Pastoral Musings

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Delighting In The Trinity, by Tim Chester, is a very good book. The title made me break my book reviewing moratorium, and it mostly lived up to what I expected.

That being said, first of all I shall look at the good. The good is that the book gives a very good, though relatively concise overview of the doctrine of the Trinity. Chester surveys the biblical doctrine of the Trinity as well as the history of the doctrine. In doing so, I believe that he has been faithful in every respect. He is true to the Scriptures, and he is true to history.

Another way in which he is faithful is that he is true to the reader. Chester does not write for the academy, but for the average Joe. The book is accessible to anyone, especially those with no theological education. Though that is so, Chester has written the book well. It is both scholarly and accessible.

The book covers the doctrine of the Scripture quite well in that it presents God not only as one, but as three. Chester explains that God is neither monistic, nor tritheistic. He explains that Trinitarian theology speaks of God as one God in three persons. I believe that this is true, and appreciate Chester’s manner in explaining it.

I became very concerned later in the book as Chester began to speak about the atonement. My thought was that he had branched out too far, and would be getting in over his head. A few pages later, after seeing how he tied Trinitarian truth to the atonement, my reaction was one of pleasant amazement that he had tied it all together so easily and did such a good job of it.

The only thing that I can say that, to me, was a negative about the book is the fact that the title of the book presents us the idea that we are going to be directed to delight in the Trinity. I believe that the theme permeates the book, but I think that it should have stood out a bit more apparently than it does. Not only do we need our theology of God to be correct, but we need a correct doxology. A chapter about applying this to our lives in the matter of our thought life and our worship as matters of delighting in the LORD would have been very helpful. This small complaint of mine, however, cannot diminish the worth of this book to God’s people.

All in all, this book remains worthy of four out of five stars. It is a book that I wish I would be able to convince all of the members of my flock to read.

This book was provided for review by the publisher, but there was no expectation of a positive review.