by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: April 05, 2007   Last Updated: June 20, 2009

God is three persons rather than 'taking three forms'. Christians accept the reality of three persons in-the-universe that are God. God is one-yet pluralism exists in all things extended or emanated from the one. The One of itself in all of eternity hasn't pluralism implicitly Plotinus speculated-it is something that occurs with the pluralist manifestation of all things temporal.

To human appearances there are three persons; The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit, yet God is One. Biblicly based paradoxically neo-platonic philosophy may provide the best clue as to how the Trinity are One. It isn't as simple as the analogy that the three branches of the U.S. Government comprise one government with an evil corporatist foreign lobby entity attempting a hostile takeover.

Plotinus describes the mystery of the One in his Enneads; 54 tractates on God. God is a perfect being that in some way emanates the Intelligence that actually is still a spiritual being yet one more actual toward the spectrum of what people think of as reality. For himself God is absolutely perfect, omniscient and it isn't necessary for thought to occur for Him, as he foreknows all things. The Intelligence in a realm of actualization yields or creates a realm of forms eventually from which a material universe might come into being through the spoken word, big bang, apparent creation of a scalar field with zero-dimensional membranes and so forth building up to a theistic evolutionary context approximately paradigmed by the first couple of chapters of the book of Genesis.

In this associative interpretation of the One as God either Jesus Christ or The Holy Spirit may be construed as the Creator of the Universe...the One for-himself is to perfect to be so far away in a manner of speaking, from his perfect status as to drop down through the realm of forms into a material world. Emanations of the One are still from the One however it is now possible to discern the existence of a contingent pluralism. This all possible worlds pluralism could be analogized to the all-possible-worldlines criterion of quantum mechanical particles and their relationship to a more basic scalar field, Higgs field or membranes tying in super-strings 'grounding' the Universe. In the realm of forms all possible universes, forms, structures and ideas have an ethereal, potential existence not yet materialized as is the universe flowing through temporality in space.

Jesus Christ is actually The One direct way to return to a perfect relationship with The One or The Father. In this material universe there is inherent imperfection, and consequently as Paul pointed out none desire to do good, none are worthy; original sin physically prevents humanity from leaping directly from this material Universe to the ineffable perfection of God. Only the atoning sacrifice and substitution of Jesus Christ can renormalize the human soul unto the Father (The One). Jesus Christ alone knows The One in some way that providence has provided. The Intelligence may be the transcendent Spirit of God, yet all three Persons are One. It is from the human point of view that The One appears as three perhaps, though for whatever purposes including a dimensional objectivity relativistically it may be good for The One to be Three Persons. God is too perfect for a human being to guess at what God hasn't disclosed. There is of course more about each person in The Holy Bible.

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