The Trinity and Personal Identity

Abstract

The idea that the doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery suggests one strategy. It is to find something else that defies human comprehension but which we firmly believe in, and use it to speculate about the Trinity. And the obvious - perhaps too obvious - place to look is in ourselves. There are several aspects of human beings that defy human comprehension. One of these is our persistence over time. In this paper I explore the idea that the three Persons stand to each other in a way somewhat analogous to the temporal stages of an enduring person.