The Trinitarian Concept of Person

Abstract

Beyond the precise etymological sense of the concept of person and its proper application in Trinitarian theology, the ultimate foundation of the value and dignity of the human being, as well as the ultimate understanding of reality, stands or falls with the Trinitarian concept of person. If the Trinitarian and anthropological concepts of person have been centred around the axis of incommunicability (I) throughout the centuries, it is now understood from that of relation (other). In ahighly synthetic manner we can say that we have passed from identity to alterity. This displacement can be verified in the manner in which contemporary theology reads and recovers its own history (history of concept), confronts the difficult question of God’s personal character (in the context of theological agnosticism and interreligious dialogue), and the concrete developments of contemporary Trinitarian theology centred in a renewed concept of person (relation, communion, reciprocity and gift).