Abstract
Professor Sánchez teaches systematic theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and directs the Center for Hispanic Ministries. His book offers a survey of the wide variety of “Spirit Christologies” that have developed over the past decades. A subdiscipline has become a field. The book aims at being a guide through the maze of conceptions that fill it.
The major questions underlying Spirit Christologies concern Jesus’ divinity and how he saves, what happens to the Trinity in these approaches, and their bearing on Christian spirituality. S. provides a large map for sorting them out by distinguishing those that are Nicene because they also protect a Logos Christology, pre-Nicene that attend carefully to the witness of the Gospels and early church fathers, and post-Nicene that offer alternative frameworks to the terminology of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon.
After an initial overview, S. proceeds constructively in five more chapters that canvas Spirit Christologies focusing successively on biblical studies, early church resources, views of trinitarian theology that accent the role of Spirit, Spirit Christologies that integrate Spirit and Logos in a complementary way, and finally the payoff in the role of the Spirit in Christian life. In each case he provides a précis of exemplary theologians to illustrate a trend. S. is most sympathetic toward Nicene or trinitarian Spirit Christologies that present Word and Spirit at work together in Jesus.
In the case of trinitarian Spirit Christologies, the theology of the immanent Trinity, whether it be expanded in terms of a mutual indwelling of persons or by “processions,” is a doctrinal given; it weds a Spirit Christology from below with the framework and language of tradition.
The book shows a long and deep familiarity with the subject matter and is packed with content. The rationale for the explicit or implied criticism of one position in relation to another is reported rather than adjudicated. Why are theologians saying such different things and why does it make a difference? Most students will need a teacher as a guide through this book. But it accommodates readers with a glossary and an extensive bibliography for accompanying texts in a course.