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The Third Person of the Trinity: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics
A Fresh Look at the Holy Spirit.
Recent decades have recognized pneumatology—the theology of the Holy Spirit—as a critical component in Christian thought, worthy of increased attention. While scholarly discussion about the Spirit is both creative and lively, it does sometimes occur in outlying areas of doctrine and practice rather than within its context of the doctrine of God.
The Third Person of the Trinity represents the proceedings of the 2020 Los Angeles Theology Conference, which examined pneumatology as a core component of the doctrine of the Trinity, offering constructive proposals for understanding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit with theological and historical depth, ecumenical scope, and analytic clarity.
The twelve diverse essays in this collection include discussions on:
Understanding the Holy Spirit’s presence in creation.
The mystery of the Trinity and the procession of the Spirit.
An exploration of a Black American pneumatology of freedom.
Exploring pneumatology alongside sorrow and suffering.
Each of the essays collected in this volume engage with Scripture as well as with others in the field—theologians both past and present, from different confessions—in order to provide constructive resources for contemporary systematic theology and to forge a theology for the future.
Recent decades have recognized pneumatology—the theology of the Holy Spirit—as a critical component in Christian thought, worthy of increased attention. While scholarly discussion about the Spirit is both creative and lively, it does sometimes occur in outlying areas of doctrine and practice rather than within its context of the doctrine of God.
The Third Person of the Trinity represents the proceedings of the 2020 Los Angeles Theology Conference, which examined pneumatology as a core component of the doctrine of the Trinity, offering constructive proposals for understanding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit with theological and historical depth, ecumenical scope, and analytic clarity.
The twelve diverse essays in this collection include discussions on:
Understanding the Holy Spirit’s presence in creation.
The mystery of the Trinity and the procession of the Spirit.
An exploration of a Black American pneumatology of freedom.
Exploring pneumatology alongside sorrow and suffering.
Each of the essays collected in this volume engage with Scripture as well as with others in the field—theologians both past and present, from different confessions—in order to provide constructive resources for contemporary systematic theology and to forge a theology for the future.
- GenresTheologyChristianity
256 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2020
About the author
Oliver D. Crisp
53 books37 followersOliver D. Crisp (PhD, University of London, DLitt, University of Aberdeen) is professor of analytic theology at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of several books, including Analyzing Doctrine: Toward a Systematic Theology, Saving Calvinism: Expanding the Reformed Tradition, Jonathan Edwards Among The Theologians, and The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Analytic Theology, and co-organizes the annual Los Angeles Theology Conference with Fred Sanders.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 21, 2022
As tends to happen, especially when it's a book that began as a conference of multivariate papers, some things are really quite good. Others could have done with more editorial work, greater focus, etc. And nearly all of them could have done away with the introductory, "where do I even begin; at least others are covering this topic that I want to talk about."
February 23, 2024
Christian theology has placed great focus on theology in general, Christology, anthropology, soteriology, ecclesiology, and even eschatology. There tends to be one domain which is rarely thus highlighted: pneumatology.
The 2020 Los Angeles Theology Conference worked to address matters of pneumatology, and the papers involved therein can be found in The Third Person of the Trinity: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics.
The contributions vary yet all seek to better define and understand, to the best of our ability, the work and person of the Holy Spirit. Some focus on procession and the relationship between the Spirit and the Father and the Son. Some grapple with the filioque of the Nicene Creed and the enduring arguments attempting to sort out the procession of the Spirit from the Son. Attempts are made at better understanding how Christians should come to spiritual understanding by means of the Spirit, how the Spirit works within creation, how our understanding of the Spirit should be shaped by our understanding of the Son, the role of the Spirit in liberation and the Black American experience, and how the Spirit is the basis of the unity of the people of God in Christ and what that might mean for us.
This was a clarifying, helpful, and useful exploration into matters of the Spirit and pneumatology. Many of the contributors are of Pentecostal or charismatic traditions, but the theological reflections remain consonant with the greater "orthodox”, confessional tradition.
I very much appreciated one contributor’s quotation about the Spirit and the church - the Spirit is the sine qua non of the church, but the church is not the sine qua non of the Spirit. That concept resonated for me more in terms of the Word/Scriptures, since so many in my tradition have limited their understanding to false binaries and grossly distorted the relationship between the Spirit and the Word. The Spirit is the sine qua non of the Word: without the Spirit, there is no revealed message. But the revealed message is not the sine qua non of the Spirit: the Spirit is involved in much more than revealing information, as the New Testament itself abundantly attests, and our Restorationist forebears in their hyper-rationality very much departed from healthy teachings and faith when they sought to restrict the work of the Spirit to the revealed message.
If you fully understood all the words in this review, then this book might well prove helpful for you in your pneumatological understanding as well. If most of this has confused you, then this book will also be quite confusing; it would be helpful to consider more introductory works to Christian theology first. I do not say this with any attempt to be haughty or high-minded; one can be a faithful Christian without plumbing the deep depths of theological discourse. But this book does require some familiarity with that theological discourse to be well and profitably understood.
The 2020 Los Angeles Theology Conference worked to address matters of pneumatology, and the papers involved therein can be found in The Third Person of the Trinity: Explorations in Constructive Dogmatics.
The contributions vary yet all seek to better define and understand, to the best of our ability, the work and person of the Holy Spirit. Some focus on procession and the relationship between the Spirit and the Father and the Son. Some grapple with the filioque of the Nicene Creed and the enduring arguments attempting to sort out the procession of the Spirit from the Son. Attempts are made at better understanding how Christians should come to spiritual understanding by means of the Spirit, how the Spirit works within creation, how our understanding of the Spirit should be shaped by our understanding of the Son, the role of the Spirit in liberation and the Black American experience, and how the Spirit is the basis of the unity of the people of God in Christ and what that might mean for us.
This was a clarifying, helpful, and useful exploration into matters of the Spirit and pneumatology. Many of the contributors are of Pentecostal or charismatic traditions, but the theological reflections remain consonant with the greater "orthodox”, confessional tradition.
I very much appreciated one contributor’s quotation about the Spirit and the church - the Spirit is the sine qua non of the church, but the church is not the sine qua non of the Spirit. That concept resonated for me more in terms of the Word/Scriptures, since so many in my tradition have limited their understanding to false binaries and grossly distorted the relationship between the Spirit and the Word. The Spirit is the sine qua non of the Word: without the Spirit, there is no revealed message. But the revealed message is not the sine qua non of the Spirit: the Spirit is involved in much more than revealing information, as the New Testament itself abundantly attests, and our Restorationist forebears in their hyper-rationality very much departed from healthy teachings and faith when they sought to restrict the work of the Spirit to the revealed message.
If you fully understood all the words in this review, then this book might well prove helpful for you in your pneumatological understanding as well. If most of this has confused you, then this book will also be quite confusing; it would be helpful to consider more introductory works to Christian theology first. I do not say this with any attempt to be haughty or high-minded; one can be a faithful Christian without plumbing the deep depths of theological discourse. But this book does require some familiarity with that theological discourse to be well and profitably understood.
February 28, 2022
Excellent collection of essays on the third person of the Trinity in reflection of the Council of Nicaea’s third article. Both academically challenging and worshipful, this book is not for someone first exploring pneumatology, but is a great resource for someone looking for deeper exploration on specifically the personhood of the Spirit.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews