Considering the Deep Things of God

Earlier this year I made a sad discovery.  I discovered that I have no books on the Trinity.  I have plenty of Systematic Theologies with sections on the Trinity.  The closest thing to a book on the Trinity in my library was probably J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.  While not on the Trinity, as an heir to the Puritans he was quite Trinitarian in his theological approach.  So, in the words of Uncle Duncan in Braveheart, “We’ll have to rectify that.”

“Forget the Trinity and you forget why we do what we do; you forget who we are as gospel Christians; you forget how we got to be like we are.”

One of the books I bought to remedy that was Fred Sanders’ book The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything.  I’m on a combination of vacation and study leave, so I thought this was a good time to read it.  I’d have a bit more time to think on it.

Prior to leaving on vacation the guy who lives with us commented “he keeps talking about evangelicalism”.  Sanders’ point is that Trinitarian thinking has long been foundational to evangelical thinking.  This foundation has been cracking of late as the implicit has been largely forgotten or at least seen as non-essential.  His goal is limited to evangelicalism.  This is the Christian heritage of which he is a part and which he wants to be healthy and growing.  He’s not trying to evaluate and critique other traditions in the visible church.

These means that while Sanders uses Scripture, he’s not putting forth a biblical-theological defense of the Trinity.  He’s more concerned with how our Trinitarianism plays out in our understanding of our faith and practice.  So the reader must keep this focus in mind and not expect something profoundly different.

Sanders does draw on the writings of earlier evangelicals of different stripes to illustrate how deep the heritage runs (and how shallow our present experience).  So you find sections looking at Francis Schaeffer, Susanna Wesley, C.S. Lewis, Adolph Sahpir, Henry Scougal and more.

“A gospel that rearranges the components of your life but does not put you personally in the presence of God is too small.”

Sanders starts with salvation.  He says “The Trinity is the gospel.”  And that could be misunderstood.  The gospel reveals the reality of the Trinity which was largely hidden in the Old Testament.  But in the gospel we come to experience fellowship with the Trinity.  We really cannot understand the gospel if we don’t understand the Trinity.  And you’ll never understand the Trinity apart from the gospel.  This is how God has revealed it most profoundly in Scripture.

What he is saying is similar to John Piper’s point in God is the Gospel, to which he refers.  Sanders takes a slightly different approach than Piper (since he is a different guy).  While I found his presentation deep and edifying, at times I found it verbose, repetitive and abstract.  I thought of one of my elders who is in engineer.  He would not like this book.  He doesn’t think a book like this should resemble a novel.  He wants to know where you are going to go from the onset, and have an idea of how you will get there.  He is not part of the intended audience for this book.

This section of the book takes up 4 chapters.  He leans on some heavy hitters like J.C. Ryle and John Flavel in the process.  He spends time unpacking various aspect of the gospel: Incarnation, atonement, adoption etc.  He talks about the “two hands of God” referring to the Son and the Spirit.  His comparison of their ministries to us is helpful.  He helps us to grasp the biblical interplay between the 3 persons of the Trinity for our salvation.

“Doctrine is important, but it is not an end in itself.  There is to be an experiential reality, moment by moment.”  Francis Schaeffer

From there Sanders moves to 2 aspects of the Christian life important to evangelicals: reading Scripture and prayer.  He handles, briefly, the sacraments under our life in Christ.  Evangelicals of most stripes have been weak on sacramental theology.  The Reformed heritage has been far more robust in this area.  The shallowness of thought and infrequency of participation are part of what makes the church weak, in my estimation.  Sanders wants us to see, however, how the Trinity is at work (and how we have fellowship with our Trinitarian God) as we read Scripture and pray.  The former was a better chapter than the latter, I think.  I suspect these things bear more thought.  For instance, the Trinitarian nature of the inspiration of Scripture.  Hebrews is rich in this regard as we see “God says”, “the Son says” and “the Spirit says”.  We even find “He says to the Son”.  At times we get snippets of their conversations in Scripture.  This should encourage and inspire us.

This book is a very good contribution to our understanding of the Trinity.  It did lead me to think more deeply about the Trinity, and more biblically about the Trinity.  It bears reading for many of us.  I’m glad Fred Sanders took the time to put these thoughts to paper.