Shema and Trinity, part 3

Here’s a final post—at least for now—on the question, “How can we say that God is one, as in the Shema, and believe in a Messiah who is God with us, or Immanuel?” Or to put it more abstractly, how can we affirm both the Shema and the doctrine of the Trinity? This question came to me indirectly from a 14-year-old Jewish girl who was interested in Yeshua as Messiah, but not sure that was OK.

The idea that the Christians worship three gods—which the Trinity definitely does not teach—does seem to be a big impediment for Jewish people who might otherwise be interested in Yeshua, especially when they realize they can believe in him and still be Jewish. But does believing him mean believing that he’s God? That’s a big problem.

Before we go any further, I should note that the New Testament doesn’t actually say in so many words “Jesus is God.” There are a couple of passages that almost say that, depending on the translation, but much more often what happens is that attributes that belong only to God are ascribed to Yeshua the Messiah. Indeed, in Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, the multitude of the redeemed “from all tribes and peoples and languages” worship God and the Lamb, or Messiah, “who is at the center of the throne” (Rev. 7:9–17). I could give lots more examples, but the point is not that a man became God, but that God become a man in order to be the Lamb of redemption, whose sacrifice redeems human beings for God and cleanses them from sin.

I won’t try to explain how this can be; the doctrine of the Trinity seeks to do that (and the interpretation of the Shema in Maimonides’ second affirmation of Jewish faith seeks to prove that it’s impossible). But Revelation is still talking about the one and only God of Israel, and we see something similar in the Torah itself.

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.

Positively bound up

The terms bound up, bondage, and binding usually have a pretty negative connotation. People normally think of the devil as the one who binds people up—at least those folks who believe there is a devil. But now that I’m focusing on the Shema more intently, I’m obeying one of its instructions, which says to bind Hashem’s words as a sign on your hand (Dt. 6:8). You could translate that as “tie them as a sign,” which sounds a little milder than “bind,” but the meaning is about the same. And “binding” certainly describes the experience. The hand-tefillin is placed on the biceps, and then its leather strap is wrapped seven times around the forearm, from the elbow down to the hand itself. My understanding is that you’re to wrap this tightly enough for it to make an impression in your flesh.

In The Year of Living Biblically, AJ Jacobs describes his experience with wrapping tefillin (both binding and wrapping are used to describe the ritual). It’s part of what the book’s subtitle calls his “humble quest to follow the Bible as literally as possible”:

Positively concrete

These days I’m refocusing on the Shema as the first and greatest commandment (Mark 12:28ff) and as foundational to my work in mussar. A few weeks ago one particular of the Shema got in my face: “You shall bind these words as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes” (Deut. 6:8). Jewish tradition provides a literal way to fulfill this commandment through tefillin, small leather boxes containing the words of the Shema, attached to leather straps that can be bound to the arm and forehead.

I’ve prayed with tefillin in the past, but never regularly, so that’s my assignment now. When I told my wife, Jane (who is always supportive of my Jewish practices) about my new assignment, she said, “But aren’t those words meant figuratively?” It’s a good question, based on Scripture itself. Back in Exodus 13, when Moses gives the law of redemption of the first-born, he says, “It shall be as a sign on your hand and as frontlets between your eyes . . .” clearly a figure of speech here, as the same terminology is in Proverbs 3:3, 6:31, and 7:3. I remember reading somewhere that Rabbenu Tam, grandson of Rashi, who wrote the definitive tract on binding tefillin, also believed that the language was metaphorical, but applied it literally anyway. The language might be figurative, but if there’s a way to fulfill it literally, all the better!

That’s the particular genius of Jewish tradition—it doesn’t overdo the contrast between inner and outer, but seeks to express the inner through the outer. It lays out a spiritual pathway with concrete steps.

Ears to Hear

In my mussar work for the coming year, I’m going to focus on the Shema. (Mussar is a Jewish spiritual path that emphasizes ethical transformation. Check out rivertonmussar.org.)

The first ethical or character trait that we’re working on is humility, so I’m thinking about how humility relates to the Shema, and I decide that Listen – the very first word – is the link. Listening takes humility because it’s not about me and it requires that I set aside my stuff and pay attention to someone else.

This is in the back of my mind as I’m finishing up The Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs, a secular, mostly assimilated Jew, who sets out to “follow the Bible as literally as possible” for one year.