Is the Doctrine of the Trinity Nonsense? 1
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the trinity comes pretty close to crossing the line into contradiction. In fact, Muslims sometimes say to Christians, “Three does not equal one.” Obviously, if Allah (God) is one, as the most fundamental tenet of Islam proclaims, he can’t possibly be three gods, as Christians seem to believe. The trinity is explicitly rejected by the Quran as a form of unbelief, akin to polytheism and it seems to fly in the face of the law of non-contradiction.
Surprisingly, while the word “trinity” is never used in the New Testament, the phrase “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is used in Matthew 28:19, and the trinity is alluded to in 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 Corinthians 12:4-5, Ephesians 4:4-6, 1 Peter 1:2, and Revelation 1:4-5. There is no doubt that the earliest Christians believed in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, since new believers were to be baptized into the name—singular. The unity of God in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is present by inference at Jesus’s baptism, where Jesus is immersed, the Father speaks from heaven, endorsing Jesus as his Son, and the Holy Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32-34). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all raised Jesus from the dead, if we are to take the statements in Acts 2:24, 32, 3:15; John 10:17-18; and Romans 1:4, 8:11 seriously. So, there is no doubt from earliest days Christians believed in one God and yet the deity and distinctiveness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christians believe that God is one in being and yet three in persons.
Four Analogies for the trinity
Is this, as our Muslim friends believe, a simple contradiction? Or is there something else happening, more in the realm of paradox or mystery? I believe the latter.
Even in nature, we see examples of three in one, of trinities. The analogy of three states of matter sometimes is used to illustrate this. Although it’s not my favorite analogy for the trinity, it’s easy to understand: water, for example, can exist as solid (ice), liquid, and gas (steam). A weakness of this analogy is that the same water is not in all three states at the same time. Still, it shows that even in nature, the same substance can be in three different forms.
We human beings are little trinities, another analogy, since we are body, soul, and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). I like this analogy because it illustrates unity and diversity. Since I am a trinity, I want to take care of my body, soul, and spirit. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to any of them, because they are all me. A weakness of this analogy is that some people don’t believe that humans have a spirit or even a soul. There is no soul or mind, they believe, only chemical processes in the brain. Still, for some people this analogy is meaningful.
This blog post is an excerpt from my recently published book, Is Jesus Real? available on Amazon in print and Kindle. The article continues in part 2, next week.
