Abstract
What I want to establish in this chapter is that, at the very beginning of Christian theology, Christian thought about God strained in two directions. We can call one of those directions Hellenic, and the other Trinitarian. The issue raised here can be put in the form of a question: is the ontology implicit in the doctrine of the Trinity compatible with the notion of divine absoluteness explicitly affirmed by the early church? The answer to this question involves unpacking the ontological implications of Trinitarian thought, but it is necessary first to open up some of the issues involved in the concept of the absolute. We can begin with Plato’s thought and its influence upon the early church fathers.
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References
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© 1974 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Cooper, B.Z. (1974). The Tension in Patristic Theology. In: The Idea of God. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-8093-1_1
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