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Dr. Fred Sanders teaches in the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. His book The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, has been recommended by some evangelical professors as a go-to book for evangelicals looking to deepen their understanding of “the” doctrine of the Trinity. In this episode, I start my two-part, in depth review of the book.
As I read it, the book could be summarized as the following letter:
Dear Evangelical Christian,
As you’re among the most spiritual of Christians, you already tacitly “know” everything you need to know about the Trinity. You’re as “Trinitarian” as you need to be. Congratulations! You can rest assured that the doctrine is as biblical as can be. Trust me – if you pick up the Bible, you’ll just see the Trinity everywhere in it. And you really don’t need to worry about any silly, distracting “logical” or “mathematical” difficulties, which wrongly presuppose that the Trinity is no more than a set of dry, abstract propositions, and not the very substance, size, shape, diameter, smell, texture, flavor, color, sheen, hypotenuse, center, circumference, substructure, glossy coating, chocolatey center, shine, and timbre of the Gospel. You just need to be reminded of how Trinitarian the gospel is, and how very Trinitarian your evangelical heritage is. Having been so reminded, you can again let any Trinitarian thoughts recede to the background of your mind, and you can carry on as before. Just try not to confuse together the “Persons” of the Trinity or slump down to some sort of sub-Trinitarian level of thinking. Keep in mind the differences between the Three, but remember that they’re the one God. If this doesn’t make sense to you, not to worry – C.S. Lewis has your back! God is one person, God is three persons – no problem. You see, claims which appear incoherent to us, may well seem coherent to God. There’s your defense, you beautiful Trinitarian, you! Celebrate your Trinitarian Evangelical heritage, and turn your thoughts often towards the Happy Land of the Trinity!
Love,
Fred
That’s the thrust of the book, but there’s a lot more to say about it. In this episode I discuss the book’s presuppositions, and a crucial distinction when it comes to clear thinking about the Trinity: the use of “Trinity” as a singular referring term, which goes hand in hand with thinking the Trinity to be the one God, vs. the earlier use of “Trinity” as a plural referring term, referring to the triad of God (aka “the Father”), his Son, and his Spirit (or spirit), which is compatible with unitarian and trinitarian theologies. I also discuss the book’s main thesis that the Trinity is the gospel (and vice-versa), and note some crucial scholarly information that Dr. Sanders seems to deliberately leave out.
Links for this episode:
The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (2nd ed.)- Dr. Sanders’s website
- Dr. Sanders’s blog Scriptorum Daily
- What is the Trinity? (Amazon, other sellers)
- podcast 124 – a challenge to “Jesus is God” apologists
- podcast 126 – What is an evangelical? With Kermit Zarley
- The evolution of my views on the Trinity
- What is essential to the gospel according to Luke [in his book Acts]?
- Isaac Watts, “A Solemn Address to the Deity“
- podcast 174 – The First Sirmian creed (351)
- podcast 173 – Eusebius of Caesarea
- podcast 172 – The Creed of the Long Lines (344)
- Channing vs. Stuart on the Trinity and the Incarnation
- John 17:1-3
- 1 Corinthians 8:4-6
- Ephesians 1:3-14
- John 20:17
- Thomas McCall’s Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?
- podcast 27 – Interview with Dr. William Hasker about his Metaphysics and the Tripersonal God – Part 1
- “Trinity” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- James Anderson’s Paradox in Christian Theology
- Robert Letham’s The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship
- How Trinity theories conflict with the New Testament
- podcast 146 – Jesus as an Exemplar of Faith in the New Testament
- podcast 189 – The unfinished business of the Reformation
- 21st Century Reformation
- This week’s thinking music is “Rotisserie Graveyard” by Doctor Turtle.
So, isn’t it a bit petty to lambaste a book specifically written to partisan popular audience for failing to satisfy the demands of an analytic theologian? A more fair fight might be critiquing Fred Sander’s academic work on the Trinity, like his recent “The Triune God” (Zondervan, 2016).
Hi Shea. No, I don’t think so. If you listen to the review, you’ll find that I was not demanding some special “analytic” standards of it. I was judging it for what it is, on the basis of what it is trying to do. I have read The Triune God, but in part two of my review of The Deep Things of God, I’ve discussed what is in my view most interesting about it. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Glad to see a new podcast, heard it today.
Guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see Fred Sanders didn’t really try to take the task of proving the Trinity from the Bible. I’ve never really been impressed by anything I’ve read/heard from him. Albeit, it has been only a little[mainly his debate with Anthony Buzzard]. I don’t quite understand why he’s looked to as a formidable teacher/proponent of the Trinity still. This book only affirmed it based on your review. Seems like it was just a bunch of flip-flopping Trinity/trinity terms. Never have I seen/heard a single person actually show me any one text showing “God” defined as all 3 persons at once. That question is always avoided like the plague and given the general retort “The whole Bible teaches it… I don’t need one verse.” That seems like a bait and switch back to lowercase “trinity” to attempt to make the question seem foolish.
Yet, as a former Trinitarian it took a lot to take a step back and say to myself when I became biblical unitarian… how did I not see that just because I can count three that doesn’t make them one God? It’s so clearly assumed by every Trinitarian.
I know this was already a long review, but for future reviews could you involve more quotes from the books?
Sean,
I agree. From all that I’ve heard from Sanders, it seems that he starts from a Trinitarian pardigmatic approach and doesn’t put much weight on exegesis of the biblical text. He’s almost like a Catholic priest who would start with official church doctrine and then work his way backward.
It was difficult to get much out of the Buzzard-Sanders debate because the two men were approaching the doctrine with different methodologies.
Sean,
I agree. From all that I’ve heard from Sanders, it seems that he starts with a Trinitarian pardigmatic approach and doesn’t put much weight on exegesis of the biblical text. He’s almost like a Catholic priest who would start with official church doctrine and then work his way backward.
It was difficult to get much out of the Buzzard-Sanders debate because the two men were approaching the doctrine with different methodologies.
Thanks, Sean. Yes, I do like to provide quotes… although there is a conflict between covering a lot in a short time (which requires summarizing and paraphrasing) and giving a full taste of the book, which requires quotes. Not always easy to find that balance.
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