AI YouTube-Lecture Notes Attempt
Sunday, August 27, 2023
7:21 PM
Is the trinity logical? Are we doomed to just take the trinity on faith alone? Can it be explained in any rational way? Or is it a doctrine beyond complete comprehension? The simple answer is yes, it is beyond our comprehension, but we can offer a logical explanation of how God could be three in one without violating the laws of logic, and why we can't fully comprehend the trinity. First, let's go over the doctrine of the trinity. Christians can show the Bible teaches there is one God, God is three persons, each person is fully God. See my previous videos for more on this. Now the problem is, non-Christians argue if there is one God, then only one person can be God. If each is not the other, yet each is fully God, then this is logically impossible. Either one has to be God and the others are not, each is a third of God, or each person has a different mode or personality of one God. But this is not what scripture teaches and it is an attempt to reduce the mind of God to a level we can fathom. Humans are attempting to make up a God they can understand instead of what scripture teaches about a being that is not limited by our mental capacity. And this is an important point. Just because we can't fathom how God could be three in one, that doesn't mean it is not possible or logical. A good example of this is seen in the study of Euclidean geometry. This includes the study of higher levels of dimensions of space, so the possibility of 4 dimensions, 5 dimensions, or even 11 dimensions. Such things are completely impossible for us to currently understand, yet they are mathematically sound, entirely logical, and might even exist in some sense beyond our 3 dimensional universe. So just because we can't fathom what a 4 dimensional cube would look like, that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. As Carl Sagan explained, Let's consider a cube. We can imagine a cube in the following way. You take a line segment and move it at right angles to itself an equal length. That makes a square. Move that square an equal length at right angles to itself, and you have a cube. Now, this cube, we understand, casts a shadow. And that shadow, we recognize, it's, you know, ordinarily drawn in third grade classrooms, as two squares with their vertices connected. Now, if we look at the shadow of a 3 dimensional object in 2 dimensions, we see that, in this case, not all the lines appear equal. Not all the angles are right angles. The 3 dimensional object has not been perfectly represented in its projection in 2 dimensions, but that's part of the cost of losing a dimension in the projection. Now, let's take this 3 dimensional cube and project it, carry it, through a 4th physical dimension. Not that way. Not that way. Not that way. But at right angles to those 3 directions. I can't show you what direction that is, but imagine that there is a 4th physical dimension. In that case, we would generate a 4 dimensional hypercube, which is also called a tesseract. I cannot show you a tesseract because I and you are trapped in 3 dimensions. But what I can show you is the shadow, in 3 dimensions, of a 4 dimensional hypercube or tesseract. This is it. And you can see it's two nested cubes, all the vertices connected by lines. And now, the real tesseract, in 4 dimensions, would have all the lines of equal length and all the angles right angles. That's not what we see here, but that's the penalty of projection. So you see, while we cannot imagine the world of 4 dimensions, we can certainly think about it. So if tesseracts in higher dimensions can exist, we can see a good analogy of how God could exist as 3 in 1, even though we cannot fathom such a thing within our limited 3 dimensional understanding. For us, it is rather simple. Everyone is one person, but on a higher plane of existence one could be multiple persons while being one being. As C.S. Lewis said, the human level is a simple and rather empty level. On the human level one person is one being and any two persons are two separate beings, just as in 2 dimensions, say on a flat sheet of paper, one square is one figure and any two squares are two separate figures. On the divine level you
Personalities, but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God's dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three persons while remaining one being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.
Of course, we cannot fully conceive a being like that, just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space, we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can get a sort of faint notion of it, and when we do, we are then, for the first time in our lives, getting some positive idea, however faint, of something super personal, something more than a person.
So just like a tesseract would have characteristics we cannot understand or cannot make sense of in three dimensional space, God, existing on a higher level than us, can have characteristics we cannot understand or make sense of in our limited human minds. Thus the trinity is not illogical, just unfathomable from our perspective, much like a cube would be unfathomable for a two dimensional being, or a tesseract is unfathomable to us.
How could something like that exist with all right angles? We cannot fathom it, but it is logical. How could a being exist that is three persons? Well, we cannot fathom it, but a being not bound to our level of existence could very well have such an ontology and not violate logic, only of course if God is not bound by our universe. And this is something we should expect to be true of God when we look at how God is ontologically greater in all ways than us.
For example, humans have power, but God is greater by being all powerful. Humans have knowledge, but God is greater because he is omniscient. Humans can be moral, but God is greater in that he is morally perfect. Humans are Unitarian beings, so God is greater in that he is multi-personal. Such a conclusion would just naturally follow if God is greater in all aspects. A Unitarian God doesn't logically follow if God is greater in all aspects, but a Trinitarian God would.
So the next logical question to ask is, if it is greater to be multi-personal than Unitarian, then why isn't God a million persons, or an infinite amount? Well, God could be if he wanted, but quantity in essence doesn't make someone greater. God could be as many persons as he wants, but that is not what makes him greater. What makes him greater is the ability to be multi-personal over a being who is limited and can only be one person. It is not about quantity, it is about the ability.
So God can be as many eternal persons as he eternally wills, and scripture says he is three for whatever reasons he only knows. As far as we know God is only revealed in three co-existing eternal persons, thus God would be multi-personal, and such a God would logically follow if he is not limited by our understanding like a Unitarian God would be.
Therefore, despite what the naysayers say, the trinity is not illogical and there is a rational way to explain it. The Triune God is of course unfathomable, but still is entirely logical and meets the description ontologically of who God would be, and far better than a supposed Unitarian God who is limited to the same rules that apply to us.
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