250 Concise Theological Essays

The Gospel Coalition recently made available their entire catalogue of concise theological essays that they’ve been publishing over the years. There are 12 categories for essays including: The Bible, The Christian Life, Jesus Christ, and Salvation. If your interested in a particular topic or you’d simply like to read some theology that won’t take all day, this might be a good resource for you to us.

Only the Triune God is Love

What was God doing before creating all that is? For thousands, or millions, or billions of years (however long eternity past is) God had to be doing something, but what was it?

God was loving. More specifically, God was loving himself.

If this seems odd to you (that God would be loving himself for all of eternity past), may I suggest that it’s because you aren’t thinking of God as Trinity? Most of the time when the doctrine of the Trinity is brought up, it brings with it confusion and uncertainty. A lot figure the idea of God being three-in-one or one-in-three is just too strange to make any real sense. As a result, the truth of the Trinity (and I’m here assuming the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is true) ends up creating problems instead of giving answers. Even with that often lived-out experience, let’s give this Trinity-thing a chance when it comes to God loving himself before anything else existed.

Two places in the New Testament—1 John 4:8, 16—we’re told, “God is love.” This is all good and well but in order for anyone to love they need to have something to love. We wouldn’t really call it love if someone were to say they “loved” themselves. We’re often told by the world that we should be loving ourselves but true love is really only experienced between more than one person.

A husband loves his wife. 

A mother loves her son. 

A grandson loves his grandmother. 

It would seem odd to say that real love is a husband loving himself. We would probably call that selfish, or conceited, or self-centered, or some other adjective describing the way in which someone could be turned in on themselves.

You see—or at least I hope you see—the problem arising here from what I’ve said. At the beginning of this post I said God had spent all of eternity past loving himself because he is love and now I just said that kind of behavior is egotistical.

What gives?

The Trinity, that’s what.

When we forget to think about God as triune, we run into problems but when we remember to think about him as one and yet complex in his unity, lights start to turn on in rooms we didn’t even know were there. It’s my contention that God was loving himself before he created anyone else to love because he is love and his act of loving himself was not a self-centered thing to do because he is triune. For all eternity past there existed the Father, the Son (or the Word, if you prefer), and the Holy Spirit. And, for all eternity past, the Father was loving the Son and the Son was loving the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. It may even be suggested that the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of that love between the Father and the Son.

Do you see? “God is love” is not some esoteric statement from John because he was trying to seem more enlightened than everyone else. John drank deeply from the truth of the Trinity and it leaked out of him when he wrote. “God is love” because he’s triune. “God is love” is a deeply theological statement about who God is and only the triune God is love.

Four Weeks on the Trinity

There is an upcoming opportunity for you to take part in a class taught by me (Kevin Davis) on the doctrine of the Trinity. This class will begin on Sunday, January 21 and run four straight weeks, ending on Sunday, February 11. All classes will take place at Living Waters Church in the gymnasium and will go from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. If you are reading this and think a class on the Trinity sounds interesting or you have some questions, allow me to give a little more information by way of briefly answering one question: Why study the doctrine of the Trinity?

Trinity is Foundational and Practical

The doctrine of the Trinity is foundational in the way it shows us who God is—God is Trinity. One thing to mention here is that understanding the doctrine of the Trinity shows us who God is, not what God is. The doctrine of the Trinity does not allow for an impersonal essence or being that is referred to as God; it requires a personal, knowable God who has made himself known through his word.

The doctrine of the Trinity is also foundational in the way that it allows us to accurately and honestly respond to a question that we all will most likely receive in our lives: “Do you believe in God?” Now, a Christian may be anxious to quickly answer this question in the affirmative because, of course we believe in God! However, a good understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity forces the Christian to ask a question in response to the one asked to them. This question from the Christian who knows the doctrine of the Trinity is, “What God are you talking about?” You see, for the Christian, to talk about the one true God is to talk about Trinity—there is no other God for the Christian.

The doctrine of the Trinity is also immensely practical to our lives. Understanding the Trinity shapes the way we see realities such as: baptism, salvation, creation, and prayer. Realities in which are normative for the Christian life. When someone begins to really see the Trinity for what the Trinity is, they are now incapable of seeing anything the same again. It is my hope that throughout the upcoming Trinity class the practicality of the doctrine of the Trinity as it applies to our everyday lives will be made more clear by focusing on those four areas (baptism, salvation, creation, prayer) throughout the four classes.

Trinity is for Everyone

Motivation for this class has been found in seeing the need to push back against the idea that some things are so difficult and, quite frankly, impossible to completely understand, therefore, it doesn’t make sense to even attempt to understand them. The doctrine of the Trinity often gets tossed into the group of things that we cannot and should not try to understand. Some may concede and say, “Sure, leave it up to the PhDs and the big thinkers in the church but the regular church goer should not really be spending his time on the Trinity.”

It’s true; we cannot fully understand the Trinity. However, it’s not true that we should then abandon any course of limited understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. Should we then stop trying to understand our spouse or our children because we are ultimately incapable of understanding every single thing about them? I think we would all instinctively recoil from that question. However, when it’s applied to God, there are some who, out of a misguided piety, would feel most comfortable in shying away from going too deep in their knowledge of God. Instead of feeling incapable or possibly unwarranted in looking into the doctrine of the Trinity, perhaps we ought to heed the call from the prophet Hosea: “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3).

I Invite YOU

If you are reading these words, then please consider this as my invitation to you to take part in the upcoming class on the Trinity beginning on Sunday, January 21. Lord willing, this class will help us all see both the foundational reality of God as Trinity and the practical outworking in our lives of knowing God as Trinity.

If you are on the fence regarding a decision on attending this class, allow me wrap up by noting two points: One, this class does not require a certain level of experience or aptitude when it comes to Trinitarian theology—it will be taught as an introductory course; and two, it’s only four classes.

May you seek the Father in prayer regarding your participation in this class and trust the leading of his Spirit.