What does it mean when you say that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are one? Can you form an analogy to make this more clear?



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

Norman Geisler describes the doctrine of the Trinity to be the Christian belief that “there are three persons in one essence” in the Godhead.[42]  This definition resolves the issue of self-contradiction if and only if “persons” and “essence” are distinct ideas that independently apply to God.  In fact, this is the case.  When we discuss the personhood of God, we are foundationally discussing who God is.  When we discuss the essence of God, we are referring to what God is.  So, simplistically speaking, the doctrine of the Trinity claims that there are three separate “who’s” that make up God, but only one “what.”  This logically disqualifies the skeptical claim of contradiction, but it doesn’t necessarily answer the skeptics’ ultimate concern regarding the triune nature of God.  To do this, we must try to conceive of an analogy to help us understand. 

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.