Three Minute Theology 1.1: Good God Talk

So, what can you do in three minutes?  Listen to your average pop song... take a commercial break...boil an egg... and now, do some theological reflection!  Allow me to invite you to check out my new project for 2015, a YouTube channel I started called "Thee Minute Theology."  It was inspired by a YouTube channel my kids really like called MinutePhysics.  The idea is to take a specific theological concept from the Christian Faith, and explain it in a creative video that is 3.5 minutes or less (I tried for three minutes even but couldn't quite cram it all it).  The goal is to do one video a week (I've already got the next 51 planned out, so stay tuned!).  Anyways, grab a coffee, take a breather, and turn your mind and your imagination towards God for a minute or three.  Today's topic: The Trinity.  (Thought I'd ease into it).

Enjoy.

When I was a kid, my Grandma would correct me if she heard me using bad grammar. For instance, if I told her something like, “My friend draws good.” She would say, “No, Dale, he doesn’t draw ‘good.’ He draws ‘well.’”

Grammar lays out the basic rules of a language, to ensure we’re speaking correctly; and if you grew up with a Grandma like mine, you’ll know that good grammar is essential to effective communication.

So: Christians believe that God is Trinitarian. The word “Trinity” mean “Three in One”; and to say that God is a Trinity means he is one single, undivided God, and yet, at the very same time, Three distinct Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This can cause a lot of confusion among non-Christians, who know as well as we do, that 1+1+1=3; so either the Christians worship three different gods or they just can’t do simple math. Even many Christians find the idea of the Trinity difficult to explain, so they don’t tend to emphasize it a lot.

This confusion comes, in part, because often we think about the Trinity as though it were sort of a “schematic” that describes what God’s inner workings look like. And because God is God and we’re not, any attempt to sketch out a “schematic” for God is bound to fail.

So: perhaps a better way to think about the Trinity is as a “Grammar for God Talk.” Just like “English Grammar” lays out the guidelines for using the English language correctly, the “Trinity” lays out the guidelines for speaking correctly about God.

You see: the very first Christians were all 1st Century Jews, and they took the teaching of the Torah very seriously when it says that “The Lord your God is One God and you shall love Him with all your heart.”

There’s only One God; that’s the most basic rule of God-grammar.

But at the same time, they had encountered the man Jesus Christ, a 1st Century Jew who taught them to pray to God as if they were talking to a loving Father. And then they saw him crucified and rise again the third day. And here’s the thing: their encounter with the living Jesus was *so profound* that they began to worship him as God.

So: Jesus is God. That’s another rule of God-grammar.

But then, if someone were to ask them: “Are you saying that Jesus is the same as God the Father?” They would have had to say, “No.” Jesus is fully God, otherwise we couldn’t worship him; but at the same time, he spoke to God as his Heavenly Father, and taught us to do the same.

So Jesus is not God the Father. To say that would be bad grammar.

Of course, 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection, the Holy Spirit came, and filled those first Christians up to over-flowing with his love; and the experience they had of the Holy Spirit was just like the experience they had of Jesus , so they started talking about the Holy Spirit in the same way as they did Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is God. Good God-grammar.

But: the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us, and reminds us of his teaching. So he’s not the Son or the Father; to say that would be bad grammar.

The Trinity, then, lays out the guidelines for speaking correctly about God.

There is only one God. The Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God. The Son is not the Father and the Holy Spirit is not the Son. All those statements are good grammar.

But if we say that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all just different “appearances” the same single God, or if we talk about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as though they were three different gods, or one was not god, in each of those cases, we’re using bad grammar.

But: if we say something like: “The grace of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit be with you all.” In that case, we’re speaking good. About God.