Our historical survey (chapters 5-7) suggests that the concept of person underwent a remarkable development from its early grammatical and exegetical usage via Christological and Trinitarian speculation to its Lockean use as both a forensic term of responsibility and a term for personal identity, its rational and ethical emphasis in Kant, its use in Feuerbach to subvert Hegel's idealism and some of the theological ideas of the period, and its almost purely evaluative use in many contexts today to signify approval of status.

The present chapter will analyse more closely the idea of God as person, and important objections to the idea. Although it is assumed by Lossky and Zizioulas and others, as we noted, that the idea of human personhood is influenced by, if not derived from, the idea of God as person, we need to explore what is meant by this, particularly in relation to Trinitarian usage. Our historical survey has indicated how members of the early Christian church made use of the concept for theological purposes, because it enabled them to relate their exegesis of scripture to their experience of God in Christ and their common life in the Body of Christ. It was flexible and could be related to prevailing Greek philosophical ideas, yet, at the same time, it was free from some of the alien connotations of substance philosophy, and allowed them to bring out the distinctiveness of historical revelation, i.e. what God had done in Christ.