An Analogy of the Trinity of God

The doctrinal cornerstone of the Trinity which we can neither adequately picture nor explain has proved a stumbling block throughout the ages to many people’s belief in the God of the Bible. The inability to form a mental picture or to develop a complete explanation has caused many to wrongly conclude that the doctrine is contradictory or, at best, logically and rationally incoherent.

Jews reject the Trinity as a violation of God’s oneness. Muslims mock its “mathematical absurdity” as proof that their beliefs make much more sense than do those of Christians. Daniel Webster received public ridicule for his acceptance of it: “How can a man of your mental caliber believe that three equals one?”

More than 500 Scripture verses, Old and New Testament, refer to God as both singular and plural. We can somewhat picture an analogy for the Trinity of God with some characters we design on a computer screen. These screen people occupy only the two dimensions of the computer’s screen, while we reside in three. And for the sake of analogy, we can pretend they are able to physically think, feel, and know.

We can try to imagine what would happen if we brought one of our three-dimensional hands into contact with the two-dimensional computer screen people. If we were to touch their plane with the very tip of one finger, they would see us as a single point, a point that can, as the finger touches and withdraws from the plane, appear and disappear at any time. If we were to touch their plane with the bottom side of an extended finger, they would see us as a line. If instead of a finger extended straight out, we were to touch their plane with the bottom side of a curled up finger, they would see us as a curled line.

If the screen were not a solid barrier to us, we could push a finger perpendicular into their plane and this time the screen people would see us as a small, slightly irregular circle. If we were to push it deeper, they would observe us as an enlarging irregular circle. If our finger were to penetrate their plane at some other angel than the perpendicular, they would now see an elongated ellipse which would enlarge depending on the degree of penetration.

So from the screen people’s perspective, the finger could appear at different times as a point, a straight line, a curved line, a small irregular circle, a larger irregular circle, an elongated ellipse of variable size, or not even appear at all. They could easily conclude that the same finger is six or more different entities, each manifesting some distinct characteristics. They might never discern that the six-plus manifestations were all governed by one entity and one source of operation.

The analogy illustrates at least to some degree how we can misunderstand God’s contact with our world. Because He manifests Himself to the human race at different times and in different ways, we may conclude that God is not one but several deities or that He is one totally changeable, unpredictable, and undefinable deity.

Let’s take this illustration of the screen people and the human hand further. Suppose we penetrated the screen plane with two, three, or more fingers, and each of these would enter at a slightly different angle from the others. We could bend our pointer finger so that the fingertip just touches making a small dot, while at the same time our thumb passes into the plane sideways making an elongated ellipse, and our middle finger passes straight through the plane perpendicularly making an irregular circle. If we move these fingers, they may appear to the screen people to be functioning in complete independence of each other.

What the screen people could not see, nor even comprehend, is how the various circles and ellipses can be united into the closed surface, that is the skin, that encloses a body (or even a part of it, the hand).

The reverse difficulty could just as easily occur. If we were to pass our fist pressed tightly together through the plane right up to the wrist, the screen people would attest to the oneness of our hand while remaining ignorant of, and perhaps arguing against, the plurality manifest by our separate fingers.

Now what if the screen people became theologians. In response to the revelation of various cross-sections of our fingers, one group of screen people might become the equivalent of convinced polytheists, certain that multiple higher beings exist who can never be treated in any context as one.

In response to the revelation of the wrist cross-section, another group of screen people might become the equivalent of monotheists who insist that the one higher being can never, in any context, be two or more.

We can even imagine much debating among screen people who saw dots, lines, circles and ellipses, staying still or moving, appearing or disappearing. At some point one group might band together to found the Church of the Three Circles, while another group launches the Elliptical Society, another the Two Circle Fellowship, another the Science of Lines, and yet another the Church of the One True Ellipse.

The great irony of the disagreement about the higher being is that none of these groups and individuals has more than a tiny clue about who that being is and what that being can do.

What if one bold group of the screen people dared to acknowledge both the plural and singular manifestations of the higher being as possibly connected? Some of the smarted screen people may have studied our contacts closely enough to see that we first appeared as dots, but then the dots enlarged to form slightly irregular circles, which then flared out as the flat hand passed further and became one elongated sausage shape.

And what if some members of this screen group had received and read some electronic code from the person to whom the hand belongs. Based on their confidence that the code came from outside and spoke of possibilities beyond their screen life, this group might be willing to accept what they cannot picture, that a three-dimensional being does exist and can exist as a fourness and oneness simultaneously, continuously, and permanently. They could the draw up a Quadrinity doctrinal statement.

They would never, as part of the screen world, be able to picture these truths. But with some trust in the motivation of the higher being to make contact and explain him or herself truthfully (say through electronic messages), and perhaps by using their research in higher-dimensional math problems, they would have a justifiable faith in the fourness and at the same time oneness of this being from another dimension.

Even the best extra-dimensional analogies we humans could develop for Gods’ Trinity will fall short. We do not know the extent of God’s attributes, capacities, and extra-dimensionality. Though we certainly can expose more of God’s threeness and oneness to human comprehension, ultimately there are limits to what we can discover.


The intent of this analogy of our hand visiting screenland is to stimulate our thinking about God’s powers and attributes, including His triunity, from an extra-dimensional perspective. With the mind God has given us, we can surely develop more and better analogies with which to build our own faith and spark the faith of others.

How many of us are willing to admit that our view of God extends just slightly above the earthly horizon? If we laughed at the Quadrinitarians’ gross underestimates of their God, what can we say for ourselves? We must certainly sweep away doubts about God’s capacity to manifest Himself as a Triune Being – a TRINITY!

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