Author MICHAEL REEVES
Publisher PATERNOSTER
ISBN 978-1-84227-744-7
Here are one hundred and seven pages packed with good things! There are not too many books I feel I can purchase twenty copies of and either give them away or sell them on to interested readers, and certainly not books on God as the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Although I love books on the Trinity, I cannot promote them widely because they are beyond many readers, but this one I can! Michael Reeves communicates really well and shows how God as Trinity is vital to the Christian Life. I particularly like the way he introduces his subject matter against the background of erroneous ideas of God that have plagued the church and their inevitable outcomes.
He is not afraid to show how the Moslem idea of God is tragically deficient and issues in what we are seeing today from the extreme elements holding Islamic beliefs. He also does a good job of showing how the caricature ‘god’ that the ‘new atheists’ inveigh against is really not the Christian God at all, but a straw man of their own making. Another thing I like at the ‘windows’ he introduces throughout the book. They can be read alone and deal with quite a number of historical elements, people and their views. None of the writing is laborious; its thrust is consistent throughout, leading us to a deepened love for, and worship of God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity. There have been numerous books written on this subject in the last forty or so years, a resurgence of interest, perhaps linked with the ‘spiritual renewal’ of the sixties and seventies when the Holy Spirit gained more ‘room’ in the hearts of Christians.
He will always glorify the Son and the Son will surely bring us to the Father and where He is absent, then we will find a God distant, aloof, ‘single-personed’ and how can a ‘single personed god’ be a lover for he has no object of love and how can he be anything other than ‘power’, even in his creative act. This book wins our affections to God as good and as the beautiful attractive center of all things. Most of the other books written have been more along the line of doctrinal theological treatises, mainly to be read by those involved in the Christian Ministry and other scholars, for those attuned to that kind of literature then there is wonderful benefit in the contemplation of God in Three Persons, but, most are beyond the ‘average’ church member but this book can be read by all who are prepared to concentrate a bit! Yes, it is not ‘light’ reading; it will require a measure of discipline but will soon begin to yield up its fruits. God as Trinity shapes every part of our personal life and therefore, of necessity, our church life too.
I think this book will expose the fact that some of the misshapen elements apparent in some individuals and churches are the direct result of an inadequate appreciation of Who God is as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you want to learn God and enjoy Him and thereby show Him forth as He really is the more, then get and read this book!
