The Shack

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 paradox but not as a logical contradiction; the distinction between “essence” and “persons” renders the position noncontradictory, if not easily understandable. Most of Young’s portrayal of the members of the Trinity follows this traditional understanding of the doctrine; they are all represented as God, mystically united with one another in a real but hard to describe way, and yet they are all their own persons at the same time.

In a few aspects, Young’s portrayal strays from traditional depictions of the Trinity. In choosing to represent God the Father and the Holy Spirit as feminine, Young is out of the mainstream, but the novel presents two rationales for this choice: the relationship between divine nature and the idea of gender, and Mack’s personal background with father figures. Also atypical is Young’s portrayal of all three members of the Trinity having been fully present in the suffering and death of Jesus, as evidenced by Papa’s scars. While the portrayal upholds the union of the three persons, Christian theology has usually denied that the other members of the Trinity could have suffered and died along with Jesus (the idea was at times condemned as a heresy in early Christianity, under the term patripassianism). Young also portrays the relationships between the Trinity as a circle of love without any hierarchical distinctions. In doing so, Young’s portrayal supports traditional ideas regarding the consubstantiality and interpenetration (perichoresis) of the life of the divine persons, but some critics believes it falls afoul of the Bible’s portrayal of the Son’s submission to the Father and of the differences inherent in the idea of being begotten (in the case of the Son) and of proceeding from another (in the case of the Holy Spirit).

Along with The Shack’s distinctive portrayals of the Trinity, some theologians have also questioned its perspectives on the Bible, the church, and God’s manner of relating to the world (though in such cases The Shack’s positions often align with other theological voices). Some such criticisms reflect active areas of theological debate rather than indicating that Young has gone beyond the bounds of Christian orthodoxy. Regarding these doctrinal issues, the fact that The Shack is a work of fiction and not a theological treatise offers room for an exploration of broader understandings. In particular, most of the theological dialogues in the text unfold with reference to the particular emotional and spiritual needs of the story’s main character rather than with a goal of expounding an all-encompassing view of theology.