Shema and Trinity, part 2

I’m still thinking about the email I got a couple of weeks ago that mentioned a 14-year-old Jewish girl who is “interested in Yeshua as Messiah but has questions about the Trinity and the Shema balancing out.” As I noted in my earlier blog on this topic, you don’t exactly have to make the Trinity and the Shema balance out because they’re different kinds of statements. The Trinity seeks to describe the nature of God, whereas the Shema tells us who God is and how we are to relate to him. Still, the question remains, how can we say that God is one and believe in a Messiah who is God with us, or Immanuel?

Let’s stay in the neighborhood of the Shema itself, namely the Torah, while we consider this question.

Shema and Trinity

While I’m deep in my studies about the Shema, I receive this email from a colleague:

I have a question that relates to one of my children’s friends at school, who has a Jewish mother and a Christian father…  She is interested in Yeshua as Messiah but has questions about the Trinity and the Shema balancing out. I am trying to help my 14-year-old son to have these conversations with her.

Now I know how our sages Shammai and Hillel must have felt when a Gentile came to each one of them and said, “Teach me the whole Torah while standing on one foot.” Except it would have been a 14-year-old asking the question—and I’m not quite as smart as Hillel and Shammai.

But, let’s give it a shot.