Works on the Trinity: A Request for Assistance

~ Adam Kotsko

As I have begun to wrap up my work on The Prince of This World, I have been thinking about which direction to go next. A project on the Trinity seems like the most compelling option to me currently, and though I plan to take it easy writing-wise for a while, I’d still like to be in a position to make some progress toward that project. Toward this end, I suspect it would be helpful for me to have a list of texts on the Trinity that I can work through over time.

So let’s assume that I am familiar with the obvious classics. I did an exam area on patristics, I’ve read Pelikan, I’ve taken a course on contemporary works on the Trinity, etc. What are some non-obvious texts that I may have overlooked? I don’t need to be told that Augustine or Rahner wrote major works on the Trinity, but I might not have come across someone like Marius Victorinus. I probably know that Athanasius wrote a lot of anti-Arian literature, but may not be familiar with his Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit. That kind of thing.

Published by Adam Kotsko

14 thoughts on “Works on the Trinity: A Request for Assistance”

  2. For a more contemporary take indebted to Benjamin, I would recommend Kornel Zathureczky’s _The Messianic Disruption of Trinitarian Theology_.

  3. I don’t know how wide the parameters for the figure of ‘trinity’ or ‘trinitarian’ are in your project, but I think that Rosenzweig’s Stern would be interesting to look at in this context.

  9. Some primary and secondary sources dealing with late antiquity that could be useful (if you are not familiar with them already): Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy; Richard Vaggione, ed. Eunomius of Cyzicus: The Extant Works; Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution; Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Faith; and Epiphanius of Salamis, Ancoratus.

  10. Meister Eckhart? Raimon Panikkar? Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s “Trinity: Global Perspectives” (2007) provides a wee gateway to some contemporary majority world stuff. Isaak Dorner for a 19th Century Lutheran with a different approach to the oft mentioned Schleiermacher. Eugene Rogers’s “After the Spirit” retrieves some overlooked pneumatological sources from the tradition. Thomas Weinandy’s “The Father’s Spirit of Sonship” is interesting because he proposes a “spirituque,” a procession of the Son from the Father in the Spirit, playing with the traditional Catholic taxis but maintaining awareness of the systematic, theological implications, etc. Fred Sanders’s “The Image of the Immanent Trinity” is the best work I’ve read looking at a major theme of 20th C west-euro-nth-american theology — the relationship between immanent and economic Trinity — for providing context and short exposition. Katherine Sonderegger’s recently released first volume of her systematic theology begins with the divine oneness/attributes, a critique of the post-Rahnerian mainstream that polemicised against separating the unity and trinity of the Godhead.

  13. I was really impressed by Thomas W. Ricks, Early Arabic Contributions to Trinitarian Theology. Translations of the primary sources are available now too in The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700-1000: An Anthology of Sources.

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