Learning to Speak Christian

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Because the true God is triune, a colloquy unto himself, Christianity is primarily a linguistic endeavor. Jesus is the Word which words the world and Christianity is the attempt to learn how rightly to reply. Theology, then, is the discipline which attempts to equip believers to speak Christian.

The theologian Eugene Rogers was one of my first teachers. He has published the distillation of his undergraduate theology course as Elements of Christian Thought: A Basic Course in Christianese. He begins the book with a simple T/F, multiple choice test, the questions of which touch upon the matters Christians talk about when we talk about the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Try it for yourself:

True or False

If the human being had not sinned, Jesus would not have come.

Jesus could have come as a woman.

God should have become incarnate at the beginning.

The God of the Christians intends other religions.

O happy fault, that merited so great a Redeemer!

The ability not to sin is freer than the ability to sin.

God has died.

Multiple Choice

1. How does God’s freedom relate to ours?

a. The freer God is, the less free I am.

b. The freer God is, the freer I am.

2. The word of God is

a. the sermon

b. Jesus

c. the Bible.

3. Jesus saves because

a. he pays the debt for sin

b. he teaches humans how to love

c. he defeats death

d. he tricks the devil at his own game

e. the Spirit gathers others around his body

f. he releases the prisoners of hell

4. The “debt for sin” is owed to

a. the devil

b. God the Father

c. your neighbor

5. Salvation is

a. freedom from sin

b. joining the Trinity

c. perfect community

d. resurrection of the body

6. Does God have a body?

a. No, silly, God doesn’t have a body

b. God has a body in Jesus

c. God has a body in the church

d. God has a body in the bread

Obviously, you can infer from the above that every question in Christian discourse can yield multiple orthodox answers, given the fact that scripture is a thick text and the Trinity is a lively conversation.

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