Away with Tropical Icebergs! Shamrocks Begone!

"When most Christians hear the word Trinity, their immediate mental response is to reach for an analogy: Is the Trinity kind of like a shamrock, or like the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), for instance, the one substance H20 being ice and water and steam? They do this, I think, because of a mental habit of associating the Trinity with a logical problem, the problem of reconciling three and one. But while there is a time and place for coming to terms with that problem, and while analogies can offer some limited help on that occasion, we have learned something different from the shape of the economy of salvation. We have learned to associate Trinity with the incarnate Son and the outpoured Spirit. 

When we talk about Jesus, sent by the Father to work in the Spirit, we should know that we are talking about the Trinity. Our thoughts and affections should jump to the Gospels and the gospel, the story of Jesus and the present encounter with him, rather than to shamrocks and steaming icebergs. The whole point is that the presence of the Son and the Spirit themselves, sent by the father into the economy of salvation, is the Trinity. The eternal Trinity is the gospel Trinity. These person in the gospel story are not what the Trinity is like--they are the Trinity. We will see how this changes everything about how we look for the signs of the Trinity in the various elements of the church's life and work. For now, it is enough to underline the new mental associations...that we gain from attending to the economy [of salvation]. Away with tropical icebergs! Shamrocks begone! In the gospel we have God the Trinity." 

-Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything