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127 Bauckham and N. T. Wright. Like the latter, he argues for a high early Christology. Picking up on Augustine’s warnings about three types of people who have unwittingly erred or intentionally connived to distort a true conception of the triune God, Bates contends that this book is an effort to correct the misguided rationalism of former attempts to depict the Trinity as well as the inappropriate means of scriptural interpretation that can result in faulty conceptions of God. Indeed, the doctrine of the Trinity did not emerge as a late philosophical imposition predicated on Hellenistic assumptions (as Harnack argued), nor did it predominantly arise as an extension of the concept of divine agency within the matrix of Jewish monotheism (as Dunn argues). Rather, the idea of separate persons in timeless, intimate communion within the Godhead—i.e., Father, Son, and Spirit— was fostered and nurtured by prosopological exegesis, which is a technique that involved assigning dramatic characters to otherwise ambivalent speeches in inspired texts as an explanatory method. In speaking of the “the birth of the Trinity,” Bates does not refer to the ultimate or ontological starting point of the Trinity, but to the arrival and initial sociolinguistic framing of this doctrine in human history by the early church. This Trinitarian birth did not occur in a vacuum, but in the specific method of reading the Old Testament. The earliest Christians believed that the ancient prophets had in fact gained a supernatural view of the divine as these prophets participated in what may be termed a “theodrama,” taking on various masks or persons (prosōpa), and these early interpreters of the texts read the Jewish scriptures in a person-centered manner in order to recover the transcendentally revealed information about the nature of God latent therein. When this reading technique is employed, a theological wealth shines forth, as we are able to listen in on the intimate conversations within the Trinity. What emerges is not a Godhead marked by subordination and procession as the Scholastics viewed it, but rather a Father, Son, and Spirit who are characterized by relentless affection and concern for one another. What is offered in this book is a window into the inner life of God as discerned by person-centered reading of the Old Testament in the early church. Bates’s thesis in the book is contextualized in terms of other scholarship in chapter 1. Chapters 2–6 cover the full chronological divine drama from creation to final consummation. In fact, chapter 2 explores early Christian interpretations of the Old Testament. The third chapter examines moments of dialogue between the Father and the Son as depicted in the Old Testament. Chapter 4 enters into intimate intra-divine conversations, especially as seen from Jesus’ words to the Father on the cross. The fifth chapter recounts Jesus’ words of praise to the Father for deliverance, and chapter 6 culminates the story with discussions regarding the enthronement of the Son, the final conquest of evil, and the new creation. The book concludes with chapter 7, wherein Bates reflects on hermeneutical questions raised by the study. In contradistinction to the position put forward by James Dunn and Bart Ehrman (among others) that Jesus was “adopted” as the Son of God, Bates contends that the presence of divine dialogue in the New Testament and early Christian literature shows that the claims of the earliest church were the highest Christology, as Jesus was identified as a divine person through Old Testament interpretation. This book is written for readers of theology, history, and religion. I could easily see it used in seminars regarding the Trinity, Christology, biblical theology, and New Testament theology. It should be a nice addition to theological studies for years to come. Bradford McCall Holy Apostles College and Seminary Hawkinsville, GA. 31036