Below is John 1: 1-4. (If you’re new to learning the Bible, what John 1:1-4 means is that in the New Testament we’re looking at The Book of John [sometimes also called "The Gospel According to John," or, most often, just "John"], chapter one, verses 1-4.)
John 1: 1-4
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
I think these first four sentences of The Book of John are capturing and expressing the reality of the Trinity. They’re saying that God comes in three modes: Absolute and unchanging (“God”); exuberantly creative (“Word”); and personally and specifically inside of each and every man (“the light of men”).
And there’s the ineffable mystery of the three-in-one God. There, in four (heartbreakingly elegant) sentences, is the basis for the entirety of Christianity.
Jesus, of course, is the Word, the active aspect of God; he is God’s unending potential manifested in real space and time. Jesus is the perfect means by which God’s absolute, undifferentiated power is physically, corporeally expressed.
“Word” perfectly captures that extraordinary dynamic. A thing doesn’t really have an identity, hasn’t ever been definitively differentiated from everything else in the world, until it has been named—until someone has attached a unique word to it that, from then on out, refers exclusively to that thing, and only that thing. Naming something marks the finality of the process by which something gains its own distinct, enduring presence; it is how a thing transforms from unknown to known.
Put in the broadest possible terms, it’s how a thing moves from the world of undivided and absolute God, to the differentiated, relative, human world in which God became Jesus.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
And there it is: by the power of the active, creative force of God—which ultimately personified itself into the Jesus we worship today—all things that ever were or will be were created. Jesus is the Word through which God created us, and our world.
In him was life was life, and that life was the light of men.
That’s just an extremely perfect way of saying that, ultimately, what Jesus brought is the means by which his essence (“the light”) is meant to be fully imparted and awakened in the hearts and minds of all who believe that he was, in fact, exactly who he said he was.
And that is the Holy Spirit.
And there we have the Holy Trinity, laid down before us like a path any of us are free to walk upon.
Other posts of mine about the opening verses of John:
John 1:5: The Archer’s Grief
John 1:6-15: Read It and Weep
John 1:16: It’s All Groovy Like a Movie
John 1:17: Where “Truth” Depends on Your Translation
John 1:18: Bring on the Stupid
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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ok
Hmmm, not a believer in the 3-in-one theory.
BUT we read your comments today!
@ AC: That’s okay. I do that all the time!
I didn’t realize this was an old post. Just commenting away to ppl from years ago!
But we READ your comments today … !
OK, but can i still play here even though i go to a UNITARIAN church?
Ha! Good one!
But no.
(Joke. That was a joke.)
i knew it was. doi.
Yeah, YOU knew it was (as I knew you would, of course).
But. Well. You know.
yeah, i know. its almost sad.
I think my biggest problem with the Holy Spirit is that, the more I think about it, analyze it, cognate on it, the farther that takes me from actually experiencing it :/
OK– THis made sense to me:
“and personally and specifically inside of each and every man (“the light of men”).” as the trinity’s final third. Is that another way for you to say “Holy Spirit”? It seems to me that you are saying that while simultaneously saying that the Holy Spirit is , if we borrow Einsteins E=mc2 formula, all energy that can be manifested in matter.
(Thanks for the link)
Lisa: this, too: http://johnshore.com/2010/08/24/what-is-the-holy-spirit/
Beautiful John as always.
Absolutely beautiful and simple. Sometimes I think preachers/teachers make it complicated so we stay confused and dependent on them to take us to the next level of understanding. You never do such nonsense. Thank you!
I really appreciated this article as I have an ongoing internal struggle trying to figure out if I’m a trinitarian or not. If I have read this correctly, the trinity you present does not include that wascaly wabbit– the Holy Spirit, a concept I, at 42 years old, still cannot wrap my puny little brain around. I can accept your explanation of the trinity. I want to be clear– I’m not anti-Holy Spirit. It’s just a concept I cannot seem to grasp. Maybe by viewing it as indenendent of the trinity, I can start to get some sort of grasp of it
I wish you had been with me Thursday when I talked to a man with a five foot high photograph of a fetus. Wow, that was a loss for scientific method.
Easiest way to explain it is by thinking of water. Ice is solid, steam is gas and water is liquid. 3 forms of the same thing, same as God.
I’ve also heard it compared to the sun. There is the actual, physical sun, the star in the sky (God). Then there is the sunlight, which comes from the sun, by which you can see everything else (Jesus). And then there is the warmth of the sun’s rays, which you can feel but cannot see (Holy Spirit).
I had never heard that one K.E. that is great!
I haven’t heard that, either. I think there’s a fun worship activity in that, somewhere. Thanks!
You have to love the explanations religous people use to explain things… sure they might sound good to one who’s not a great thinker, but to those who are… the explanation in itself explains nothing, just well chosen words that sound good.
“There is the actual, physical sun, the star in the sky (God). Then there is the sunlight, which comes from the sun, by which you can see everything else (Jesus). And then there is the warmth of the sun’s rays, which you can feel but cannot see (Holy Spirit).” See this actually explains nothing, but appears to the way Wise Chinese proverbs do, but without the actual wisedome/knowledge behind it.
The Trinity makes no sense. 1) Jesus never taught it. 2) It’s not in the bible 3) It was an invention by man hundreds of years after Jesus.
That’s the trinity I believe in…. and then theres this one example of many in the bible which contradicts the trinity theory. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” -Jesus (just before he died). Either Jesus wasn’t God, or he was Crazy…. either way the Trinity is not worth believing in.
And a happy Easter to you too, James!
Spot on comment, James.
I don’t understand why modern Christianity is so fixated on something that is both illogical and found nowhere in the Bible.
Get over it. Just go back and read, then do, the stuff Jesus actually is supposed to have said and drop the theological, doctrinal BS.
“Get over it. Just go back and read, then do, the stuff Jesus actually is supposed to have said and drop the theological, doctrinal BS.”
I actually agree with you on this. But your “theological, doctrinal BS” may be someone else’s profound insight. Or vice versa.
I’m a big fan of leaving people alone unless they’re trying to kill someone or something. Otherwise, just leave them alone. Let trinitarians be trinitarians. Let monotheists be monotheists. Let atheists be atheists. And if people keep jumping around–let them! Each person must walk his or her own path in his/her own time and way. No one can walk another person’s path for that person.
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