To me, placing such emphasis on descriptors that complicate one's perception of God is at best vain, and at worst idolatrous. Check out this definition of the "The Trinity:"
God is a trinity of persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is not the same person as the Son, the Son is not the same person as the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the same person as the Father. They are not three gods and not three beings. They are three distinct persons, yet, they are all the one God. Each has a will, can speak, can love, etc. These are demonstrations of personhood. They are in absolute perfect harmony consisting of one substance. They are coeternal, coequal, and copowerful. If any one of the three were removed, there would be no God. (written by Matt Slick on the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry website)
Charts have been devised that show instances in which the Bible refers to God as one or the other or the other of the three components of the "Godhead."
Of course, for some believers, the Holy Spirit only arrived after Jesus was crucified, ignoring numerous instances in the Hebrew Scriptures of Holy Spirit-like adventures and occurrences. Those who cling to the notion that God is "Father" forget what happened "In the beginning"-- "So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27, NRSV) So, it would appear that God has female qualities.
Just a little reminder that "The Trinity" hovers dangerously close to being an anti-Semitic and patriarchal "doctrine." But maybe that shouldn't be very surprising.
In the culminating activity of my seminary days, known as the ORAL EXAM, I stated that "The Trinity" was not a biblical concept. Yes, there are various means in scripture by which people described and understood the working, presence, and essence of God, but the Bible as a whole never lands on a single, agreed-upon way to understand God. As an aside, think of the dozens of images used to describe Jesus and what he was all about, or the very words of Jesus himself when he described the Holy Spirit (Come on, you can look them up!)
Of the three professors tasked with "pouring their derision upon everything we did, exposing every weakness" as the then-fairly-current Pink Floyd snippet from The Happiest Days of our Lives song on The Wall album phrased it, two were from my very own faith tradition which held the exact position I expressed. (In fact, one of our primary forebears in the faith tradition expunged "The Trinity" from the beloved hymn Holy, Holy, Holy!) The third spat, "Oh, I am so sick of that canard!" I think mainly he was attempting to unnerve me, as was the pattern in those exams, but he probably bought into the doctrine, at least somewhat.
In any case, when I think of "The Trinity" as an entity (which is rarely) it brings to mind the same image I carry around of modern councils of church potentates -- a bunch of old men with appropriate beards sitting around gigantic oval-shaped conference tables in wood-paneled rooms, wearing flowing robes, vestments, academic hoods, medallions and over-sized crosses while considering 400-page white papers detailing why Christians of diverse backgrounds cannot recognize the validity of one another's baptisms or sanction the qualifications of one another's clergy. Each stridently defends the purity of his tradition.
Meanwhile, on the street, the homicide rates skyrocket in many of our major cities; bigotry is more and more blatant; police and minorities are at war; family values champions and clergy are caught up in salacious scandals; youth are addicted to electronic stimuli and become more and more isolated as genuine human interaction is replaced by virtual life; irrational anger, insults and bullying comprise the fallback position when someone unique appears on the scene, or when one does not get his or her way; terrorism on both domestic and international fronts are daily occurrences...fill in the blank yourself.
To me Christianity is much more than tradition, doctrines, statements of beliefs, and the like. Clearly, it seems to me that too much time, effort, and brainpower are wasted on codifying and explaining God's various "heads." (Fareed Zakaria of CNN had a guest on his show yesterday, supposedly an expert in Islam and the Koran, who stated that the text about martyrs for the faith reaching heaven where "72 virgins" await them has been misinterpreted. The word thought to represent "virgins" in this particular passage is more correctly understood to be "raisins.")
Long and short -- NONE OF US FULLY KNOW OR UNDERSTAND GOD -- despite our pretensions.
If there is anything that seems at all clear to me about God, from my reading and study of scripture over the past 40 years, it would be two related assumptions:
1. We are completely and utterly dependent upon God for all things; and,
2. God makes all things new.
Keep your doctrines. Keep your arrogance about your self-serving God. Keep your canards. Keep your learned behaviors about how you play church.
Just help me and the rest of the world come to grips with how I/we can be transformed by the knowledge of God's love and provision, and renewed by God's will and promise of life made new.
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