In his 2-volume God With Us and Without Us, Trinitarian apologist Imad N. Shehadeh noted the following problems with the common illustrations to support the Trinity:
Avoiding Exaggeration in the Use
of Illustrations
Many attempt to explain the
Trinity through illustrations, pictures and examples . . . Though there may be
some value in these methods, none of them is actually able to explain this
doctrine. The Christian Arab philosopher Awad Samaan maintains that God is not
compound and the persons are not parts in him that can be compared to anything
in existence. (Samaan [God, His Essence and His Kind of Unity, 43])
The Pattern
of the First Family
Eve was created out of Adam’s rib.
Then through their physical union they had offspring. So Adam, Eve and their
descendants from three elements, when they were originally one. However, in the
Trinity, there was no temporal order in the presence of the persons, there was
no causation for any of them and there was no time when God was not a
Trinity.
The Pattern
of the Head of the Family
The head of the family is used in
his triple role as father to his children, son to parents and husband to his
wife. But the problem in using this pattern for the Trinity is that it
communicates modalism and not the Trinity.
The Pattern of
Soul, Body and Spirit
The problem with using the
illustration of soul, body and spirit to illustrate the Trinity is that it implies
that God is composed of parts when he is simple and not compound.
The Triple
Point Pattern
There is a condition called the “triple
point” whereby, under specific pressure and at a certain temperature, water
exists as ice, liquid and vapor at the same time. Three distinct conditions
thereby exist in one essence (H2O). However, the problem in using
this illustration for the Trinity is that there is a change from one nature to
another, and this change requires certain conditions, not to mention the absence
of the personal element. None of these features can be found in the Trinity.
The Pattern
of the Sun: Its Rays, Heat and Light
One of the best-known illustrations
of the Trinity is the nature of the sun, with its rays, heat and light being
three elements of one entity. There have been variations of the sun
illustration. The Greek Gregory of Nazianzus of the fourth century AD spoke of
the Trinity not as the sun with its rays, but as three suns combined in one ray
(Gregory of Naziansus stated that “the Godhead is, to speak concisely,
undivided in separate Persons; and there is one mingling of Light, as it were
of three suns joined to each other” [Schaff and Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 7, 14:32]). The Arab Ammar Al Basri of the
ninth century AD stated that, just as the soul with its spirit and word did not
become three souls, and fire with its heat and light did not become three fires,
and the sun with its light and heat did not become three suns, so God with his
Spirit and Word did not become three gods. Threeness does not nullify
oneness and oneness does not nullify threeness (Ammar Al Basri [The Book of
Evidence], 48-49).
While these pictures provide great
benefit, especially in supporting plurality in unity, it must be noted that
they give only one aspect of the Trinity and not the whole. Moreover, they of
course lack the element of persons in relationship.
Conclusion about
the Use of Illustrations
If there is any benefit in using
illustrations, it is not in explaining the Trinity, but at best in illustrating
that there can be plurality in one respect and unity in another. But there is
very far from explaining the Trinity. All a person can experience is to
discover one of the many aspects of the Trinity, then another and yet another,
all the days of his or her life. The greatest obstacle in these illustrations
lies in preventing this discovery. (Imad N. Shehadeh, God With Us and
Without Us, 2 vols. [Carlisle, U.K.: Langham Global Library, 2018], 1:90-91,
emphasis in original)
While comedic, the following video from "Lutheran Satire" is spot-on, too, with the problems of the common analogies used to explain the Trinity: