From Nicea to Now

Combatting the litany of unorthodox views on the doctrine of God that have sprung up in recent years, this seasoned lineup of pastor-theologians issues a call to the church to stand on the rock-solid foundation of biblical, classical, and Reformed theism. Traversing the goodly fields of revelation, salvation, and the divine nature, you will encounter an awe-inspiring vision of the triune God and a rich view of Christ as Creator, Mediator, and Redeemer. Plus, the contributors masterfully parse complex (but equally vital) concepts and explain them with precision for believers in the pew. Highly recommended!

“The Trinity is not an optional doctrine. It is the grammar of Christian worship.” Just so. From Nicea to Now reminds us not only why the church confessed the Triune God 1,700 years ago but also why it is essential for believers in the twenty-first (and every!) century to do so in submission to the Scriptures and in concert with believers throughout the ages. Most simply, if God is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then we are not saved.

This is a very helpful resource. Peter Sammons has assembled a strong lineup of theologians to give the reader an extra-strength dose of biblical and classical theology. Each chapter show a strong command of the subject at hand and helpfully places classical Trinitarian and Christological theology in their biblical and historical context over and against common contemporary evangelical errors. Likewise, they show that this classical heritage is rightly claimed by the Reformed Baptist tradition. Each chapter can stand alone as a strong presentation of Trinitarian and Christological theology at its best, and together they conspire to be a one-stop-shop for student of Holy Scripture who desires to delve deep into the deep things of God.

After forty five years of pastoral ministry, the nature and beauty of the Triune God has become the soul of all my theology and meditations. Sadly, this began less than 20 years ago. My theological training presented me with an emaciated, overly simplistic understanding of Father-Son-Spirit, defined as one God in three persons, each of whom is God, a mystery to be recited dutifully and then forgotten. Almost 20 years ago, Fred Sander's The Deep Things of God was a thunderclap that awakened me to the glory of the life of God in himself and the ways the Triune God colors everything in the Christian life. My soul became athirst for the Triune God and I began to search and study the "deeps." For me this was not a theological curiosity but a desire to know God as He is, in His glory. 

My bookshelf on the Trinity is now 4 feet across. Few of these books were familiar to me from my theological training. They introduced the riches of Nicaea and its theologians and the clarification that followed in the centuries that followed. I have taught at a school for church leaders in Serbia. There I developed a class on the Trinity and used it (and two adult Sunday school classes at my church) to work out my understanding. There were times in class when all we could do was sit in silent wonder at the greatness of the Triune God whom we call by Name and who names us as his own. Along the way I was gripped by truths about God what were ineffable. I also sloughed off many ideas unworthy of God including the modern shallowness named ERAS -- shallow because it is superficial, dismissive or ignorant of the comprehensive thought of the Cappadocians, and too interested in using the Triune God to defend their idea of sex roles (FYI I am a complementarian too).  All of that has been hard work, hard thought, lots of praying, and like labor pains birthing a vision of the Blessed Triune God that now colors all my theological vision. 

That brings me to this book. Had it been written 20 years ago it would have saved me hours and hours of toil. But it would not have been written then because the Spirit of God then was just awakening the evangelical church to the majesty of the truth about the Triune God. Now you do not have to do your own work. You can get this book and study it, line upon line. It is an excellent and comprehensive summary and introduction, with gracious critique of errors, ancient and modern. By studying this book you will get ahold of the ideas and terminology that are essential to understanding the truth about God the Father, Son, and Spirit. With the grammar of Trinitarian theology in hand, you will find a host of profound theological reflection made accessible by your understanding. There will be new vistas into His beauty, His grace, His plan of redemption, and your union with Christ by the Spirit. You will find yourself lost in wonder as you see with new eyes, and you will, I hope, grow more and more to contemplate the infinite blessedness of the Triune God and our future of enjoying Him forever.

Mark Lauterbach, ThM, DMinHonorably Retired Minister in the PCAInstructor, Baptist Theological Seminary of Novi Sad

Points of widespread agreement among Christians in one generation frequently become points of controversy in the next.  There are probably a lot of reasons for this, but among them:  It is not uncommon for us to do our most vigorous studying and our deepest thinking, not about the most important truths (like, Who is Jesus? and how is He related to the Father and Spirit? and to me?), but about controverted issues.  When the debate comes, we want to win!  But those neglected fundamentals, although uncontroverted for the present, tend to become the controverted issues of the next generation.  We simply do not do a job handing on truths about which we have scant understanding ourselves.

Has that happened with the Doctrine of the Trinity?  Each will have to judge for himself, I suppose.  But my own experience tells me that there has been little emphasis on the particulars of the Doctrine of the Trinity in teaching, and consequently the understanding of the Doctrine in the pews is quite thin.  With this in view, this book is timely.  It's authors accomplish two things that are certainly not easy to do at the same time:  1.  They are able to explain difficult things in plain language; and, 2.  they are nevertheless able to take us into some of the deeper issues.  Certainly a significant pedagogical accomplishment! Tolle et lege.