Christian doctrine tells us that Jesus is God, that the Holy Spirit is God and that ‘the Father’ is God.  And that Jesus is not the Father, who is not the Holy Spirit, who is not Jesus.  And that there is only one God.

Doesn’t it defy common sense and logic? How might we think about this mystery? 

Consider an analogy:  what is War and Peace?  It is a novel by Leo Tolstoy of course.  And of course, we all know what a novel is.  Or do we? 

It is of course the book that you buy in a bookshop?  But is it the paper and ink? No, it’s more than that.  Is it the pattern made by the dark ink on the white paper? No, the same words can be written in different fonts?  And what about different translations? And what if the book is read out loud?

Is it the precise set of words that Tolstoy wrote? – were early drafts not War and Peace? 

Is it the precise story? – then what of screenplays, are they not War and Peace?

War and Peace is the book, it’s the film, it’s the spoken word, it’s all the translations.  The book is not the film, which is not the spoken word.  The Chinese translation is War and Peace, the English translation is War and Peace, but the English translation is not the Chinese translation – there is only one War and Peace.

Something which we think is simple is actually much more complex! 

And so it is with God.  We might think we know who or what God is, but most certainly we don’t.  They are far more complex!  But perhaps thinking about the analogy of War and Peace we will understand a little more.

And here’s a bonus question – did the story exist before Tolstoy wrote it?  Would it cease to exist if humanity was wiped out and there was nobody to remember it? (Isn’t memory just another medium for recording the story anyway).  If another civilisation emerged ten thousand years after humanity died out and were able to read the book, would War and Peace come into existence again?  Or did it continue to exist throughout that period.  Did the tale exist before it was written down, in the same way that 1 + 1 has always equalled 2 – even before there was intelligent life to discover it.  Has War and Peace always existed?  Does this help us understand how Jesus always existed, how ‘in the beginning was the word’?