The Significance of the Trinity

The Significance of the Trinity is Albert Nolan's lectorate in theology (STL), which was granted by the Dominican studium generale in Oxford and was awarded to him in 1961. It is a biblically based piece of work, Thomistic, and oriented towards the relevance of the doctrine for our Christian lives. There are three things we can note before reading it. (1) It shows Albert's beginning his own theological enterprise where all theology begins, or began, with the doctrine of the Trinity. (2) His approach at that time, and his training, was in the thought of St Thomas, which continued to ground him even as he moved more and more in the direction of doing theology contextually. (3) As Jesus became more and more the center of his theological thought, he had already begun his reflections on Jesus in his study of the Trinity. Albert became best known as a theologian with the publication in 1976 of his widely distributed and translated Jesus Before Christianity and thirty years later of Jesus Today. Jesus had already been on his mind but the Jesus of the electorate began where the story of Jesus himself begins, within the Trinity. From the Foreword by Donald Goergen OP, Chicago.