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The overarching aim of this work is to develop a new account of the doctrine of the Trinity that is more attentive to human experience. It will be argued that such an approach is overdue because contemporary trinitarian theology pays insufficient attention to the fact that theology as linguistic discourse is inescapably embedded in human experience. This neglect is particularly worrying because many theologians who favour a kind of social doctrine of the Trinity claim that the Trinity is a doctrine with practical consequences for human life. The main thrust of this project, therefore, is to link the doctrine of the Trinity more creatively with human experience and to develop an understanding of how and who the triune God is in relation to human life as it is lived and experienced by human beings. The discussion is divided into five chapters. Chapter One highlights the need for a new approach engaging in a critical discussion with some trinitarian theologians. By giving close attention to the concepts of experience and revelation and their embeddedness in language. Chapter Two aims at establishing an understanding of experience that underlies all human linguistic discourse. This account will lead to the conclusion that trinitarian discourse must pay proper attention to both the human condition as experienced by human beings and religious experience which is expressed in biblical narratives. Consequently, while Chapter Three, drawing on contributions from contemporary literature, the human sciences (Franki, Weizsäcker) and philosophy (Lévinas), gives an account of what it is to be human. Chapter Four, engaging with biblical narratives, tries to spell out how biblical experience might inform Trinitarian discourse. In conclusion, Chapter Five offers an interstitial trinitarian theology that maintains such discourse as creative tension. An account of the Trinity in relation to human life will emerge and draw the whole argument to a close.

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The present dissertation combines sequential and analytical approaches to Augustine's De Trinitate to elaborate a description of the treatise based on the presupposition of its unity and its coherence from the structural, rhetorical and theological points of view. The sequential analysis of books 1-7 and 8-15 describes first the outer layer of the argument of the treatise: Scripture and the mystery of the Trinity (books 1-4); discussion of'Arian' logical and ontological categories (books 5 —7) and a comparison between self-love/knowledge and formal aspects of the confession of the mystery of the Trinity (books 8-15). However, this outer layer does not adequately account for the * unity and the coherence of the treatise. On the contrary, the most comprehensive and satisfactory structural, rhetorical and theological description of the De Trinitate results from an inner layer which can be detected throughout the treatise around the theme of knowledge of God. Augustine, in the De Trinitate, implicitly endorses the threefold classical definition of the purpose of rhetoric: teach, move, delight (explicitely mentioned in the De Doctrina Christiana). The outer layer of the De Trinitate, especially the so called 'analogical' line, is meant to entice the interest and the curiosity of the reader, to delight him. Other aspects of the outer layer, especially in the first half of the treatise, have a predominant instructive or polemical function. The deepest thrust of the treatise, however, aims at 'moving' the reader, that is leading him to the visio and frutio of God the Trinity, in whose image he is created. This mystagogical aspect of the rhetoric of the treatise entails its own distinctive delightfulness and eloquence, unfolded through Christology, soteriology doctrine of the Holy Spirit and doctrine of revelation. At the same time, from the vantage point of dilectio, Augustine detects and powerfully describes the epistemological consequences of human sinfulness, thus unmasking the fundamental deficiency of received theories of knowledge. Only dilectio restores knowledge and enables philosophers to yield to the injunction which resumes philosophical enterprise as a whole, namely cognosce te ipsum.

This thesis proposes that Robert W. Jenson's identification of the triune God faithfully describes the persons and being of God. To support this I examine the most basic argument of Jenson's 'Systematic Theology',: that God is freely but truly identified by and with Jesus Christ. This includes discussion of Jenson's starting point, his formal description of the three persons of God, and the theological ontology that this entails. Throughout I argue that Jenson's trinitarian description and theological ontology is rightly controlled by an a posteriori logic of response to the triune God's actual life with and for his people. Central to this is the way that Jenson creatively and courageously uses Jesus Christ's life and person as the controlling criterion of all dogmatic statements about God. Finally, this thesis proposes that Jenson's basic insights are made more exact when Jesus Christ is recognized in his perfect relation with the Father and Spirit before, in and after created history. To elucidate this suggestion the nature of the triune God's election and self-determination is reconsidered in light of Jenson's critical insight that the persons are mutually, not identically, perfect in deity. This in turn leads to a brief description of the eternity and freedom of the triune conversation that begins and ends with the Word who is Jesus Christ.

This thesis provides an historical and intellectual summary of the role of the concepts of 'substance,' and 'participation,' in the making of the doctrine of the Trinity. In the concluding chapter, a study is made of the assumptions of deconstruction, which are somewhat hostile to a substance paradigm. We argue for an appreciation of the importance of both substance and participation for the Trinity, and philosophy generally. Chapters are dedicated to individuals who have in some way contributed to perceptions of these two terms, as they pertain to the Christian notion of the Trinity. Additionally, we seek to define some philosophical problems that accompany a Trinitarian metaphysics of 'substance,' and 'participation.' The problems include those of deconstruction: issues such as 'Logocentrism,' and 'Presence.' Finally, we investigate how Trinitarian ontology can provide answers to many of the questions Derrida raises conceming the problematic future of metaphysical thinking. / Philosophy and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Systematic Theology)

This thesis is an attempt to relate the Scriptural revelation of God's nature to the normal Christian life. It analyses the experiential factors that originally gave rise to a triune awareness of God, arguing that a contemporary recovery of those seminal events is requisite for an integration of the trinity into the Christian life. After a theological summation of the biblical revelation, the thesis then explores the nature of the orientation of the trinity within the Christian life. This orientation is brought about by observing the harmonious arrangement of the different Persons within the Godhead. Once this is done we can then ensure that this arrangement finds an echo and corresponding imprint within the Christian life. As the Christian consistently integrates that tripartite relationship into the Christian life, the doctrine of the trinity will be a continual source of sustenance and direction for life and godliness. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / Th. M. (Systematic Theology)

The purpose of this thesis is to re-assert beauty as a fundamental and essential value within contemporary Christendom as it exists within a postmodern culture. Once a strong and meaningful concept within Christian belief, beauty has been lost over the passage of two millennia. This thesis examines the loss of beauty as a meaningful concept in western Christian belief, and offers a re-evaluation of the concept particularly within the postmodern world. Drawing together the fundamental concerns of postmodern society and the contribution that beauty is able to make from within the Christian context, this thesis demonstrates that "beauty" speaks to contemporary concerns and meets its deepest needs. Here, beauty, understood as the relational aspect of forms conceived by God, and offered to humanity as gift, is shown to overcome the affective sterility that has overtaken western society as an effect of enlightenment thought. An examination of the concept of beauty, particularly in the works of Thomas Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards and Gerard Manley Hopkins serves as a basis to posit a definition of beauty that is consistent with Christian beliefs without violating its unique content. Tracing the loss of beauty in western Christian thought and in western culture at large, and recognising the absence of a similar phenomenon within the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, suggests that the genius of these eastern traditions is their refusal to minimise the notion of "mystery" that stands at the heart of Christian revelation. The western Church then, is called to refocus on the centrality of the "mystery" inherent in her life. To this end, contemplation is proposed as the avenue wherein the believer experiences an intimate and transforming encounter with the Triune God which leads to the fruition of unique personhood that increasingly takes form as the "beauty of holiness." / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

In 1563, the publication of the Heidelberg Catechism marked the conversion of the Rhineland Palatinate to a stronghold for Reformed religion. Immediately thereafter, however, the Palatinate church experienced a deeply unsettling surge in the popularity of antitrinitarianism. To their Lutheran and Catholic opponents, this development revealed a toxic connection between Reformed theology and the tenets of antitrinitarianism. As early as 1565, for instance, the Catholic Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius argued anonymously that the Reformed principle of sola scriptura was indistinguishable from the biblicism which had led heretics to reject the doctrine of the Trinity on the grounds that it was nowhere explicitly justified in the biblical text. Seven years later, the displaced Italian theologian and Heidelberg professor, Girolamo Zanchi, countered this argument in his De Tribus Elohim (1572). This huge landmark of this early theological crisis in Heidelberg sought to oppose the biblicism of the early antitrinitarians by arguing that the doctrine of the Trinity was explicitly taught within the Hebrew divine names Jehovah and Elohim. The following year De Tribus Elohim received an Imperial Privilege from the Catholic court in Vienna, a distinction virtually unheard of for a Reformed theological text. Zanchi’s argument was then widely promulgated in the marginal notations of the tremendously influential Biblia Sacra of Franciscus Junius and Immanuel Tremellius, and became a staple of refutations of antitrinitarianism thereafter. Yet Zanchi’s confidence that trinitarian theology was contained within the Hebrew of the Old Testament was not shared by many of his own Reformed colleagues. John Calvin’s exegetical works had explicitly rejected this argument; and theologians like David Pareus (Zanchi’s younger colleague in Heidelberg) and the Dutch Hebraist Johannes Drusius preferred a more historical-grammatical reading of the Old Testament and dismissed Zanchi’s reading of the name Elohim despite the danger that this might sacrifice a valuable defence against antitrinitarianism. Complicating the picture further, the Lutheran polemicist Aegidius Hunnius directed Zanchi’s arguments against Calvin in his Calvinus Iudaizans (1593). This variety of responses to Zanchi’s argument demonstrates the diversity of assumptions about the nature of the biblical text within the Reformed church, contradicting the notion that the Reformed world in the age of “confessionalization” was becoming increasingly homogenous or that the works of John Calvin had become the authoritative touchstone of Reformed orthodoxy in this period.