Trinity and Reality: An Introduction to the Christian Faith

The doctrine of the Trinity is often neglected, especially in the preaching and teaching of the Church, but in this book Ralph Allan Smith shows how Trinitarian theology has wide-ranging implications for the Christian worldview.

Trinity and Reality introduces Christians to a number of essential biblical doctrines by presenting them through the lens of the Trinity, explaining Christian teaching not only on the basis of the Word of the triune God.

Looking through a Trinitarian lens, the author re-evaluates common questions including:

• How to live by faith?
• The Trinity and evil? The Trinity and hell?
• How does God dwell in us?
• Why and how is Christianity different from other religions?
• What is the connection between Creation and covenant?
• Is there a threefold revelation of the Word?
• And much more.

Ralph Allan Smith, born in 1949, began a serious Christian life after he graduated from Ohio University in 1971. He served in the Navy for two years before he entered Grace Theological Seminary, graduating in 1978 (M. Div.). In 1976, he married his seminary class mate Tsing (Sylvia) Kou, and the two of them arrived Tokyo, Japan in 1981, where they started church planting work with Sylvia's mother and her brother's family. That was the beginning of the Mitaka Evangelical Church. Ralph and Sylvia's son, Ben Zedek, is now the main pastor of the Mitaka Evangelical Church. Their second son, Berek, is an Anglican minister, also serving God in Tokyo, Japan. He is the author of The Baptism of Jesus the Christ as well as Hear My Son: An Examination of Fatherhood of Yahweh in Deuteronomy.