Katherine Sonderegger , Virginia Theological Seminary

My research area for the Center of Theological Inquiry is the first volume of a systematic theology. I aim to treat the Doctrine of God, especially the Divine attributes or perfections, the Doctrine of Trinity, and –if this is not overly ambitious – the Doctrine of Creation. I consider theology an act of the intellect at prayer; in just this way is Systematics a work of the Church catholic, grounded in Scripture, and sustained by the communio sanctorum. This is a dogmatic theology of the Latin tradition, broadly Reformed in its heritage.

I begin with the Oneness of God. Parting company with some current convictions in Systematics, I believe that Divine Unicity, rather than Trinity, is the place to begin and ground the Doctrine of God. The Divine perfections rest upon God’s Oneness, treated now as a via positva of Uniqueness, now as a via negativa of Freedom. This two-fold character of God’s perfections ranges all the way through the treatment of attributes: the One God as Subject of his acts; the One God as Subject and Object; the One God set against all idols.

Trinity follows this section on the One God. Here I follow the general doctrinal pattern of Richard St Victor’s Trinitarianism: Person as the incommunicable existence of the Divine nature. I take this up into a general Augustinian theology of Trinity in which the One God knows the Truth and loves the Good.

Katherine Sonderegger is Professor of Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, a free-standing seminary of the Episcopal Church. She has taught there since 2002, arriving from Middlebury College, in Middlebury, Vermont, where she served as Professor of Religion for fifteen years. Her education is from Brown University, Yale Divinity School and Smith College. Her particular interests lies in the area of historical and constructive theology, and has published on Karl Barth and in doctrinal theology, including essays in Trinity, Christology, and Providence. She is at work on a systematic theology, her CTI project. Raised a Presbyterian, Kate brings her Reformed theology into the Episcopal Church. She is a priest of the diocese of Virginia. Her writings include That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew: Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Israel.