Trinity Book Fest – Part 1: Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity

Jason S. Sexton (Editor)

Stephen Holmes, Paul Molnar, Thomas McCall, and Paul Fiddes (Contributors)
Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014.
Available at Amazon.com

This book is a good summary of a debate about the “classical” view of the Trinity versus a “relational/social” view of the Trinity. It has Holmes (Baptist) and Molnar (Catholic) arguing for the classic view, while McCall (Wesleyan) and Fiddes (Baptist) advocate the relational view. There are a whole bunch of topics discussed in the book, often technical, like divine simplicity, subordination, theopaschite proposals, the immanent Trinity, the filioque clause, etc. There is some vigorous banter with certain person’s views of the Trinity compared to pantheism! In the end, I have to confess that I was probably more convinced by Holmes than anyone else, esp. about the so-called  east-west divide, the biblical roots of the Trinity, and his reading of the Cappodicans.

The editor and my buddy, Jason Sexton, introduces the book in the clip below: