Making Sense of Trinitarian Language

My evangelical training taught me that God exists in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which I never did understand. I was instructed that I didn’t need to understand it, just accept it, because it’s in the Bible. Once I became a spiritual seeker, I sought understanding outside the doctrines and teachings I was programmed to believe. Here is how I make sense of the language now.

Father, Mother, Creator represents the Divine as transcendent personal Presence. We can relate to God as a Presence separate from ourselves. God is not a person, yet God relates to us through all the attributes that constitute personhood. So we can pray, “Our Father/Mother who occupies all the heavens . . .”

Son represents the unique form God has taken in the world through the evolution of the human species. The life of Jesus of Nazareth was a beautiful exemplar and archetypal representation of the Divine in a human being. I do not see Jesus as essentially different than any of us. Like Jesus, the Divine lives in each of us and if we live in the way of Jesus, we too, as the daughters and sons of God can manifest the Divine nature the way Jesus did in our own unique ways.

Holy Spirit represents the Divine as immanent personal Presence. God is not just out there, but right here, within us and all around us as the very energy of the universe and as the life force of all living entities. All matter in some sense is sacred because the energy that is moving at subatomic levels is Divine. Spirit indwells us and can speak to us in the depths of our hearts and souls through inner intuitive and subtle perceptions, promptings, and inclinations. Jesus lived continuously in and through this inner Presence/Spirit; so can we.

This makes a whole lot more sense than believing in one God in three persons. There is only one infinite Divine consciousness, intelligence, personal Presence, but the Infinite Presence, consciousness, intelligence can manifest in countless ways in this time-space universe that began with the Big Bang – where the Formless One took on form.

We are all connected to the Divine through this inner Presence (our original goodness and union with the Divine) and in effect constitute one family, one household, and one people regardless of all our diversity in race, religion, beliefs, traditions, etc. Now, if more of us could just wake up and see what is and live into this wondrous reality, we might be able to save humanity from self-destruction and find joy and peace, as well as meaning and purpose in loving, blessing, and caring for one another and all creation.