THE TRINITY,JESUS AND FLATLAND

2b: Models in Science and Religion

THE TRINITY

But how many Christians can talk about what they understand about the Trinitarian nature of God with any confidence? Is this because they forget that the Trinity is a model of what God is thought to be like? Models have limitations but are illuminating nonetheless.

THE TRINITYDefines Christian

Orthodoxy

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord ... I believe in the Holy Spirit ...”One God in three Persons, coeternal, coequal and consubstantial.

TRINITY IN THE CREEDS

In the Godhead there are three Persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. These three form one true eternal God, whose substance is undivided, and each Person is equal in power and glory. Royston Pike, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Religions.

TRINITARIAN FORMULATIONS

Because God is infinitely greater than we can imagine, theological language has always needed analogies.We have to say, “God is like this or that” and immediately qualify this by saying, “But only in a limited way”!

The need for analogies

Three kinds have been used historically:

From inanimate nature or plant life

From the life of man, in particular his mind eg. Augustine’s psychological unity of intellect, affections and will, as an analogy of the Trinity.

From the nature of love

various analogies

Mankind has always struggled to

imagine what God is like. To imagine is to make an image of some kind. Hence

the twin dangers of getting the image

wrong and of thinking that the image is the real

thing!

“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth... (Deuteronomy 5:8)

Hence the Second Commandment

Jews will not utter the name of God, YHWH

Jewish synagogues are devoid of pictures

Muslims consider the Christian notion that Jesus is the image of God to be blasphemy

Muslims have a theologically motivated tradition of non-representative religious art

Other Theistic religions are

therefore keen to avoid idolatry

“..we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man.” (Acts 17:29)

And Paul’s Athenian address commenting

on the altar ‘To an unknown God’

Sometimes Christians have been fanatically keen to avoid

idolatry, not least with regard to

anything to do with artistic imaging of God - witness the iconoclasts in the

Protestant Reformation!

But, have Protestant Christians

substituted an idolatry of words? Do they underplay the importance of

other ways of encountering God in say art, theatre,

icons, music...?

We tend to forget that language about God

can be just as fraught with difficulties and

misunderstandings. It is easy to think that our words about God

define God, rather than partially

represent God. It is too easy to be

idolatrous!

Knowing about God is not the same thing as knowing God. Religious language - God Talk - is only useful inasmuch as it enables folk to ‘Keep God company’, to use a limited but helpful image!

CRUCIALLY FOR BELIEVERS!

It has to be recognized that the doctrine arose as the spontaneous expression of the Christian experience. The earliest Christians knew themselves to be reconciled to God the Father, and that the reconciliation was secured for them by the atoning work of the Son, and that it was mediated to them as an experience by the Holy Spirit. Thus the Trinity was to them a fact before it became a doctrine, but in order to preserve it in the credal faith of the church the doctrine has to be formulated.R.A.Finlayson,

But Christians have keen on the belief

that God has revealed Himself to

us, in Jesus in particular. This puts controlling limits on

Christian speculation about what God is like, even when we

forget that the language is not

literal!

All images and

language are partial

representatives of the real

thing !

In the end of the day our images are partial - these are

only photos of the real young men,

but to those who know them personally, they are

evocative images.

Take the concept of the Kingdom of God (or Heaven) in the gospels, and notice

Jesus’ habit of comparing it to a

whole host of things, each one of which

sheds some light on the nature of the

Kingdom.

Thus, in Matthew 13 alone, The Kingdom of God is like (resembles Gk:

homoios)....

A grain of mustard seed (v 31)

Yeast in bread (v 33)Treasure hidden in a field

(v 44)A merchant in search of

fine pearls (v 45)A fishing net (v 47)

It is important to grab the

relevant part of the comparison,

otherwise we misunderstand the comparison.

What aspect of each of the comparisons on the previous slide is important?

FLATLAND

Edwin A.Abbott wrote a nineteenth century novel called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, from which this idea is loosely based.

See also ch 5. in Eric Middleton’s The New Flatlanders, Highland, 2002 and p31 of God Talk, Science Talk, by Brown, Poole and Hookway.

consider FLATLAND

What would it be like to be a two dimensional being who has an encounter with a three dimensional object? You live on Flatland. A sphere moves into and through your world. What do you see?

Flatland - 1

What you see as a

flatlander looking

along the plane that

is the boundary of

sightin your flat

world

What do you see?

What you see

What you see

What you see

What you see

What you see

What you see

What you see

What you see

JESUS

“He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth...all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together...For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell...” Colossians 1:15-19

Jesus the image of the invisible God

The doctrine of the incarnation is making the

apparently absurd claim

that the infinite God became

finite in Jesus of Nazareth.

Consider Cantor on infinities

0 1

There are an infinite number

of numbers

in this interval 0 to 1

Cantor on infinities

0 10.5

Cantor on infinities

0 10.50.25

0.1250.0625

Cantor on infinities

0 0.06250.03125

0.0156250.0078125

Cantor on infinities

0 0.0071825

There is an

infinite number

of subdivisi

ons of this

interval too!

An infinite number

of infinites between 0 and 1?!

Cantor on infinitiesTheologi

cal point:

by analogy you can conceive of an infinite being

occupying a finite

space!

It has always been the case

that theologians have struggled to find ways to express their

belief that Jesus was somehow God incarnate.

It is interesting to look at new models which attempt to

capture something - but not everything - about these central

Christian beliefs about the person of

Jesus. Here are a couple from chaos

theory!

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Jesus the strange

attractor!

Jesus the fractal image of God

These will only make sense if you already understand

something about the basis of the model ie. the

mathematics of chaos.

Otherwise the model is totally

opaque.

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