Social trinitarianism

[4] Those who are often associated with this term include Jürgen Moltmann,[5] Miroslav Volf,[6] Elizabeth Johnson,[7] Leonardo Boff,[8] John Zizioulas,[9] William Lane Craig[10] and Catherine LaCugna.

Some forms of social trinitarianism are opposed to Nicene Christianity, in that they see the Trinity as composed of three distinct wills which voluntarily submit to one another, similarly to subordinationism.

[13] Social trinitarian thought argues that the three persons are each distinct realities—this was generally presented in the East with the Greek term 'hypostasis' from the First Council of Nicaea onward.

[14] Many proponents of the social trinitarianism, including John Zizioulas, criticize modern individualism by mapping human relationships onto this relational ontology as well.

[15] The three persons of the Trinity must not be confused as three distinct gods, an error that the name 'Trinity' itself was developed to combat: Tri-unity (as first outlined by Tertullian).

It was in the development of the Trinity that the Greek terms ousia and hypostasis were fully separated; before the First Council of Nicaea, they had often been used interchangeably[citation needed].

[1] Though the Cappadocians, for example, tended to begin with the three persons and from there develop the sense of unity, while Augustine of Hippo more or less began, drawing from the Latin tradition of Tertullian, with the unity and then developed the three distinct persons (along a psychological metaphor), neither the Eastern nor the Western traditions actually see either the 3 or the 1 as ontologically prior to the other: the three are always united in and constituted by the one; the one is always expressed in the three.

[18] According to William Lane Craig, who identifies as a "vigorous social trinitarian", all three persons are to be distinguished by having their own centers of consciousness and will.

However, he sought to revise the doctrines of Apollinarus by arguing that Christ in eternity already possessed those properties necessary for human personality in archetypal form.