Quantum Mechanics and The Trinity

When Christians speak of The Trinity, as they have for at least 1900 years, we are simply using a label for the following set of statements:

1. God the Father is God.
2. Jesus Christ is God.
3. The Holy Spirit is God.
4. There is one God.

How do we reconcile these statements? By saying that God consists of three persons - that is, in His essence (ousia) and divinity He is one , but in personhood (hypostaseis) He is three. It is easy to see why this is not irrational by expressing these concepts mathematically.

If God is one god and three gods, then:

1 God = 3 Gods
therefore,
1 = 3.

If God is one person and three persons, then:

1 Person = 3 Persons
therefore,
1 = 3.

But in the Trinity,

1 God = 3 Persons.


(And these 3 persons are in eternal relationship with each other, such that God has always lived in a community of perfect love).

This is a concept that is beyond my intellect or imagination. It is an inexhaustible mystery. It defies all categories of human thought. But it is not irrational. It is fully within the bounds of logic and reason.

For years, scientists debated as to whether the electron was a particle or a wave. (Light was also the subject of the same argument). In 1897, J.J. Thomson measured the charge/mass ratio of the electron, thus establishing that it was a particle and earning himself a Nobel Prize in 1906. His son, George, won the Nobel Prize in 1937 for measuring the wavelength of electrons, thus proving that they were waves, which must have made for some awkward conversations at family gatherings. So which is it?

Both. In 1926, Erwin Schrödinger used Louis de Broglie's concept of wave-particle duality to formulate a mathematical equation explaining how anything could simultaneously be a wave and a particle, earning himself a Noble prize and setting off unending speculation about his cat. This result, with it's probabilistic implications (as in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle), was profoundly unsettling to some. Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize (in part) for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, which established the particle nature of light and confirmed the basic hypothesis of quantum mechanics. Yet these conclusions led him to angrily respond, "God does not play dice with the universe!"

It's always amusing when scientists - or theologians - tell God what He can and cannot do.

Nevertheless, despite its rigorous formulation and experimental verification, this fundamental law of quantum mechanics is difficult to picture. It's one thing to explain mathematically, via a "probability wavefunction," how something can simultaneously be at one point and also be sort-of-everywhere and sort-of-nowhere. It's another thing to attempt to explain this to someone in terms from everyday life that would make one bit of sense. They would probably see it as a contradiction, when in reality it is simply a little - or perhaps a lot - beyond the sort of thing we encounter in a normal day.

I observed this blurring of distinction, between that which is irrational and that which is difficult to understand, on multiple occasions when interacting with atheists (or with Muslims, in the case of the Trinity). But given the upheavals in physics over the past century, why do we continue to make this mistake in our understanding of the natural world - or of God?

Perhaps it's because we think we are smarter than we are. We think that surely, with our education and our civilization and our iPhones, we are advanced enough to understand everything - if only God would quit talking in riddles. We never stopped to consider that any complete answers might be far beyond our comprehension.

The oldest book of the Bible is an extended exploration of senseless suffering which, in some ways, raises more questions than it answers. We see Job, a righteous man, refusing to believe the logically simple explanations of his friends because they don't fit who he knows himself - or God - to be. He persistently demands his day in court with God. When God finally shows up, the tables are suddenly turned: "Brace yourself like a man! I will question you, and you will answer me!" God then proceeds to show Job just how little he (or anyone of us) actually knows. It's as if God is saying, "If I tried to explain to you what is really going on, it would be like trying to explain the General Theory of Relativity to a kindergartener."

That's why Jesus tells us to receive the Kingdom like little children. Children know that they don't understand everything, that's it's okay to trust someone wiser than yourself, and that the world is often a mysteriously wonderful place. God isn't asking us to believe that 3 = 1 or to reject reason; rather, He is asking us to accept the fact that if we can't even comprehend the electron, we will never be able to wrap our minds around the fullness of His being.

RE: Experts jarred by court gay-parent comments

I sent this to the Tribune in response to a story in Sunday's paper, possibly lifted from the LA Times.

Dear Sir,

Your story, "Experts jarred by court gay-parenting comments," was conveniently focused only on those experts who disagreed with the justices and implied that there was universal consensus on the question at hand. Astonishingly, you didn't even mention the largest study ever of children raised by same-sex parents, Mark Regnerus' New Family Structures Study, which used double-blind methods and followed more than 3000 subjects over a long period of time. Regnerus' conclusions made headlines and remain controversial, but his methods remain unmatched in their rigor. I realize that your paper is supportive of changing the definition of marriage, but please have enough respect for your readers to give us both sides of the story.

Best Regards,

 I doubt they will print it, but it's hard to say nothing when you see a story botched so badly.

Reuters: TV characters prove that same-sex parents are normal

Tim Molloy of Reuters recently offered this "contribution" to the same-sex marriage debate. Here was my comment:

Mr. Molloy, I have news for you: TELEVISION IS NOT REAL. Also, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are myths. Being, for the most part, adults, the Supreme Court Justices are probably aware of this.

This is illustrative of a trend I've observed ever since I first wrote publicly about this issue in 1999 for the Kansas State Collegian, and another columnist responded with a full-length editorial, the argument of which was based entirely upon an episode of the TV show L.A. Law. The arguments for same-sex marriage are either highly emotional ones, or they rely on deliberate attempts to get people not to think. (The primary function of television dramas and/or comedies is to amuse, which comes from the Greek meaning "to not think").

Some people, of course, have done a lot of thinking about this issue. Or a lot of data-driven research. But they do not have primetime TV shows. I guess they're just not amusing enough.

HAIR for Lent

HAIR is a rock musical about hippies that features nudity, drug abuse, the mocking of traditional values (even the sacrament of Communion) and the celebration of alternative lifestyles. Last year I saw a live performance of Hair during Lent, the Christian season of fasting and repentance before Easter... and it couldn't have been more appropriate.

I confess that I did not stand with the audience during the final applause (although The Lady did). The performance was fantastic and filled with energy, but it was a little much for this son of a small-town Kansas banker. I'm not exactly part of the "establishment" - my wife is Jewish, my children are black, we're practically broke, and we attend a church filled with some of the most eccentric people in suburbia. But I am reflexively conservative, and I wasn't ready to embrace what I had just seen.

However, the more I thought about what I had seen, the more I liked it. I came to realize that Hair is the perfect musical to see during Lent.

The hippies were obviously wrong about a lot of things, and in some ways our society is still paying the price for their excesses. But they were seeking the right things, even if they looked in the wrong places. They recognized that something had gone wrong with America, and that all the traditional sources of authority weren't offering any genuine answers.

Jesus repeatedly emphasized that those who appeared farthest from God were sometimes the most likely to "get it," whereas those who seemed the most religious were often very far from the living God. The truth is, once you become a hippie you are halfway to becoming a Christian. Which many of them ultimately did: it has been estimated that as many as 250,000 of their generation, many of them former hippies, were part of the Jesus Movement of the early 70s (the closest thing to a revival the USA has seen in the last century).

Hair ends with the song "Let the Sunshine In," which repeats the refrain,

Let the sun shine!
Let the sun shine!
Let the sunshine in!

Having heard it before, I did not realize that it is a tragic expression - particularly in the stage version - and not a celebratory one. SPOILER ALERT - One of the main characters has been killed in Vietnam. Around his casket, they are begging and pleading for light and peace. The curtain closes, and despite the cast bowing and the wild applauding afterward, the audience is left wondering what hope is left. The musical is subtitled, "Let the revolution begin," but the revolution appears to have failed.

At Easter Vigil, as I walked forward to receive Communion, the worship team was singing, "Alleluia He Is Coming." It's a great song but something about it did sound slightly dated. I looked at the copyright date: 1974. It was written by a middle-aged Southern woman in an Anglican church, five years before HAIR, but in one sense it is far more radical, for it celebrates a revolution which has never died.

I looked up, and I saw my Lord a-coming

Alleluia! He is coming!
Alleluia! He is here!
Alleluia! He is alive!

I looked up, and I saw the 30-foot icon of the resurrected Christ that was painted just a year before - his features Middle-Eastern, the wounds visible on his hands and side, radiating glory. There were flowers sprouting out of the cross, which to a 1st-century Roman general would probably look as silly as putting a daisy in the barrel of an M-16 rifle.

My mind went back to the final scene of Hair, of desperate men and women looking for genuine hope. And I thought, the sun IS shining!