What we need to seek to understand when thinking about the Trinity is how it works on a psychological level. In this I will not be appealing to scriptural proof texts from the Christian Bible because it is already clear to believers that Scripture is a valid source of information. I am therefore more interested in the psychological mechanisms that take place as a means to understanding and believing in a particular theological formulation, in this case the Trinity. How does an individual understand the concept that God is One and yet three Persons?
Although I respect Christianity I feel compelled to say that the Trinity seems like a theological aberration. Given the potentially complex nature of trying to speak about such a thing, I think the best way to approach this is with a metaphor.
Let us consider a mirror, for a moment. It is possible for a single individual to create three reflections of himself by positioning himself at the right angle in front of three mirrors. This process of refraction seems to be the one taking place at the center of the belief in the Trinity.
The most disturbing thing about this metaphor is that I can't really have a relationship with God. In effect I am having discussions with the reflections while my back is to the person who is speaking to me. I may not even know that he exists because all I know of him are his reflections, which I take to be real. Imagine my shock were I to turn around and see a single individual as the source of the voice speaking to me! I would feel embarrassed and foolish for having spoken to a three-way mirror my entire life!
However, this process of converting God to elements occurs on the psychological and meta-level; God is not actually describing Himself in this way. It is a product of human reflection in the realm of theology and not the product of Divine revelation. For the record, the Trinity is but a mild form of theological refraction compared to the literal polytheism described in the Torah and anthropological studies. It is a huge step in the right direction from polytheism, but has not quite made it.
An equally useful, but cruder, example is that of a fractured mirror. Looking into a mirror that has a great crack right in the middle creates a bunch of “small mirrors” around the crack. Each pane of broken glass faces in a slightly different direction, creating its own reflection of the object in front of it at a slightly different angle. The result is several similar images of one object.
Extended to the theological understanding of God as One, the multiple or broken mirrors represents a mental mechanism whereby God is presented at several different angles at once through different perspectives. And just as these reflections are not for all intents and purposes real, the Persons in the Trinity are not real. The reflections are real insofar as they really do reflect the object in front of them, but they do not actually multiply that object. Practically speaking, the reflections are illusions; they are images that depict all visual aspects of a three dimensional object on a two dimensional surface. This is why just as reflections have the illusion of depth, the Trinity as well produces an illusion of depth – they reflect shadows and spaces perfectly, but they are ultimately not real.
For more information on how theological refraction is similar to full-blown polytheism, see Polytheism - Theological Fragmentation.
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