A Dialogue on Trinity

A Dialogue on Trinity

  Copyright 2011, 2014 Domenic Marbaniang

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  I

  It was a wintry evening, around 9 O’clock, and Rev. Clark was busy in his Study preparing for the Sunday Service, when Madeleine, his daughter of age 13, came to him and broke in “Dad, I wanted to ask something.”

  Clark [turning around at her]: What is it, my dear?

  Madeleine: Doesn’t God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit make three gods? [Then, pointing to a picture on the wall] God is that old Father, Jesus is the Son, and that dove is the Holy Spirit. They also look so different from each other.

  Clark: This picture is just a painting. Somebody imagined it that way. There are not three gods. Only one God, and…

  Madeleine: But, you said that Jesus is God, and also the Holy Spirit?

  Clark: Yes, that’s right.

  Madeleine: Then, there are three gods.

  Clark: No, there is only one God. It’s not very easy to understand how, but there’s only one God.

  Madeleine: How can that be, dad?

  Clark: Well, it’s difficult to understand how, but the Bible teaches that the Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and that these are three; but, yet, there is only one God.

  Madeleine: And, who is that one God, dad?

  Clark: God the Father is that God. Jesus is that God. The Holy Spirit is that God.

  Madeleine: Oh, you mean God is like Spider-man. He is both Peter Parker and Spider-man at the same time.

  Clark: Well, perhaps; but, I don’t think so. Peter Parker and Spider-man is the same person, but the Father is a different person, Jesus is a different person, and the Holy Spirit is a different person.

  Madeleine: You confuse me, dad.

  Clark: God is not one person like we humans are; He is three-persons.

  Madeleine: Okay, you mean He is like Brahma who got four heads, four hands, but two feet.

  Clark: Why do you think so?

  Madeleine: I thought there are as many persons as there are heads to count.

  Clark: Why, you can have two or three hard disks or processors in a computer, but it’s still one.

  Madeleine: But, a computer is not a person, and the various disks and processors are just parts.

  Clark: So, the head could also just be a part.

  Madeleine: Well, if each of the processors had consciousness, then the computer made up of two processors would not be one person, but still it would be one computer.

  Clark: I don’t think so. The two processors would merely be two thinking units of one person, like we have a tussle between the good and evil, reasoning and feeling, within us.

  Madeleine: Well, the two thinking units would not be against each other but would operate seamlessly. But, I think you may be right. Still, there are two thinkers already there.

  Clark: For that to be possible, each unit will need to have a separate will of its own.

  Madeleine: Granted.

  Clark: But, yet the units are just parts of a whole, the computer, while, God is not made up three different parts: each Person is fully God.

  Madeleine: It’s not necessary to think of them as only parts. Granted each possesses consciousness, each will distinctly be conscious of being the computer.

  Clark: So, there will be three consciousnesses but, seamlessly, one computer.

  Madeleine: Yes.

  Clark: I’m a bit afraid of this analogy though it, at least, makes some sense. However, God is Spirit and we can’t talk of Him in the way we talk of a human body or a machine.

  II

  Madeleine: You are right, Dad! Also, I can see that the three processors would still be parts of the one; so, the analogy does fail.

  Clark: You saw it well.

  Madeleine: So, we lack an analogy?

  Clark: Well, there may be a few natural ones like space which has three dimensions (Length, Breadth, Depth), time has three divisions (Past, Present, Future), persons have three references (First person, Second person, Third person), and the universe has three realities (Space, Time, Matter).

  Madeleine: Water has three forms: liquid, solid, vapor.

  Clark: Right. However, we must be careful here because there is a false view known as Sabellianism (or Modalism) which says that God has three forms: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. According to this false view, the Son who died on the cross was the same as the Father.

  Madeleine: What are the other false views?

  Clark: These are the four chief heresies or false teachings:

  Unitarianism: One God = One Person

  Modalism: One God =Three Forms

  Tripartitism: One God =Three Parts

  Tritheism: Three Gods = Three Persons

  The Bible teaches us that there is one God; the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God.

  Madeleine: Was this known to people in both the Old Testament and the New Testament?

  Clark: The word “Trinity” was not known to them, of course. Also, the way in which this doctrine is known to us today was not known to them as such, then.

  Madeleine: So, they didn’t have the confusion.

  Clark: Yes. For instance, in the Old Testament, the Spirit of God is mentioned several times. Similarly, we find references to the Son of God, the Angel of the Lord, and the Glory of the Lord which we know were references to Jesus. However, there was no confusion regarding the oneness of God. Similarly, in the New Testament, Jesus was prayed to, Jesus was worshiped, and the Christians were baptized with the Holy Spirit. But, they didn’t have a problem about the Trinity. At least, we don’t find any such problem mentioned anywhere in the New Testament. They all knew and believed that God is one. They also knew that God the Father sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins, and that the Holy Spirit dwells among us today to guide us into all truth and help us in our weaknesses.

  III

  Madeleine: Then, when did this become a problem?

  Clarke: It became a serious problem some 300 years after Christ, when a certain presbyter named Arius began teaching that Jesus was not God but the first creation of God. God created Jesus first; then, all other things through him, he said. Many preachers did oppose him and a Council was called at Nicaea in 325 AD, in which, after rigorous debates from both sides for a period of two months, Arius’ teaching was declared heretical, or false.

  Madeleine: Is the divinity of Jesus so important?

  Clarke: Yes, very important. If Jesus is not God, He cannot give us eternal life; neither can He provide for us eternal redemption, nor can He be the author of the new creation, nor a proper mediator between God and man.

  Madeleine: What if there were no Father and no Holy Spirit, but only Jesus is God?

  Clarke: Then, Jesus could neither be moral nor relational. To be moral would require the presence of another person. One cannot possess nor be the embodiment of love unless there exists an object of that love. God is love, because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are bound together in the Holy Triune Community by God’s infinite and divine love. If God were not a person and Triune at the same instance, then He would be a lonely person before the creation. But, God is by nature a good, kind, merciful, and a communicating Master. This is only possible because in His being, God is never a singular person, He is a community of three persons from all eternity.

  Madeleine: That almost makes it appear as if He was composed of three different persons.

  Clarke: Certainly not.

  Madeleine: But, if not, how would persons in the divine community be different from persons in our commun
ities, that is, they are three different people? We come back to the same question.

  Clarke: This is where faith exhausts analogy from human experience. This truth is so crystal clear in the Scripture and yet we don’t find any illustration that could rightly explain it to us. But, someone has offered a few that are close to it as I mentioned a little earlier.

  We don’t believe that the three persons are 1+1+1=3

  Let’s take the analogy of 1x1x1=1; then as

  Length x Breadth x Height = Space,

  Energy x Motion x Phenomenon = Matter,

  Future x Present x Past = Time,

  Space x Matter x Time = Universe,

  Nature x Person x Personality = Man.

  In the like manner, we can talk of the three persons in the Trinity as one God.

  Madeleine: Oh, wow!

  IV

  Clarke: And yet, of course, this though not an analogy of mathematical addition (a sum) is an analogy of mathematical multiplication (a product).

  Madeleine: Yes, I see that. [Musing] If God cannot be a sum of three persons, He can also not be the product of three persons.

  Clarke: Exactly. But, the focus was on the analogy from 1x1x1=1.

  Madeleine: In which case, it