Four Sources For Trinitarian Apologetics

The Forgotten Trinity by James White

In defending the doctrine of the Trinity against Islam or another heretical group, there are several resources that I recommend.  There are actually five sources that I recommend but the fifth one is the Bible so it’s a given.  One needs to know the Bible in order to defend the Trinity, or any other doctrine for that matter.  Of my four additional sources that I’m going to recommend, two are from the ancient church and two are from modern apologists.

The first document to consider is the Nicene-Constantinople Creed itself.  This is the product of two fourth century councils.  Almost every phrase in the document comes straight from the Bible and that just goes to show how seriously these men took scripture.  It also shows what I said before in that the first thing one needs to know is the Bible.

The second document is the book On the Trinity by St. Augustine of Hippo.  Reading this book will allow you to familiarize yourself with how top bishops in the early Church defended this doctrine.  Reading literature like this helps one get into a Trinitarian mindset instead of memorizing the Creed or proof texts from the Bible.

Now, these two ancient sources aren’t that early.  They’re from the fourth and fifth centuries which doesn’t provide an early witness.  If one wants to prove the Trinity from ancient witnesses, it’s better to look at the second century fathers like St. Ignatius of Antioch and others.  Although early witnesses are important, they’re not important enough to make it into the top four resources that I’m recommending.

The third source and the first of our two modern documents is The Forgotten Trinity by Dr. James White.  I love this book.  White is an expert in apologetics and the Greek language.  He’s defended the deity of Christ many times in debate.  His book doesn’t only give good texts that prove the Trinity but he also shows the important roles of the three persons of the Trinity.  For example, he goes deep into texts like John 1 and shows the deep theology of the prologue of the Gospel.

The last of the documents is the book that I recently reviewed.  It’s the book Our God is Triune.  The book isn’t written by one author.  It’s a collection of essays written by apologists and scholars who have been studying this doctrine for many years.  Although the book is simply about the Trinity, it is geared toward Islamic polemics.  Vocab Malone and Anthony Rogers are two of the contributors and they deal very extensively with Islamic apologetics.  This book is very advanced so it should be the last to be read out of these four documents.

These are the four sources that I would recommend.  I would recommend reading them in this order as well.  Obviously if one is getting into apologetics, they’ll have to read even more than this, but these sources are the bare minimum.  They’re a good starting point.  In previous posts, I’ve often talked about how Muslims should be forced to give an answer to their Quran utterly collapsing on the doctrine of the Trinity.  This is true and that’s an avenue one can go down.  However, at the end of the day, we need to know how to defend the doctrine as well.  After all, even if Islam and the Quran are false, it doesn’t mean that the Trinity is true.  We need to be able to articulate it well and these four sources are the place to start.