In The Shack, Young deals with many theological concepts regarding the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, as well as some of the doctrines regarding the Bible and how God relates to the world. Most of these doctrines are familiar to those who have studied Christian theology, but Young does not always take them in the traditional direction.

The most important theological context for the novel is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine, dating to the earliest centuries of the faith, holds that there is one God who exists in an eternal union of three “persons” (“person” being an English translation of a theological term in ancient Greek, hypostasis, that does not necessarily convey the full semantic range of the original term). The three persons of the Trinity are God the Father, God the Son (incarnate in a full human nature as Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. All three persons of the Trinity share the same essence, the same undivided divine nature (in theological terms, they are referred to as being consubstantial with one another), and so cannot be understood as three separate gods. This three-in-one dynamic is often expressed as a holy mystery or

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