Putting into words the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the three persons of the Holy Trinity, has led to controversies for almost as long as there's been a church. And a library could be stuffed full of books on the topic to serve as proof. But to properly approach the Trinity, we must push through those debates.

In 2010, Fred Sanders published an appropriately titled book, "The Deep Things of God, How the Trinity Changes Everything." In it, he wrote this, "The doctrine of the Trinity expels a host of unworthy ideas about God's love. God is not lonely or bored or selfish. This is what the doctrine of the Trinity helps us to learn with greater precision, that God is love.

The triune God is a love that is infinitely high above you, eternally preceding you, and welcomes you in." That is powerful. In other words, the end of our pursuit is not merely knowing about this triune God more clearly, but knowing Him personally. In our theology, when it's done properly, it's an invitation to experience God's love and presence, and we delight in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That's the theme of an excellent book called "Delighting in the Trinity," written by historian and theologian Michael Reeves, who serves as the president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in Oxford. I asked Reeves to explain why he wrote his book, "Delighting in the Trinity." I wrote the book out of a simple pastoral desire to have people know the living God better.

I see, particularly amongst UK students, I see just an enslavement to idolatry, is really how I'd put it, meaning that there's such an impoverished understanding of God that people don't see the beauty of the triune God. Therefore, the whole Christian life is shrunken and withered because they're thinking, "Well, okay, I've got out of hell, but I'm not sure I want to be with this God." Particularly if you're thinking that Trinity is something awkward or difficult in God, then you've got something very, very schizophrenic in your faith.

You're thinking, "Okay, I've got a God who produces a good gospel, but the God behind that gospel isn't actually himself good or beautiful or desirable." Yeah, and to show the beauty of the triune God in your book, you often contrast Him with Islam. Explain why. Why does this contrast work so well?

Well, I want to draw this comparison really, I think, not just so you can see the difference to Islam. I remember as a teenager, I was interested in Islam for a while just because of the simplicity, the cleanness of its monotheism, and that's quite attractive and was attractive to me then.

And I now see, no, that was horribly reductive. And by snipping out Trinity, you're not snipping out what's ugly or awkward, but what's beautiful. But it's not simply a contrast with Islam that I wanted to bring across. It's a contrast with single-person gods of whom Allah is the best-known example.

And the reason I wanted to make that contrast is I think that so many Christians are assuming that the living God is a single-person God. But if He is a single-person God, then He looks very much like Allah and will behave like Allah, which means that not being as He is, He won't offer a gracious gospel.

He won't offer us an intimacy because the very nature of God is different. Allah does not offer free grace. He doesn't offer intimacy because of His very nature. I wanted to draw out that what you think about the nature of God is going to change your very understanding of the gospel from soup to nuts.

Yes, everything top to bottom. And that's why your book is so good and so valuable. And I want to step back in and look at the big picture of the inter-Trinitarian relationship we see in Scripture. You work with college students, and you have a heart for college students and to care for them.

Imagine a student approaches you who wants to understand the Trinity. How would you explain the biblical doctrine of the Trinity to them? Yeah, I think I always want to start with Jesus. I don't want to start with abstract illustrations, shamrock leaves, eggs, that kind of stuff. I want to start with Jesus and say, look, when you proclaim Jesus, you proclaim a triune God.

He reveals a triune God to us. So, for example, a sort of verse I'd like to go to is John 20, 31. John says he writes his gospel so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ. That means the one anointed by the Spirit, the Son of God.

And so when you believe in Jesus, the Son, then you believe in the revelation of a God who's proclaiming himself to be Father. Who is Jesus the Son of? He's the Son of the Father. And that's the first thing I really want people to see in their understanding of God.

He's not like any other. The God revealed in Jesus is a Father. If you think of John 14, 6 as well, Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me. And so when you come to see Jesus, the Son, you see the God that he reveals is a Father, eternally a Father, eternally, therefore, one who has a relationship, who loves his Son.

And that sort of thing, Jesus says in John 17, 24, Father, you loved me before the foundation of the world. This isn't something that started at some point. For eternity, God has been a Father loving his Son. And he's loved him by pouring out his Spirit on him. It's the Spirit is the means of his blessing to him.

The Spirit personally works on the Son to make the Son enjoy the love of the Father for eternity. And so what I want students, for example, to see is I'm talking about the Trinity is very quickly to be able to see this isn't some abstract, strange math we're talking about.

We're talking about a beautiful fellowship of love. So that even if they're not immediately understanding it, they're seeing this is something desirable. Amen. Amen. So it seems that this eternal relationship and eternal love within our Trinitarian God is really what most distinguishes him from other single person deities, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a real tension within Islam. I mentioned this in the book at one point where one of Allah's 99 names, these 99 names are supposed to describe how he is in eternity. One of those 99 names is the loving. But that's really problematic. Now, of course, that's a lovely thing to say.

But how can he be loving if there's no one there for him to love? And so because he's a single person, God, he cannot be essentially, eternally loving. And that's really why he's not going to offer a gospel of grace or offer close fellowship with himself. For the Muslim in paradise, they never get to see or be with, let alone be sons of Allah.

Yeah, that is so important. I want to change gears a little bit and talk about creation. In the book, you write in one place, quote, "Absolutely singular supreme beings do not like creation." Yeah. What do you mean by that statement? What I mean by that is that if you have, if God is an absolutely singular being, a single person and has been so for eternity, then that's how he likes things to be.

It seems a very unnatural thing for such a God to cause anything else to exist. Why would he want to cause anything else to exist? For eternity, he's happy entirely by himself and has never known relationship, never known what it is to love another. And just as you look at other systems of thought that have an absolutely singular supreme being, again and again, you see they veil the physical and the feminine as slightly embarrassing things.

Creation is a slightly awkward thing with a single person God, as is femininity. Wow. You have to keep expounding on that. Explain this to us further. Yeah. It's that if God is a single person who's never enjoyed loving another, there's no real rationale for loving relationship being a good thing.

There's certainly no eternal rationale for that at all. I think one good example of this would be in second century Gnosticism. One of the strains in Gnosticism, which Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code, made out to be a kind of proto-feminist movement, which is a pack of lies. In second century Gnosticism, you start with a monism, that the single being is good, the spiritual realm only is good, and the existence of a second thing, the physical, the creation, is a bad thing.

And the Gnostic hope is that the physical, the creation, will be slurped back up into the spiritual realm one day. Now, if you've got that view of reality, imagine then reading Genesis 2. We have a man who's all by himself. Well, that's a good thing, right? That mirrors the ultimate spiritual reality of being all by itself, which is good.

The existence of a second thing beside it, woman, is considered a bad thing. Hence, you see, at the end of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Peter says, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of eternal life." And Jesus corrects Peter slightly and says, "No, women who make themselves male may enter the kingdom of heaven." And so, with this idea that only one is good, therefore, women were very devalued.

If you have a relational God, you have the Father who is eternally the loving head of the Son, then suddenly a marriage becomes deeply affirmed and a beautiful thing. The Father and the Son relationship being echoed out in a marriage relationship. Beautiful. That was historian and theologian Michael Reeves talking with us about his incredibly good book, Delighting in the Trinity.

If you're looking for a good summer read, consider this one. Dr. Reeves serves as the President and Professor of Theology at Union School of Theology in Oxford. Tomorrow, I'm going to ask him what it looks like in practice to delight in the Trinity. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.