The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything

by Fred Sanders

This is a famous passage, and Lewis argues his way through it very tidily.19 He uses the language of the three dimensions, exploring the relationship between the higher, more complex dimensions and the lower, simpler ones. Lines are one-dimensional things, but when they are taken into the second dimension, they can be combined to form a square. Squares are two-dimensional, but if they are transposed into the third dimension, six of them can coexist as one cube. As you progress to dimensions that are “more real and more complex,” you do not leave behind the lower dimensions; you combine them in ways that were unimaginable in the lower dimensions. This example from geometry helps us picture the situation in theology: as far as we can see, one person means one being, and three persons means three beings. We can no more conceive of three persons in one being than a two-dimensional resident of Flatland could conceive of six squares somehow being combined into one single form. “In God’s dimension,” though, it is possible and actually the fact that these three persons are one being in a way that we cannot conceive in terms of our own less complex, less real world.