What is Trinity in the Bible? Is there a good Analogy for Trinity?
Yes, there is a good analogy for Trinity that is given by God Himself to the apostle John (1 John 1:5) and understood in the light of modern physics. You can see the details under the menu heading “Holy Trinity” on this blog site.
Greetings! Thank you for visiting.
You may be asking yourself, “What kind of a blog is this?”
The answer, “It is a blog about truth.”
“Really?!” you say. “So, what is truth?”
Truth is something that everyone desires, at least from others. If defining truth seems presumptuous, read a little further before closing your mind.
As implied in this blog’s logo, there are two kinds of truth—Temporal (or scientific) and Eternal. If we leave out either kind, we will miss the Whole truth.
But the whole truth is expensive, as Ziggy knows.
Few of us want to tell the whole truth for fear that it will expose the lies we tell ourselves.
Any thinking that admits the eternal truths of the Holy Bible is commonly rejected out of hand by those who are under the suasion of 21st century pop philosophy, that there is no absolute truth. But that is a crippling and potentially deadly philosophy.
If you are of the popular common suasion, be warned that this blog discusses unabashedly the truths of temporal science and the eternal truths of the Bible, giving appropriate weight to both. This discussion does not filter out observations, revelations, or historical facts, but incorporates all in attempt to understand the whole truth. The questions, “What is Trinity in the Bible?” and “Is there a good analogy for Trinity?” are examples of how combining temporal and eternal viewpoints can resolve apparent contradictions (paradoxes).
This blog will pursue truth where there are hard questions and conflict between temporal and eternal truths, with the intent to resolve conflict into the whole truth.
Topics discussed include:
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- The oft confusing Christian Trinity can be explained by a good analogy, a metaphor given by God Himself in the Bible (1 John 1:5) to the apostle John.
- The age of the world (cosmos). How old is the world we live in–ancient or young?
- Evolution by natural selection vs. Creation by intelligent design (God).
- What are time and eternity? How do time and eternity relate to one another?
- What happens at death? Is death disintegration or transformation (metamorphosis)?
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Here is a hint of what to expect as we peruse the above topics. Though the doctrine of Trinity in the Bible is deemed incomprehensible by many, God Himself explains it in a science metaphor in 1 John 1:5. The world we live in is ancient (billions of years), but human beings arrived in this world only a few thousands of years ago. Creation cannot be explained without intelligence, and evolution cannot be explained with science. Time is simply a prison in eternity. Death in time is entry into the eternity one desires—either with or without God.
Who am I that I should presume to discuss and define the whole truth?
I am a retired medical doctor and lifelong student of science and the Bible. These two fields of study have made me a student of history. As a student I have pursued truth in all three fields. I have discovered two types of truth, which I call temporal and eternal.
Science sees truth from a temporal perspective, which changes from time to time, according to evidence and experimentation. Some truths we hold today are different from those of our ancestors, and will probably be seen differently by our descendants. Nevertheless, for the present moment (at any given time), by hard evidence and testing, science defines truth quite clearly and definitely. But it is a maxim of science that what is true today may be proven false tomorrow. Therefore, temporal truth cannot always be absolute. This is because scientists, like all of us, are caught up in time and do not know what the future will bring.
Furthermore, science owes an important debt to the Bible, as freely admitted by atheist mathematician Alfred North Whitehead and by agnostic T.H. Huxley, known as Darwin’s bulldog.
Historic truth is also temporal in perspective, since history is a record of human activity through the passage of time. Truth from the past is harder to clearly define, since it cannot be studied by experimental design. Thus historic truth must be sought in personal testimony and documentary witness, both of which can be falsified, and frequently are, by human manipulation.
The Bible contains truth of a different sort than science and history. Bible truth was revealed by God through inspiration of human writers in the course of ancient history. This divine canon is complete, though it has often been co-opted by men of various religious persuasions through history to propagate their own particular views.
Human distortion notwithstanding, the Bible declares itself the complete and final word of God, which defines His purpose for humanity and His relationship with us. God is eternal, without beginning or end. The Bible declares that God’s relationship with us is eternal–that is, forever and ever. The first evidence of the eternal truth about God is the marvelously complex and orderly temporal creation in which we find ourselves. Our world demonstrates God’s creative intelligence and power as observed by the Christian apostle Paul in Romans 1:18-20 and by the Roman lawyer, Marcus Tullius Cicero. But there is more to examine in this relationship, as we shall see in on this blog.
To adequately treat the subject of truth, we must investigate the temporal and eternal perspectives in the Bible, in science and in history. If it be objected that this temporal, physical world is the only reality, then we might sneer at all truth and exclaim, “So what? What difference does it make?” This is the despairing view of today’s postmodern generation, which claims that “there are no absolutes, and absolute truth does not exist.” In this view the eternal perspective is irrelevant and unnecessary. Postmodernism sees history as merely cyclical and not progressive toward a goal. Thus all human endeavors are like hamsters running in a circular cage, with no end in sight.
Without the eternal context, temporal truth has no ultimate meaning and becomes merely a fleeting convenience to be manipulated in a conflict of personal and political ambitions. If the student of scientific and historic truth (which I designate temporal truth) does not also yearn for eternal truth, then his understanding of any truth will be pointless. In these pages and posts I invite you to study time and eternity with me and see if you think there is a point to it all.
I am a retired physician, in my 70’s. The son of a career U.S. Air Force officer, I grew up in the 1940’s and 50’s. During that time I moved every two years, attending different schools in different parts of the country, and learning to appreciate differing social customs. This broadened my appreciation for different types of people. I discovered that mutual trust was the glue that bound people together in whatever place I lived. Trust depended on being truthful, no matter where I lived.
I did my medical training at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Texas, and this included postgraduate training in internal medicine and surgery. My ultimate career, however, was in surgical pathology where I rendered diagnoses on biopsies and surgical resections (“pieces of people”) and communicated those to your clinical physician. This medical detective work of inquiring after the true nature of a patient’s disease molded my desire to know the whole truth.
Though you usually never met me as your doctor, if you knew I existed, you hoped that I knew what I was doing and that I was truthful. In the practice of my profession I saw first-hand the importance of scientific (temporal) truth to the welfare of your physical life and health. Truth enables the trust that is crucial to a healing physician-patient relationship. I have come to realize that trust, based on truth, is crucial to every relationship in our lives.
A good analogy for Trinity in the Bible will illumine the amazing nature of the Creator of this world of time, who Himself dwells in eternity. From this point many possibilities are open to resolve hard questions and apparent conflicts between science and the Bible regarding the whole truth.
