I suggest you spend some time at my web site doing a search for the word trinity.  I have literally dozens of articles, power points and audios on this topic.   I would particularly ask you to consider looking at the power point and outline of the lesson titled “Answering the Hard Questions” or another lesson titled “A Defense of Christian Theology.”

Let me give an extremely brief summary of how I see the biblical answer to your question.

One thing which is abundantly clear, from literally hundreds of passages, both in the Old and the New Testament, is that there is only one God.   Christianity is a religion of monotheism, not tritheism.  In the lesson on Answering the Hard Questions you will find a list of perhaps fifty of these.  Paul tells us that there is one God.  I will let Deuteronomy 6:4 stand for the hundreds of passages which absolutely affirm that there is one God.  “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.”

Yet, in what as first glance what can seem to be a logical impossibility, Jesus, a man born in human flesh, is described by the Bible as being God.  John 1:1 tells us about Jesus, “In the beginning was the Word.  The Word was with God and the Word was God.”  Later we are told that the Word of God became flesh and lived among us, and that we beheld the glory of God in Jesus Christ.  There is no doubt at all that the New Testament identifies Jesus as God/deity.  I could cite dozens of passages on that as well.  John 8:58 and John 10:33 as samples of this.  We, as Christians, seem to be in a logical conundrum, in that Jesus is “with God” and yet Jesus “is God.”  Add to this the fact that the Holy Spirit is identified as God as well.

Words used to describe this Christian teaching are many.  Some describe the godhead.  Others use the word trinity.  In any case, surely this God of the Bible is a mystery.  Some describe the Father, the Son and the Spirit as three persons in one God.  This may be accurate, but any human description appears to be inadequate.  Certainly, words used for personhood are used of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, so this description of three “persons” seems to be a reasonably good one.

Personally, I would not say that there are three “different persons.”  I am not even sure I would say that there are three separate persons.  I would prefer to say what the Bible says, and leave it at that.  Jesus is God, yet Jesus speaks to his Father who is also God, and yet there is only one God.  This is the nature of Jesus as the Bible describes it.  It is not strictly “logical” according to human logic, yet it is true.

God is about relationship from the beginning to the middle to the end, and even God himself exists in a kind of relationship between Father, Son and Spirit, and we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Spirit–the one God of the Bible.

This is a mystery and I am afraid I must leave it as a mystery.  It can be a stumbling block to those who think they are wise (1 Corinthians 1:18f), but it is true nevertheless.

I hope this helps.

John Oakes