In our human understanding, infinity is often restricted to as far as we can see. We build large telescopes to see further into the unknown. We send spacecraft to search beyond the planets into the currently unseen void of our universe.
The interesting thing about our understanding of infinity is that we see our position as the starting point and we define infinity as that which extends beyond us and has no end. How then do we see our God who always was and who always will be? (Col. 1:17)
Maybe when we symbolise our God as a triangle, we are falling short of using the symbol to define our meaning. Perhaps a more accurate symbol of the Divine would be the infinity horizontal eight symbol touching a circle and then another infinity symbol.
The circle has no beginning and no end and infinity on both sides indicates our God always was and always will be.
The use of a triangle to explain the Christian understanding of three persons in the one God tends to humanise the Almighty and I believe it can only confuse those trying to understand more about the Trinity. We learn about The Father, Son and Holy Spirit because Jesus himself prayed to his father and the apostles were told on the mountain that, “This is my son…”.
Just as Jesus gave his message to his followers in stories they could understand, so, scripture allows us to see in a simple way the existence of the Trinity.
Because God became human in the form of a man born in the same manner as we all recognise, it is easier for us to understand the terms of Father and Son. However, the Holy Spirit is not so easily recognisable. Pictures of firey tongues sitting on the top of the Disciples heads is, to say the least, a very restricted way of depicting the Holy Spirit.
While the Father and the Son might be seen as ‘persons’ it is hard to classify a tongue as a person. Hence the triangle depicting the three ‘persons’ in the Trinity is somewhat inaccurate, especially as the second ‘person’ in the group didn’t become a ‘person’ until he was born and the first ‘person’ wasn’t born at all.
Let us go back to the circle symbol of our God and let us not see God as a person but as a free Spirit. In each of us there exists a spirit which cannot be seen by an x-ray but we all know is part of us. We refer to some as having a ‘spirit’ of adventure or a ‘spirit’ to survive. When a group strives towards a common goal, they are said to possess a team ‘spirit.’ Some see their conscience as a guiding ‘spirit’; others refer to their mental or moral nature as their ‘spirit’.
If we believe in the miracle of birth, then, at the moment of conception we are gifted by our God with the ‘spirit’ of life. Our body grows in the womb according to the genes of our parents and our ‘spirit’ remains with us forever. At our death, our body returns to dust but it is our spirit that goes to meet its maker. At His death on the Cross, Jesus yielded up His spirit.
So, in the Spirit Circle of God, we can now see how the ‘Spirit’ has been involved in creation; in loving that creation by giving us Jesus; and in the on-going support for that creation by giving us all a part of God’s own ‘Spirit.’ Jesus said, “Behold I am with you always.” Let us take time out occasionally from our busy life to embrace the Spirit of God that lives within us.
I’m Peter Mack and that’s faith