A new Trinity theory

Recently on Background briefing I was listening to a Richard Dawkin's lecture. No matter what you think of him I as struck by the following section about the trinity...

Do we have one God in three parts, or three gods in one? The Catholic Encyclopedia clears up the matter for us in a masterpiece of theological close reasoning. 'In the unity of the godhead there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; these three persons being truly distinct, one from another. Thus in the words of the Athanasian Creed, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three gods but one god.

As if that were not clear enough, the Encyclopedia quotes the 3rd century theologian, St Gregory, the Miracle Worker. 'There is therefore nothing created, nothing subject to another in the Trinity, nor is there anything that has been added as though it once had not existed, but had entered afterwards. Therefore the Father has never been without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit, and this same Trinity is immutable and unalterable forever.'

Traditionally the teaching of the trinity is has been one of the messiest most confusing aspects of Xy. One being (God) in three beings (persons) just doesn't sit right for many people and analogies about ice, steam and water or one atom made up of three electrons (or is it the other way round?) are often even more confusing.

So I thought I'd explain how I'm thinking about the trinity. This is very much a work in progress littered with ideas that I would have been burnt at the stake or excommunicated for if I was born in a different century. None the less I enjoy posting ideas in progress and I'm not sure if I know anyone else who has a similar ideas.

Here goes...

First forget about trinity. Firstly I think of God and the spirit of God. I tend not to think of the spirit as a second person rather I think of the spirit of God a little bit more like (but not exactly like) the way someone might think of spirit when they say "That act was done in the spirit of Mother Teresa". When we say that someone does something in the spirit of someone else we may not know exactly what has been done but we have an idea of what that act will be like.

Now try to imagine some kind of spirit concept that is somewhere between that and your classic another person / being idea and what I have just described. I often think of the spirit of God as the essence of God. The Hebrew concept of talking about the breath of God, which is translated as spirit in our Old testament, sits well with me. Also interestingly in Revelation 19:10 the spirit tells people not to worship the spirit, this has stuck with me for some reason.

Now that I've explained that nice and vaguely, second you've got Jesus. I tend to think of Jesus as a human with the spirit of God or essence of God. A human infused with the spirit of God or God in the form of a human.

So in essence I kind of believe in just one God perhaps a binity at a pinch but probably not a trinity. This is something that I'd like to resolve reasonably satisfactorily in the next ten years or so. I thought I'd post my incomplete thoughts as a kind of motivation to start working on them.