Book: The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Fred Sanders)
Publisher: Crossway Publishing (2010)
Review by: Matt Ford
Fred Sanders’ The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Crossway Publishing) is true to its subtitle, The Trinity really does change everything. Sadly, many Christians do not know this to be true, which gets to Sanders’ aim in writing the book. He quotes what he calls the old “frightful admonition” that seems to summarize what we tend to think about the Trinity: “Try to understand it and you’ll lose your mind; try to deny it and you’ll lose your soul!” (8).
Sanders fears evangelicals have drifted away from their Trinitarian roots and desires that Christians return to “the deep things” of who God is. A warm biblical understanding of the Trinity will be, as he calls it, “the hefty, solid steel” behind the cutting edge of what we know, emphasize, and proclaim as Christians. He desires that we see the glorious background of who this God is that looms behind and in the Scriptures and the Gospel itself. As he says, “Our great need is to be led further in to what we already have” (13).
It’s Already In There
In Chapter 1 Sanders reveals our Trinitarian fear. We dare not say it, but we wonder if the Trinity is not simply a doctrinal equation that, though for some reason essential for us believe, is impossible to understand, and irrelevant to our lives. Think of the common analogies used to “understand” the Trinity (I remember the “3-in-1 egg” or “water-in-3-forms” illustrations. If you don’t know them I certainly won’t ruin you with further explanation). They serve only to “sound the death-knell for Trinitarianism’s relevance” (35). But Sanders says that’s not because the Trinity is irrelevant. Far from it.
He insists that what need is what the Bible gives us: “an approach to the doctrine of the Trinity that takes its stand on the experienced reality of the Trinity and only then moves forward to the task of verbal and conceptual clarification” (35). In other words, God has moved to save us and in so doing has revealed Himself to be gloriously triune. And Scripture reveals how this is so.
After discussing possible reasons for our move away from a celebration of the Trinity, Sanders reminds that the resources for knowing the Triune God already exist all about us as Christians. We just need to go deeper into what we already have. He says, “If you trust Jesus to be your salvation, you already know the Trinity. But it’s a great benefit to know that you know the Trinity” (46).
The Trinity Was First…And Will Be Last
In Chapter 2 Sanders pulls the curtain to reveal that the Trinity isn’t some cold proposition, but rather the eternal, living God. The chapter is gorgeous in it’s descriptions of beauty, supremacy, and happiness of the Father having always been The Father and the Son having always been The Son and the Spirit always the Spirit – eternal, sufficient, fulfilled, joyful in one another. God did not need to create. He did not have to save. But He must be a Trinity, for that is who He is. Sanders says,
Things like creation and redemption are things God does, and he would still be God if he had not done them. But Trinity is what God is, and without being the Trinity, he would not be God. God minus creation would still be God, but God minus Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would not be God (70).
I’m tempted to mention quote after quote from this awe-inspiring theme but I won’t. Read the book.
The Good News Is That You Can Have The Triune God As Yours (Or Rather, You Can Be His)
In Chapter 3 Sanders aims to restore a proper awe of the gospel by reminding that, as he says, “the gospel is God-sized” (103). It is so, says Sanders,
because God puts himself into it. The living God binds himself to us and becomes our salvation, the life of God in the soul of man. We are saved by the gospel of God to worship the God of the gospel (117).
When you’ve considered the Eternal One and then realize that the Eternal One wants to know you and fill you, you get amazed again. Addicted, really.
In Chapter 4 Sanders shows the Trinitarian “shape of the gospel.” We begin to see what he meant in Chapter 1 – that the Trinity is there in our gospel. The Father sends the Son and the Spirit. The Son does nothing alone but what the Father tells and shows Him – and He (the Son) does it through the Holy Spirit who is constantly giving attention to the Son for the glory of the Father. Salvation is ordained by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and applied by the Spirit. Sanders proclaims,
…the Trinity is the gospel…the good news of salvation is that God, who in himself is eternally the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, has become for us the adoptive Father, the incarnate Son, and the outpoured Holy Spirit. God the Father sent the Son to do something for us and the Spirit to be something in us, to bring us into the family life of God. God, who is eternally triune in himself…gives himself to us to be our salvation, giving the economy of salvation a triune shape that reveals who he is, and making the Fahter, Son, and Spirit present in our own lives (165).
In Chapter 5 Sanders voices a tension some of us might be feeling: are we supposed to focus on Christ or the Trinity? His answer is “to be Christ-centered without being Father-forgetful or Spirit-ignoring” (168). Salvation really is all about union with Christ (172) but, as Sanders says it, “the Father puts all the blessings of salvation onto the incarnate Son, and the Spirit unites us to that” (173). So an accurate Christ-centeredness is a Trinitarian Christ-centeredness.
Sanders illustrates the beauty and fullness of this Trinitarian Christ-centered life in Francis Schaeffer, which led to one of my favorite nuggets in the book, a poem by Schaeffer (on pg 177):
To eat, to breathe
To beget
Is this all there is
Chance configuration of atom against atom
Of god against god
I cannot believe it.
Come Christian Triune God who lives
Here am I
Shake the world again
The Normal Is Quite Exceptional
In Chapters 6 and 7 Sanders expounds the Trinitarian nature of bible reading and prayer. Sanders explores evangelical’s love for the Scriptures and reveals the best descriptions to be deeply Trinitarian. Packer is quoted,
The givenness of Jesus Christ is bound up with the givenness of New Testament theology, which is nothing less than the Father’s own witness through His Spirit to the Son (210).
Scripture is powerful and still speaking because the life of the Trinity is all over it.
What’s more, Sanders shows, with the help of C. S. Lewis, how the simplest Christian prayer is deeply Trinitarian. He then encourages us to “pray with the grain”, wherein he means that we pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s not only because such prayer comes from biblical instruction, but also because, as Sanders quotes Graham Cole, such prayer is to “rehearse the very structure of the gospel.” The good news is that through Christ, by the Spirit, we have been brought to the Father.
Evaluation
I’m no Trinitarian scholar, but having read a few books on the subject, this work is by far my favorite. I leave it not only with more knowledge of the Triune God, but also more full of a warm worship for who He is and a greater wonder at His grace in calling me to Him.
I would have appreciated more time from the author in unpacking relevant biblical texts. I also wonder if, for a book that is intended for a popular audience, the discussion on Michael Polanyi and tacit knowledge might have been replaced with a more C.S. Lewis-ish, down-to-earth illustration. But these are mild concerns.
Drawing from Lewis, Sanders wrote, “the doctrine of salvation is itself the doctrine of the Trinity” (236). I cannot disagree. In fact, I’m enthralled. Consider:
The primal delight that the Father takes in the Son, in the glory that they shared before the foundation of the world, will in the end be our glorification too. God will be truly pleased with us, and we will be a part of the mutual delight that is the life of the Trinity. That will be glory, when we are finally caught up into the heavenly love of the three-personal God (238).
Amen.
Verdict: I recommend it.
5 Comments on "Book Review: The Deep Things of God"
Great review, Matt. It made me really want to read the book. Thanks so much for putting in the time to read the book, and write this wonderful review for it.
I agree. Thanks for the review. This book has been on my soon-to-read shelf for far too long and now I can’t wait to read it.
I read this last month and echo your sentiments, Matt. The book proclaims the gospel, and God’s salvations to sinners, very well. I highly recommend it too.
This book sounds interesting! I, personally, always loved studying places throughout scripture that explicitly show the Trinity. For example, creation (Gen 1) and when Jesus was baptized by John.
Thanks for the review. I’ll have to read this one.
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