LaCugna treats the Cappadocians as the most promising patristic resource for a relational, practical doctrine of the Trinity: she thinks they start from concrete **persons in communion** rather than an abstract divine substance, and she builds her own trinitarian theology on that move.[1][2][3][4]
## Ontological priority of person over nature
– She reads Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus as understanding the Trinity so that “*hypostasis* (person) was predicated as prior to and constitutive of *ousia* (nature),” giving **personhood ontological priority over nature**.[2][1]
– This “Cappadocian view” starts from the three divine persons and only then speaks of their one essence, so God’s being is communion: one *ousia* existing as three hypostases in mutual relation.[4][5][6]
## Why she favors them
– In her historical survey she says the Cappadocians, with Athanasius, are “perhaps the most valuable” for a contemporary reformulation because they reason from **salvation history** (Spirit’s work in the church) to the doctrine of the Spirit’s full divinity, not from abstract metaphysics.[4]
– She sees in them a way of doing Trinity that links doctrine directly to worship and soteriology: confessing Father, Son, and Spirit as one God because they are together the agents of our salvation.[7][4]
## Nuancing her use of them
– At the same time, she notes that even the Cappadocians contributed to the later drift toward focusing on the “inner life” of God; she therefore wants to retrieve their **person‑first, economy‑rooted** impulse while not simply repeating all later Eastern developments.[3][4]
– Her appropriation is selective and constructive: she highlights their vocabulary (one *ousia*, three *hypostases*), their stress on hypostasis as concrete person, and their rooting of trinitarian confession in baptism and doxology.[6][7][4]
## Contrast with Latin trajectories
– In her reading, Western theology after Augustine tends to make *ousia* the “highest ontological principle,” with person and relation derivative, whereas the Cappadocians attach ontological ultimacy to **the Father as hypostasis** and thus to personhood.[8][2][6]
– That Cappadocian emphasis underwrites her own relational ontology: if God’s being is communion of equal persons, then Christian life and community must mirror “shared rule of equal persons in communion, not domination by some over others.”[9][4]
So, for LaCugna, the Cappadocians supply the crucial grammar—person as being‑in‑relation—that lets her argue that the Trinity is best understood as the mystery of **persons in communion** encountered in the oikonomia of salvation, rather than as an abstract triune substance contemplated “behind” God’s saving action.[1][2][3][4]
Sources
[1] The “Practical” Trinity – Catherine Mowry LaCugna https://theologyandchurch.com/
[2] [PDF] The Relational Ontology of Augustine’s and LaCugna’s Trinity https://digitalcommons.csbsju.
[3] God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life – An Extraordinary … https://www.goodreads.com/en/
[4] [PDF] The Trinitarian Theology of Catherine Mowry LaCugna | Word & World https://wordandworld.
[5] [PDF] Augustine and Cappadocian Fathers’ Summation of the Doctrine of … https://www.ejournal.
[6] The Importance of the Monarchy of the Father according to John … https://zizioulas.org/
[7] God for us : the Trinity and Christian life – Archive.org https://archive.org/details/
[8] Three What? Augustine and the Trinity (Part I) http://houseoftheinklings.
[9] [PDF] God For Us – -ORCA – Cardiff University https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/
[10] God for Us (Lacugna) – The Puritan Board https://puritanboard.com/
[11] In Defense of LaCugna – Theopolis Institute https://theopolisinstitute.
[12] [PDF] The Practical Trinity – WordPress.com https://livinglocalnw.files.
[13] Plucking the TULIP (3) — An Eastern Orthodox Critique of the … https://orthodoxbridge.com/
[14] [PDF] Navigating the Trinity’s Practical Symphony with LaCugna and … https://digitalcommons.csbsju.
[15] [PDF] the trinity as model: tanner and lacugna https://repository.divinity.
