The perception of God as a Holy Trinity is among the prime ideas of Christianity. The majority of Christian denominations share this idea, so it can be safely said that “God as Trinity” is a central notion of the Christian faith.
This article, written by a theoretical physicist (PhD in quantum physics), suggests the idea that the nuclear particle called a “neutron” has a Tri-United nature and can be envisioned as a natural physical analogue of the Holy Trinity. In this way, a neutron should be given the status of a genuine “God Particle”, deriving this honor from the so-called “Higgs boson” that was recently proclaimed in public media as the “God Particle”.
To recall the facts from commonly known elementary physics, all matter is made of atoms, and atoms, in turn, are made of atomic nuclei and electronic clouds. Almost all the mass of an atom resides in its nucleus; the total mass of all electrons in an atom is less than 1/2000 of the mass of the nucleus. Likewise, the size of the nucleus is thousands of times smaller than the size of an atom. If we imagine a nucleus to be the size of a blueberry, the size of the atom will be a large cathedral. So, in essence, everything around us (including ourselves) is largely an empty space with rare atomic nuclei hanging in it.
Atomic nuclei, in turn, consist of protons and neutrons, and each chemical element from the Periodical Table has a fixed number of protons, but may have different number of neutrons (the so-called isotopes).
For most elements, the number of neutrons is larger than the number of protons. So about sixty percent of the weight of all matter is made of neutrons. Speaking metaphorically, we all are “walking bags of neutrons” whether we like it or not!
So, what are the physical connections of a neutron as a quantum particle to the idea of the Trinity as it is understood in Christian theology?
At first glance, to propose such an analogy may seem a far-fetched speculation, but let us look at the facts.
As a particle, a free neutron has a natural lifetime of about fifteen minutes (the average time of its radioactive decay), and it decays on THREE(!) particles, namely, protons, electrons and neutrinos.
Formally, the neutron decay reaction can be written as:
N – -> P + e + (Neutrino)
So, how does it become possible? Does this mean that these three particles – proton, electron and neutrino – “sit” inside the neutron, “waiting” to escape from it and to start their “independent” existence as “free particles”?
Yes and no. It depends on how to look at this, and what philosophical platform to adopt for the interpretation of the above decay reaction. Here (God forgive us!), I would like to suggest a theological interpretation based on a “Tri-united” nature of a neutron. Without any attempt at undue proselytizing, I believe that some readers may find these analogies both interesting and philosophically stimulating.
The idea of God as a Holy Trinity is among the prime ideas of Christianity. Here we are not going into extensive theological discussions on this matter, but I will mention a few analogies that are related to the nature of a neutron as a particle. An elementary particle, we can say, that also has a Tri-United nature.
Since early Christian theology was mostly written in the Greek language, we can refer to some terminology used by early Church Fathers. In their discussions of the Holy Trinity, one of the key terms they used was perichoresis, which can be translated as “permeation without confusion”. This is the idea that each of the persons of the Holy Trinity shares completely in the life of the other two. Theologians say that each person of the Holy Trinity “interpenetrates” the others, so that the distinctions between the persons are preserved, and the substance of God is not divided into three. In other words, perichoresis can be described as “the intimate and perfect inhabitation of one Person in the other,” meaning that the three Persons of the Trinity live in and relate to each other perfectly.
Many modern writers prefer to use the word “indwelling” to express the idea of perichoresis. They say that there is a mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity. The Latin equivalent of perichoresis is the term
circuminsessio. And the Russian (Slavonic) language and Liturgy practice expresses the idea of Trinity by saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are present in the Trinity nerazdelno-neslijanno (without separation and without merging).
Now, turning our attention to a neutron, we observe pretty much the same thing. The neutron (at least before it decays) has “inside” it, in a potential (virtual) way, three “components” – Proton (“the Father”), Electron (“the Son”) and Neutrino (“the Holy Spirit”). The first “person” (Proton – the Father) represents the Prime Source (the Ultimate Creator). The second “person” (Electron – the Son) acts as a Messenger conveying most of the information in the universe. (Is it not providential that in our “information age” most of the information is carried by electron-ics?!). And the third “person” (Neutrino – the Holy Spirit) is linked to radiation and energy. (It is known that millions of neutrinos generated by the sun come through our bodies every second!).
In other words, we can present a neutron as a “Physical Paradigm” (or an “Image”, or “Egregore”, or “Avatar”) of the Holy Trinity. It should be noted that we do not necessarily limit this analogy to just a traditional Christian Trinity. The “Trinities” of other religions and traditions can also be included in such hypothetical imagery. In particular, the Trinity of Hinduism (Brahma – Father, Vishnu – Son, and Shiva – Spirit or Cosmos) has a generic similarity with the Christian Trinity, an analogy that is discussed in numerous scholarly sources.
On that note, I am leaving these ideas for the contemplation (and perhaps for further development) by those readers who may be curious about the analogies.
These ideas in more technical details are discussed in my recent monograph:
Alexander Berezin, Isotopic Randomness and Self-Organization in Physics, Biology, Nanotechnology and Digital Informatics, Berlin: De Gruyter Verlag, 2018.