Explain the Trinity? We can't even begin. We can only accept it—a mystery, disclosed in Scripture. It should be no surprise that the triune Being of God baffles our finite minds. We should be surprised, rather, if we could understand the nature of our Creator. He would be a two-bit deity, not the fathomless Source of all reality.

It is commonly said that the Trinity is a mystery. And it certainly is … . But it is not a mystery veiled in darkness in which we can only grope and guess. It is a mystery in which we are given to understand that we will never know all there is of God … . It is not a mystery that keeps us in the dark, but a mystery in which we are taken by the hand and gradually led into the light … .

Apart from the Incarnation and the Trinity, it is possible to know that God is, but not who God is.

If Christianity were something we were making up, of course we would make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he doesn't have any facts to bother about."

When we consider that those who could not help worshiping Jesus were Jews—strict monotheists, whose foundational creed was "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one God"—we have to ask one very important question: What were they doing worshiping Jesus and confessing him as Lord?

What God creates is not God; just as what humans create is not human. What God begets is God; just as what humans beget is human.

In the deepest mystery of his being, God is an intimate relationship, a fellowship, a community of love.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the central dogma of Christian theology, the fundamental grammar of our knowledge of God.

A God understood, a God comprehended, is no God.

The Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and life. It is the source of all other mysteries of Christian faith, the light that enlightens them.

God the Father is fully God. God the Son is fully God. God the Holy Spirit is fully God. The Bible presents this as fact. It does not explain it.

What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussions concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity?

The important point is not whether we can understand the Trinity, even with the help of illustrations, but whether we will believe what the Bible has to say about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and about their relationship to each other.

He is at once infinite solitude (one nature) and perfect society (three persons).

More than any other Christian doctrine, the Trinity sets before us the mystery of God and points to the element of mystery in every aspect of our faith.

You, oh eternal Trinity, are a deep Sea, into which the deeper I enter the more I find, and the more I find the more I seek.

Trinity is the Christian name for God.

While it is true that no passage of Scripture spells out the doctrine of the Trinity, it is also true that the whole of Scripture's witness to who God is and who Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are makes no sense at all without the model of the Trinity, and that all alternative concepts end up doing violence to some essential aspect of revelation, Christian experience, and possibly even reason itself

The advantage of believing in the reality of the Trinity is not that we get an A from God for giving "the right answer." Remember, to believe something is to act as if it is so. To believe that two plus two equals four is to behave accordingly when trying to find out how many dollars or apples are in the house. The advantage of believing it is not that we can pass tests in arithmetic; it is that we can deal much more successfully with reality. Just try dealing with it as if two plus two equaled six.

Hence, the advantage of believing in the Trinity is that we then live as if the Trinity is real: as if the cosmos environing us actually is, beyond all else, a self-sufficing community of unspeakable, magnificent, personal beings of boundless love, knowledge, and power. And, thus believing, our lives naturally integrate themselves, through our actions, into the reality of such a universe, just as with two plus two equals four. In faith we rest ourselves upon the reality of the Trinity in action—and it graciously meets us. For it is there. And our lives are then enmeshed in the true world of God.

Seeing mystery…enables us to understand how it provokes reverence, the only possible attitude to what is supreme and final in our lives. It is not a mystery that leaves us dumb and terrified, but one that leaves us happy, singing, and giving thanks. Mystery is like a cliff; we may not be able to scale it, but we can stand at the foot of it, touch it, praise its beauty. So it is with the mystery of the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinity wasn't invented—it was uncovered. The doctrine of the Trinity…is not some arbitrary and outdated dictate handed down by some confused council—it is the inevitable result of wrestling with the richness and complexity of the Christian experience of God.

Sam O'Neal is managing editor of Discipleship Resources at Christianity Today International.