holy trinity egg analogy

If God has existed for all eternity in a perfectly loving Triune relationship, then it shows He is completely self-sufficient and requires no further relationship in order to complete or satisfy Himself. 1 Corinthians 8:6: Yet for us there is but one God.. While it captures the idea that God is one, it doesnt do such a good job of showing how God is three and one at the same time. Jesus is fully God. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there you may be also (John14:2, 3). Here are some common analogies that Christians have used about the Trinity: God is kind of like water which can be ice, liquid and steam. Again, this analogy doesnt work because God doesnt morph, change, or become different aspects of Himself. It's impossible to be an Orthodox Christian without professing belief in the Triune nature of God. Born in England in 1961, Benjamin Waterhouse Benjamin Waterhouse has been the organist of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity since 2000. RELATED: What Did Jesus Really Look Like? Adorn your liturgical vestments with classic images from the Monastery Icons collection. If youre interested into diving deeper into the topic of the Trinity, here are some valuable resources that could help. The Holy Spirit and Son do not send the Father. For them, a person is someone who could relate to another. But if they give us a warped idea of what they are trying to explain, they arent helpful illustrations. In one egg you have the white, the yoke, and the shell composing one full egg. Tritheism denies the unity of the God-head by saying there is just three different gods. Martyn Iles Removed as Managing Director of Australian Christian Lobby by Board, Seven Types of Rest to Restore Your Body, Mind and Spirit, 8 witnesses testified against Hillsong founder Brian Houston in court case, wife Bobbie reveals, Why you feel guilty for not going to church, Samaritan's Purse sends 52-bed field hospital to Turkey. The egg (or apple) fails in that the shell, white, and yolk are parts of the egg, not the egg in themselves, just as the skin, flesh, and seeds of the apple are parts of it, not the apple itself. Yet God lovingly chose to create and eventually redeem us anyway (both thoroughly Trinitarian acts), at great cost to Himself. 3:15; John 17:1-4, The Holy Spirit Acts 5:3-4; John 14:16-17, 26; John 16:7-13. Explaining the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is one of the most foundational doctrines of Christianity. It is a miraculous invention, the egg. This is the one I used long ago when trying to explain the Trinity to a group of 1st-5th graders. Each one is fully 100% God. in that while water can change into vapour or ice, Jesus cannot change into the Father or the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Holy Spirit. Or, we can quote Daniel Webster; a strong Christian- I do not pretend fully to understand the arithmetic of heaven now. . The problem with this analogy is that it teaches that God has three components: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let's use an egg to explain the Holy Trinity! The problem with this analogy is that no one molecule of H2O can actually exist as solid, liquid, and gas at the same time. Memory, Understanding, and Will. The unseen Father is in Christs mind. Jesus is the Holy Spirit that saves us. You are an egg! 5And there are varieties of ministries and the same Lord. show me your glory. I think the analogy of the Sun works well. God is infinitely greater than we are; therefore, we should not expect to be able to fully understand Him. Jesus, visually seen, judges all, not the Unseen Father. As a result the water molecule must change forms. Copyright 2023 Christian Today. But thats not how they understood it. Yet there is still only one God we serve. Im giving God the credit for stirring this memory, and am extremely grateful. Take a moment and give it a try. Revelation 4:3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. That would not be had God be three persons. God is much bigger than what we can understand yet He is close enough to us so that we can know some things about Him, though not completely and not everything. God is not made up of 3 'parts' like the 3 parts of the egg. None of the 3 are less divine than the others. Each separate being is co-equal, co-powerful and co-eternal. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind lived the doctrinal truth about the Trinity. Few if any have every tried to teach the heresy of Tritheism, but it needs to be mentioned anyway. According to the first, just as water takes three forms (liquid, vapor, and ice), so too God takes the form of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One thing that Ive found helpful is using the Trinity to illustrate truths we know about God. A certain YouTube page created a famous video titled "St. Patrick's Bad Analogies" (which can be found here), in which the historic St. Patrick meets charming villagers who deride him based on the analogies which he uses in the process of explaining the Holy Trinity. When we see them as three individual spirits, (God is one Spirit John 4:24), then that is the blasphemy of polytheism which is the worship of more than one God. Does that make sense? The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. In the same way is God being the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.. We can touch the cord, but not the power it is insulating. The word God in this sense is defined as a single being, having all divine attributes. The Father hears their intercessory prayers. Time exists as 3 things: past, present, and future. This book is now available in a published format for easy sharing and classroom use. It is a miraculous invention, the egg. A chicken egg consists of a shell, a yolk, and an egg white, yet it is altogether one egg. Haydn describes himself as a five-point Calvinist, but he recognises that many faithful Christians disagree. Modernizations of this analogy include that of an apple (with the peel, the flesh, and the core) or an egg (with its shell, yoke, and white). Some think of God as H 2 O, which is sometimes a solid (ice), sometimes a liquid (water), and sometimes a gas (steam). This error denies something central to God that makes Him God. The Holy Spirit is the shell, Jesus is the egg white, and the Father is the egg yolk. Through the brokenness of the Shell, His Son, the Spirit white pours out into our beings through our faith in what was done and believers are joined with the yolk, for it is by One Spirit we have access to God the Father (Ephesians 2:18). I never thought about it in that way some of these examples Ive never heard of. The Latin word for trinity (trinitas) combines two words- unitas (unity) and trias (three). Haydn Lea is an Ordained Minister, and is currently serving as an Air Force Chaplain in Adelaide. These hand embroidered emblems are made with metallic gold-plated thread with silver content, printed on canvas. Stars were made on the froth day. And for a mere mortal to have dared invent it and be able t. Now, as youve probably guessed, this analogy also breaks down. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:13). In one of his sermons, he wrestled with the passage in Scripture recounting Jesus' Baptism. If youve been involved in ministries for children or young people, questions about the Trinity have most likely come up. Our God is three in one. Another analogy that Tim remembers, being Irish Catholic, is the analogy of the shamrock with its three parts. The problem with this analogy is that an egg yoke is of a very different substance than a shell. But understanding the Trinity is important. For instance, we know that God is perfectly loving. But if modalism is true, and the Trinity really is like water, then the story of Jesus (the Son) praying to the Father as recorded in the Bible seems like an awfully strange masquerade. God Himself explains why some things are still a mystery: For as heaven is higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9) Our human minds can never understand all of who God is and how He thinks and acts. Youre right, theyre all good but not perfect because only God IS perfect. This is a general rule when we study this Mystery using our human weakness since it is absolutely impossible for our human minds to comprehend the Divine. So much of what we know about what God does is wrapped up in who He is. There is what is called the 'triple point' the combination of pressure and temperature at which H2O can exist simultaneously in all three states: solid, liquid and gas. For example, we know that God didnt create humanity because He bored or lonely. Now if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is not His" (Romans 8:9). Some have used examples such as water, watermelons and eggs; the principle behind those illustrations is that even though each thing is one, it is also three. Lost will be burned up. The Father is fully God; Jesus is fully God and the Holy Spirit is fully God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit also exist eternally and concurrently. However, many of our faithful, and even priests, attempted to simplify the Mystery of the Trinity and made it easier to understand by using MODELS AND ANALOGIES, giving birth to modern-day heresies/fallacies about the Trinity. The Holy Spirit prays for us. The military would like to have that power. The very definition of the heresy known as Modalism/Oneness is that there is one person existing in three different modes or manifestations. So, in God, there are three distinct persons. But in the Godhead, each Person is fully and completely God unto Himself (even as they are all one God). But we can (and should) have a solid foundation to explain this core belief of our faith. It may not appear to agree with common sense. He is one God in three persons, all at the same time. In Jesus is the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9). There is one GOD in three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), 2. He has been relationally fulfilled within Himself since forever. We can admit it is a mystery and accept that our incomplete knowledge cannot fully comprehend it. Each person is fully God (Phil 2; Acts 5:3-4). Because Gods Person is unapproachable, the Spirit White acts as insulation, for we know that it is through the Holy Spirit that God can communicate, speak through and interact with mankind. Cool it down, and itll eventually freeze into a solid. Understanding 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. But God is the eternal Light, which has neither had a beginning, nor shall ever fail. On a whim, I looked up the lyrics at a later time. Blessings! The problem with this analogy is that it denies the distinction of persons in the God-head. Theyve transformed. Indeed, how can an infinite God be contained in a finite human womb! In Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9) They say that three separate beings exist, 2. However, Christians through the ages believe in the Trinity because the truths it represents are taught in the Bible. When we view the egg in its entirety we have the Biblical Trinity, One that is Three. Here are 8 Bible Characters Who Should Be More Famous. Haydn Lea is an Associate Pastor in Queensland, and is currently studying his Master of Arts (Theology). True, we humans are image bearers but nothing in creation serves as an analogy for the Trinity because the Trinity is a doctrine of special (biblical) revelation not nature or reason. Many of us would use analogies to explain the Trinity. But Hes God too, right? These three Persons are all equally God and all equally Persons. I bet I havent sung or heard this song in years! Now God can be in you by His Spirit! In other words, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have a unique and unbreakable unity, and their existence together is the being that is God. In the same way, water is all the same molecular structure, expressing itself in three different modes. Notice the distinction between persons and being. THE TRUTH IS: From the very beginning, the Blessed Trinity Father, Son, and Spirit was there. Despite its potential obscurity, Trinity Sunday is a great occasion for me to revisit an old article on the Trinity. Humans as we are, we cannot fully understand how the three divine Persons, though really distinct from one another, are one and the same God. THE TRUTH IS: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really DISTINCT from one another: He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son. (CCC 254), 3. An egg is made up of shell, white and yolk. Vestment Emblems. And we know that because the Persons of the Godhead have perfectly blessed and exalted each other for all eternity. But while this idea is central to the Christian faith, it is also incredibly mysterious to us. If the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate beings, then its not really clear how someone can say that God is one or that only one God exists. Infinite thy vast domain, everlasting is thy reign.. So, the egg analogy doesnt work after all. Thus, the Father Himself is not God, nor is the Son, nor is the Holy Spirit, but combining the three, there is one God. In some ways, it resembles the tritheism view (Misunderstanding 2). This analogy actually teaches the heresy of tritheism. Further, his dialectic is guided by the particular consideration of what true love is: a trinity of lover, beloved and the love that binds . Paul explains our finite understanding of beliefs like the Trinity as looking into a poor-quality mirror- a distorted image; dim and unclear. This would make Jesus something less than fully God. This is the Christmas paradox. It only has 1 person acting in three different roles. When we think about influential New Testament leaders, most names are male. But common sense is intuition based on day-to-day experience. FOR CENTURIES, the Church had fought against heresies on the Trinity. Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature. (Lateran Council IV), 4. The meme above discourages the use of analogies in explaining the Trinity. There are some analogies that come close. They suggest that only one God exists but this God transforms or morphs into each of the different persons. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each called Jehovah (or Spirit of Jehovah), given divine attributes, and are distinguished from one another. Arius was condemned by the council of Nicea in 325 AD. All of the above Bad Analogies would perhaps do more harm than good if used in explaining the Trinity. Before I even began writing this post, I had an unusual song stuck in my head Holy God, we praise thy name. He taught that the son was at one point created by God the father. In order to accomplish this union with God and man, He allowed His Shell to be broken with the weight of our sins to cleanse our souls so His holiness can approach, for God cannot look upon sin (Habakkuk 1:13). The three-leaf clover analogy is OK. We find it in all four Gospels. This analogy actually falls prey to the same error of modalism. I believe that the best way to talk about the Trinity is to simply say that God is one God, who eternally exists in three Persons. Likewise we cannot have the Father or His Spirit without the Son I am the Way the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by Me- John 14:6. But this idea is central to the Christian faith. The Holy Spirit is like the heat that the sun produces, unseen yet powerful and effective in making the sun felt. Because God is utterly unique, all comparisons will fail at some point. Modalism teaches that the trinity is not three distinct persons, but just different modes that God reveals himself to human beings. THE TRUTH IS: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three different parts or components of God, but the . One sits on the throne looking like Sardine and Jasper stone. Ontological means the nature or essence of something. I go to prepare a place for you. If all you had were an eggshell, you wouldnt have a very exciting breakfast. Dr. Bruce Ware does an excellent job in his book Big Truths for Young Hearts. But they are one God. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. God is kind of like a man who is a father, a son and an uncle God is kind of like a three-leaf clover, or a triangle; one object, but three different, identifiable leaves, or sides* The white of an egg is the connection between the yolk and the shell. And in our efforts to grasp it, weve come up with a number of analogies. If the sun exists, there is also day; if nothing of this be manifest, it is impossible that the sun should be there. Yet we do not have three gods but ONE God. Light comes from God. He was with God in the beginning. Rather, He created us in order to bless us. The problem with this analogy is it denies the unity of the God-head. Arianism denies the deity of each person in the trinity. The idea that the Trinity can be compared to a shamrock is largely attributed to St. Patrick. In this analogy, God is compared to a man. The word trinity is not in the Scriptures, but is a word used to describe the three in one God revealed in the Bible. What is the Trinity? The Trinity is established by 3 Biblical truths, . History, lifestyle, family, music, theology, scripture, literature, the saints, church history, parenting, politics, prayer, the pope, and more. His motto was that "There was a time when the son did not exist". However, it breaks down on the level of equality: No one keeps or eats the shell of an egg. This little child cannot look at one without experiencing a profound sense of wonderment and awe. The problem with this analogy is that it would imply that there is only one Divine Person, who eventually multiplied Himself. And when the time comes when death is allowed to crack your shell in its final hour and your believing soul is released; the Spirit of God that holds you will carry you in His arms to your heavenly home because In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. Love your blogs! The Father sends the Son, and both the Father and Son send the Holy Spirit. All these make up one egg just as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit make up one God. I think the illustration that represents the Trinity most accurately is the egg example. We might call one side A, another side B, and the other C. So, there is a distinction between each of the sides, yet, all three are the same. If one of the sides were removed, then there would be no equilateral triangle. Devils cannot grab ahold of them to cast them into Satans prison. Check out verse four: Holy Author, Holy Word, Holy Spirit, three we name thee; Still, one holy voice is heard; undivided God, we claim thee, and adoring bend the knee, while we own the mystery. . Shively, This book is now available in a published format for easy sharing and classroom use. is not). Space consists of three things: height, width, and depth. If the Sun existed from eternity past then so were the light rays from the Sun. This description that all persons are fully God is called the Ontological Trinity. No analogy is perfect, but we want to be careful of using wrong ones that may confuse people. Christians believe, then, that only one God exists but this God exists as a unity of three persons: a Trinity. In other words, this view denies Gods oneness. Water at room temperature is liquid. Below is a compilation of the verses that reference all 3 persons of the one God. God has revealed some mysteries from the Old Testament in the New Testament (the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the coming of the Messiah, salvation by grace through faith, etc.) When we tend to make an analogy about the trinity we are forced to diminish one of the three trinitarian truths in order to make the analogy work. What portion is erroneous? We can always rebut these claims with another equation: 1 x 1 x 1=1. H2O can exist in three forms: liquid, gas and solid. Starting with the three biblical affirmations, ask your kids to show you how these examples support or deny what the bible teaches about the Trinity. We can say that the first is egg the shell, the second is egg the albumen and the third is egg the yoke. Should Women Really Keep Silent in Church? The past is not the present and the present is not the future, yet all three together is what we call time. The Father is fully God; Jesus is fully God and the Holy Spirit is fully God. Analogies of the Trinity.

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