Review of Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service by Stephen Seamands

It is not Seamand's intention in this volume to deal specifically with the issue of gender as it relates to the Christian life and ministry. He argues and demonstrates that in an age when the Trinity is largely misunderstood and ignored, a fuller understanding of it provides a pattern for how Christian ministry should be done. However, he includes a chapter on the mutual self-denial and deference of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As each person of the Godhead denies and defers himself for the sake of the others, he argues that each "finds his personhood by being subject to the others and allowing his identity to be established by the others" (80). Seamands also attributes the Gospel of John's minimization of the self-giving and deferring nature of the triune persons to his emphasis on the economic trinity. This, he says, is not the way it was from eternity past. Although he does not deal specifically with gender as it relates to ministry, certainly these ideals will lend themselves to a form of egalitarian ministry.