After Our Likeness - 1

It's been a while since I talked a solid, heavy theological book. So I have started reading: After Our Likeness: The Church as The Image of The Trinity by Miroslav Volf. I've just got started: The Preface and one of the Introductions. That's not usually the point at which I start to write a review, but if he fulfils what he sets out to do, this should be an interesting read. [Disclaimer: I am a graduate of Regent College in Vancouver, BC, studying with Dr. Jim Houston, which means I am predisposed to a trinitarian approach.]

In the Preface, Volf describes his two basic assumptions:

"no church without the reign of God...;
no reign of God without the church"; p. x

and his goal:

"to show that the typically Protestant - above all "Free Church" - form of ecclesial individualism and the classical Catholic and Orthodox forms of ecclesiological holism are not the only adequate ecclesiological alternatives, but that an appropriate understanding of the Trinity suggests a more nuanced and promising model of the relationship between person and community in the church." p. xi

In his Introduction to the American Edition he sets out his purpose:

"to counter the tendencies toward individualism in Protestant ecclesiology ad to suggest a viable understanding of the church in which person and community are given their proper due.... to spell out a vision of the church as an image of the triune God." p.2

I'm looking forward to seeing how he develops this trinitarian model of the church, and to see how this gets lived out in a missional context.