An assessment of some recent Trinitarian thought

Abstract

This thesis is a study of some representative thinkers in recent trinitarian thinking (post 1970). My intention is to note leading themes, in particular changes from past emphases, and also assess the seriousness of some of the problems that result. In the first two chapters I characterise and analyse in some detail two representative Roman Catholic writers (Leonardo Boff and Catherine Mowry LaCugna) and two Protestant (Jűrgen Moltmann and Colin E. Gunton), noting some of their major recurring themes, and, where appropriate, points of convergence or divergence. Chapter III then focuses upon the most marked feature of recent Trinitarian thinking, the new stress on a dynamic and social understanding of the doctrine. Chapter IV offers a critique, arguing that the whole approach is premised on anthropological and sociological assumptions that really come from elsewhere than from revelation. The net result is to restrain God in a typology of this world. The final chapter then attempts to balance that critique by noting both positive and negative contributions in such recent thinking. As a whole the thesis welcomes the new focus on the biblical revelation, as I agree that the doctrine can only be found on the basis of God's salvation history. Where I differ is in questioning whether recent trends do not impair the fundamentally transcendent character of the being of God, through too simplistic a dependency on human reason and anthropological ideologies.