Question. What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of thy Belief?
Answer. First, I learn to believe in God the Father, who hath made me, and all the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me, and all mankind.
Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the elect people of God.
It is one of the most astonishing discoveries of modern natural science that every elementary particle of matter exhibits the properties of particles, but also of waves - simultaneously. As Einstein said, "we have two contradictory pictures of reality: separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do". Early Christians had a not dissimilar problem. On the one hand, they inherited from the prophets of Israel and retained a deep conviction that God is One Lord alone to be loved, worshipped, and served (Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 13). The "many gods" of the Gentiles were in fact nothing more than creatures, and thus false gods. Yet at the same time, in the humanity of Jesus Christ, and in the gift of the Holy Spirit, they had known God the Creator fully present and active also.
There was, and never has been, any question, of "three gods" in rivalry with one another, but of one God revealing himself in three distinct ways. Jesus is related to God as Son to the Father; and the Spirit is related to the Father and the Son as the Spirit of both, sent by both. The idea that in God there is both "one-ness" and "three-ness" we find throughout the New Testament. It is there when Jesus commissions his apostles to "baptize in the name [singular] of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost [plural]". It is there when St. Paul prays for the Corinthians that "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost" might be with them all evermore (2 Corinthians 13:14) - thus treating them with implicit equality.
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