A QED treatment of the spectra of highly-charged ions analogous to the QED treatment of the electrongfactor is advocated. In both cases a well-defined, rapidly converging set of Feynman diagrams exists that need be considered only to relatively low order in order to provide highly accurate theoretical predictions. We demonstrate this for lithiumlike bismuth, considering diagrams involving one, two, and three photons. One set of two-photon diagrams involves the two-loop Lamb shift, and we show how the size of this effect can be inferred from a recent experimental measurement. ©1999 American Institute of Physics.