Jacqueline Service offers a scholarly and innovative account of the dynamics of the trinitarian doctrine of God. At its heart is the notion of divine enrichment as a basis for the well-being and development of human life. The reader is offered a compelling and radical vision of divine kenosis as the way of fullness and perfection of God’s life. Service breaks new ground in this original and carefully researched inquiry into the doctrine of God.
— Stephen Pickard, Charles Sturt University
Through the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, Christian theology claims that creation is gift. Whilst observing the protocols of classical Christian teaching concerning God’s simplicity and aseity, Jacqueline Service extends the theme of gift and receipt to a Trinitarian theology of God’s eternal and dynamic self-enrichment. This is a profound meditation with significant implications for human self-understanding and well-being.
— Simon Oliver, Durham University
Jacqueline Service has taken a term—Self-Enrichment—that carries the scent of modernist narcissism and self-indulgence and reformulated it to do stunning work in thinking the triune life of God and our participation in that life. Service weaves a glorious vision of enrichment through several theologians and offers us a beautiful portrait of life guided by God’s own project of flourishing in and with the creation. This is a wonderful piece of theological reflection.
— Willie James Jennings, Yale University
Within the strictures of classical theism, here is a carefully argued systematic ontology of divine self-enjoyment. It is a deep dive into the inner life of God discussed as perichoresis. The offering is a theory of God’s self-enjoyment through the giving and receiving of the divine nature among the three trinitarian persons that encourage, uphold, and sustain each other. Many more riches await the trained reader. She does not stir trinitarian waters but sails on a calm lake with new sails hoisted high.
— Ellen T. Charry, Princeton Theological Seminary
Carrying out a remarkable thought project with remarkable thoroughness, Service undertakes to confess God's all-blessedness as a reality that is dynamic and perichoretic. She proposes a novel category, divine self-enrichment, and then gladly accepts the challenging task of expounding this new proposal entirely within the classical guidelines of aseity, simplicity, perfection, fullness, and immutability. The result is real progress toward an important goal.
— Fred Sanders, Torrey Honors College, Biola University