-encompassing attributes of God.

5. I appreciated the way Coppedge lines up classical theism with an over-emphasis on the transcendence and immutability of God and then process theology (and it's little sister open theism) with an over-emphasis on the immanence and mutability of God. Although I would parse things out a little differently (see below), I do agree with him totally that "triune theism" is the counter to these equal and opposite pitfalls.

And that brings me to my main issue with the book. Coppedge and I have a fundamental difference on the notion of "freedom" and the ever-debated notion of "free-will." But with that said, this was probably the best thing I have ever come across that really made me engage with a Wesleyan view of human freedom - it was very well done even though I disagree with it. His argument is essentially that the Persons of the Trinity have freedom to chose. Thus, "freedom" is inherent to personhood. Since humans are persons made in God's image, we also have freedom to chose. My problem with Coppedge's thinking is that it falls into what I have come to belive is an error that is made by most Wesleyan/Arminian theologians (God bless them). The error is that if God chooses, then man can't be simultaneously choosing. Likewise, when man is choosing, God cannot be simultaneously choosing. The choice of one always prevents the choise of the other. But I think this is not the way things work. God's choices and our choices overlap like a novelist who writes the novel and the character who acts in the novel. I see this in the narratives of Pharaoh for example, and Judas, to name a few. In this way I am a "compatabalist" (Coppedge calls this "soft determinism") in these debates; for example, I think that when Pharaoh hardens his own heart (Exodus 8:15) and when God hardens his heart (Exodus 9:12) it's actually the same thing and, although there is mystery here, the freedom of neither is actually impinged. I like J.I. Packer's use of the word "antimony" in this (in Evangelism and the Sovereinty of God) - these two truths of human freedom and God's soverign choosing appear to be contradictory but they actually run parallel. Anyway, I know this is an endless debate fraught with problems and often all sorts of ridiculous false caricatures and straw men, but utlimately I have come to conclude after reading this that Coppedge has a pre-commitment to a particular anthropomorphic understanding of personal freedom and then he applies that concept to the Persons of the Trinity in an illegitimate way in this book. Thus, he roots the "free-will" of man incorectly in the freedom of the three Persons. I think a better approach would be to actually look at the way the Persons of the Trinity "work" in the economy of salvation - the Father elects, the Son atones for those elect, and the Spirit applies salvation to those elect - so what you have there is a unity in will and at the same time a dynamic, immanent expression of that will worked out in time (contra fatalism) and also worked out in the personal, authentic choices of all who turn to Jesus (or resist and turn away). I think then what you have in the Trinity is the freedom of the Persons excercising a unity in will. Ultimately, for me it is Trinitarian theology applied to soteriology that is the strongest argument for a Reformed/Calvinistic view of both salvation and human freedom. The decrees of God are worked out in time and space and also in personal, subjective experience...but that does not mean that God somehow limits or accommodates his own decrees, modifies them or adjusts them with his own freedom to allow for the existence of human freedom - no the picture I see in Scripture is that humans make authentic choices, and God relates personally to those choices, and yet as it turns out all those authentic choices are simultaneously predestined and determined by God before the foundation of the earth.

Update (July 3, 2016): One other flaw in the book is that Coppedge at times preferred to emphasize God's love over God's passion for his own glory. I understand why he did this - because he wants to show how God deeply desires a relationship with his people - but unfortunately this simply does not square with the many references in Scripture to God's "jealousy" - He is zealous for the honour due to him. The key I think, is to understand, like Piper so often reminds us, that God's zeal for his glory is not at odds with his love for us and our joy in him.

[SusanwithaGoodBook]

I've been working my way through this for a while now. It's very similar to Coppedge's Portraits of God which I loved, but this felt a little repetitive. I think the Trinity book came first and then Coppedge expanded the different roles of God into Portraits. In any case, this was a good dive into the Trinity and how the doctrine of the Trinity affects other beliefs we have. I don't know that I agree with every word, but there were some interesting insights to ponder. I do want to caution anyone interested: this is a very dense book, probably intended for a seminary study, not a daily devotional-type study.

[James Korsmo]

In The God Who Is Triune, subtitled Revisioning the Christian Doctrine of God, Coppedge undertakes a systematic exposition of the doctrine of God. The key to the book, though, as its title makes clear, is that Coppedge draws on the triunity of God as the key for his reconstruction. The book opens with two chapters laying out the New Testament evidence, larger biblical "frame," and early theological developments toward understanding God as triune, making a case that understanding God as three in one and one in three, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is essential to understanding who God is. He then goes on to construct a fuller doctrine of God, covering the classic themes of God's attributes, creation, and providence, but he does it all after laying the trinitarian groundwork and in light of these fundamental insights. This makes Coppedge's book a valuable contribution to the field.

Coppedge's material on the Trinity is very well done, and I think he lays out very clearly and helpfully the essentials necessary for constrcting a theology of the Trinity. He shows much sympathy toward an Eastern approach to the Trinity that starts more from God's threeness and goes on to assert God's unity, though he also shows sympathies toward the more Western, Augistinian approach of starting from God's unity. Overall, though, this Eastern trend helps give the trinitarian drama to his whole presentation, as it keeps the vibrant interrelational life of God center stage as moves on to discuss God's being and attributes and God's relation to creation.

One of the defining insights of the book is that a Trinitiarian starting point means that when one moves to discussing God, the traditional four categories of attributes are still discussed--personal, moral, relative, and absolute--but they are approached in a different order. Coppedge begins with God's personal attributes (discussing attributes such as God's social nature, life, heart, moral capacity, freedom, creativity, and responsibility) and moral attributes. Only then does he move on to God's relative and absolute attributes. This means that God's sociality, will, freedom, and righteousness come before and exercise a controling role over attributes such as omnipotence. The result of this is that a picture of a vibrant, alive, relating God comes to the fore. This doesn't lessen God's glory or holiness, or diminish God's transcendence, but it means that who God is isn't lost in discussions of what God is capable of. Instead of focusing on God's being in himself, with a focus on God's unity as the omnipotent and omnipresent being above and beyond the universe one meets God as Father, Son, and Spirit, forever relating as living, loving, active beings who come to meet us in holiness and invite us to enter into their trine life. That, to me, is the refreshing aspect of this book. The Doctrine of God doesn't become abstract philosophical discussions about categories of being, though it does contain that, but it focuses instead on God as he makes himself known in a personal way. The focus is thereby supremely on God as made known in Jesus Christ, who becomes the key for our understanding of who God is.

I found Coppedge's expositon of the entire doctrine of God based on a trinitarian starting point to be supremely helpful. It helps to illumine all of theology by adding a relational element to God's very existence. It also points Coppedge (a Weslyan) toward an understanding of providence and freedom that entails God inviting human persons to enter into genuine relations with God and each other in true freedom. In short, I think it is one of the most helpful defenses I have read of a Weslyan (that is, essentially an Arminian) understanding of providence and free will, drawing as it does on God's very nature as the ground for its theological reasoning.

I highly recommend this book as a great resource on the doctrine of the Trinity, but more than that, I think it is essential reading for an example of how Trinity matters to all of Christian life and thought, instead of being a mere appendix to the doctrine of God to set it apart from other non-Christian expositions of theism. Not only did I benefit from it, but I enjoyed reading it. And further more, I was drawn closer to God through it, by being reminded that God isn't an amorphous being up there but is instead chooses to be known as Father, Son, and Spirit: in short, God lets us know who he is, and that's a lot more intimate than focusing on what or that God is.

[Russell Frazier]

I wrote a review essay or (partial) response to this book. It was published in the Asbury Journal. Here is the bibliographical information: review essay, “Assessing Christocentric and Trinitarian Theism: An Open Dialogue with T. A. Noble, Dennis Kinlaw, Allan Coppedge, and William Ury,” The Asbury Journal, Spring 2026, vol. 81, no. 1, 337-357. Here is the link: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/cgi/...

[Ron Mackey]

To be honest, I only made it about 2/3 through this book. It is good, thorough, but reads liek a text book. I had trouble engaging the subject matter. I'm a simpleton!