Quotes from Vanhoozer, "The Triune God of the Gospel"

"The most important task of the doctrine of God is to identify the God of the gospel who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ through the Scriptures. It is therefore surprising that the bulk of evangelical treatments have been given over to discussions of the existence, nature, and attributes of God--that God is and what God is--rather than to God's identity or who God is, even though Scripture itself identifies God by what he says and by what he does: 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt' (Exod. 20:2). When it comes to personal identity, actions speak louder than words, even when that word is perfect being."

.....

"As Barth insisted, however, the only God Christians know and confess is the God who has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Spirit. The Trinity is not merely the appendix to the doctrine of God, then, but the primary and distinctive way in which Christians should think about God.

"The doctrine of the Trinity is not abstract speculation but the church's response to the revelation of God in history and Scripture. We best come to know other persons not through charts that list their personality traits, properties, or vital statistics, but by listening to stories about what they have said and done or, better yet, by watching them in action. The gospel is an account of something God has said and done. hence the key insight behind the renaissance of Trinitarian theology: God's nature must not be deduced from anything other than the narrative of his won revelatory and redemptive acts."


Kevin J. Vanhoozer, "The Triune God of the Gospel", in Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology (Cambridge, 2007), 17-34 at 26.

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