Voice, Vestigia, and the Holiness of the Triune God

I’ve organized my response into a loose series of comments, appreciations, and questions, as I try to begin to take in Katherine Sonderegger’s extraordinary work in this volume. Here, I will comment on 1) her voice in the project, 2) the vestigia Trinitatis, with sex/gender as an example, and 3) the holiness of the Triune…
The Holy One in Our Midst

What might it look like to pursue a theology that, in its very form, is warped and bent around the voice of the God who speaks, the one who was is indeed most fully and vivaciously alive, of the one who truly “is a consuming fire” (cf. Heb 12:29)? Volume 2 of Katherine Sonderegger’s tour…
Working Close to the Flame

“It is not from below to above that we seek here” (p. 295). Sonderegger’s Systematic Theology is a masterpiece. As its readers, we are invited into the master’s workshop. We glimpse her tools, we watch her work, we see the form of the craft taking shape. I imagine it as a blacksmith’s shop—this is old…
Permanent Self-Hallowing and the Processional Life of God

Katherine Sonderegger freely admits that in her Systematic Theology, Volume 2 she has written “an unfamiliar, perhaps odd book on the Holy Trinity” (p. xxix). It is also a masterpiece, a sustained virtuoso performance at the highest level of academic systematic theology. Sonderegger attempts things that only a handful of living practitioners could aspire to;…
The Inner Life of God

Katherine Sonderegger confesses that Volume 2 of her Systematic Theology “is a strange book, a disorienting one, and, some would say, an impossible one” (p. xv). It is, after all, a book about the inner Life of God, as its title makes clear—The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Processions and Persons. Theologians have been eagerly…
The Two Hands of God

Many contemporary approaches to divine providence strive towards a relational and explicitly Christian, read Trinitarian, account of the doctrine, and David Fergusson’s work numbers among these. The goal is a praiseworthy, good, and powerful God, who is neither distant nor dominant, thus enabling dignified creaturely action. However, Fergusson risks absenting the Father in various ways…
Creatures of the Triune God

Fred Sanders is usually writing about the Trinity. The burden of his 2010 volume The Deep Things of God was to show how the doctrine of the Trinity “inherently belongs to the gospel.” Years earlier he wrote his dissertation on “Rahner’s Rule” and the immanent Trinity. Then there is his 2016 volume in Zondervan’s New Studies…
Trinity Debate: Ware-Grudem vs. McCall-Yandell

live-blogged by Andy Naselli Live from the chapel on the campus at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School: Students, faculty, and guests are gathering for a much anticipated Trinity Debate on this question: “Do relations of authority and submission exist eternally among the Persons of the Godhead?” 1. Participants Affirmative Bruce Ware (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) Wayne…