Understanding the Trinity  
 

"Christian understanding of God, culminating in the doctrine of Trinity is deep and rich, and the reader must be warned from the beginning that the best that this book can do is to scratch the surface," writes Alister McGrath in his preface to Understanding the Trinity. The book has served its purpose well, both in helping to understand one’s own faith and to explain it to others.

     Although it has 10 chapters only the last four are on Trinity proper. In the first six chapters he ably builds a firm groundwork before he unpacks the most enigmatic of Christian doctrines – the doctrine of Trinity. All the chapters are peppered with apt illustrations that make interesting reading.

      The book begins with current skepticism about God’s very existence. McGrath starts off with very convincing apologetics. He takes the critics of God, head on. He makes a very clear distinction between knowing God and knowing about God. He rejects two popular ideas namely ‘that God is a projection of human ideals’ and ‘that God is the opiate of the people’.

      In the chapter that follows he advances three arguments to suggest that belief in the existence of God is reasonable. He calls the three arguments the Argument from Morality, the Argument from Rationality and the Argument from Desire. He believes that if a reliable knowledge of God is to be had, a more reliable source than nature is required. The Scripture establishes a reliable framework for thinking and talking about God which goes far beyond the very modest knowledge of God which is possible to derive from nature. He argues that the Scripture endorses insights drawn from nature through natural theology. He makes it clear that what is offered to us in the pages of Scripture is not just information about God, but the living God Himself. Christianity is not like some sort of religious education in which facts are pumped into our heads; rather it is like a love affair-something powerful, challenging and possessing real meaning to those involved. He concludes this chapter by stating that “To know God is to encounter the living and loving God and really to live and really to love as a result”.

      The next chapter is devoted to the importance of visualizing God in some sort of way. The author does not prefer to talk about God in terms of abstractions (as many theologians tend to do). He observes that the Scripture offers us a series of highly effective pictures of God (such as God as a father, God as a shepherd) drawn from everyday life, building up to give us a comprehensive view of what God is like. The author agrees that these images are not adequate in themselves, nevertheless, together they give a consistent and satisfying picture of what God is like. He recognizes the limitations of human words to describe God, and in this context quotes Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who pointed out that human words were completely incapable of describing something as mundane as the aroma of coffee. McGrath therefore suggests that it is helpful to think that the scriptural models or pictures of God reveal God in manageable proportions so that the human  mind can cope with Him.

      In the two chapters that follow McGrath examines some of the biblical models of God in order to see how they combine to build up an overall portrayal of God. He deals with the models of God as shepherd, God as spirit, God as  parent, God as light, God as rock and the most powerful of all, God as a person. He warns his readers that models are only ‘partial and conceivable representations of reality’ and that we are authorized to use only certain models – within the framework of the Scripture. He mentions that there are three levels in which any Biblical model of God can be seen. First, they are a collection of words. Second, we have the image, which those words combine to create in our minds-images of God as shepherd, father and so on. Third, there is the reality of God himself. He is not identical with these verbal pictures, but they correspond to Him, they echo Him and they capture His likeness. The biblical model of God as a person has several implications. God cannot be treated as an object, something which we can examine at our leisure and under conditions of our choosing. Thus we are also set on the road  which leads to the recognition that God is three persons.

      Chapter 6 of the book is devoted to show that the supreme illustration of God as a person is found in the incarnation. He insists that to abandon faith in incarnation is to lose sight altogether of the centrality of Jesus to the Christian faith. McGrath also demonstrates that there is no logical contradiction of any sort in incarnation. Since man is made in the image of God, in asserting that Jesus is man and God, no logical contradiction is involved. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead demonstrates that Jesus Christ is divine, and thus establishes that He has unique status and identity, which distinguishes Him from all other human beings.

      In the four chapters that follow, he outlines the Christian understanding of the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ. In chapter 7 (The Road To Trinity), with vivid illustrations, the distinction between Kerygma (proclamation) and dogma (doctrine) is brought out very clearly. The proclamation is that God redeems us in Jesus Christ – the doctrine is that God must therefore be a Trinity.

      In chapter 8 McGrath bites into the meat of his message. He skillfully puts together what ‘God is one and three’ means. He avoids the opposite mistakes of modalism on the one hand and tri-theism on the other. He starts by stating that the idea of trinity, as a committee somewhere in the sky is ludicrous. He then explores why Christians believe in Trinity and what it is that they believe about it. He begins by showing a number of verses in both the OT and NT which affirm that God is one. Then there are also verses about Jesus where he is understood to act as God and for God. Jesus allows us to sample God. Similarly the NT insists that in the Holy Spirit we really encounter none other than God himself. To the all important question “what God are you talking about?” he gives us this answer: The God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and is now present in the Church through the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of Trinity does not explain how it is that God is able to be present in this remarkable way – it simply affirms that God is present and available in this manner. He concludes this chapter with an important corrective. When we talk about God as one what we mean is that He is one being and when we talk about God as three what we mean is that He is three persons. Thus to affirm the divinity of Father, Son and Spirit is not to suggest that there are three gods, but simply that the one God can be encountered in these different ways, all of which are equally valid.

      In the next chapter he explores the dilemma which the early Church faced: to adopt either a God who could be understood, but could not redeem, or a God who could redeem, and yet not be understood. The Church went for the second option. He says that it is helpful to see God as Father, Son and the Holy Spirit as three essential models for understanding God. All the three models need to be combined together to capture the full depth of Christian understanding and experience. In the end McGrath reminds us that it is very difficult to find illustrations for the doctrine of Trinity for the doctrine is in a class of its own. The danger with illustrations of the doctrine is the danger of confusing the representations of God with the reality of God.

     The concluding chapter is entitled ‘The strong name of the Trinity’ where the author draws together the great themes of the book. The doctrine of Trinity is the Christian’s last word on God, he says. The doctrine is to Christian experience what grammar is to poetry- it establishes a structure, a framework, which enables us to make sense of something which far surpasses it. He rejoices in the fact that God has chosen to reveal himself.

 “Against the tendency of human beings to invent or construct their own idea of God and then worship it (which is idolatry) or declare that it is not worth worshipping (which is rationalism), we may set the exciting and deeply disturbing Christian insight that God has taken the initiative in revealing himself to us.”

      The book ends with a stanza from the hymn: Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons blessed Trinity!  

     Although it is full of convincing apologetics, the author goes beyond that –he knows that the only way to be sure about the living God is to encounter him and this can happen to people who know almost nothing about him. Both theologians who want to communicate the grand theme and ordinary Christians devoid of theological training would find McGrath’s book a marvelous guide on the great doctrine. The book would be worth reading and if one could afford worth buying!