Explaining the Trinity

A Layman’s Look at God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit

It’s been said that you will lose your mind trying to explain the Trinity and lose your soul trying to deny it. Admittedly, Christians have a difficult time explaining the Trinity to new Christians, non-believers and even other Christians.

How can we claim to worship one God while believing that God exists as three persons — God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit?

Isn’t the Trinity a contradiction?

If God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are one and the same, why does the Bible say that God the Father “sent” his son Jesus to earth?

Why did Christ pray to God prior to the crucifixion and say, “Thy will be done?”

And how could Jesus be baptized at almost the same moment that God the Father blessed the baptism from heaven and the Holy Spirit descended upon Christ like a dove?

How do you answer questions that seem to have no answers?

In the Beginning….

The Bible opens with these words, “B’reshyt bara elohym et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz,” which means “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

The Hebrew word “elohym” or “elohim” is the plural form of “el,” which means “God.” Thus, the Bible reflects the Trinity in its opening passage.

Christian Beliefs about the Trinity

Christians believe that….

• There is one and only one God.
• God exists as three distinct, eternal and equal persons, as described in the Bible.
• Each of these persons is 100 percent God.

To believe otherwise means you are something other than a Christian.

God in Three Persons

“The fact that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons means, in other words, that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father,” says Cru, a non-profit Christian organization in its post, “Understanding the Trinity: How Can God Be Three Persons in One?”

The post explains, “Jesus is God, but He is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, but He is not the Son or the Father. They are different Persons, not three different ways of looking at God.” Click here to read the entire article.

Analogies for the Trinity

Dr. Henry Morris, a noted scientist, has been quoted as saying the entire universe is trinitarian. It consists of three things – matter, space and time. If you take away any one of the three, it ceases to exist. (Read the entire post in which he is quoted — “God in Three Persons: Trinity Doctrine We Barely Understand” —  here.)

In the same post, Christian speaker, pastor and author Tony Evans likens the Trinity to a pretzel. It is one piece of dough with three holes. Take away any one of the holes and it is no longer a pretzel.

And Dr. Vern Poythress, an author and professor of New Testament interpretation at Westminster Theological Seminary, says that some people use a triangle to represent the Trinity. But he thinks it’s a poor analogy because a triangle has three parts — and God doesn’t have parts. (Read his post, “How Do I Explain the Trinity to Children?” here.)

So, is there a good analogy? Probably not.

“The whole universe witnesses to the character of the God who made it (cf. Psalm 19:1),” notes Dr. Ray Pritchard in his article, “What Exactly Is the Doctrine of the Trinity?” All attempts to illustrate the Trinity or find an analogy to explain it will fail, he believes. “They don’t ‘prove’ the Trinity; they simply help us understand the concept.”

Confusion Abounds

You are in good company if you’re confused. Christians and Christian scholars have spent the last 2,000 years trying to understand and explain the Trinity.

“Some use math to explain the Holy Trinity,” says Kelli Mahoney, an author, Christian youth worker and expert on Christianity. “We cannot think of the Holy Trinity as a sum of three parts (1+1+1=3), but instead, show how each part multiplies the others to form a wonderful whole (1x1x1=1). Using the multiplication model, we show that the three form a union, thus why people have moved to calling it the Tri-Unity.”

One way we might think about the Trinity or Tri-Unity is to view God the Father as the creator, God the Son as the teacher and God the Holy Spirit as our guide, she says. “They are the different natures of God, who is one being.”

Learning to Accept

Ultimately, humans have no words to adequately describe or explain the Trinity, nor do we have the ability to fully understand the concept.

But Mahoney says we need to remember this about God:

“He can do anything, be anything, and be everything at every moment of every second of every day. We are people, and our minds can’t always understand everything about God. This is why we have things like the Bible and prayer to bring us closer to understanding Him, but we won’t know everything as He does.

“It may not be the cleanest or most satisfying answer to say that we cannot fully understand God, so we need to learn to accept it,” Mahoney says.

And she’s right.

(Read Mahoney’s post here.)