Most Christians are comfortable talking about God. Most Christians are comfortable talking about Jesus. Many Christians are even comfortable talking about the Holy Spirit. But when the conversation turns to the Trinity, people often become unsure how to express this Christian core testimony.

Christians insist there is only one God, yet we also speak about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To many people—both inside and outside the Church—that sounds confusing at best and contradictory at worst.

I’ve certainly heard that reaction over the years.

Some of my Jewish friends have wondered why Christians complicate something that seems so simple. There is one God. Why not leave it there? Some of my Muslim friends have been even more direct. If there is one God, why keep talking about three?

Those questions have never bothered me. In fact, I think they are fair questions.

The earliest Christians were asking something very similar. The first followers of Jesus were not trying to invent a complicated doctrine. They were Jews. They believed in one God—the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God who created heaven and earth and called Israel to be His people.

Then Jesus entered the story.

He taught with extraordinary authority. He forgave sins. He spoke of God as His Father. He claimed a relationship with God unlike anyone had ever claimed before. His followers became convinced that in Jesus they had encountered something more than a prophet or teacher.

Then Jesus’ disciples experienced the Holy Spirit’s presence and power in ways that transformed their lives and communities. Yet through all of this they continued to insist that there was only one God.

The question was not whether God was one. The question was how they were supposed to think about what they had experienced.

Over the centuries Christians have wrestled with that question. Not because they thought they could fully explain God, but because they wanted language that would help them speak truthfully about Him.

I remember sitting in a class years ago where two of those attempts were being explained. For the first time I heard what Christians have often called the psychological analogy and the sociological analogy.

The psychological analogy begins with the one.

Imagine a single person. That person may be a husband, a father, a son, a professor, and a friend. In every one of those relationships he remains the same person. Yet each relationship reveals something unique about who he is. He is known differently by his children than by his students, differently by his spouse than by his colleagues. The relationships are distinct, yet the person remains one.

Some Christians have found this helpful when thinking about the Trinity. One God, yet known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The sociological analogy begins somewhere else.

Instead of beginning with one, it begins with three.

Think about humanity itself. There are billions of people on this planet. We differ in language, culture, personality, appearance, and experience. Yet we do not speak of many humanities. We speak of one humanity shared by many persons. Each person is fully human, yet each expresses that humanity in a unique way.

Some Christian thinkers have suggested that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in a somewhat similar way. The emphasis is not on how one becomes three, but on how three share one divine life. Distinct, yet united. Unique, yet inseparable.

Neither analogy solves the mystery, and neither claims to. In fact, I have become increasingly convinced that God is not a problem to be solved at all.

I sometimes think about the relationship between a young child and a parent. A child knows his mother. He recognizes her voice, trusts her presence, and experiences her love. Yet that same child understands only a small fraction of who she truly is. He knows her genuinely, but he does not know her completely.

The same may be true of God. We can know God because God has made Himself known, yet there will always be dimensions of God’s life that remain beyond our full comprehension. That should not surprise us. If God is truly God, we should expect both knowledge and mystery to exist together.

What struck me that day was not that these analogies finally explained the Trinity. They didn’t.

What struck me was where they seemed to be pointing.

For much of my life, I thought about God primarily in terms of power. God creates the universe. God rules history. God judges evil. God sustains all things. Each of those affirmations is true and deeply important. Yet as I listened to these attempts to think about the Trinity, a different possibility began to emerge.

What if power is not the deepest thing we can say about God?

What if relationship is?

That thought stopped me—not because it answered all my questions, but because it changed the questions I was asking.

Before there were human beings, there was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Before there were nations, governments, churches, or civilizations, there was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Before creation itself, there was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What if that means something?

What if the Trinity is not simply a doctrine Christians believe, but a window into the very nature of reality itself?

Many people imagine ultimate reality as power—a distant ruler, a supreme authority, a force demanding obedience. Yet what if, at the center of all things, there is something more? What if, at the heart of reality itself, there is relationship?

That possibility changed the way I began to think about God. It changed the way I began to think about creation. It changed the way I began to think about myself.

And perhaps that is why the Trinity continues to matter. Not because Christians have solved the mystery, but because the mystery continues to point us toward something deeper.

It invites us to ask whether relationship is more fundamental than we imagine, and whether love lies at the center of reality.

I certainly don’t claim to have solved the mystery.

But I have come to wonder whether the Trinity is pointing us toward something deeper than we often realize. Something about God. Something about ourselves. Something about why we are here in the first place.

That, at least, is a question worth exploring.

About This Article

This article is adapted from a teaching by Dr. Wayne Brouwer in Session 2 of Recounting Our Core Testimony, the third learning series offered through the Church Leadership Center. The original material was presented in a live learning community and has been edited and adapted for publication while seeking to preserve the substance, intent, and voice of the original teaching.