hrist ("The Lord is the Spirit").

But while Paul and other New Testament writers did not feel the need of
thinking out what their threefold experience of God implied as to His
Being, later Christians did; and using the terms of the current Greek
philosophy, they elaborated the conception of three "Persons" in one
Godhead. We have no exact equivalent in English for the Greek word which
is translated "person" in this definition. It is not the same as "a
person" for that would give us three gods; nor is it something
impersonal, a mode or aspect of God. It is something in between a
personality and a personification.

Let us remember that this doctrine is not in the New Testament, but is
an attempt to explain certain experiences that are ascribed in the New
Testament to Jesus, the Father, the Holy Spirit. Even the hardiest
thinkers caution us that our knowledge of God is limited to a knowledge
of His relations to us: Augustine says, "the workings of the Trinity
are inseparable," and Calvin, commenting on a passage whose "aim is
shortly to sum up all that is lawful for men to know of God," notes that
it is "a description, not of what He is in Himself, but of what He is to
us, that our knowledge of Him may stand rather in a lively perception,
than in a vain and airy speculation." But let us also recall that in
this doctrine generations of Christians have conserved indispensable
elements in their thought of God:--His fatherhood, His Self-disclosure
in Christ, His spiritual indwelling in the Christian community. Wherever
it has been cast aside, something vitalizing to Christian life has gone
with it. But at present it is not a doctrine of much practical help to
many religious people; and it often constitutes a hindrance to Jews and
Mohammedans, and to some born within the Church in their endeavor to
understand and have fellowship with the Christian God.

We may adopt one of two attitudes towards it: we may accept it blindly
as "a mystery" on the authority of the long centuries of Christian
thought, which have used it to express their faith in God--hardly a
Protestant or truly Christian position which bids us "Prove all things;
hold fast that which is good"; or we may consider it reverently as the
attempt of the Christian Church of the past to interpret its discovery
of God as the Father Lord, revealed in Christ, and active within us as
the Spirit of love; and use it in so far as it makes our experience
richer and clearer, rem