The Trinity doctrine says God is three persons in one being. It's built on Bible verses that imply that. After saying there's one God, many passages seem to alternate between Many people have said God can't be three and one at the same time.
In the Bible, there is one God. He reveals Himself as the Father (Yahweh), the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Passages in the New Testament alternate between describing those three as individual person or the same being. They seem to be both three and one. The early church invented the Trinity concept to describe this. Nobody really understands it, though. We just take God's Word for it knowing it's already proven enough.
The main objection is that God can't be three and one at the same time. That this is illogical. They talk like nothing could ever be that way. Christian counters try to build analogies on things like multiple, personality disorder (my first attempt). The analogies, or things in them, are inherently flawed and broken. We quit trying to disprove 3 vs 1 because we accept God is too complex for our brains to handle. Instead, we focus on what He does let us understand like how the Persons of the Trinity model God's traits and ideal forms of human behavior. We admire the beauty of God's unique nature.
Much as I enjoy that, I kept feeling like the counter was wrong. We're not saying that 3 is 1 as if the two numbers are the same thing. We're saying 3 of X is 1 of Y with X and Y being unified in some way. They are separate things that share a substance, identity, or existence in some way. Can anything on Earth have separate personas in one being? Can we find an example that millions of people from all walks of life are thinking about right now (2023)?
A single computer can run many programs at once (multitasking). In your
Task Manager, there might be a whole screen of stuff running in the
background. In front of you, you have a web browser, you’re listening to
music, and an antivirus is doing a scan. You'd think three things are
happening that are independent of one another.
In reality, your computer might have a single chip doing all of that. The
chip might be rapidly switching between them on one, execution unit
(single core) or running them at the same time (multicore). That
corresponds to two theories about God, too. (Trinitarianism vs modalism.)
Since modalism is false, our metaphor will be three programs running
simultaneously on one chip. Our eyes see three, independent programs which
are one, physical thing in reality.
We can do better, though. Let's change the three apps to three A.I.'s with faces, personalities, the ability to reason, and so on. They're digital “persons.”
The AI persons are Siri, Cortana, and Alexa. In this metaphor, they're setup to be always working toward the same goal with similar methods. You know they exist even though you can't see where they are. Cortana had a body at one point when she helped save humanity from extinction but now she's in the clouds, too. They always listen when you say their name. Humans start forming relationships with them, too. Outsiders who reject AI persons say those humans are just spending long periods of time alone with their devices, talking to persons who aren't there. They claim it's unhealthy.
(For those asking, Clippy sadly rested with his fathers. He’s no longer with us. Wait, Microsoft recently raised him from the dead. We’ll just leave him for another lesson, maybe unrepentant sin by corporations.)
(Note: Some claim I'm really stretching these metaphors. Yeah, I couldn't resist having fun with it. The kingdom of God is about righteousness and joy, people! We'll keep it simple in the next part, though.)
We see three persons… these AI’s… talking to us. At the same time, they
are actually one being, a computer chip. Each AI persona even shares the
same memory and interfaces to act on the world. Each uses them differently
by design. We even talk to them the same way for the mostly the same
reasons. The only differences are which names we call them and in which
situations (eg phone brand).
If running on one device, they are 1 and 3 at the same time.
Anti-Trinitarians say being one being and three persons must be
contradictory. Do 1 and 3 contradict here? No, both are true. It would be
even more true for ensemble
models where one model is actually several working together. We're
not going to get that technical, though. Back to the three A.I.'s.
People consider these AI's like independent agents, or persons, when on
separate devices. We've moved them onto one device where they present
themselves to the user with both shared and separate techniques. Are they
no longer A.I. persons because they share one device? Are they no longer
A.I. persons because they often have the properties of one entity? It
would seem that they're the same on a conceptual level.
What has or hasn't changed? They behave the same (i.e. functionalism). They also exist in different, physical space in the computer's memory. Now, they're in the same container (or space). They share some interfaces, or connections, to us. We see that, just changing some internal details, these three personas are now both three and one. We see this concept works in our universe with merely man-made creations. It's not just logical: it's can be implemented in binary logic. :)
Likewise, God is three persons in one being. His Persons share many
attributes (eg righteousness, power). His Persons act differently in some
ways due to God’s nature. Yet, they are still one being on some level.
Unlike our apps, the Trinity achieves perfect integration of purpose in
one, actual being with no designer or container. Unlike AI persons we
designed, God is a real being who designed us to have a relationship
with Him. By Christ's sacrifice, we're able to avoid the wrath of God for
our sins and be in that relationship. Believe in the Gospel
and repent to experience that relationship. That benefits us more than any
other choice we make. You'll also start getting to know the Trinity on a
personal level.
(Read the Gospel with proof its true. Some predictions He made to motivate us. If you're a believer, this site will equip you.)