Thursday, December 01, 2005

An Essential Truth...

I have begun going through the adult confirmation class that is being offered at my church. I figure it will be a good way to review some of the points with Christianity and Lutheranism. After all studying the Word is a lot of who we are as Christians.


But anyways I have some cool stuff I picked up one thing was a picture of the Trinity. This is of course the belief that God is one but also The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all at the same time. What I was provided with were some explanations as to how one thing can be three parts at the same time.

Illustration #1

The Apple

Pretend you have three parts of the apple the core, meat, and skin. Now all parts are apple but all have distinct characteristics to them. If you ate them you would definitely understand that. Still all of the pieces are apple and without one piece you can not have an apple. In the same way God is three distinct pieces however each one makes up the whole which is God and you can not have God without one of the pieces.


Illustration #2

H2O (aka water)

No matter what form we see this in for example liquid, gas, ice it is still water. In this way it can take different forms but it is still water all the time. The same way God takes different forms but is still God all of the time. You can also look at it that there are two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen that make up a water molecule. These different pieces form water and you can not have water without them.



Those were a few of the cool illustrations that I picked up as ways to describe how it is possible for God to be three pieces at the same time but still always being one.

1 comment:

Robert Elart Waters said...

All of which, interestingly, are heretical if considered as literal models of the Trinity!

God is always Father, always Son, and always Holy Spirit, regardless of the temperature. Nor is God divided into parts like the parts of an apple.

Well, you get the point. The examples do illustrate how something can be three and one at the same time. But the Trinity remains nonetheless an incomprehensible mystery.