The concern of this thesis is with the history of ideas; specifically, the history of recent theological ideas. This thesis is not a work of systematic theology but rather situates discourse about a theological problem within the matrix of some relevant contemporary thought. Its category then is the history of the development of ideas.In the late twentieth century many academic theologians found the intelligibility of the traditional language used about the Christian Trinitarian God to be problematic. This is the thesis' research problem. The research hypothesis is that these recent academic theologians sought to make trinitarian language used about the Christian Trinitarian God intelligible by replacing static definitions of 'person' with a dynamic relational model. The methodology of this thesis is essentially historical and hermeneutical. It draws on the hermeneutical philosophy of language of Paul Ricoeur as it developed around two key notions, his notion of text and his attention to the metaphorical process. Data is drawn from representative recent trinitarian works of a significant and scholarly nature written in and for the western arena at the end of the twentieth century. These sources are evaluated according to their ability, in Ricoeur's language, to redescribe the reality of the trinitarian symbol and refigure the world of contemporary Christian consciousness.The thesis presents an investigation of western academic trinitarian theology in terms of ...