C. S. Lewis on Trinity

You know that in space you can move in three ways - to left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are called the three Dimensions. Now notice :his. If you are using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two; you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we call a solid body: say, a cube - a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares.  

Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would be a straight line. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one solid body. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you the things you found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways - in ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels.  

Now the Christian account of God involves just the same principle. 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 two 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 still find 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. It is something we could never have guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one almost feels one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so well with all the things we know already. 

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

The concept of Trinity is really a "potong stim" (turn-off) moment in Christianity. Not only is the concept complicated and confusing, it is the concept by which Muslims do not recognise Christianity as monotheistic.


C. S. Lewis couldn't put Trinity in explanation any better, intellectually. Understanding the concept of Trinity is like trying to understand the 4th dimension. Watch this video:

The existence of God is completely something beyond our limited understanding and perception. And that, I believe, is the beauty of it. The mystery of God picks on our curiosity and drives us to seek Him. I love knowledge and abhor ignorance. If we are to make a conclusion based on something that we did not do our best to understand it, I doubt it. In the same way I hate to see people arriving at conclusion that God does not exist because they cannot see Him, I hate to see believers refuse to listen to reasons and seek the truth.

However, there must be a recognition that there are certain things that are beyond our understandings. Those moments are where faith and our former encounters with God comes into the picture. There are moments that we need to take His Word for it without a certainty for answer. Faith comes into play with our previous encounters and experiences with Him. He was faithful and good in the past, I am sure He will be the same in the present, and I will not worry about the future.

Faith comes hand-in-hand with the knowledge of God and experiences with Him. Faith, is then a gift of God, because if God doesn't draw near to us, we will never draw close to Him. 

My brothers and sisters, experience God!