Trinity Explained

C. S. Lewis said of the Trinity that it is either the most farcical doctrine invented by the early disciples or the most profound and thrilling mystery revealed by the Creator Himself, giving us a grand intimation of reality. Lewis does a masterful job in helping us approach this mystery of divine personality by the use of analogy.

A good many people nowadays say, "I believe in a God, but not in a personal God." They feel that the mysterious something which is behind all other things must be more than a person. Now the Christians quite agree. But the Christians are the only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it isn't a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market. You know that in space you can move in three ways&md;to 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're using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you're 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&md;a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares.

Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would be a world of straight lines. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one solid body. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you don't leave behind you the things you found on the simpler levels; you still have them, but combined in new ways&md;in ways you couldn't imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.