Based on my 2001 dissertation at the Graduate Theological Union, The Image of the Immanent Trinity is written in a more scholarly register than much of my later work. It takes the most important sentence in the modern academic revival of trinitarian theology, “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and vice versa,” and subjects it to four kinds of analysis: First, it investigates how the sentence emerged from Karl Rahner’s work on historical and systematic theology; second, it surveys how subsequent theologians interpreted the sentence; third, it compares the sentence to the longer history of trinitarian theology; and fourth, it questions the value of the sentence for carrying out a theological interpretation of Scripture.

The dissertation itself was written under advisor Ted Peters, with a committee that included Ralph Del Colle, Bob Russell, and art historian Doug Adams. Catherine Mowry LaCugna had agreed to serve as a reader, but passed away before the project reached completion. In his earlier work, Ted Peters coined the name “Rahner’s Rule” for this key sentence, so including it in the title was a nod of thanks to him. The original dissertation included a chapter on the history of the iconography of the Trinity; for book publication I removed this chapter, replacing it with one on Karl Barth. My editor at Peter Lang was Paul Molnar, who was writing his own influential book on the immanent Trinity at the same time.

If “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity,” as Karl Rahner said, then what difference does it make for how we read the Bible? This book takes up the discussion that has dominated the last several decades of Trinitarian theology –that of Rahner’s Rule– and brings it into dialogue with the longer history of the doctrine, particularly with the history of interpretation of scripture. The history of Trinitarianism is the history of complex interpretive moves, a long conversation in which the Christian church has sought to learn how to ask the right questions of scripture. Surveying recent theological projects and learning from their successes and failures, The Image of the Immanent Trinity argues that the eternally perfect fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit is truly present for our salvation in Christ who, as the image of the invisible God, secures God’s presence in the economy of salvation as the image of the immanent Trinity.