I was prompted to repost this post after reading my friend’s, Ron Frost, great post on the Trinity here.
T. F. Torrance says:
While the Lord Jesus Christ constitutes the pivotal centre of our knowledge of God, God’s distinctive self-revelation as Holy Trinity, One Being, Three Persons, creates the overall framework within which all Christian theology is to be formulated. Understandably, therefore, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity has been called th innermost heart of Christian faith and worship, the central dogma of classical theology, the fundamental grammar of our knowledge of God. It belongs to the Gospel of God’s saving and redeeming love in Jesus Christ who died for us and rose again and has given us the Holy Spirit who has shed the love of God abroad in our hearts. The doctrine of the Trinity enshrines the essentially Christian conception of God: it constitutes the ultimate evangelical expression of the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ who though he was rich for our sakes became poor that we through his poverty might become rich, of the Love of God who did not spare his own Son but delivered him up for us all, for it is in that personal sacrifice of the Father to which everything in the Gospel goes back, and of the Communion of the Holy Spirit through whom and in whom we are made to participate in the eternal Communion of the Father and the Son and are united with one another in the redeemed life of the people of God. Through Christ and in the Spirit God has communicated himself to us in such a wonderful way that we may really know him and have communion with in his inner life as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (Thoams F. Torrance, “The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons, 2)
If you want to read a theology book that is more like a worship book, then read this book! You will learn much (this is my second reading of this wonderful work); you will have a depth of understanding about our awesome God that you most likely had not before, before you read this book, that is!
Isn’t the last clause of this paragraph an amazing thought? It reminds me of this:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. . . .”~Ephesians 1:3
and,
“But he unites himself to the Lord is one with him in spirit.” ~I Corinthians 6:17
and,
“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20. by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21. and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22. let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water, . . . ~Hebrews 10:19-22
We are one spirit with Christ, in union with Him by the Holy Spirit; having been blessed with every spiritual blessing that is “His,” seated with Him behind the ‘veil’ in the Holy of holies — which is to say participating in the very communion of the life of God through union with Christ as our Saviour and High Priest! What a thought . . .