Three-in-One: Gospel Truth, Not Church Invention

I hope this isn’t arrogant, but I consider myself an intellectual person. I won’t brag about my achievements, but I’ve made it a point to continue learning and pursuing personal growth even in my forties. But as the philosopher Socrates said, true wisdom is knowing you know nothing. Despite my willingness and ability to learn, there are many things I don’t know—and some things I can’t know. There are technical and philosophical concepts that are beyond my understanding, but there are things I can never understand because I don’t have the requisite experience.

There’s a philosophical thought experiment called Mary’s Room, proposed by Frank Jackson in his 1982 article “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” Mary is a researcher who studies color. She has studied technical aspects of color—she can tell you every wavelength that is considered blue and which wavelengths of color are diffused in 20 feet of ocean water. She has studied the psychological aspects of color and can tell you how rooms painted in green or yellow affect people within. She’s studied color symbolism and can tell you what each color represents in every culture across the earth. She knows everything there is to know about color.

Despite her immense knowledge of color, Mary is missing some important information. You see, Mary lives in a black and white room. Her computer only displays in black and white, and, for the purposes of this thought experiment, Mary herself is monochromatic and lacks any color. She knows about color, but she has never seen color. She can tell you every technical detail about the color blue, but until she stands beneath a blue sky or over a blue ocean, she will never know what we, in our colorful lives, simply see as blue.

There’s a mountain of philosophical meaning here to unpack, but Mary’s dilemma describes so many aspects of my knowledge. I can learn all there is to know about a war-torn third-world country, but I will never know the true stress of having to live every day with the threat of violence and death. I can study racism and discrimination in America, but I will never know what it’s like to be a marginalized minority and face microaggressions every day because of the color of my skin.

When it comes to the theological concept of the Trinity, I feel a lot like Mary in her black-and-white room. Well, that’s being too generous—I’m Mary with a lot less intelligence and drive for learning. The point is that I could be like Mary or a far less industrious person, and the result would be the same: no amount of knowledge on the subject would ever explain as much to me as standing beneath a blue sky. In an instant, I would know what the color blue is; but without that experience, anything I learn is theoretical. I honestly don’t have answers for you about what the Trinity is or how we should understand it. I do know that one day, standing before God, we will have that experience and understand it in an instant.