The Trinity

The Trinity: An Introduction

by Scott R. Swain
Series: Short Studies in Systematic Theology

Paperback, 133 pg.
Crossway, 2020

Read: January 17-31, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

What we find in later Trinitarian creeds, confessions, and doctrinal summaries are not improvements upon a latent or undeveloped biblical Trinitarianism but, rather, the church’s attempt to fathom the depth of the riches of biblical Trinitarianism for the sake of various liturgical, pedagogical, and polemical ends. Some of the church’s creeds, confessions, and doctrinal summaries represent such faithful expressions of scriptural teaching and enjoy such wide-ranging ecclesiastical consensus that we dare not transgress the lines they have drawn. Rather, taking them on our own lips, we gladly join the church’s chorus of Trinitarian praise.

What’s The Trinity: An Introduction About?

It’s kind of there in the title, right? This is an introduction to the classical Christian doctrine of The Trinity. He’s not trying to re-invent the wheel, he’s definitely not trying to innovate, but to provide a concise (it’s a Short Study, after all) jumping-off point into deeper studies by providing a solid foundation.

He spends two chapters looking at the primary Biblical texts demonstrating the Doctrine. Chapter 3 is about the Simplicity of God—something too many overlook in a discussion of The Trinity. The following three chapters each focus on a Person of the Trinity. The final chapters are about the “external works” of the Trinity, the “appropriation” of specific works to particular persons, the beneficiaries of God’s work, and assorted topics.

All of that is a lot to ask of 133 short pages. Swain pulls it off by being concise, but he never seems to be leaving out details or avoiding the complicated ideas (although he obviously has to).

Touching on Controvery

This isn’t a polemical work—Swain is here to inform and educate, not combat. Still, he does talk about some Christological errors, including the contemporary dust-ups over EFS/ERAS—Eternal Functional Subordination/Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission.

Swain briefly (again, it’s a Short Study) addresses this error. He’s calm, he’s fair, yet he’s firm. It’s one of the best short treatments of the controversy I’ve seen, and in the context of the larger discussion of the Person of the Son as well as the larger discussions of each of the Persons, it’s incredibly helpful. It also fits where he put it and doesn’t seem like Swain used the opportunity as a digression just to beat a pet theological peeve.

Helpful Supplemental Material

Maybe it’s just me, but I rarely find the post-text material all that helpful. This book was one of the pleasant exceptions—there’s a brief glossary of some of the technical terms. Also, the “Further Reading” suggestions look great and my “To Buy” list grew a bit.

So, what did I think about The Trinity: An Introduction?

Because the persons of the Trinity are internal to God’s life, not external works of God, we can know the persons of the Trinity, as well as their ultimate plan for creation (Eph. 3:9), only if they stoop down and open up the depths of their inner life to us. Only the persons of the Trinity know the persons of the Trinity. Therefore, only the persons of the Trinity can make known the persons of the Trinity. The revelation of the Trinity is a matter of divine self-revelation, divine self-presentation, divine self-naming.

While this is a theological book, drawing on the teaching of the Church, Swain is careful to never lose sight of the source of this Doctrine, the Word of God. We know this, we understand this (as much as we do) because it is revealed to us. That’s vital to an understanding of the doctrine, and vital to the teaching of it. Swain doesn’t let his readers stray from the text.

This is one of those books where my notes keep saying “Chapter X is likely the highlight of the book,” “the section on X is likely the most valuable in the book.” It appears 60-70% of the book is a highlight—and I may not have written all of those parts down. Which is to say, there’s a lot of gold here, very little (if any) dross.

Helpful, insightful, and useful—it also achieves its end for leading on to further study for me. It’s accessible, but not easy, reading. At the same time, it’s a challenging, but not difficult, text.

Also, I like the looks of this series as a whole, I’ll most likely be grabbing more/all of them if they’re all about this quality.

5 Stars

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