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…

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…

“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…

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;…

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…

I would like to begin by thanking Matthew Wiley, who has taken the lead in organizing this symposium, as well as the four colleagues who have taken the time during this most unusual season of academic life to engage with my work. It is a privilege to be given the time and space to think…

The strengths of Dr. McFarland’s Christological proposal lie in (a) its epistemological draw, and (b) its deep roots in Chalcedonian reasoning. Indeed, the force of McFarland’s epistemic claims emerge from an elegant reading of the Chalcedonian heritage and its implications. Yet, I wonder if, in McFarland’s zeal to center the human nature of Christ, he…

The central thesis of Ian McFarland’s book, The Word Made Flesh, seems straightforward enough: the Christology hammered out in the Chalcedonian Definition remains “the most adequate account of Christian convictions regarding Jesus” (p. 3). But upon closer inspection, McFarland’s “Chalcedonianism without reserve” is quite arresting, even provocative. He suggests that the classic distinction drawn between…

“As the voice, so the vision of God is the end of the creature; no one looks on the Lord and lives.” —Katherine Sonderegger “Whoever wishes to deliberate or speculate soundly about God should disregard absolutely everything except the humanity of Christ.” —Martin Luther In 599, Gregory the Great was alerted that the Bishop of…

The third volume of my tetralogy on divine action represents a significant departure from traditional genres of systematic theology. On the surface, the work looks like a standard treatment of the loci of systematic theology and thus could readily be dismissed as archaic at worst and conventional at best. However, it is placed very deliberately…

There is something naturally compelling to Abraham’s call for theology’s return to the language of divine personal agency. It is as if theology had languished under a spell, which was preventing us from seeing the obvious: that there is no metaphysical quandary about the claim that God acts. Invoking an open concept of action, he…

Professor Fergusson’s The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach is an impressive contribution to the search for an adequate Christian doctrine of divine providence. The merits of the book are many, and there is much to appreciate. Fergusson’s discussion is grounded in consideration of Scripture (including both the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament and the New…