The haunting begins whenever someone says, “The Trinity is like…” and ends only after someone explains why the analogy points to an ancient heresy.
A growing number of Christians have reportedly begun experiencing supernatural encounters after attempting to explain the Trinity with analogies involving water, apples, shamrocks, or household appliances.
The apparitions consistently feature two Irish peasants bearing a striking resemblance to Donall and Conall of Lutheran Satire fame. They do not attack anyone. They do not issue curses. They merely appear at the precise moment a speaker says, “The Trinity is kind of like…” and remain present until the speaker has acknowledged the relevant Christological error.
The first incident occurred when a youth pastor compared the Trinity to water existing as ice, liquid, and vapor. The lights reportedly flickered, the church television filled with static, and the pastor saw two figures standing behind him in the dark reflection of the sanctuary window.
“Modalism,” one said.
“God is not one Person wearing three seasonal outfits,” said the other.
When the pastor turned around, the men had vanished. Their voices, however, were later heard through the static of his car radio, explaining that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not merely three successive appearances of one divine Person. The pastor reportedly drove home in silence and removed “fun Trinity illustration” from his sermon notes.
A second haunting involved a three-leaf shamrock. As the speaker explained that the three leaves represented the Father, Son, and Spirit, Donall and Conall allegedly appeared in the reflection of a dimly lit bathroom mirror. One pointed at the shamrock. The other pointed at the speaker.
“Partialism,” they said together.
The men then reportedly vanished when the light came on, leaving behind only a faint smell of peat smoke and the uncomfortable realization that each Person of the Trinity is not merely one-third of God.
The apparitions have since appeared in increasingly conventional haunting locations: at the end of dark hallways, behind shower curtains, in the black screen of a powered-off laptop, and briefly in the rearview mirror of a car traveling to a theology conference. Their voices have been heard beneath the static of AM radio, inside voicemail recordings, and once through a microwave that had been unplugged for three years.
Their message remains consistent. The sun analogy has allegedly been classified as Arianism when the Son and Spirit are treated like mere products or emanations of the Father. The man-who-is-a-father, husband, and employee analogy has been condemned as modalism. The three-part apple analogy has been labeled partialism. A pastor who compared the Trinity to three actors sharing one costume was reportedly told to “stop trying to make the eternal Godhead sound like community theater.”
Church leaders say the men are not opposed to illustrations in general. They are opposed to illustrations that make the Trinity easier to understand by making it something else. “The issue is not that every analogy is equally bad,” one theologian said. “The issue is that most analogies explain the Trinity by accidentally denying either the unity of God, the distinction of the Persons, or the full deity of each Person.”
At press time, several pastors had reportedly adopted a new policy: whenever someone begins, “The Trinity is like…,” the congregation must first check the mirrors, turn off the radio, and prepare for Donall and Conall to appear somewhere nearby with the exhausted expression of men who have just heard the water analogy for the forty-seventh time.
The two peasants’ preferred corrective remains the historic confession that Christians worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, without confusing the Persons or dividing the substance. They reportedly consider this formulation less catchy than a shamrock, but significantly less likely to summon them through a bathroom mirror.
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