Music: https://www.bensound.com
When I was a boy we used to play a game to pass the time. The game was called Twenty Question. You may be familiar with it. The object was to guess the thing the other was thinking of in the span of twenty questions. To narrow the field and save a boat-load of questions, the guesser’s first query was almost always, “Is it Animal, Plant, or Mineral?” Three categories had been established long before any of us first played the game, and in these three all of existence was thought to be found. And generally, it worked. Of course, there were those random arguments that arose as to whether Silly Putty was in the category of Plant or Mineral, and thankfully we seldom wandered into the realm of the metaphysical, with items such as love or justice. So on the whole, the guesser usually arrived at the answer within the allotted range. It never dawned on me then how significant it was that all of physical reality could be found within the scope of just three categories, but now it does, especially as I consider all the other foundational threes there are.
The very formation of our lives displays a threefold reality. We are here because one man and one woman brought forth a child. And though the number of the family may swell with each successive sibling, still each child completes this basic trinity. No other family members play a part in our creation, and none within this triad are what they are without the other. A mother isn’t a mother apart from her child, nor can she be one apart from a father, and the same holds true for each within this group. And every offspring is a set of three as well. For though it’s more in vogue these days to define ourselves as body and soul, still, the ancient Scriptures list our parts as three – spirit, soul, and body (1 Thess. 5:23). So every human is a single being of these three.
And we have our being within the three dimensions of space – height, width and depth (I wrote about that in my post Our Being Within the Three), and space for us is tied to time, but time itself is a span neatly broken into three – past, present, and future. And while they together comprise the single line upon which all our days are measured, still there is never any mixture between the three. There is no moment when the past is the present, nor the future the past, and yet none of them exists individually without the other two. What meaning could past have except in reference to the present, or the future without its being distant from the here and now? Does it not strike you as a very interesting coincidence that the most basic stuff in which we have our being – space and time – are both trinitarian in their fundamental nature and that the God held forth in Scripture is Triune in His being too?
Consider also the amazing world of color. Who can forget the elementary lessons we all learned in Art, how just three primary colors – red, yellow, and blue – form every other hue our eyes can see? I wrote in my post Roses In The Dark about how all those wild and vibrant colors find their origin in the unassuming whiteness of the light that shines from up above, but isn’t it curious that we detect a trifold basis for their formation here on earth? And speaking of the earth, here again, we discover another division that is triple in its nature, that of land, and sea, and sky. I’m sure the count could be expanded, but these three come first to mind. The solidity of the land, the wavy wonder of the seas, and the transparent ocean of the air through which we move. What could be more foundational than these?
And even as I write these words, I’m conscious that verbal communication itself could not be made without the tripartite aspect of sentences themselves – subject, verb, and idea. Every sentence of complete, coherent thought contains a subject and a predicate, which together form a meaning that can stand alone. Take any one away and transfer starts to falter. Intelligibility relies upon all three. Indeed, communication in its most rudimentary form cannot exist without a basic trinity – one mind giving to another the contents of its thoughts. For though a speaker or an author may have an audience far greater than just one, those masses are but multiples of this simple three – two minds connected through the instrument of words.
“What shall I say?” wrote the writer of Hebrews (Heb. 11:32), as he realized his list of faithful witnesses could go on and on, “For time would fail me to tell of…”, and then he adds a few more to his roster. I too could keep expanding on this testifying list of threes. And though a host of other numbers might be brought forth in contradiction to my thesis, it’s the foundational aspect associated with this number that captures my attention. The potpourri of threes, so subtle and ubiquitous in our world, seems to me a silent witness far too deafening to ignore. May each one lift our thoughts to the Triune God from whom they all proceed!
For another post on another “three”, see Minor Chords and the Man of Sorrows.
