A Fresh Look at the Doctrine of Christ, Essential for Modern Theological Work Christology was the central doctrine articulated by the early church councils, and it remains the subject of vigorous theological investigation today. The study of the doctrine of Christ is a field of broad ecumenical convergence, inviting theologians from all denominational settings to fruitful collaborative exploration. In the contemporary setting, it is especially crucial for theologians to investigate the scriptural witness afresh, to retrieve classical criteria and categories from the tradition, and to consider the generative pressure of soteriology for Christology proper. The first annual Los Angeles Theology Conference sought to make a positive contribution to contemporary dogmatics in intentional engagement with the Christian tradition. Christology, Ancient and Modern brings together conference proceedings, surveying the field and articulating the sources, norms, and criteria for constructive theological work in Christology.

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.

The mystery of Almighty God is most properly an explication of the oneness of God, tying the faith of the church to the bedrock of Israel's confession of the lord of the covenant, the lord of our Lord Jesus Christ. The doctrine of divine attributes, then, is set out as a reflection on Holy Scripture: the One God as omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, and all these as expressions of the Love who is God. Systematic theology must make bold claims about its knowledge and service of this One lord: the Invisible God must be seen and known in the visible. In this way, God and God's relation to creation are distinguished-but not separated-from Christology, the doctrine of perfections from redemption. The lord God will be seen as compatible with creatures, and the divine perfections express formally distinct and unique relations to the world. This systematic theology, then, begins from the treatise De Deo Uno and develops the dogma of the Trinity as an expression of divine unicity, on which will depend creation, Christology, and ecclesiology. In the end, the transcendent beauty who is God can be known only in worship and praise.