Why did the Trinity matter to 20th-century theologians, according to Graham Ward?

Graham Ward says Karl Barth revived the Trinity in Protestant theology after Friedrich Schleiermacher had pushed it into an appendix in the 19th century. After the Second World War, the idea of three persons interpenetrating one another offered a model of equality, justice and democratic relations, giving rise to social Trinitarianism, which Leonardo Boff used in liberation theology as a picture of the society to aim for.

• Ward ties the post-war interest to rebuilding Europe and the wider world after 1945.
• The Greek term for the mutual indwelling of the three persons is perichoresis.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-10-08). Read the whole episode summary →

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