The Trinity from an Akan Moderate Communitarian Perspective
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines how Kwame Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism can illuminate Trinitarian teaching within an Akan setting in Ghana. It argues that the distinction between intrinsic personal worth and communal moral formation offers limited pedagogical resources for discussing personal distinction and communion. The study uses conceptual analysis and a critically controlled comparison of Gyekye, Kwasi Wiredu, selected Akan accounts of personhood, and Trinitarian theology. Biblical interpretation and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan confession govern the comparison. Community nurtures persons whose dignity it does not create; communal development does not establish divine consubstantiality, eternal relations, or inseparable operation. The article therefore distinguishes created interdependence from the eternal relational inseparability of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and rejects the claim that personal association produces divine essence. Its contribution is a bounded use of Akan moderate communitarianism that identifies both the illuminating function and the doctrinal failure points of communal analogies. Recommendations for formation and accountable leadership follow from biblical teaching about the church rather than a direct transfer of divine relations into ecclesial structures.
Author: Harry Allotey
Institution: Central University
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7225740424