3dii) A Rocket Scientist’s Explanation
of the Trinity
I would like to add credibility to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity by offering a logical explanation from the point of view of a NASA Rocket Scientist and an Adventist.
We’ve seen countless scriptural references that reveal each Person of the Godhead as distinctive. We also have seen countless scriptural references that reveal the Creator God as a one, unique being.
How can both revelations be totally correct and logical? Do explanations such as:
- the three phases of water
- three strands of a rope
- three lit candles merging into one light
make any sense to you as depicting the Tri-unity God the way it really is? Well, none of them nor anything else I’ve ever seen in print have made any sense to me as being remotely analogous to what the Scriptures are revealing to us. I think it would be fair to suggest that theologians in general are of the opinion that this is a mystery, which the human mind cannot resolve, so they will freely admit that whatever analogy they might suggest themselves, it is certainly not really valid.
So, are we to just believe the mystery and go on with such a soft foundation to everything else we hold as truth in our theology? A rocket scientist cannot do that. We would lose our credentials if we based all our beliefs on a mystery. We would call that a Hypothesis, and not even give it the respectability of a Theory. And as such, we certainly would be very careful not to derive too many other theories from such a weak premise.
We hear strong criticisms from our Muslim friends about the Triune God of the Christians. They ask how we can expect them to believe in something, when it makes no sense at all to ourselves. I see their point.
For such reasons I myself left the Catholic Church when 100% of my relatives dating back at least as far as 946AD have been Catholic. I need a better explanation so that my faith in what follows will be reasonable and not blind.
I
wonder if only rocket scientists care about such things? It is doubtful if those guys, who hijacked
the planes and flew them into the
Now, we know that one can quote chapter and verse in the Bible to prove contradictory beliefs. Examples would include the question of what it means that only the Elect will be saved (eg Rom 11:4-8). Could it be that Christ only came to save the elect and that the others were destined to be lost from before they were born? Other examples would include the questions, “What is the “hell” of which Christ spoke?” and “Which day is the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath to be kept by His followers?”
Pertinent to this discussion we can find several Biblical texts that on the surface at least appear to contradict themselves. Verses such as: John 1:18; 6:46; 1Tim 6:17; and 1 John 4:12 tell us that no one has ever, will ever, or can ever see the Creator God. Yet other verses such as: Ex 24:9-11; 32:30; Matt 5:8; and Rev 1:7 indicate that people have seen or will see God face-to-face. Also, many saw Jesus the Christ face-to-face and the Bible says that Christ was God (John 14:9). So, how do you explain these obvious contradictions?
Now that I’ve stuck my neck out on this question of the Trinity, how could I possibly resolve the issue with an analogy, which makes perfect sense even to a Rocket Scientist or a Muslim? Would you believe it if you heard such an explanation? Or, would you feel obligated to deny the possibility that what God has revealed in His Word can actually make perfect sense to a logical human mind?
I suggest that anyone, who can Imagine has
exactly three distinct persons in themselves.
Imagination is more than thought. Animals can think. Imagination is a level of thought that animals will never achieve. We may not fully comprehend the physics of thought, but surely we know that humans are capable of a higher level of thought than any animal will ever achieve. Let’s isolate this difference between humans and animals and call it, “Creative Thought”.
Can you imagine a situation and put yourself in it? How about this? Imagine a room full of people talking. They can’t see you, but you want to talk to them directly. What can you do? You can’t take them out of your mind and put them next to you. However, you can imagine yourself in that room talking face-to-face with them. Let’s do that now. Now, can they see you face-to-face? Is that image of you in your thoughts you? When they are seeing that image of you, are they seeing you? Well, isn’t that why you put yourself in that imagined world – so you could talk to those imaginary creatures of yours face-to-face?
What we have here are two distinct “persons”, who are both you. There’s the thinker, who is having the creative thoughts, and there is the image of that thinker in their thoughts.
There is also a third person evident in this scenario. Your thoughts themselves are also you. Your thoughts completely define you and no one else. Without your thoughts you cannot be you. Your “Thoughts” are your “Spirit”.
So anyone, who can imagine has exactly three distinct persons in themselves: the Thinker, the Image of the Thinker in their thoughts, and their Thoughts or Spirit. Each of these is essential to the life of each other and each has existed in union with the others from the beginning of their existence. Each is essential to the life of this Trinity. But, if God can Imagine, then God, too, is Triune and He has always been such.
Is God thinking of you right now? Do you suppose that you could continue to exist if God were to stop thinking of you? Would you conclude that you exist only because God is thinking of you? So, God is literally creating you in His Mind – right? Is there an alternative explanation?
If we were not in the Mind of the Creator, could we be existing somewhere outside of God? Is there anything outside of God; any place outside of God where we might exist? If the First Cause were the Universe, ie all there is, what would be outside of it? I conclude that there can be nothing, including nothingness, outside the First Cause. The First Cause must be a universe unto Itself. Hence, anything the First Cause creates must be created within Itself. This is supported by the biblical text 2 Chronicles 6:18. Anyone, who can visualize their thoughts has verified this by literally creating “something out of nothing” in their mind.
There’s the classic debate as to whether the First Cause, which must be Eternal, is personal or just inanimate. It’s safe to say that everyone, even Atheists must believe in an eternal First Cause. For example, some may feel that since Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, that energy must be eternal. They would be certain that energy may change form, but it has always existed in some form or other and it always will. Energy would have created everything else in this universe. Energy would define this universe. Energy would be their “God”. But, is this “energy” inanimate or could it be personal? This is the real question.
Einstein had trouble believing that the Creator God was “personal”. He just could not accept a deity, who could meddle at whim in the events of His creation. “The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God” he argued. Scientists aim to uncover the immutable laws that govern reality. Einstein would say that a personal God would be capable of and interested in intervening to violate this cosmic causality. As such, he did not believe in free will. Like Spinoza, Einstein believed that a person’s actions were just as determined as those of a planet or a star. He could not for all his brainpower, see why God would choose to intervene in human affairs only when it did not violate our free-will. He was missing a Big Picture plan of God that would justify why He set up this 3-dimensional reality of ours, with all its order yet all its imperfections as well.
We Christians look to the Bible for the Big Picture explanation of God’s Plan for us. Yet whatever we read in the Bible is open to interpretation. Often the interpretations vary profoundly. They cannot all be correct, in spite of quoting chapter and verse to support them. They all can be wrong and logically, all but perhaps one of them would not be correct. So, we must rely on an accurate Big Picture explanation of the Plan of God to understand how all the pieces fit. The border of this puzzle is the concept of the Trinity. Many fundamental Christian beliefs hinge on this concept of a Trinity, such as: Christ was totally God, but He died; Christ was totally Human, but when they saw Him they saw God; Christ talked to the Father, Who He said was greater than He (John14:28); Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable (Matt 12:32); Christ would send the Holy Spirit to testify about Him (John 15:26); …
Now the Bible never calls this God “Triune”. Instead it describes God as real with Creative thought; which tells us that He has a tangible form and is personal. It says that this God created the 3D universe around us (eg Job 38:4). My first question is, “Where is this universe with respect to its Creator?”
We reasoned by logic above, that anything derived from the First Cause would have to be created within and not outside of that source. We said that, if the universe were the First Cause, then it contains all there is and there is no place outside of it to place something derived from it. A personal God would be able to Imagine – He would have Creative Thought. This is the ability to Create something within yourself. So, we could conclude that this universe must literally be “in the mind of God”. What this personal God imagines about our universe, becomes our reality.
Next we realize by observing ourselves, that Creative Thought enables the thinker to imagine a situation and then put themselves into it. This Image of the Thinker in their thoughts is at once the thinker, yet distinct from the thinker. So by declaring that the Creator is personal, the Bible is actually telling us that the Creator has a form; has creative thought; and can create an image of Himself in His thoughts. In summary, this adds up to what we call a “Triune God”.
Logically we can observe that any of us created beings, who can imagine a situation and put ourselves into it, must have three distinct “persons” that are all us: Our form, our thoughts, and the image of ourselves in our thoughts. Like our Creator, we are triune beings.
The bottom line is that this is all possible because it is literally happening in the mind of a personal God. Does that make logical sense? I say it does, because we can observe it in ourselves. So the concept of the Trinity is really describing a real, Personal God. While the physics of such things as “thought” may well be beyond our full comprehension, it is not a mystery that we can think and the rocks cannot. We certainly know that thinking humans are capable of a creative thought, which no animal can ever achieve. We can observe these things.
So, if the God, Who created us can think at least as well as we can, then God can also imagine a situation and put Himself into it. We are literally made in the image of a God, Who can Imagine.
Now let’s put all this logic together in terms of things we have always believed about our Creator:
The Bible describes a Creator, God, Who is Omnipotent, All-knowing, and Everywhere. A God, Who can Imagine, would be All-powerful, in the sense that He would be able to visualize anything He can imagine and it would then exist in His mind. It may be three dimensional, since this God could think in 3D. Such a God would be all-powerful in that He can create in His mind anything He can visualize, ie imagine. Furthermore, nothing would exist in this universe until He thinks of it and it would cease to exist if He stops thinking about it. If this personal God wants to give someone “everlasting life” he just keeps thinking of them. A personal God must be All-knowing. And similarly, no place could exist in this universe until God thinks of it, and then His thoughts are there. So too, a personal God is All-present. No thing and no place can exist in the Mind of a personal God, unless He is imagining it.
We see that the God of the Bible can definitely imagine a situation and put Himself into it. If He is thinking of people and they exist in His mind, then He can just as easily think of Himself as another person standing in their midst (John 14:9, 10; 2Cor 4:6; Heb 1: 1-3). Every-thing in the mind of God is equally real. Our physical reality is what God imagines it to be.
So, in conclusion, we can indeed understand the Trinity of God by analogy to what everyone of us, who can imagine, is able to do. If we can imagine a situation and put ourselves into it, then so can God. His thoughts may be higher than our thoughts (Isa 55:8 - if He stops thinking of us we go away and not vice versa), but the analogy is bullet-proof. What we call the Trinity is in reality a real, personal Being, Who is imagining us in His mind. By believing in the Triune God, we are believing that the Creator is One (Deut 6:4), but He is a personal being and not an inanimate thing. This Creator must have these essential elements: A real form; His Thoughts/Holy Spirit; and an Image of Himself in His Thoughts. A God, Who can “imagine” is a personal God and we His creatures, who can imagine, are made in His “Image”.
24 April 2007
For more on this and a response to any questions, please email any comments to nasamike