Preface

A few years ago my congregation had a Sunday morning forum on Islam. Among the events, we had a Muslim speaker come in and talk to us about why Muslims attach so much importance the oneness of God. This generated a lot of interest in having a forum on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

I'm on my congregation's adult education committee, and we all agreed that a forum on the Trinity would be a great idea. But who would foolish enough to think they could pull it off. A little less than a year later, I realized who would be that foolish. So, I spent the next nine months reading every book on the Trinity I could get me hands on, and in the fall of 2004 I presented a six week class that I called "The Truth About the Trinity: Whose Idea Was This Anyway?"

I learned a lot preparing for that class, and it seemed to me that it would be worth trying to write a book on the subject. There are several excellent books available on the doctrine of the Trinity (see my recommend reading list on the sidebar), but most of them are fairly technical, and none of them had everything I'd like to include. So I thought, maybe I'll give it a try.

But I'm a terrific procrastinator, so I haven't done anything about it....until now.

It occurred to me this week that it would be fun to try a sort of cross-media experiment. Rather than writing a book on the topic, I can write a blog. And if it goes well, then when I'm done I'll throw it all together and see if I can make a book out of it.

So that's where I am and how I got here. I would love to have feedback as I work through this. What's clear, what isn't, where am I stretching my sources too far, where am I soft-pedalling a good argument, etc. If you reject the doctrine of the Trinity and want to argue against it, please don't bother to leave comments here. But if you want to come along on a journey and see if we can make some sense of the tradition we've been handed, welcome aboard.


Continue to "Why Bother?"