In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Book excerpt: Our six authors from four continents representing several branches of Evangelicalism are united in affirming the classical Christian understanding of God as Trinity as crucial for knowing God, understanding the world, and serving God honestly. Their essays lead up to a compilation of classical creeds regarding this foundational proclamation. Thomas K. Johnson: “The Trinity is a matter of knowing God in his complexity, totally different from us in our singularity yet radically similar in having personality in his image, then letting this knowledge of God become the pattern of a renewed Christian mind.” Brian Edgar: “This presentation of the consummate dimensions of the Trinity . . . tells us that the life of God as Trinity is something in which we participate rather than something to be intellectually comprehended.” J. Scott Horrell: “The suggestion, humbly submitted, is especially for a missional Trinitarian worldview—not missional as from one culture to another, but missional as each body of believers seeks to engage and express Trinitarian faith within their own culture.” William P. Atkinson: “As the Father’s kenotic ‘leadership’ of the Trinity thereby exalts the Son and the Spirit, so too we can expect that the sort of servant-leadership that answers Jesus’ high-priestly prayer will lift those who are being led.” Pavel Hošek: “The Enlightenment reductionist rationalism in theology is going through a serious crisis, and the relativistic postmodern alternatives do not provide any firm epistemological basis for responsible theological thinking. I suggest that the trinitarian intellectual framework which Comenius and Lewis tried to develop offers a promising and inspiring way forward for Christian theologians faithful to the orthodox teachings of the church who are struggling with the intellectual challenges of contemporary culture.” Tersur Aben: “The Trinity is the heart of God’s self-disclosure to and involvement with humans on earth. . . . The mission of the church is thus to proclaim the gospel of salvation and the restoration of humans back to God, which the Son accomplished on Calvary and the Holy Spirit applies to believers on Pentecost.”