This magnificent book, a Te Deum laudamus for our scattering times, invites responses which gather diverse powers and genres. Before an analytic account, I must mention how, after completing my first thorough reading, the book sprang a surprise (one of many) on me. Gerard Hopkins’ ‘As kingfishers catch fire’ came back to me transformed, after Soulen, in the lights and sounds of the theophanies on the mountain in Exodus 3, and at Pentecost in Jerusalem according to Luke, and in the great ‘I am’ affirmations in Johannine traditions. Hopkins (with Soulen) allows us to hear and see something of how the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, takes care of his own name, with a surprisingly tender, joyful and generous sharing of this self-affirmation with countless others.
Soulen gives an exemplary opening abstract of his work on p. ix. As this can be read in Amazon's sample of the text, I offer a different summary. Soulen shows how Christians name the persons of the Trinity in three distinct, equally important, connected ways, each in affinity with one person of the Trinity in particular. Part I is mainly descriptive of these patterns of naming, showing how Christians across time have understood their relations. Soulen's account often explicitly concerns the vicissitudes of the pattern of naming he calls ‘Theological’, involving the Tetragrammaton, as this interacts with the two others, the christological and pneumatological patterns.
Hence Soulen's approach has from the start a reflexive character, opened up by the patterns of naming or – by synecdoche – ‘voices’, offering degrees of originality and freedom, as well as inheritance. Reluctance to infringe on the Lord's self-naming bestows a liberty for complementary naming. Indeed, reverential reluctance to use the name YHWH, accompanies a profusion of human names which incorporate ‘Ya’ or ‘Jah’ sounds, not least the antecedent versions of ‘Joshua’ and ‘Jesus’.
In Part II, Soulen's argument becomes more normative. Christians name the persons of the Trinity in three distinct, equally important, connected ways because this is the way the triune Lord, God of Israel, is self-indicated throughout holy scripture. The qualities of Soulen's exegesis and hermeneutics show these circles are intensively beneficent, as he engages constantly with biblical texts and doctrinal tradition.
In chapters 8–11, Soulen argues that God's name-declaration in the scriptures takes an implicitly trinitarian shape. God promises first, to declare who God is, by second, coming to save Israel, and by third, blessing Israel with fullness of life. These three characteristics of God's name-declaration are recognisable as uniqueness, presence and blessing. In the New Testament, God's name-declaration becomes explicitly trinitarian, as salvation history culminates in the first person of the Trinity revealing who he is, by sending the second person to come to deliver, and by sending the third person to bless with fullness of life. Thus the Trinity declares who the Trinity is, with each person enacting a distinct role in that one work: the first person has a special, non-exclusive, affinity with expressing divine uniqueness, the second person with divine presence, and the third with the sharing of divine blessing.
One considerable advantage is how this approach, with the Tetragrammaton as centre of gravity, lets Soulen explore the fullness of canonical and ecclesial divine names and patterns of naming, in their diversity and coherence, with their rich varieties and concordances of voice, both fully human and fully divine, with analogical imagination. Moreover, the patterns imply disciplines of prayer and worship as well as faithful teaching and living.
Soulen asks us to consider the Trinity's undivided self-identification through questioning whose voice and whose characteristic ‘note’ predominates. The first person and the note of divine uniqueness? The second person and the note of divine presence? Or the third person and the note of divine blessing? Surveying biblical data, Soulen concludes that each person and personal note predominate at different points, so that, essentially, the Trinity makes itself known in three distinct, equally important, and connected ways, each of these ways having a non-exclusive affinity with one person of the Trinity and one pattern of naming.
Even more riches are promised in Soulen's second volume, including consideration of the economic and immanent Trinity arguments, and of the churches’ gender and sexuality wars, and other versions of cultural captivity and deliverance; and, no doubt, also Soulen's responses to readings of this volume. It would be good to explore further how all three patterns of naming connect with ways of prayer. Soulen's wonderful exegesis (for example of ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’) would be even more persuasive if it connected more with Paul's recognition that ‘the Lord is the Spirit’. Nevertheless, we are shown here how to appreciate better, with Paul in the Philippians hymn, the ways in which divine uniqueness is not being minded towards the privative, rapacious or exploitative, but towards generative and nurturing constructive justice, and the overflowing generosity of sharing.
