ABSTRACT
Three main phases can be distinguished in modern discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity in the West. In early modernity, its fate tended to be bound up with that of christology, so that early modern criticism of the dogma of the divinity of Christ, classically that of Socinus (d. 1604), naturally called the doctrine into question. Aspects of that anti-trinitarian teaching, sharpened by the Enlightenment, are repeated without much variation by F.D.E.Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who is in that respect representative of one strain of nineteenth-century Protestantism. However, in the constructive dimensions of his theology Schleiermacher took the discussion into a second phase, as did some of his contemporaries. W.G.F.Hegel (1770–1831) developed a speculative theology of the Trinity in the process of developing his wide-ranging philosophy. In England, the doctrine of the Trinity in a more traditional form became increasingly important in the thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), as he engaged with problems of religion, morality and society against the background of the philosophy of the Enlightenment.
