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)?
Multiple Tasks, One Being (CPU)
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.
Three Persons, One Being (CPU)
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. 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.
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.
Three Persons, Nearly Identical, and One Being (CPU)
Now, let's add multi-agent systems. These can be separate models working together on the same system. However, one can use the same model with different modes of operation, different instructions or goals, to work on the same problem. Once again, they're sort of the same thing but also three, different things. We're still in modalism.
One model can also be forked, or spun off, with each copy going through alignment training to become different models. These models might retain all the same knowledge and skills of the original but act and respond differently. If one is master and one is servant, they are still equal in power and authority but simply performing these roles. Even this alignment data can be very similar for the three models.
The above agents have seperate memories, though. The Trinity's memory is sometimes shared and sometimes divided ("no one knows the day or time"). One can train a specific model in a set to have extra information for planning purposes. From then on, all models see whatever changes happen in the world around them. They're moving forward step by step with each possibly having knowledge the others don't. One can also be programmed to ignore a specific thing that others might respond to. They can also communicate with each other ("let us make man in our image"). At this point, three models are nearly identical, share almost all knowledge, and are different in some memories and responses.
With the setup I've describd, we have a system whose agents are different persons but also the same in deep ways. They share one substance (physically), nature (the code), internal knowledge, and ability to interact with what is external. Yet, they are three, different entities that act differently. They also have different access to or respond to specific facts. They can also collaborate despite being one being.
One model forked into three with different alignments and prompts... constantly working together in harmony.. all in reality one machine, substance, knowledge base, and set of abilities... is my best metaphor of the Trinity.
It's still merely a metaphor. God's nature is perfect, was not created, and is from everlasting to everlasting. His knowledge, even differences within the Trinity, has always existed. Unlike a 3 in 1 system, God wrote the laws of our universe, sustains them, forgives our sins, and gives us eternal life.
(Read the Gospel with proof its true. Some predictions He made to motivate us. If you're a believer, this site will equip you.)