Confession to A Person?

Some years ago the Court of Appeal of British Columbia, Canada, was hearing a case about a man accused of arson. During his trial in a lower court a microphone had picked up something he had murmured under his breath – ‘O God, let me get away with it just this once.’ The judge of that court had ruled that this incriminating remark was not admissible as evidence, since it was not (in his view) a public utterance, but a private conversation between two persons – the accused and God.

The Appeal Court, however, now ruled against this judgement, on the grounds that ‘God is not a person.’ When this story was reported in the Guardian newspaper, the reporter added his own twist to the verdict: he suggested that Christians should agree with the judgement of the Appeal Judges since they believe that ‘God is not one person but three’.