OK, a slightly odd take on the trinity! 🙂 (with a Star Wars tip)

“I am my father”

However, it is a serious point. The majority of Christians say that God is three persons in one, according to the standard doctrine of the trinity which was formed in the early centuries AD.

By the way, I would define a person as being a individual with which one can have a relationship that is distinct to other individuals that one can have a relationship with (but perhaps in the same group).

However, I can’t see where we get it that God is three persons.

I can see that God presents himself as three persons (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit), but I’m not quite sure that I can make the leap to say that he actually is three persons, especially when you get phrases like ‘I and the father are one’ (John 10:30) (or in the context of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ‘I am my father’).

I think that I prefer the less well defined understanding of God, that he presents himself as three persons – as opposed to the definition that he is three persons. I’m not sure that we are supposed to understand the mystery of God quite that well.

If we really thought that God was three persons then we wouldn’t say things like ‘God is my friend’, which is a phrase that is grammatically incorrect if he is three persons – because ‘a friend’ (singular) implies one person with the emphasis on both the word ‘one’ and the word ‘person’. Only persons (or should I say people, which is the plural of person) can be friends – organisations or other units cannot be friends, as friendship always entails a relationship with a person (or relationships with people) – so either ‘God is my friend’ (one person) or ‘God is my friends’ (three persons) would be correct depending on your concept of God.

If we look at history we see God presenting himself as one person and then presenting himself as three persons. God is the same throughout eternity, so we cannot assume that he changed, but rather it is merely the way he presents himself (for our understanding) that changed – he used to present himself one way and now he presents himself another way – neither way being incorrect.

What is perhaps unfortunate is that perhaps the ‘three persons’ doctrine was rather pushed by various people through history to the extent that any other interpretation has been pushed to the margins. This has perhaps even lead to certain groups coming up with wildly different understandings of God, that they think avoid the contradictions of the ‘three persons’ idea – groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses who don’t believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God.

Anyone got any firmer pointers as to why we should believe that God is actually three persons?