Today I read
a (frankly) lousy, poorly researched volume by former Latter-day Saint Lisa
Brockman, Out of Zion. To give you an
idea of how bad the book is, it was endorsed by none other than Lynn Wilder. On
Wilder and her lack of integrity, see:
Notwithstanding,
there is one thing in the book that is interesting: even as a Trinitarian, she
explicitly rejects many of the common analogies used by Trinitarian apologists
as she correctly notes they are insufficient (and frankly, more consistent with
Modalism and other heresies). While discussing her Protestant friend Gary and
his pastor’s use of such analogies to help her understand the Trinity, she
wrote:
Gary and I arrived and sat across from his
pastor in his church office. Gay had prepped him for my questions about the
biblical God. I desperately desired to understand. The most vivid parts of our conversation
were his pastor talking about water and eggs as metaphors for God.
“An egg is one egg, yet it has three parts—the
shell, the white, and the yolk.”
What?! my mind screamed, “God’s like an
egg?” I asked, completely baffled. “God just got more confusing to me if He is
like an egg.” I asked questions, hoping to wrap my mind around this concept.
The pastor attempted to give me some answers. He moved on to his water metaphor.
“God is like water. Water has three different
states in which it exists—ice, liquid, and steam. Even though it has three
states, it’s all water.”
This metaphor for God also fell short and
failed to help me make sense of the Trinity. Metaphors of states of water and
an egg were not helpful. I now know that these metaphors left me even more
confused because they’re not accurate representations of one God who eternally
exists in three persons at all time in a perfect community of love. (Lisa
Brockman, Out of Zion: Meeting Jesus in
the Shadow of the Temple [Eugene, Oreg.: Harvest House Publishers, 2019], 95)
