A Book Review from Books At a Glance
by Ryan M. McGraw
Theology should be about learning to see ourselves, our world, in short, everything, in light of God and in relation to God. We cannot overstate the importance of the doctrine of God because knowing God in Christ is nothing short of the gospel itself (Jn. 17:3). How can we learn to live for God in our families, at work, in school, without getting to know God himself? Yet the best and highest thing God revealed to us about himself is that he is Triune. Beholding the Triune God makes substantial strides towards moving the Trinity from being merely a fundamental doctrine that we don’t really know what to do with, into a central place in every area of theology and Christian hope. While needing refinement at points, the authors ultimately train readers to see all three persons at work in everything God does, helping us balance the unity of God and personal distinctions in God in how we see and relate to God in Scripture.
The twin concerns of this book are that the one God acts as three persons, and that the one God is three persons (7). Through highlighting five Trinitarian categories, the authors root their teaching in divine simplicity, processions, taxis/order, missions, and appropriations (8-10). Their primary aim is to avoid atomizing the work of the Father, Son, and Spirit by seeing all three persons at work in everything God does. After establishing such foundational principles in the introduction, the following eight chapters illustrate these “inseparable operations” in divine revelation, providence, creation, salvation, the church’s mission, communion with God, sanctification, and judgment. At first glance, the order of some of the chapters might appear surprising. Since “God executeth his decrees through the works of creation and providence” (WSC 8), why treat providence prior to creation? (chs. 2-3). Moreover, salvation appears in chapter four, followed by mission, communion, and sanctification. Yet sanctification belongs to salvation, communion with God is where and how the church lives, and mission is what the church does. However, in theology, how authors present ideas is often more important than the order of the topics treated, and the authors show us the Trinity well in each connection. Each chapter is a fine example of who the one God is, Father, Son, and Spirit, and how God works from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, in order and at once. Creating patterns of thought directing us towards worship, Emerson and Smith teach us how to see everything in the world and in Christian experience with the mental habit of thinking of the one God as Father, Son, and Spirit, without losing either unity or personal distinction in God.
However, popular treatments of the Trinity run the risk of imprecision in definitions. For instance, the authors virtually conflate appropriations with the missions of the Son and the Spirit by saying that an appropriate act of a divine person is “uniquely associated with the mission of that one person” (7). Yet appropriations are distinct from missions in that the Son and Spirit’s missions are historical realities hinging on incarnation and Pentecost, while appropriations more broadly include any text, Old Testament or New, that assigns divine works or attributes to one person in ways that reflect that person’s eternal procession or relation of origin (which the authors more or less assume on pg. 8). Further, they define the divine missions as “revelations and extensions of the divine processions, the manifestation of divine persons in creation” (10). This sounds more like appropriations than missions. Again, appropriations highlight particular divine persons in ways that reflect their eternal processions, but missions narrow the scope to special divine in seismic historical moments surrounding the incarnation and sending of the Spirit. Additionally, they write that the divine persons “equally share” the divine essence by procession (9), rather than saying that the divine persons are the divine essence considered as subsistent relations inherent to the essence. For this very reason, the authors later reject the common practice of referring to “members” of the Godhead (88) because the persons are integral to God without being parts of God. Trinitarian theology draws from many precise and fine distinctions, making popular presentations of the doctrine challenging. The payoff of these distinctions, however, is becoming better equipped to understand what we see in biblical texts and why. Missions, for example, tell us why the incarnation and Pentecost are special works of God related to human salvation in human history. Appropriations, which most modern treatments of the Trinity neglect, help us grasp in a broader way why biblical appeals to particular persons, even when the missions are not directly in view, are reasoned rather than arbitrary.
A couple of other doctrinal points could benefit from some refinement. While the authors state that sanctification is both declarative and progressive (103), their arguments actually bear out a threefold sanctification. We could say that the church is sanctified by being set apart to God as his special possession (1 Cor. 1:2), that believers are decisively renewed by the Spirit’s breaking the power of sin in Christ (Rom. 6:1-4), and that we are being transformed into the image of God’s Son (Rom. 8:29). The last two senses of sanctification or holiness belong to true believers in Christ, while the first includes the entire visible church, including apostates, who “trample underfoot the blood of the everlasting covenant” by which they are “sanctified” (Heb. 10:29 NKJV). While some Reformed readers likely think in terms of “definitive” and “progressive” sanctification, this threefold rubric does not fit these categories neatly. Israel in the OT and the church in the NT are holy because they belong to God. True believers are sanctified, not merely by definition or position, but by the Spirit giving them new hearts bent towards God. Habitually drawn to God, they can then learn how to obey God through the Spirit, making them like Christ in practice. This summary shows a need to rethink sanctification in broader ways, which, historically, Reformed theology has done well.
Additionally, the chapter on judgment does not fully develop the Spirit’s work in judgment. While the authors connect the Spirit to resurrection in the OT (118), they do not develop his role in judgment more widely. OT allusions to the breath of God, which is the ordinary word for the Spirit of God, are relevant here, such as Isaiah 40:6, where all flesh is as grass “because the breath of the Lord blows upon it.” As the Spirit perfects all divine works, which are from the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit, so it is with divine acts of judgment. Isaiah 30:33 refers to the “breath of the Lord” being like a “stream of brimstone” in wrath, and Job 4:9 says, “By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his anger they are consumed.” Such texts, and others like them, likely stand behind New Testament statements like, “Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations” (Rev. 19:15). Making such connections would give readers a more full-orbed depiction of the inseparable operations of the whole Trinity in judgment in both testaments.
Beholding the Triune God gives readers some important patterns to look for to see and worship the Triune God better in light of Scripture. While admitting greater doctrinal precision at times, the authors achieve their goals well. This is a good book for promoting understanding of a narrow, yet vital, sliver of Trinitarian doctrine, which is worth reading for the sake of meditation, prayer, and devotion.
Ryan McGraw
Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary