Other analogies for the Trinity

The previous post contains a video of the children's book, 3 in 1: A Picture of God, describing the trinity as a an apple. In our last discussion, we mentioned several other analogies for the trinity, and I thought I would search some of them out and post them here in our blog. The trinity is a difficult concept to understand, one that the church has been wrestling with for generations. These are some ways that the trinity has been conceptualized:

Water:

This analogy has a couple of variations. Some say that the trinity is like a molecule of water: H2O (two hydrogens, one oxygen). These are three atoms but they make up one molecule.

The second variation is that there are three states of water, solid, liquid & gas, but they are all water.

Egg:

The egg is made up of the shell, the white, and the yolk. Together they form an egg.(The following illustration is from a great article about how God is like an egg, but not like an egg; like water, but not like water: God is like...)

Three Leaf Clover:

3 Dimensions:

From Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, Chapter 23:

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 this. 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.

And...

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.

  The Points of a Triangle:

A Pretzel?

This is actually kind of cute, from a page about teaching kids the Bible: Jesus Did It All.