The purpose of this research is to examine the doctrine of the Trinity as put forward by Boff in Society and Trinity. The plan of the research will be to set forth the principal constituents of his elaboration of the Trinity, and then to discuss the scope and limit of his contribution to the modern understanding of what he persistently refers to as a mystery. In particular, attention will be given to the issue of the tension between Boff's specific and repeated rejection of what he refers to as the modern historicist understanding of the doctrine and his own argument that the authentic modern interpretation of the mystery must be understood with specific reference and appeal to faith.
Boff's method of explicating what he refers to as a modern understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is to proceed in logic from the general way that mortal man approaches the Trinity toward an increasingly specific examination of the components that make up the Trinity itself. It is for example fundamental to his entire discussion that one begins the journey of understanding by acknowledging that the Trinity is perforce a mystery that passes understanding and that therefore any glimmer of comprehension of the mystery must be seen as an abstraction from the metaphysical reality as it were of the mystery. This is what is meant by his discussion of the Trinity in theological imagery and his focus on such terms as "signifier" and "signified." But without laying as a ground rule the principle of abstraction in theological discussion, Boff asserts, it would be virtually impossible for most of the faithful to comprehend the fairly technical verbiage that accompanies any serious examination of doctrines of faith. As he puts it: "The importance of images lies in their ability to help us take certain attitudes to the Trinity in itself and to each of its Persons. So when we say `Father' or `Mother,' the words evoke certain resonances in the depths of our psyc...