“If God Makes One More, It’s All Right With Me”

There is no question then of the doctrine of the Trinity being a kind of numerical puzzle designed to test faith or to baffle the human mind. The doctrine does not state the paradox that God is one being and three beings at the same time, or even that God is both ‘one person’ and ‘three persons’, as something impossible to believe but required as proof of devotion.

Unfortunately, Christian people do not think like this, as was shown by a survey conducted in 1984 by a professional sociologist and entitled ‘The Triune God in Hackney and Enfield’. When church members in this area of London were asked, ‘How is it that God is three persons in one?’, the answers of about a third of the sample group showed that they understood the last word in the sense of ‘one person’, one respondent affirming typically that ‘The three are one person: they’re all one person’, The willingness to accept a pious puzzle was well illustrated by the church member who remarked that ‘two are hardly enough and four are too many. But if God decides to make one more, it’s all right with me.’