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Systematic Theology, Volume 2: The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Processions and Persons
Katherine Sonderegger follows her monumental volume on the doctrine of God with this second entry of her Systematic Theology, which explores the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Locating her analysis first in the Hebrew Scriptures, Sonderegger examines the thrice-holy God that is proclaimed to Isaiah in the sanctuary and manifested in the sacrifice of the temple. The book of Leviticus, read in conversation with Exodus, unfolds the doctrine of the Trinity under the character of holiness. In the One God, Trinity speaks of the life, movement, and self-offering of God, who is the eternal procession of goodness and light. In Israel's sacrificial covenant, the Triune God is perfect self-offering: the eternal descent of the Father of Lights is the offering who is Son, eternally received and hallowed in the one who is Spirit. Anchoring the theology of the Trinity in Israel's Scriptures in this way elevates the processions over the persons, exploring the mystery of the Divine Life as holy, rational, and good. The Divine Persons, named in the New Testament, cannot be defined but may be glimpsed in the notion of perfection, a complete and perfect infinite set. In all these ways, the Holy Trinity may be praised as the deep reality of the life of God.
- GenresTheologyChristianity
610 pages, Hardcover
Published May 5, 2020
18 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 22, 2021
There's a lot in here that I'm *not sure* I agree with, because there's a lot in here I'm *not sure* I understand. But I can say this much: Sonderegger makes me love God more, and she makes me want to tremble before him in reverent awe-filled worship.
"The Spirit of Holiness drives newfound preachers from village to village, making witnesses of these Holy Things, freeing and giving stout hearts, until the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (pg. 2).
"When the Lord God declares that He sanctifies Himself, we are to hear, in the Heavenly chorus, the Thrice Holy praise of the seraphim: God enacts His Holiness. Our metaphysical doctrines conform to this seraphic call and explicate it." (pg. 475)
Nearly 600 pages of that kind of intense, riveting, stirring prose.
"The Spirit of Holiness drives newfound preachers from village to village, making witnesses of these Holy Things, freeing and giving stout hearts, until the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (pg. 2).
"When the Lord God declares that He sanctifies Himself, we are to hear, in the Heavenly chorus, the Thrice Holy praise of the seraphim: God enacts His Holiness. Our metaphysical doctrines conform to this seraphic call and explicate it." (pg. 475)
Nearly 600 pages of that kind of intense, riveting, stirring prose.
May 1, 2021
Incredible. Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this yet.
January 18, 2023
If I could give this book a 0 out of 5 I would do it so quickly. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. I cannot stand this book. I could go on and on and on about the reasons why I will never touch this book again and will tell everyone I know not to read it. One of my biggest issues is that the author writes with a very pedantic and an incredibly academic tone… the arrogance… ew! I don’t like it when an author tries to sound so smart and impress their readers with big fancy words. I was not impressed! If anything, it sounds like you had the thesaurus open while you were writing and editing and just plugged in the most complicated (and sometimes misused) words. Tsk tsk. Listen, I love using big, powerful words. But there needs to be a balance. This text is inaccessible to the audience that she is trying to reach.
In general, this book is filled with lousy logic, weak arguments, incorrect interpretations, and overly abstract arguments. Listen, I am not opposed to abstract arguments. You just need to tie them to something concrete/start with a solid, tangible, and fact-based foundation. Give the people something to hold onto, Katherine! At the same time, you don’t always have to over complicate things. Sometimes we don’t need to read between the lines.
One of my final qualms with this book is that the author can write and write and write but say nothing at all.
Okay, I can’t write about this anymore. Oy! 😵💫😵💫
In general, this book is filled with lousy logic, weak arguments, incorrect interpretations, and overly abstract arguments. Listen, I am not opposed to abstract arguments. You just need to tie them to something concrete/start with a solid, tangible, and fact-based foundation. Give the people something to hold onto, Katherine! At the same time, you don’t always have to over complicate things. Sometimes we don’t need to read between the lines.
One of my final qualms with this book is that the author can write and write and write but say nothing at all.
Okay, I can’t write about this anymore. Oy! 😵💫😵💫
March 10, 2021
Reading this must have been like what Ezekiel experienced when beholding the Glory of the Lord.
"As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings...Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands."
Beautiful, but probably leaving you asking "what the hell just happened to me?"
"As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings...Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands."
Beautiful, but probably leaving you asking "what the hell just happened to me?"
April 12, 2021
Typical works on the Trinity such as, say, Robert Letham's (2020), survey the biblical foundations of the doctrine, the history of its development and accompanying issues. Sonderegger will have none of that. She writes with a poetic almost hortatory prose (reminiscent of Barth), displaying a deep awareness of the theological landscape and of modern philosophy (e.g., Kant, Hegel, Descartes) as well as a willingness to challenge the contemporary consensus in Trinitarian theology. In a word, Sonderegger's Trinitarian theology is like no other. Deeply concerned to maintain the, as she terms it, 'unicity' of God (in line with vol 1 of her ST), she argues that the processions of God (generation, spiration) precede the persons of God, with the latter reduplicating and thus completing the former. The reader's patience will be stretched at times as the author adventures into lands seemingly disconnected from the doctrine in view; but persistent will be paid with reward. I am convinced that this will be a book that will need to be wrestled with and fought through for those seriously interested in the depths and complexities that is the doctrine of the Trinity.
April 17, 2021
First the good: There were periodic offerings of brilliant insight or wonderful new phrasing of several themes of classical trinitarian theology.
Still, so much of this is tedious and tiring, or worse. It took over 400 pages to arrive at the exploration of the central ideas. You really need to already enjoy Tillich & Schleiermacher. I might compare it to listening to Macy Gray or Smashing Pumpkins, tolerable for a song or two but rather unpleasant for an entire album. My eyes grew weary of overdone capitalization and exclamation marks. And will someone encourage a thesaurus with regard to her monotonous use of "neuralgic"? Another complaint: her interactions with Thomas are too sparse compared to how she camps out with recent moderns (e.g. Barth and Rahner).
I have serious questions about some of the proposals. This is not theological retrieval or repristination for a new era. It's not obvious to me that the novelty of her work is actually compatible with the received tradition. Is her adaptation of Emery's redoublement actually new or helpful? Has she substantially unpacked anything from Leviticus, or just used the notion/idea of sacrifice as a springboard to her metaphysics? Her focus here is not the Persons, but the Procession(s). But even that parenthetical "s" appears to return her to the quandaries she was working to alleviate in order to maintain a concrete monotheism and absolute divine simplicity. Are there processions or just procession, because it seems she wants both, but only as convenience allows. I'm still particularly perplexed by her portrayal of the Holy Spirit in the closing pages. Lastly, I need more details on how the costliness of sacrifice maintains cogency in God Himself.
On several topics that were routinely punted in Vol 1, my concerns persist. I'm still unclear about her doctrine of scripture (it's a creature?). She rejects inerrancy (without exactly saying why), but leaves unstated what confidence she retains in its truthfulness at any particular location. Her offerings on epistemology are likewise anemic. More worrisome to me are her cyclical affirmations of (affection for?)Freud. And several seemingly offhand comments peppered within left me dumbstruck. For example, she notes in reviewing a liberal Christian's appreciation for Leviticus that it is still "proper" to be directed towards "the honoring of same-sex unions." Call me a backwoods fundamentalist, but I'm worried this project has jumped the shark.
Still, so much of this is tedious and tiring, or worse. It took over 400 pages to arrive at the exploration of the central ideas. You really need to already enjoy Tillich & Schleiermacher. I might compare it to listening to Macy Gray or Smashing Pumpkins, tolerable for a song or two but rather unpleasant for an entire album. My eyes grew weary of overdone capitalization and exclamation marks. And will someone encourage a thesaurus with regard to her monotonous use of "neuralgic"? Another complaint: her interactions with Thomas are too sparse compared to how she camps out with recent moderns (e.g. Barth and Rahner).
I have serious questions about some of the proposals. This is not theological retrieval or repristination for a new era. It's not obvious to me that the novelty of her work is actually compatible with the received tradition. Is her adaptation of Emery's redoublement actually new or helpful? Has she substantially unpacked anything from Leviticus, or just used the notion/idea of sacrifice as a springboard to her metaphysics? Her focus here is not the Persons, but the Procession(s). But even that parenthetical "s" appears to return her to the quandaries she was working to alleviate in order to maintain a concrete monotheism and absolute divine simplicity. Are there processions or just procession, because it seems she wants both, but only as convenience allows. I'm still particularly perplexed by her portrayal of the Holy Spirit in the closing pages. Lastly, I need more details on how the costliness of sacrifice maintains cogency in God Himself.
On several topics that were routinely punted in Vol 1, my concerns persist. I'm still unclear about her doctrine of scripture (it's a creature?). She rejects inerrancy (without exactly saying why), but leaves unstated what confidence she retains in its truthfulness at any particular location. Her offerings on epistemology are likewise anemic. More worrisome to me are her cyclical affirmations of (affection for?)Freud. And several seemingly offhand comments peppered within left me dumbstruck. For example, she notes in reviewing a liberal Christian's appreciation for Leviticus that it is still "proper" to be directed towards "the honoring of same-sex unions." Call me a backwoods fundamentalist, but I'm worried this project has jumped the shark.
April 14, 2023
Similar sentiments to volume 1. The style of writing felt meandering and distracting from the content which was actually good. It’s just a preference thing, though. She’s brilliant.
August 12, 2022
I rarely stop reading books. I stopped reading this one.
I picked up Katherine Sonderegger’s first volume because I was intrigued by a scholar in the 21st century attempting an old-school systematic theology. Sonderegger’s old-schoolness is both her gift and her curse. At her best, Sonderegger reads like a joyfully earnest 19th-century Anglican cleric following you around at a dinner party telling you about the scientific journal they read, while you desperately look for another drink. At her worst, Sonderegger indulges the driest parts of scholasticism and analytic philosophy that cause theology to give itself a bad name.
The crux of her argument is that the Trinity is best represented in the notion of sacrifice. As other commentators have pointed out, sacrifice is an important facet of our understanding of God, but placing it at the art of Trinitarian understanding brings all kinds of problems with it – most crucially the difficulties of satisfaction atonement, with Sonderegger mentions but does not adequately rebut. The concern underlying this argument, I think, is to preserve the Old Testament (and for Sonderegger it is the Old Testament, not the Hebrew Bible, a telling choice) as equally reliable for Christian theology as the New Testament – and the book of Levicitus in particular. As with satisfaction atonement – and all other problems attendant on the sacrifice motif – Sonderegger mentions supersessionism in passing but fails to seriously grapple with it. The rest of the book is dedicated to Thomistic metaphysics and analytical realism. I stopped reading at section 6.
The author is clearly devoted to a high understanding of liturgy and Scripture, which I don’t align with but respect. Her writing is best when it is most lyrical and homiletic – I suspect she is a beautiful preacher. But it still carries a whiff of the Anglican preacher waxing rhapsodic while his congregation snores in the pews. Sonderegger’s habit of capitalizing all adjectives and predicates for God ceased being meaningful upon repetition and reminded me more of Winnie the Pooh (a Bear of Very Little Brain). Perhaps very few theologians of the 21st century are writing systematic theologies because they are indeed irrelevant to contemporary Christianity. Sonderegger’s second volume does nothing to dispel that suspicion.
I picked up Katherine Sonderegger’s first volume because I was intrigued by a scholar in the 21st century attempting an old-school systematic theology. Sonderegger’s old-schoolness is both her gift and her curse. At her best, Sonderegger reads like a joyfully earnest 19th-century Anglican cleric following you around at a dinner party telling you about the scientific journal they read, while you desperately look for another drink. At her worst, Sonderegger indulges the driest parts of scholasticism and analytic philosophy that cause theology to give itself a bad name.
The crux of her argument is that the Trinity is best represented in the notion of sacrifice. As other commentators have pointed out, sacrifice is an important facet of our understanding of God, but placing it at the art of Trinitarian understanding brings all kinds of problems with it – most crucially the difficulties of satisfaction atonement, with Sonderegger mentions but does not adequately rebut. The concern underlying this argument, I think, is to preserve the Old Testament (and for Sonderegger it is the Old Testament, not the Hebrew Bible, a telling choice) as equally reliable for Christian theology as the New Testament – and the book of Levicitus in particular. As with satisfaction atonement – and all other problems attendant on the sacrifice motif – Sonderegger mentions supersessionism in passing but fails to seriously grapple with it. The rest of the book is dedicated to Thomistic metaphysics and analytical realism. I stopped reading at section 6.
The author is clearly devoted to a high understanding of liturgy and Scripture, which I don’t align with but respect. Her writing is best when it is most lyrical and homiletic – I suspect she is a beautiful preacher. But it still carries a whiff of the Anglican preacher waxing rhapsodic while his congregation snores in the pews. Sonderegger’s habit of capitalizing all adjectives and predicates for God ceased being meaningful upon repetition and reminded me more of Winnie the Pooh (a Bear of Very Little Brain). Perhaps very few theologians of the 21st century are writing systematic theologies because they are indeed irrelevant to contemporary Christianity. Sonderegger’s second volume does nothing to dispel that suspicion.
September 15, 2025
Just as fascinating but significantly more difficult than volume one. This was so thought-provoking, but I simply do not feel like I'm able to evaluate which of her conclusions I can follow until I read her next volume.
I cannot wait for her next book to come out. I really do think the last time I was this excited for a book to release, I was eleven years old, lining up for my copy of Harry Potter 7.
I cannot wait for her next book to come out. I really do think the last time I was this excited for a book to release, I was eleven years old, lining up for my copy of Harry Potter 7.
Read
May 16, 2025Still dense and difficult. I think Sonderegger is best at emphasizing the oneness of God, but her location of the Trinity in God's blazing life, seen in Old Testament as well as New, is a helpful anti-Marcionite framing.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews