Posts in this Series
Introduction (this post)
The Trinity has been at the center of Christian doctrine and Christian worship for centuries. At its heart, the Trinity is a doctrine that affirms key biblical truths:
- There is only one God.
- The Father is not the Son
- The Son is not the Spirit
- The Spirit is not the Father
- Yet all three persons are truly God, sharing the same divine nature.
These truths are pictorially represented in this well known graphic.
The trinity helps to safeguard against heresy. Christians do not believe in three gods (Tritheism) or in one God wearing three masks (Modalism), or in a head God and subordinate quasi-divine beings (Arianism), but in one eternal Being who exists as three distinct, coequal persons.
The Trinitarian creeds including the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 381) and Athanasian Creed were developed to precisely articulate Biblical truth in the face of these heresies. These creeds articulate the truth that God is one in essence and three in persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial.
One of the most common critiques that I hear from my Latter-day Saint friends is that the doctrine of the Trinity is incomprehensible or even contradictory. It’s true, that we human beings cannot fully comprehend the Trinity. But it is not true that the trinity is contradictory or totally incomprehensible. The Trinity is not illogical, but suprarational—transcending, not contradicting, human understanding.
There is a beauty in this divine mystery. As Gregory of Nazianzus explained in the Fourth Century: “No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. “
Understanding the Trinity is crucial. It helps us know God truly as He reveals Himself, and shapes how we worship, pray, and relate to Him.
A.W. Tozer famously declared:
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
If God is small, then so is our view of Him; and if He is small, our worship will be small.
But if God is great, then our vision of Him will grow, and our worship will become grand.” A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy (1961)
While the Trinity cannot be fully comprehended, God has given us glimpses—echoes—in both nature and Scripture that help us approach its mystery with awe. These echoes do not explain the Trinity fully or perfectly. When we are contemplating an infinite God any analogy is going to fall short or teeter into heresy. But these glimpses stretch our imagination towards the trinity.
Even though understanding God stretches us and pushes at the limits of our mortal perspective, this is a worthwhile journey. As Augustin of Hippo explained: ““In no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of truth more profitable.” On the Trinity (De Trinitate), I.3.5
As we embark on this journey to explore the profound mystery of the Trinity, I invite you to hold this truth gently: God’s nature is far beyond what we can fully grasp, yet He graciously reveals Himself to us in ways both beautiful and strange. This tension between knowing and mystery is not a barrier, but an invitation—to be drawn deeper into awe and worship.
One of my favorite scenes in The Chosen captures this perfectly. Nicodemus, wrestling with the stirrings in his heart, asks his wife to contemplate the possibility that God is “more beautiful and more strange than we can ever imagine.” In a later episode, he longs to be caught up “in something complicated and fraught.” This human longing for the divine mystery resonates deeply with me.
The Trinity is exactly that—more beautiful and strange than we can ever imagine. It is complicated and fraught, yet utterly life-changing when we begin to know our God more deeply.
For any Latter-day Saints reading this (and for anyone else), my hope with these posts is that considering these glimpses of the trinity will open your heart to the possibility that the God who created this universe is “more beautiful and more strange than we can ever imagine.”
Tomorrow I will begin with the Bible’s most visible and yet profound image for the Godhead–of Fatherhood and Sonship.