Takeaway: The Trinity is who God is, not just how God reveals himself.
I am glad there is a new interest in the Trinity among the Evangelical world. Like most things, the current revival of interest in the Trinity among Evangelicals reflects the increased academic interest in the trinity over the last 50-60 years (Barth, Rahner, Grentz, etc.).
What I find odd about the renewal of interest in the Trinity among Evangelicals is that they seem to want to not talk about recent academic writing about the Trinity.
So when I read Ryken’s book on the Trinity he wanted to talk about the Trinity as a purely individualistic issue and ignored the Trinity as a social theology (which has been the primary focus of modern Trinitarian writing.) Ryken also primarily seemed to talk about the Trinity not as who God is, but what the Trinity means to who we are as Christians (why we need the Trinity for salvation).
Sanders does not fall into quite the same problems. He explicitly says, “We have seen that God is triune at the deepest level, at the level of who he essentially is rather than merely at the level of what he does.” and later “God is Trinity primarily for himself and only secondarily for us. One of the consequences of this is that the Father has always been the Father, the Son has always been the Son, and the Holy Spirit has always been the Holy Spirit.”
