I was raised
attending a quaint Methodist Church in the small unincorporated town of Abrams,
Wisconsin. Looking back at it now, one might
say the theology taught there was not what one would describe as “deep,” or in
some cases “true.” Still, it was the
only religious teaching I was exposed to, and so it was the things I learned
there became my religious views, and they were planted into my young mind.
I remember
learning that God was everywhere. They
used an unnecessarily big word, omnipresent, to describe this fact. What didn’t they just say “God is
everywhere”? At least then everyone
would have known what we were talking about.
At any rate, when I learned this truth about God, I remember my mind
envisioning an enormous, semi-transparent God being on the earth, taking up a
lot of space, and having his big toe jutting through our front door into our
living room.
But then I
got smart, or so I thought. I learned
Santa was not real, nor were any of the other holiday characters. I had been lied to regarding so many of my
deeply held childhood hopes and dreams.
However, once I found out the truth, things started to make sense in the
world around me. My parents got those
presents on Christmas morning and put them under the tree. Santa didn’t deliver them personally to small
home in the North Woods of Wisconsin. We
didn’t even have a chimney for that matter.
I relegated Santa to his proper place in my mind. He and his actions were described with such
absurdity that he would never again be seriously considered as a potential
reality.
That is
absolutely fine, of course. As it turns
out, Santa isn’t real and never has been.
However, that doesn’t mean that I stopped being fed information that
seemed absolutely incredulous by people who claimed to have intellectual
integrity. God’s big toe never did end
up in our living room. In fact, I really
didn’t seem much evidence or need for God at all. Furthermore, in church, we would often be
taught seemingly contradictory things that were supposedly “foundational” to
the Christian faith. One of these things
was called “the doctrine of the Trinity.”
We were
taught Monotheism. There is only one God
and no others. By itself, this didn’t
pose any problem except for the perceived lack of evidence for such a God. But then, around Christmas time every year,
they would tell us that Jesus was born in a manger and that He was God in human
form. Quizzical and confused looks may
have spawned on my face, but I’m not sure.
Later on, they told us that there is this thing called the Holy Ghost,
but really He’s God too. Well, now I had
a problem. Which was it? Was there only one God? Or was there three or even more God’s? In a few short years, these and other contradictions
became too much, and I came to reject the idea of God altogether. It was simply irrational.
The Doctrine of the Trinity
Clearly, my
perspectives have changed since that time.
The triune nature of God was not at the forefront of my mind when I
first came to believe in Christ, but in the years since it has been clear that
the doctrine of the Trinity is foundational and necessary for the Christian
faith.
Church
history gives testimony to the centrality of the Trinitarian teaching. On June 12th, 1643 the Long
Parliament of England issued an Ordinance with the purpose of “the calling of
an Assembly of learned and godly Divines, and others, to be consulted with by
the Parliament for the settling of the government and liturgy of the Church of
England; and for vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the said Church
from false aspersions and interpretations.”[1] Their purpose was clear. They wanted to define precisely what the core
Christian doctrine was and reject all false (non-Christian) teachings from
their church. The resulting work was a
statement called the Westminster Confession of Faith. It addressed most ever issue and doctrine
that the Church of England would face, and this is what it had to say regarding
the Trinity:
In the unity of the Godhead, there
be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Ghost: the Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is
eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the
Father and the Son.[2]
This may be
the best attempt of mankind to grasp the teaching of the Scriptures regarding
God being one in essence and three in persons.
Yet, it is clear that even the Westminster Confession is not very clear
as to how God can possibly be both one and three. Given this fact, one would be either completely
arrogant or naïve to think that a layman in the 21st century would
be able to do much better. However, we
will endeavor to shed a more modern light on the doctrine so as to hopefully
gain a better grasp of this truth.
Biblical Basis
As with any
Christian doctrine, we must start with consulting the whole counsel of the Holy
Scriptures. Without the Bible, there
would be no Christianity, much less any of its particular teachings and
doctrines. Therefore, we will take the
Bible and analyze it to see what it declares to be true. We will then combine these truths to see what
the Bible collectively teaches, and then we will address any concerns that
might arise concerning our results.
After all of this is complete, we will attempt to provide an analogy
that may help us to understand more fully what is meant by the Trinity.
1. There is one God.
The central teaching of Judaism, on which Christianity has its
foundation, consists of what is called the Shema.[3] The Shema is simply a Scripture found in the
Pentateuch that reads, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”[4] The great Israelite king Solomon prayed “that
all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God and that there is no
other.”[5] The prophet Isaiah reiterated this when the
Lord declared through him, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me
there is no God. I will strengthen you,
though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the
place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the LORD, and there is no other.”[6]
The New Testament also exclusively teaches the existence of one, and only
one, God. Paul writes, “For there is one God and one mediator
between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,”[7]affirms
that “there is only one God”[8] and
teaches, “There is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for
whom we live.”[9] Lest we are tempted to think that this is a
truth only for those who believe and trust in Christ, the Apostle James warns
us, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and
shudder.”[10]
The existence of one and only one God is
clearly taught and never contradicted in Scripture.
2. The Father is fully God.
The Bible teaches, from its very first verse, that the Father is
God. “In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth.”[11] This is, of course, referring to God the
Father. He is viewed throughout
Scripture as sovereign Lord over all things.[12] Jesus prays to God the Father each time His
prayers are recorded in the New Testament.
Jesus “looked toward heaven and prayed: ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son my glorify
you.’”[13] Similarly, in the book of Luke Jesus prays,
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours
be done.”[14]
Jesus believed in the inerrancy of the Old Testament Scriptures. When Jesus made the audacious claim to the
Jewish authorities that He and the Father were one,[15] they
prepared to stone Him for claiming to be God (the Father). “Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in
your Law, ‘I have said you are ‘gods’[16]’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of
God came—and Scripture cannot be set
aside - what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and
sent into the world?”[17] What is of importance to our discussion is
that Jesus refers to the Old Testament Scriptures as though they carried
authority and could not be thrown out.
Apparently the Jewish leaders of His time agreed with this position,
otherwise Jesus’ argument would have been in vain. In another instance, Jesus was asked by the
Sadducees (a leading Jewish sect of Jesus’ day) a complex question regarding
marriage in the resurrection. Jesus
response is telling: “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures
or the power of God… have you not read
what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”[18] This particular statement by Jesus tells us
much about Jesus’ opinion of the Old Testament.
He is quoting Exodus 3:6, and He goes so far as to imply that the tense
of the verb “to be” used in the original writings was of critical
importance. God does not say “I was,”
but rather “I am the God of Abraham…” Jesus
draws his conclusion (that the Father is the God of the living) from a position
of Old Testament inerrancy.
Taking just these few passages into account, we must reach the following
conclusion. Either Jesus said these
words that were recorded as He said them, He was misquoted, He was crazy, or He
was lying. Jesus being misquoted is
unlikely since there would have been many alive when the gospels were first
written that would have refuted that He said such things. If Jesus was crazy, then all of Christianity
is defunct, and the question of the Trinity is one of mere mythology. If Jesus was lying, then He could not have
been who He claimed to be, God in human flesh.
This would also debunk that Christian faith. Thus,
if the Christian faith is to be assumed to be true, it must follow that these words of Jesus are historically accurate and
true.[19]
From these passages and many like them, it is clear that the Father and
Creator of the Universe is considered God.
3. Jesus, the Son, is fully God.
The deity of Christ is not as clearly taught as the deity of the Father
throughout Scripture, yet it is undeniably proclaimed in the Bible. In looking at these passages, we may do well
to group them into two separate categories to establish this Biblical
doctrine. We will first look at the
records of others declaring Jesus is God, and then we will look at what Jesus
had to say about Himself.
John begins his gospel with these words: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him
nothing was made that has been made.”[20] Referring to the person of Jesus as “the
word,” John reflects the first verse of Scripture in starting his gospel with
the words “In the beginning…” He was
implying that what he was about to say was true before the world began. John thus claims that Jesus is eternal and
was necessary in the process of creation, both of which are attributes which
can be attributed only to God. Later in
John’s writings, we are told of events that occurred after Jesus’ resurrection.
Many of the disciples believed when they
saw the resurrected Jesus. But one of
the twelve, Thomas, had not seen the risen Christ and was left doubting. He told the others, “Unless I see the nail
marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into
his side, I will not believe.”[21] About a week later, Jesus appeared among the
disciples when Thomas was present. He
said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and
put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord
and my God!”[22] In this case, the monotheistic believer
Thomas openly declares that Jesus is God.
Elsewhere in Scripture, we find numerous references to Jesus’
divinity. The writer of Hebrews says, “The
Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.”[23] Later, the author of Hebrews refers to the
Son directly as God.[24] The book of Titus refers to “our great God
and Savior, Jesus Christ.”[25] Peter wrote something similar in the
introduction to his second Biblical book.[26] Even Paul, who is credited with writing the
over 30 percent of the New Testament, refers to the ancestry “of Christ, who is
God over all, forever praised! Amen.”[27]
Clearly there were others who knew the person of Jesus who were convinced
that He was God. But what did Jesus
think about Himself? Consider again what
Thomas said when he saw the resurrected Christ.
He declared Jesus to be his Lord and his God. Jesus response to such a declaration would be
of great importance to our discussion.
If Jesus, being a God fearing Jew, disagreed with such a proclamation,
He would most certainly have voiced his displeasure with Thomas’ blasphemous
statement. However, this was not the
case. Instead, Jesus told Thomas, “Because
you have seen me, you have believed;
blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”[28]
When Thomas declares Him God, Jesus does not rebuke Him. Rather, Jesus tells Thomas that he has believed because he has seen the risen
Christ. We can properly gather that
Jesus does not think Thomas to have made a false declaration, thus verifying
the truth of what he said. Furthermore,
He credits Thomas with belief in something.
This would imply Jesus’ viewed the content of that belief to be
objectively true. Jesus is God and
Lord. Elsewhere, Jesus uses the same
subtle argument that He used with the Sadducees to claim His divinity when He
told the Jewish leaders that He had seen Abraham. The Jews complained that Jesus was not yet
fifty years old, absurdly young to make such a claim. But Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you,
before Abraham was born, I am[29]!” Jesus is again using the verb “to be” in such
a way as to support His divinity and to equate himself with God who, when Moses
asked for His name at the burning bush said, “I AM WHO I AM.”[30] God is first among all things. He is the Creator. He is the Sustainer. He cannot be classified by any of His created
beings. He simply must be who He
is. That is His necessary mode of
existence. Thus, when Jesus simply says
“I am,” He is directly equating Himself with God.
The same arguments could be applied to these passages as to the previous
ones dealing with the truthfulness of the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus could be lying, but then that would be
a self-refutation of a claim to be a God who cannot lie. Jesus could also have been delusional, but
being bodily raised from the dead after three days might convince us
otherwise. It is clear that the teaching
of Scripture, and the logic of the situation declare Jesus is fully God.
4. The Holy Spirit is fully God.
The third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. We address the Holy Spirit third because it
is helpful to have an understanding of both the Father and the Son as being
fully God in order to appreciate and understand the third person of the
Godhead. For instance, look at the words
of Jesus in the passage of Scripture that has been called the Great
Commission: “go and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit.”[31] Similar phrases can be found at other places
in the New Testament texts.[32] Though these statements fall short of an
explicit claim to the Holy Spirit being God, they do infer that the Holy Spirit
is on par with both God the Father and God the Son. Regarding these words of Jesus, Wayne Grudem
writes, “…they show that the Holy Spirit is classified on an equal level with
the Father and the Son. This can be seen
if we recognize how unthinkable it would have been for Jesus to say something
like, ‘baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
archangel Michael’… Believers throughout all ages can only be baptized into the
name of God himself.”[33]
There are more explicit claims in Scripture regarding the divinity of the
Holy Spirit. The book of Acts presents a
detailed historical account of the origins of the Christian Church. The Holy Spirit plays a prominent role in the
book, and there is one particular event that is of interest to our current
discussion.
We are told that all of the believers, from different backgrounds and
economic classes, shared all that they had so that “There were no needy persons
among them. For from time to time those
who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put
it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”[34] Soon, though, a troublesome incident occurred
within the body of believers:
Now
a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of
property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for
himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet. Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that
Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the
money you received for the land? … You
have not lied just to human beings
but to God.”[35]
According to the Apostle Peter, lying to the Holy Spirit is
equivalent to lying to God. This can
only make logical sense if the Holy Spirit and God are one and the same. This idea is only reiterated by the Apostle
Paul when he writes, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s
Spirit dwells in you?”[36] Again it appears that God’s Spirit is
equivalent to God Himself.
Furthermore, attributes which can be found in God alone are
also ascribed to the Holy Spirit. King
David asks, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your
presence? If I go up to the heavens, you
are there.”[37] This clearly implies the omnipresence of the
Holy Spirit. The divine characteristic
of omniscience is also attributed to the Holy Spirit. Paul writes, “The Spirit searches all things,
even the deep things of God. For who
knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way
no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”[38]
It is on
these four points, which are clearly taught in Scripture, that the doctrine of
the Trinity finds its foundation. There
is one God who exists in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. That is not to say that this
Biblical teaching is not confusing if not downright confounding! It is simply the nature and the complexity of
the living God that He has revealed to us in His word.
The Confusion
It is not
hard to see where the skeptic or the atheist will find fault in such a
position. To such a person, it is clear
that this claims is self-refuting and as such, should be rejected outright as
absurd. This was exactly where I found
myself intellectually when I was first confronted by this doctrine during my
adolescence. Either God is one, or He is
more than one. He cannot be both. This would be a violation of the law of
non-contradiction. As the Persian
philosopher Avicenna so eloquently and wittily put it, “Anyone who denies the
law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be
beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as
not to be burned.”[39]
If you
insist on claiming that God is both, then perhaps the truth of the matter is
that such a God does not exist at all!
Contradictions, after all, cannot be true. In such cases, the simplest resolution may be
the most likely. God can exist as one and more than one at
the same time, but such a God can only
exist in one’s imagination. This is the
reasoning of the atheist.
A few things
can be said regarding this argument. The
first is that it misunderstands our own restraints. Consider the example that has been put forth
by those such as Steve Bateman, pastor of First Bible Church in Decatur,
Alabama. He asserts that the Trinity, in
one sense, is like a cell phone. Regarding
this example, Bateman writes:
Imagine you can travel back in time
to the summer of 1776 and you catch Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in a
room together as they are editing the Declaration of Independence. They want to consult with John Adams on a
particular phrase and you say that you wish you had your cell phone so you
could just call him. “What’s that?” asks
Jefferson. You try to explain: “A cell
phone is like a hybrid between a phone and a two-way radio.” “Unintelligible,” says Jefferson. “Unreasonable,” says Franklin. Of course it would have been to them, because
in explaining something that is unknown, we almost always depend on relating it
to something that is known… What would be unintelligible and subject to
ridicule in 1776, is now an understandable, every-day tool of modern life.[40]
Beyond the
limitations of the human mind itself, the Christian can also take comfort in
the nature of truth. If something is
true, then it necessarily has a better argument than that which sets itself in
opposition against it. Such is the case
with the doctrine of the Trinity. The apparent
contradiction is not a result of its fabrication, but rather comes from the
fact that God lies outside of the finite, but not outside of reality.
The infinite
and the infinitesimal are concepts that are dealt with on a regular basis in
mathematics. Modern mathematics,
engineering, science, medicine and many other critical fields of study would
not be accessible were it not for the uniquely human ability to comprehend the
infinite. That is not to say that the
infinite is simple and straightforward.
Rather, it is abstract, complex, and does not play by the rules of the
inherently finite. To see this, consider
the library of infinite volumes.
Suppose you
are in a library with an infinite number of books. The books are categorized numerically for
ease of acquisition. The first book you
find is numbered “1,”
the second “2,”
and so on to infinity. Suppose that the
first book piques your interest and so you check it out. How many books are then left? There are still infinitely many books left in
the library. Thus we can see that
mathematically (where “∞” is used to denote infinity):
Suppose
further that you check out the first 100 books in the library. There would still be infinitely many books
left. Thus:
In fact, for
any finite number n:
The fun (and
the confusion) doesn’t stop here.
Suppose that you have a penchant for even numbers, and so you on your
next visit to the library, you check out all of the even numbered books, and
only the even numbered books. The books
you have checked out are then books 2, 4, 6, 8, 10… and so on to infinity. Thus you have checked out infinitely many
books. Yet books 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 … on to
infinity are still on the shelves. So we
find ourselves in the peculiar situation where:
To confuse
the matter more, suppose the next day you return to check out the remaining odd
numbered books, of which there are infinitely many. If you do not leave a single book, we have
the following mathematical equality:
The example
could be extended further, but it should be sufficient to currently see that
the infinite plays by different rules.
Something subtracted from itself by definition should be zero. Yet infinity doesn’t necessarily hold to that
foundational truth. The infinite is not
bound by our finite logic, yet it does not seem to matter much in our daily
lives as the infinite is but a concept and not an actuality.
This is
important to realize. Infinity is
thought, a tool that is used by man to approximate things that are very large
when compared to something else. The
ocean can be thought of as infinite when compared to a pond, yet the ocean is
not infinite. The universe may appear
infinite in our perception, but if the universe has a beginning and is
expanding (overwhelming evidence of which exist), then it would only be
reasonable to assume the universe is large and finite. It could be that the infinite does physically
exist, but if it does, it would be impossible for us to physically perceive it.
Now, we must
ask the reader to quickly think of a color you have never seen before.
Can you do
it?
Clearly you
can’t, but why not?
Is it simply
because you have never actually experienced a color that you have never
seen? This would imply that our minds
could never actually grasp a thing that isn’t in physical existence. We can imagine places to do not exist, but
they are constructed with images of things that we have seen and therefore do
exist. A centaur is not a real entity,
but it is composed of biological parts that we have known to exist. The human mind simply cannot bring forth to
thought those things which it has not experienced or been predisposed to realize.[41]
This has
major implications on our understanding of an infinite God. What would be a contradiction in the
understanding of a finite entity ceases to be contradictory in the realm of the
infinite. Remove ten from ten and you
necessarily get zero. Remove the
infinite from the infinite, and the possibilities are literally infinite! This also creates hardships when we try to
put together analogies to describe certain aspects of God that use finite
concepts. We often say things such as,
“God is like…” and proceed to describe God as something big, smart, just, or
loving. But these things are usually
finite, and thus fall far short of being analogous to God.
Misunderstanding of the Trinity
We should be
reminded here that models and analogies exist simply because they are not the
real thing. If they were the real thing,
they would not be called models and analogies.
Rather, they help us to grasp certain aspects of the real thing. So it is in this case. We will endeavor to provide analogies that
help us to understand certain aspects of the Trinity so that we may come to a
clearer understanding of the real thing.
For this
reason, analogies often lead to misunderstandings. One such misunderstanding is referred to as
modalism. Modalism is the view that the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are merely different aspects or manifestations of
God—different modes of appearance by which God has made Himself known. If
modalism were true, then the terms ‘Father,’ ‘Son,’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ would be
analogous to terms like ‘Superman’ and ‘Clark Kent’. In Old Testament times, God appeared as the
mode of the Father. During the
incarnation, God was present in the mode of the Son. Finally, during the time after Jesus being
taken up into heaven, God came in the mode of the Holy Spirit.
Analogies
that describe the Trinity as a man who is a father, a son, and a husband at the
same time fall into this fallacious understanding of the Trinity. Another common analogy is that of water. Ice, water and steam are all the same
substance, but are different in physical characteristics. However, it nearly impossible to have all
three phases of water in existence at the same time. It must take on one “mode” at one time and
another “mode” at another time. Some say
Scripture promotes such an understanding of the Trinity. Jesus says, “I and the Father are one”[43] and “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”[44] However, these Scriptures must also be
considered within the context of the whole Bible. All three persons were present at the baptism
of Jesus. Jesus prayed to the Father,
which would not make sense if Jesus were simply talking to Himself. Furthermore, if there were not three distinct
persons in the Godhead, the redemptive message of the Scripture (that God the
Father sent His Son as a substitutionary sacrifice to bear the wrath of the
Father in our place for our sin so that we might be indwelt with God’s presence
in His Holy Spirit[45]) would
be nonsensical.
Other
analogies have been put forth that do not suffer from modalism, but fall short
in other areas. The example of an egg
can be given. The shell is the Father, the egg white is the Son, and the yolk
is the Holy Spirit. The three parts of
an egg do indeed make up the totality of an egg. An egg is not a complete egg
without these three parts. In this way
it helps to explain the Trinity. However, the egg analogy lacks the critical
insight in showing that God is One while being three distinct persons. They are inseparable. You cannot take one person of the Trinity in a
vacuum. If you could, we could not say
that God is One. If you take a shell
away from an egg, you still have the other two parts. Its three parts are distinct and separable. An egg white is not an egg, nor can an egg
shell constitute an entire egg. However,
Jesus is God is the Holy Spirit. They
are distinct persons, but inseparable in essence.
These
analytical failures to model the trinity are common, and indeed,
inevitable. There is no such thing as a
perfect analogy. The theologian J.I.
Packer noted this when he wrote that it is necessary for us “to recognize that
God the Creator is transcendent, mysterious and inscrutable, beyond the range
of any imagining or philosophical guesswork of which we are capable…”[46] The Old Testament prophet Isaiah made
reference to this truth when he said, “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’”[47]
A Somewhat Better Analogy
Packer hits
on a very important point in his mentioning the transcendent nature of
God. Many of the problems that we see in
our analogies are, at least in part, products of a finite example describing an
infinite characteristic of God. As we
saw earlier, the infinite often follows a different set of rules than does the
finite. However, that is not to say that
the infinite exists outside of the realm of logic. Rather, the infinite is still subject to the
transcendent laws of reason. The law of
non-contradiction still applies to infinity.
Something is either infinite or finite, but it cannot be both. With this in mind, we will endeavor to come
up with a somewhat better infinite analogy of the Trinity.
In a very real sense, mathematics and logic do not abide by
the rules of a finite universe. Rather, the universe abides by the laws of
logic. For example, imagine that there are exactly 1 trillion “things” in
existence, be they quarks, protons, donuts or elephants. We have 1 trillion
fundamental things and not a unit more. If that were true, could we still do
that mathematical problem 1 trillion + 1 trillion = 2 trillion? Of course we
could! But no one would have experienced 2 trillion things in reality! It would
only exist in our mind. Similarly the laws of logic are transcendent. The
statement “truth exists” must necessarily be true at all times at all places. We
know this because the statement “truth does not exist,” if true, would be
necessarily false. Thus truth must exist in and outside of any and all
dimensions.
The idea of dimensions brings us to the spatial analogy of the
Trinity. The first dimension is but an infinite line. There is no up or down,
nor is there any forward or back. There is just side to side. Yet this one line
must exist for all other things to possibly exist. We cannot even
imagine a world in which a first dimension did not exist. It is unfathomable,
and thus the first dimension is foundational and necessary for all other
spatial entities to exist. In a sense, it is the Father of all physical space.
Once we add the second dimension to the first, we begin to see
things as an infinite plane. In mathematics, this is usually described by the
infinite x and y axis that make up the Cartesian plane. Both the x-axis and the
y-axis are single dimensions. They are both infinite lines that are essentially
the same. But the second single dimension allows one to see the world around
them. We see everything in two dimensions. It is the way we were designed. Even
3D images are seen by our brain as 2 dimensional images. We may interpret them
differently, but their appearance to us is always 2 dimensional. It was Jesus
who said to Phillip, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among
you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you
say, ‘Show us the Father’?”[48] We see
God in the Son.
Lastly, we
add the infinite z-axis that penetrates our 2 dimensional Cartesian plane at
perpendicular to the intersection of the x and y axis. This addition of another
infinite one dimensional line, essentially the same as the first two, allows us
to experience depth. What was only a square on a plane before now becomes a
cube that we can lift and touch. Indeed, each physical entity exists in three
dimensional space. This is the spatial dimension in which we will live out and
experience our entire lives. We cannot be constrained to 1 or 2, and we cannot fathom a fourth. Yet, the Scriptures tell us clearly
that the Holy Spirit lives within us as believers.[49] We should not confuse our theology at this
point and claim that the Holy Spirit is confined to spatial dimensions. That
would infer that God is bound by his own physical creation, a logical
absurdity. Rather, we are noting that we experience life in its totality in the
third dimension, and that includes how we experience the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit. We do not simply see Him or acknowledge Him as being foundational. We
experience Him.
Thus we see that we have an infinite analogy in which three
equivalent things work together in an inseparable way, each to serve its own
purpose. Remove one, and space ceases to exist. Yet the only thing that
differentiates the x, y and z axis are the letters that we arbitrarily labeled
them with. God is Jesus is the Holy Spirit. Essentially the same while serving
different, distinct purposes.
Lastly, this analogy also proves useful in that it is eternal.
Time is the fourth dimension that governs the physical universe, but it is by
its very nature independent of three dimensional space. A
unit cube will be the same unit cube yesterday, today and tomorrow. It will
never change, or at least not until the universe ceases to be. But at that
time, we won’t need an analogy to explain the Trinity. We will see for
ourselves.
The heavens
declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim
the work of his hands. – Psalm 19:1
[1] Charles Greig McCrie, The Confessions of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh: Macniven and
Wallace, 1907), 36.
[2]
Westminster Confession of Faith, “Of
God and of the Holy Trinity,” 2.3.
[3]
Frank Dragash, How Then Should We Reason:
Made in the Image of God (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2007), 321.
[4]
Deuteronomy 6:4.
[5]
1 Kings 8:60.
[6]
Isaiah 45:5-6.
[7]
1 Timothy 2:5 (emphasis added).
[8]
Romans 3:30.
[9]
1 Corinthians 8:6.
[10]
James 2:19.
[11]
Genesis 1:1.
[12]
Among the many verses declaring this truth are Proverbs 19:21; 16:9; Psalm
22:27,28; Job 42:2; 2 Chronicles 20:6; 1 Samuel 2:6,7; Deuteronomy 2:30; 32:39;
Exodus 4:11; 1 Timothy 2:4; 5:24; Colossians 1:13,15; Philippians 1:6,;
2:12,13; Ephesians 1:4,5,6,9,10; 1 Corinthians 15:10; Luke 18:27; John 1:12,13;
3:27; 5:21; 6:37,39,44; 8:36; 10:27,28; 12:39,40; 19:11; etc.
[13]
John 17:1. The prayer continues
throughout the entirety of chapter 17.
[14]
Luke 22:42.
[15]
John 10:30.
[16]
Jesus is referring to Psalm 82:6 “I said, ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of
the Most High.”
[17]
John 10:34-36.
[18]
Matthew
[19]
Also see James Hunt’s Master’s thesis
entitled “Jesus and Inerrancy” written at Liberty University in 1987.
[20]
John 1:1-3.
[21]
John 20:25.
[22]
John 20:27-28.
[23]
Hebrews 1:3.
[24]
Hebrews 1:8.
[25]
Titus 2:13.
[26]
2 Peter 1:1.
[27]
Romans 9:5.
[28]
John 20:29. Emphasis added.
[29]
John 8:58. Emphasis added.
[30]
Exodus 3:14.
[31]
Matthew 28:19.
[32]
2 Corinthians 13: 14; Ephesians 4:4-6; 1 Peter 1:2; etc.
[33]
Grudem, 237.
[34]
Acts 4:34-35.
[35]
Acts 5:1-Acts 5:1-4. Emphasis added.
[36]
1 Corinthians 3:16, RSV.
[37]
Psalm 139: 7-8.
[38]
1 Corinthians 2:10-11.
[39]
Avicenna, Metaphysics, I; commenting on Aristotle, Topics I.11.105a4–5.
[40]
Steve Bateman, Which Real Jesus? (Eugene,
OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2008), 55-56.
[41]
Note: This is an incredibly powerful
argument both for the existence of an infinite God and for the creation of man
in said God’s image. Even though we
cannot comprehend fully the concept of the infinite, we are yet able to grapple
with the idea. We have an infinite
numerical system and entire schools of thought that revolve around the infinite
and the infinitesimal (refer to Calculus).
Yet such thought could not be possible without some experience with the
infinite. If the infinite does not
physically exist, then such thoughts must have come from outside of physical
existence. But this would support the
existence of a deity outside of the physical realm. Moreover, it would support the idea that this
deity had implanted within mankind the ability to dwell on an attribute that
they have never experienced outside of themselves and their creator.
[42]
Geisler, 732.
[43]
John 10:30.
[44]
John 14:9.
[45]
Isaiah 53:11.
[46]
J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 1973), 48.
[47]
Isaiah 55:8-9.
[48]
John 14:9.
[49]
1 Corinthians 2:10.
