Contracting the Trinity

Trinitarian theology blossomed in English theology in the post-Reformation period, evidenced by the creative development of the vestigia trinitatis . During the seventeenth century, though, Trinitarian theology began to contract and wither. According to Philip Dixon ( Nice and Hot Disputes ), there were two dynamics at work.

First, Trinitarian doctrine came under attack from various angles. Heirs of the radical Reformation used sola Scriptura as a weapon to attack Trinitarian doctrine, since it didn’t appear as such in the Bible. The Socinian denial of the Trinity was a biblicist attack.

Writers associated with the nascent English Enlightenment launched moralistic and rationalist attacks on the doctrine. It didn't make sense, and, besides, it made no different. A doctrine so rationally absurd couldn't be the cornerstone of religion; a doctrine so practically insignificant wasn't worth believing.

The notion of “person” came under dispute. Hobbes too “person” to mean “representation” and gave what amounted to a modalist reinterpretation of Trinitarian doctrine: “But a person (as I have shown before, Chapter thirteen) is he that is represented, as of as he is represented; and therefore God, who has been represented (that is, personated) thrice, may properly enough be said to be three persons; though neither the word Person nor Trinity be ascribed to him in the Bible” ( Leviathan , ch. 42). Individualistic understandings of “person” threatened to turn the Trinity into tritheism.

Dixon also points to an overall intellectual shift, similar to what Eliot described as a “dissociation of sensibility.” Metaphor and analogy lost intellectual stature, while analytical and critical rigor took on greater prominence.

Dixon doesn't mention it, but the critical attack on reliability of the gospels played an enormous role. The doctrine of the Trinity arose out of reflection on the gospel story: Who must God be in order for the gospel story to be accurate to His character? If the gospels aren't reliable, then the foundation of Trinitarian reflection begins to crumble.

Dixon argues that the more fateful dynamic came not from outside the church but from within, not from detractors of Trinitarian theology but from defenders. In responding to attacks, orthodox Christians turned the Trinity into a polemical doctrine, and the rich speculations that characterized the earlier part of the seventeenth century dry up. The Trinity becomes a sheer, irrational datum of revelation, to be believed and defended but not a source of intellectual and spiritual delight. According to Dixon. “the Trinitarian imagination contracts” (12) as the doctrine is reduced to defending the personhood of Father, Son, and Spirit. that shift reinforced the attacks: Orthodox Christians seemed to be conceding the force of the rationalist assaults, and the contraction of Trinitarian imagination lent plausibility to the charge of impracticality.