Customer Reviews

Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers

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Has the Church made too much of the Trinity? Reading Life in the Trinity by Donald Fairbairn makes me realize that this doctrine is crucial and practical.

What is the heart of Christian life? Fairbairn suggests "part of the answer is that a life reflecting the love Jesus has shown for us lies close to the heart." He sees "first and foremost, then, Christian life is a process of abiding in Christ, of relying on him, of recognizing and maintaining one's connection to him in all aspects of life."

To take it further, and where the real beauty of this book lies, is seeing our relationship with Christ in terms of his relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Fairbairn writes, "He (Christ) is offering himself to us as a person, that we might share in his most deeply personal relationship, the relationship he has with God the Father." Seen in this context, the Christian life is a sharing in the life of the Trinity. This is the scarlet thread that runs through every chapter.

Fairbairn expertly walks readers through Trinitarian theology, which is fascinating, but his most important work is sharing relational and practical implications. He makes it clear that the worth of everyone lies in our being made in the image of God. "Christianity teaches us that our significance does not ultimately lie in what we accomplish or what we do: it lies in the one to whom we belong," he writes. "Our significance is not something that can be earned; it is something given to us by God."

He is also a wise guide into the thought of the Church fathers. He makes judicious use of their writings, to inform modern perspectives that can be lacking. He draws most from four Patristic writers: Irenaeus of Lyons, Athanasius of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo and Cyril of Alexandria. Readers get some of their most fruitful and biblical thoughts.

The only time I felt unsure of Fairbairn was his discussion of John 6 where Jesus enjoins eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Fairbairn sees this as a reference to celebrating the Eucharist. He notes that "the early church saw its regular celebration of the Eucharist as crucial to believers' continuation in Christian life." He adds, "To say that the Eucharist is central is to imply that communal worship in general is central to the cultivation of people's relationship to the Father and the Son." He closes this section by observing that "in the mind of the early church, cultivating a direct relationship to Christ was not by any means an individual task. It involved the entire community of faith, as well as the devotion of each individual.... Life in the Trinity is life in the church and involves regular participation in the worship and the mysteries Christ has entrusted to the church."

This is not intended to be a comprehensive book in theology but rather a supplement to the more exhaustive and systematic variety.

Just catching the glimpse this book gives of the Trinity is staggering. It is also mind-boggling to realize that becoming a Christian makes us part of this triune fellowship. Being able to better see the Godhead and the beautiful relationship it engenders, makes this a lovely book.

This was not the book that I was expecting. I anticipated a study of the doctrine of the Trinity and its development in the early church. What I found was not nearly as academic as that, though this was published by the Academic imprint of IVP. Donald Fairbairn doesn't seem to do theology in the modern sense, so much as offer his personal reflections on scripture within the context of the Church Fathers who have shaped his views. In fact, the quantity of scriptural references far exceeds those from the Fathers. Fairbairn references forty-five books of the Bible, but less than a dozen of the Fathers. Fortunately, he provides paragraph-length quotes from the Fathers which help to give a broader context than the single- sentence snippets we sometimes see in similar works.

Fairbairn attempts to follow what he considers the most helpful theological theme through the Bible and the early church: theosis or deification, which he defines as sharing in the relationship of the Trinity by participating with God the Father as adopted sons through the person and work of Jesus Christ who is the natural son, or Son according to his nature. He then ties theosis into other theological topics such as Creation, Fall, Incarnation, Resurrection, soteriology, justification, sanctification, and ecclesiology.

The overall tone of the book is almost devotional. Due to lack of in-text citations from the Fathers it is difficult to assess where they end and Fairbairn begins. It seems that he has immersed himself in dialogue with the Fathers and even undertakes to use their hermeneutic. Fairbairn articulates the most important difference between the patristic and modern methods of hermeneutics as one of direction. The Fathers start with the context of the whole Bible and then read individual passages in light of the wider context (deductive approach), whereas modern exegesis attempts to study each passage in its immediate context and work from the narrow context to the broader context (inductive approach).

Fairbairn's work is also very ecumenical in tone, but I was somewhat unhappy with the balance he tried to strike. First, he is obviously conversant with Eastern Christian theology. The theme of deification is a major one in Eastern Christianity and Fairbairn has written on the topic before in Eastern Orthodoxy Through Western Eyes. However, Fairbairn seems to cling too tightly to the Protestant distinctives for me to feel like he has given Eastern Orthodoxy a fair shake. It feels more like he has attempted to plunder the Egyptians.

I was similarly disappointed in his treatment of the current justification debate. Early in the book he distances himself from modern theological debate by emphasizing that he is a patristic scholar, not a systematic theologian and by claiming to avoid the standard loci of Western theology. However, the book is still roughly organized according to the standard loci and when he does address the issue of justification, he comes down very squarely in the Reformed camp.

Overall, I deeply appreciated Life in the Trinity. If you are looking for an academic study of the doctrinal development of trinitarian theology within the early church you will need to look elsewhere. If you are seeking to deepen your appreciation for how at least some of the early church understood the Christian life and their relationship to God, this is the book for you.

I'm just getting started on this "new look" on the Holy Trinity.
Raised in the Episcopal (Anglican tradition); studied the Bible in the Presbyterian (Calvinist tradition); and am going to two Baptist Bible study groups (one of these is using this book for study).
This is well worth the time & effort to study, especially the original Church Fathers views on the Trinity <and all of the heresies that were going on & are still going on in the world today>.