Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith

by Michael Reeves

the very fact that certain Christian beliefs can be shared by other belief systems shows that they cannot be the foundation on which the Christian gospel rests, the truth that stands “before all things.”

For what makes Christianity absolutely distinct is the identity of our God.

The bedrock of our faith is nothing less than God himself, and every aspect of the gospel—creation, revelation, salvation—is only Christian insofar as it is the creation, revelation and salvation of this God, the triune God.

I could believe in the death of a man called Jesus, I could believe in his bodily resurrection, I could even believe in a salvation by grace alone; but if I do not believe in this God, then, quite simply, I am not a Christian.

the Trinity is the governing center of all Christian belief, the truth that shapes and beautifies all others. The Trinity is th...

Strangely enough, who and what God is like tend to be things we assume we already know and so do not need to think much more about.

Yet the temptation to sculpt God according to our expectations and presuppositions, to make this God much like another, is strong with us.

The trouble is, the triune God simply does not fit well into the mold of any other God.

instead of starting from scratch and seeing that the triune God is a radically different sort of being from any other candidate for “God,” we try to stuff Father, Son and Spirit into how we have always thought of God.

usually in the West, “God” is already a subtly defined idea: it refers to one person, not three. So when we come to the Trinity, we feel like we’re trying to squeeze two extra persons into our understanding of God—and

and that is, to say the least, ...

And hard things get left. The Trinity becomes that ...

We imagine God would be a simpler being—a single-person God.

Perhaps, then, it is not so much the seemingly bad math of the Trinity that puts us off as the sheer imposition of an unexpected sort of God.

Qur’an explicitly and sharply distinguishes Allah from the God described by Jesus:

Say not “Trinity.” Desist; it will be better for you: for God is one God. Glory be to Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son.[1]

Allah is a single-person God. In no sense is he a Father (“he begets not”), and in no sense does he have a Son (“nor is he begotten”).

Allah, then, is an utterly different sort of being to the God who is Father, Son and Spirit.

Allah exists and functions in a completely different way from the Father, Son and Spirit.

which God will we worship? Which God will we ever call others to worship?

If we content ourselves with being mere monotheists, and speak of God only in terms so vague they could apply to Allah as much as the Trinity, then we will never enjoy or share what is so fundamentally and delightfully different about Christianity.

The irony could not be thicker: what we assume would be a dull or peculiar irrelevance turns out to be the source of all that is good in Christianity.

the vital oxygen of Christian life and joy.

“Uncaused” or “Unoriginate,” he therefore held, was the best basic definition of what God is like.

Athanasius simply boggled at Arius’s presumption. How could he possibly know what God is like other than as he has revealed himself? “It is,” he said, “more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate.”