Untying The Trinity: Understanding and Worshiping our Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
First Baptist Church, McLoud
OK
Sunday, November 12, 2017
I had the privilege of preaching at First Baptist Church in McLoud, Oklahoma this past Sunday - filling the pulpit for my good friend Pastor Matt Halsted, who had returned from the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum in New Orleans VERY late the night before (2AM). I am grateful for the opportunity to preach. What follows is a relatively-accurate transcript of my sermon from Sunday.
The heart of my message was: a) Christian Trinitarian belief is unique among the world's religions; b) God's Triunity is required by the biblical evidence; c) Christians cannot willingly embrace logically incoherent (impossible) beliefs; d) the Trinity is not logically incoherent; e) while we cannot fully comprehend God's Tri-unity, we can begin to rationally grasp it. I hope it is helpful!
Throughout human history, virtually every living human
being has believed in God. Even in our
current highly skeptical and secular age, around 80% of Westerners (Europeans,
Americans, Canadians) believe in some divine Being. If you survey the world at large, and
especially if you investigate human history, you find that an overwhelming
majority of human beings affirm the existence of God.
However, the term “God” or “Divine Being” is
unfortunately ambiguous. For some
people, ‘God’ is a powerful but limited being, perhaps active in a particular
geographical location or time in history.
For others, ‘God’ is a human being who was so righteous, powerful, or
otherwise worthy that they were ‘divinized’ after death. For others, ‘God’ indicates an impersonal
force which permeates the universe. For
others, ‘God’ indicates an eternal divine Being who co-exists with other
eternal divine Beings in a grand polytheistic pantheon. For others yet, ‘God’ indicates a supreme,
omnipotent, eternal Divine Being who created the universe and everything in it
– this is the belief we call “monotheism,” that is, belief in One God.
But even monotheism is unfortunately ambiguous and
multiply understood. For some, God is a
distant, all-powerful judge who will weigh our deeds in an eternal scale and
sentence us to heaven or hell. For
others, God is a personal but unitary being, almighty in nature, who
nonetheless relates to the people He has created and chosen to be His own. For others, God is personal and Triune, Three
Persons but One Being. Christianity, it
should be clear, is this species of
monotheism – a Trinitarian religion.
Mere belief in “God,” then, is quite irrelevant. In James 2:19, the Lord’s brother declares: You believe in one God. Good!
Even the demons believe that.
In other words, belief in “one God” is not salvific – it is too generic,
undefined, and ambiguous to lead us to a right understanding of, love for, and
saving relationship with, that God.
While belief in “God” is almost universal, Christian belief in a Triune
God is unique among the world’s religions.
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity, then, is both an essential
component of what it means to be a Christian, and a unique element of
Christianity that sets us apart from other God-believers.
This morning, then, I’d like us to look at God’s Word
together, to see what we as Christians can (and need to) understand about the
Triune God whom we worship, by whom we are saved, and who we proclaim to the
rest of the world. My desire is to
“Untie” the Gordian knot of the Trinity – to help us see the Triune nature of
the God whom we worship as Three Persons in One Divine Being – God the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. I want to
illuminate what Christians believe about The Triunity of God, and show why it
is so essential to our belief and worship.
In Matthew 28:18-20, the resurrected Jesus meets with
His disciples to give them instructions for their continued ministry. He says: All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very
end of the age.
Jesus gives His followers a clearly Trinitarian baptismal
formula – we are to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. John, chapter 16, starting
in verse 5.
I am going to him
who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Because I have said these things, you are
filled with grief. But I tell you the
truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come
to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.
Here we have Jesus’ promise of the coming Holy Spirit
– the Counselor (Greek paraclete),
who will be with Jesus’ followers. Let’s
move along to John 17 and note several verses in that majestic prayer.
Father, the time
has come. Glorify your Son, that your
Son may glorify You. For you granted him
authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have
given him. Now this is eternal life:
that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have
sent. I have brought you glory on earth
by completing the work you gave me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with
you before the world began.
Note two quick things – Jesus insisting that He, the
Son, gives eternal life, and that He and the Father mutually glorify one
another. Moving on to verse 20.
My prayer is not
for them [that is, Jesus’s disciples] alone.
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that
all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may
believe that you have sent me. I have
given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in
them and you in me.
Here, Jesus claims that He and the Father are one – a
union that He hopes to be the basis for unity among His believers and
followers. With these passages as a
basis, let’s look at the Scriptural description of the Triune God whom we
worship.
To do so, let’s engage in a historical thought
experiment. Imagine with me that you
were among Jesus’s original followers, and that you are trying to make sense
out of Jesus.
The first thing to realize is that you are a faithful
monotheistic Jew. That is, you believe
in One God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 is your clarion call – Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord
is one. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
You believe in One God – the Lord, the Creator. But at the same time, there are some pretty
intriguing things about your Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. He does some unusual things that either claim
or demonstrate authority and privileges that only belong to God Almighty. For example, in Mark 2:5, he explicitly
claims to forgive the sins of a paralyzed man.
When teachers of the law question His authority to forgive, by asking – Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone? –
Jesus acknowledges their question, and demonstrates His authority by
immediately healing the man of his paralysis as well. Why does he heal the man? Verse 10 – So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to
forgive sins. But who has the
authority to forgive sins? Remember,
you’re a faithful first-century Jew.
Only Yahweh, the Lord, the God of Israel, has the authority to forgive
sins.
Jesus also proclaims Himself to be the source of
eternal life, and the one who will judge our eternal destiny. John 3:16, one of our favorite verses as His
early followers (remember, we’re imagining being 1st-century
disciples, right?) proclaims: For God so
loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The passage we read earlier, from John 17:2,
contains Jesus’s claim: For you [the
Father] granted him [the Son] authority over all people that he might give
eternal life to all those you have given him. Who gives eternal life? Jesus of Nazareth, the Son. But I’m a 1st-century Jew … who
alone has the right to grant eternal life?
God, the Lord!
What, then, is Jesus saying about Himself? We could look at a whole lot more passages,
but the point becomes clear. As Jesus’
followers, we are beginning to think that Jesus thinks He is God. Yet how can that be, especially when Jesus
also prays to God. I wonder what Jesus means by calling God
Father, and then by presuming and proclaiming His own divine status?
Back to John 16.
Jesus threatens – no, promises – to leave us. But He says it will be for our own good, as He
is going to send someone to replace Himself – this Comforter, Paraclete, Holy Spirit. In addition, He has also prophesied the very
means by which He will leave us. For
example, in Matthew 16:21, we read: From
that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to
Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and
teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised
to life. I’ve got to be frank – we
didn’t get it when Jesus said this. In
fact, some amongst us – Peter, to be specific, although I don’t want to throw
him under the bus; after all, he’s kind of an important dude within our circles
– Peter even rebuked Jesus when He said he was going to die in Jerusalem!
But then it happened.
The Passover came. And
immediately after celebrating the Passover meal with us, Jesus prayed with us;
after praying with us, we went out to the Garden together, and He prayed for
even longer – so long that most of us fell asleep – c’mon, give me a break,
you’d have fallen asleep too if you were laying in that comfy garden, in the
dark, after a nice big meal, and after already having done prayer meeting
together. After His time of prayer in
the Garden, Jesus was arrested. He was
crucified just outside the city gate of Jerusalem, and He died on that
cross. On the third day, His tomb was
found empty, and the resurrected Jesus appeared to us. Well, most of us anyway – Thomas wasn’t with
us that first time. But he was the next
time, and after seeing Jesus, Thomas said what was on our minds too – “My Lord
and my God!”
You see, there was really no denying it by this
point. After all we had seen during
Jesus’s lifetime, all that Jesus had taught and done, and now His brutal death
but even more glorious return from the dead, we could no longer escape the fact
that Jesus was, in fact, God incarnate, walking among us. Not only that, but just as Jesus had
promised, the Holy Spirit did come to
us, in power and in glory! And we had no
choice but to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit, too, was divine in nature and
essence. Why?
First, The Holy
Spirit speaks directly to Christians, evidence that the Spirit is an
omni-present Person.
While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the
Spirit said to him, “Simon, three men are looking for you.” So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have
sent them. (Acts 10:19 )
Similarly in Acts
13:2:
While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the
Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I
have called them.”
The Holy Spirit
also guides and directs God’s people – sometimes even preventing them from
going a certain direction.
Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region
of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the
word in the province of Asia. (Acts 16:6)
The Holy Spirit is given as our counselor, our guide,
our illuminating light, our seal of salvation, and our constant divine
presence. John 14, beginning in verse
16, reads
And I will ask the
Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the
Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept
him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come
to you! …– The
Counselor – the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach
you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
The Holy Spirit interacts with us in an intensely
personal and intimate manner. God
desires to speak with us, to instruct us, and to guide us, and the way that He
does is through the Holy Spirit, who dwells within the heart of all who accept
salvation by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit, then, also shares in the divinity of
God. Yahweh, the Lord, is God. Jesus, the Son, is God. The Holy Spirit is God. But we believe in One God. So what we you do with that?
What early Christians did do with that, is wrestle with it – biblically, theologically,
and philosophically. Christians sought
to articulate and clarify what they believed about the nature of God. And very quickly, Trinitarian language became
the clearest means to doing so. God is a
Tri-Personal Being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three Persons, One Being. Three Persons, one eternal Godhead.
It was important, right from the beginning, that
Christians be clear about their understanding of God’s Triunity. The doctrine of the Trinity was badly
misunderstood, by both friends and foes of Christianity, with often disastrous
consequences.
Even by the end of the first century, early Christians
needed to differentiate orthodox
Christian belief about God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, from rising heretical beliefs about God and Jesus
and the Holy Spirit. Very early on, some
thinkers departed from the Christian faith, claiming that Jesus was either a
second god, or a creation of God the Father, or simply a different
manifestation (think avatar or reincarnation) of God the Father.
Some early thinkers, having encountered the Christian
Gospel, came to believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were simply different
manifestations of the One True God. This
heresy is known as modalism, the
belief that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are simply different modes of the same Person – that is, the
One God Almighty. Why is this view a
problem? Simply put, because while
Jesus, in the Gospels, does insist that He and the Father are one, He also
prays to a clearly distinct Person, His Father in Heaven, thereby clearly
indicating that the Father and the Son exist at the same moment in time as separate Persons. Furthermore, Jesus insists that He will send
the Holy Spirit – a different divine person, not just a different version or
aspect of Himself. Hence, orthodox
Christian thinking has always affirmed that the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit are not just different aspects of, or modes of, divine existence, but
rather different divine Persons who nonetheless exist in Triunity as one divine
Being.
Other early thinkers, known as Arians, having
encountered the Christian Gospel, affirmed that Jesus was obviously special,
but noted that he was distinct from the Father to whom he prayed. They also held that since God is One God, and
Jesus is distinct from God the Father, that therefore Jesus must be a creation
of God the Father, and not of the same substance or essence as God. Jesus, that is, must not be equated with
God. What was wrong with Arianism? Simply put, while Jesus is clearly distinct
from God the Father, He is also clearly one
with the Father, with all the divine rights, powers, privileges,
responsibilities, and essences thereof.
Hence, orthodox Christian thinking has always affirmed that the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not separate Beings – one fully divine and the
others just special created beings – but rather are distinct divine Persons who
nonetheless exist in Triunity as one divine Being. Lest you think that it was only early
Christian thinkers who had to worry about these kinds of distinctions, what I
have just described also distinguishes true Christianity from the contemporary
heresy of the Jehovah’s Witness movement.
The point, then, is that early Christians needed to
clearly articulate Trinitarian theology in order to maintain the purity and
accuracy of what God has revealed about Himself through His Word in
Scripture. That need carries on
today. Why does that matter? Because we cannot love that which we do not
understand. A clear understanding of the
doctrine of the Trinity is absolutely essential to a vital relationship with
the God of the Bible. (Story of
Saskatchewan man whose wife turns out to be a RCMP most wanted man?) Again, we cannot love that which we do not
understand. If we are to love God, we
must come to know God truly and
correctly.
Furthermore, you cannot worship that which you do not
understand. Worshiping God involves
ascribing ultimate worth and glory to Him, and honoring and praising Him on
account of who He is and what He has done.
Well, just as it is impossible to rightly worship God if we do not believe
He has sent His Son to save us – that is, we do not rightly understand what He
has done – so too it is impossible to rightly worship God if we do not
understand who He is – a Triune, personal God.
As Christians, we love the Lord God, and we desire to
be in right relationship with Him. We
desire to worship God, because He is worthy of our worship. But in order to love God, in order to worship
God, in order to be rightly related to God, our understanding of God has to be
filled with content – and the nature of that content matters. We must have a right understanding of who God
is and what God has done. As James says,
“You believe in one God? Good! Even the demons believe that, and
shudder.” Our notion of God must be
appropriate, correct. Hence, early
Christians needed to clearly articulate their understanding of the Trinity, of
God’s Triune nature, in order to ensure that they were rightly understanding
the God whom they then worshiped and adored.
Christian doctrine matters, and none matters more than the Trinity.
Early Christians also needed to demonstrate that their
beliefs about God were neither irrational (contrary to reason) nor logically
incoherent (self-contradictory). This
need remains paramount today. Many
non-Christians accuse Christians of believing things about God that simply
cannot be true – namely, that God is both three and one.
The accusation that Christians embrace things about
God that cannot be true (like God’s Triunity) is part of a wider trend that
gained force in the 20th century and remains strong today – namely,
the accusation that Christian faith is held apart from reason. Richard Dawkins, the world’s most
widely-published and widely-read intellectual atheist, defines faith as “belief
in the absence of evidence.” He goes on
to write, “When one person suffers a delusion, we call it insanity. When a large group of people suffer the same
delusion, we call it religion.” A
delusion, he argues, is “a persistent false belief held in the face of strong
contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder.” In other words, Dawkins holds that
Christianity is a persistent and false belief that we hold, despite there being
strong evidence that proves our belief to be false; our Christian faith, then,
he argues, is best understood as a psychiatric disorder. There are millions of atheists like Richard
Dawkins who think, first, that there is no good reason to believe that
Christianity is true, and, second, that Christians are irrational people who
rely on feeling and emotion to buttress their false beliefs and shun the use of
reason and evidence. My brothers and
sisters, these are serious charges, and we are called to provide a strong
response to them.
A disturbing trend, in my mind, is the tendency of
many Christians to embrace the
accusations of irrationality. Some
Christians will even proudly proclaim that their faith is irrational, opposed
to the application of reason and evidence, and wear their fideism like a badge
of honor. Such Christians will admit
that, yes, belief in the Trinity is irrational, or embraces a logical
contradiction, and that’s okay. Because, after all, we are talking about God,
and God cannot be fully understood; hence, we can affirm things of God that
seem to us to be logically contradictory, and yet they can be true of God. Thus, God is both three and one.
Early Christians refuted the non-Christian accusation
of incoherence, and there are two compelling reasons that we should continue to
do so.
The first reason has to do with evangelism and
apologetics. As Christians, we desire to
share the faith of Jesus Christ with those who do not yet know Him. If you are here today, and you are not yet a
Christian, I will tell you openly, honestly, and lovingly, that this church’s
sincere desire is that you also would become a follower of Jesus Christ. But, to be frank, if people are convinced at
the outset that the doctrine of the Trinity is both essential to Christianity and logically incoherent, then they
simply are never going to consider whether it might actually be true. If we present God’s Triunity, and insist to
non-Christians that, yes, our beliefs are irrational and logically impossible –
but that nonetheless we want you to believe! – I’m sad to say that others are
going to (rightly, in my mind) respond that they have absolutely no interest in
hearing anything more that we have to say about our faith. In our day and age – not just in our day, but
in any day and age – if someone is going to consider accepting Christianity as
the way, the truth, and the life, then Christianity has to at least be
logically possible. None of us will give
our lives to something that we are convinced is irrational and illogical.
The second reason that we cannot consent to the
perspective that the doctrine of the Trinity is irrational or illogical, is
that it does a disservice to God, and once again fails to rightly understand
(and hence rightly worship) the God whom we claim to follow. God does not ask us to believe in something
that is irrational, or logically impossible.
He never has, and He never will.
He is a rational God, who created us with minds that reflect His own
mind. Hence, the laws of logic which
govern our thinking are also reflections of His divine rationality and
character. The great medieval Christian
philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, made a crucial distinction that philosophers and
theologians since have been wise to adopt as their own. Aquinas distinguished between things that are
demonstrable by reason, things that
are above reason, and things that are
contrary to reason. Some truths are demonstrable by reason, in the sense that applying human
rationality and empirical evidence will convince any fair-minded person of
their truthfulness. An example of such a
truth might be the spherical nature of the earth, or the historicity of the
Holocaust. Some truths, particularly truths about
God, may be above reason – that is,
we may have a hint of them, but cannot fully grasp or comprehend because of our
finitude and fallenness. But truths,
even divine truths, can never be contrary
to reason – because irrational and illogical claims can never be true, even
if they are spoken of God. As C. S.
Lewis noted in The Problem of Pain,
“meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply
because we prefix to them the other words ‘God can’.” Hence, we can talk about the Triunity of God
as being above reason – it is
something that we do not now and never will fully understand; but we cannot
talk about the Trinity as being contrary
to reason.
How, then, can we try to understand the doctrine of
the Trinity? If we are going to insist,
as we must, that the Trinity is not logically incoherent, how can we help explain
it to outsiders, and grasp it ourselves, so that we are believing rightly and
rationally about the God whom we worship?
I want to do two things as we come to a close this
morning. First, I want to show that the
Trinity is not logically
incoherent. Second, I want to suggest
how we might helpfully understand the Trinity in such a way that we begin, at
least faintly, to understand it.
First, then: Christianity’s critics, like Mohammad in
the 7th century and Richard Dawkins today, accuse Christian
Trinitarianism of logical incoherence, self-contradiction. That is a serious accusation, not to be
launched or taken lightly. But what
exactly is a logical
contradiction? Simply put, a logical
contradiction involves an individual, we’ll call him Chris, embracing two
contradictory claims; in philosophical terms, Chris simultaneously believes A and not-A. For example, Chris
might simultaneously believe that 2+2=4, and that 2+2=5. Given that 5 is not 4, Chris is believing that 2+2 is equal to A (4) AND not-A (5). A more significant example might have Chris
simultaneously believing in metaphysical materialism (that is, atheism) and that his grandpa Joe is now in
heaven enjoying the fruits of eternal life.
Given that materialistic atheism entails human extinction at death,
Chris is believing two contradictory propositions: no human person lives on
past physical death (not-A) AND a
particular human person (Grandpa Joe) lives on past physical death (A).
Those combinations of beliefs are truly logically contradictory, and
therefore cannot even possibly be true.
But not every suggested or apparent logical
contradiction really is a logical
contradiction. For example, Chris might
simultaneously believe that “Bridget Moynahan is hot” and “Bridget Moynahan is
cold.” Given that hot and cold are
opposites, it would seem that Chris embraces both A (hot) and not-A (cold =
not hot). However, Chris may qualify,
and indicate that “hot” refers to Moynahan’s physical appearance, while “cold”
alludes to her insensitivity to the feelings of other people. In that scenario, Chris is not guilty of
logical inconsistency. Consider another
example. In Newtonian physics, it was
understood that substances could operate as either
a particle or as a wave, but not as both. Hence, if something, let’s say light, operates as a wave (A), then it cannot operate as a particle
(not-A). In the 20th century, however,
Chris comes to believe that light operates as both a wave and a particle. Is he guilty
of logical contradiction? In this case,
No. It turns out, instead, that the
Newtonian understanding was incomplete – some substances (including light) can
operate as both a wave and a particle.
That truth was, in the 19th century, above reason – and many would have accused it of also being contrary to reason – but further
discoveries showed that light’s unique wave-particle capacities were in fact
logically possible. The accused
contradiction was only perceived, not actual.
All right, with all that said, let’s finally consider
Mohammad and Dawkins’s accusation that Christian belief in God’s Triunity is
logically inconsistent. It
is my contention that the accused ‘contradiction’ in the Trinity is only
perceived, not actual. For it to be a
contradiction, the Christian belief would have to be that the Trinity is both
‘three gods’ and ‘one god,’ or that God is both ‘three persons’ and ‘one
person.’ In actuality, however, the
Christian belief is that the Trinity is ‘three persons’ and ‘one god.’ While difficult to work out conceptually,
there is no actual contradiction
within the belief.
If
there were an actual contradiction, Christianity’s critic would have to show that the Christian is embracing two
contradictory beliefs. To pursue that
end, they would need to construct a logical argument that would have to look
something like this.
Premise 1. God
exists as one Being.
Premise 2. God
exists as three Persons.
Premise 3. Thus,
God is one divine Being who exists as three Persons.
Premise 4.
Individual human beings each comprise one Being.
Premise 5. It is
impossible for individual human beings to be composed of more than one Person.
Premise 6. Thus,
it is impossible for one human being to exist as three Persons.
Conclusion 1.
Thus, it is impossible for one divine Being to exist as three Persons.
Conclusion 2.
Thus, if God is one divine Being, then God exists as one Person.
Conclusion 3.
Thus, it is false that God is one divine Being who exists as three
Persons. I.e., the Christian conception
of God’s Triunity is logically incoherent.
All
six premises seem, from a Christian view, to be clearly true. What, then, might be the problem? Why doesn’t the argument show that Christian Trinitarianism
is incoherent? Because the conclusion
actually does not follow from the premises.
In fact, nothing at all regarding divine Being and persons follows from
the six premises. For anything to
follow, there needs to be an intermediate premise:
Premise 7. It is
necessary to presume that what is true for human beings and persons also
applies to divine Being and Persons.
With
Premise 7, you now have a connection between the six premises and the
conclusions. If Premise 7 is true, then
Christians would, in fact, embrace a logical contradiction. Problem?
There is no reason to accept Premise 7 as true. There is no reason to presume that the same
conditions and limitations that apply to human personhood and being apply in
the same way to the infinite, eternal God of the universe. Indeed, there seem to be good reasons to
expect that limitations regarding human personhood and being would not apply to divine personhood and
being. In the same way, for example, we
rightly understand that the limitations upon human knowledge do not apply to
divine knowledge: our human knowledge is limited by our finiteness, our
itty-bitty-brains, and our short temporal duration. God’s knowledge is not so limited. Given that, there simply is no logical
contradiction between God’s existence as a Triune Being.
So,
on the one hand, belief in the Trinity is not obviously logically
contradictory. But, that still does not
help us grasp how the Trinity can actually make some sense, both for our own
edification, and for us to share our Trinitarian faith with those outside the
Christian faith. Historically, a number
of analogies and illustrations have been used to help explain God’s Triunity: a
three-leafed clover, an egg, water, and so forth. All analogies and illustrations break down at
some point, and some are better than others.
But to close this morning, I’d like to share what I think is the most
accurate and most helpful illustration or analogy of God’s Trinitarian nature,
from my favorite Christian writer, C. S. Lewis.
You know that in space you can move in
three ways—to the left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every
direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are
called the three Dimensions. Now notice this. If you are using only one
dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two, you could
draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines.
Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we
call a solid body: say, a cube—a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares.
. . . In other words, as you advance to
more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you the things you
found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways—in
ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.
Now the Christian account of God involves
just the same principle. The human level is a simple and rather empty level. On
the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate
beings—just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is
one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures. On the Divine level
you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways
which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God’s dimension, so
to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just
as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of course we cannot fully
conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only
two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can get
a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do, we are then, for the first time
in our lives, getting some positive idea, however faint, of something
super-personal—something more than a person.[1]
Lewis, thus, provides us with a helpful picture to
flesh out how God’s Personhood and Beingness might look different than human
personhood and beingness. Does that get
us all the way to fully understanding the nature of God’s Triunity? No, I don’t think so. But it does help to illustrate that, although
the Trinity might be above reason, it
is not in any way contrary to reason;
we can utilize our reasoning and imagination to give us a glimpse, a faint
comprehension, of the nature of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three
Persons, one Being; the eternal Godhead; beyond our full comprehension, but not
contrary to reason or logic.
And so we close.
You may be here today, and you have never committed your life to the one
true God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Perhaps you have withheld your trust from God
because you felt, consciously or unconsciously, that this belief in a Triune
God was absolutely nonsense. If that is
the case, then I invite you to reconsider the truths of Jesus Christ anew. God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, and invites us into a saving relationship with Him through faith
in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son, God made flesh.
I entreat you to see the reasonability and beauty of the Christian God,
and to give your life to Him.
Perhaps you have been a Christian for many years, but have realized this morning that your understanding of God’s Triunity has been either incomplete or incorrect. Perhaps you’ve embraced the ancient and contemporary heresy of modalism – believing that the Father, Son, and Spirit are just different aspects of the same divine Person; or Arianism – believing that Jesus and God are two totally separate Beings. If that is the case, then I invite you to come to God fresh and new, and thank Him for revealing His nature to you in a new and fuller way. And may the God of grace, whose is above our full understanding, but who nevertheless reveals enough of Himself to us that we might truly and rightly know Him, and worship Him, and be in saving relationship with Him, may God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, renew your hearts and minds this day.
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