Trinity

wkk5159

Another Quranic misapprehension of the Trinity is illustrated in 5:72, "They do blaspheme who say: 'Allah is Christ the son of Mary.'"  This statement is not an accurate representation of Trinitarianism, but instead suggests a form of modalism.  A Christian would be true in saying that "Christ is God", but would not be correct in saying that "God is Christ".  Let us take the typical Christian affirmation, "Christ is God".  This is understood in the sense that Christ is one of the three persons of the Godhead, sharing the same essence and being as the Father and the Spirit, but a separate manifestation of God, distinct in person from the Father or the Spirit.  Hence, when a Trinitarian says that "Christ is God", he or she is saying that Christ shares full portion in the Godhead.  But, if the statement is inverted to read as the Qur'an says it, "God is Christ", this becomes then a statement that, if taken in the same logical sense as previously seen, would suggest that God was a member of a "Christhead".  It takes the fundamental, underlying essence of the Godhead, and tries to say that it is characteristic of only one of the persons of the Godhead, or that God was ONLY manifested as Christ.  This is a form of modalism, which was an early heresy that taught that the fulness of the Godhead was manifested in each member of the Godhead, but only one at a time.  Various types of modalism taught, in forms and fashions, that God manifested Himself as either the Father, or as the Son, or as the Spirit, but not all three simultaneously.  Sometimes this was taught as a sequential progression of manifestation (first Father in the OT, the Son in the Gospels, then Spirit in the rest of the NT), or it was taught as a virtual form of unitarianism, with one Person emphasised to the near-exclusion of the other two (not dissimilar from the Jesus-only Pentecostal groups found today).  Needless to say, this is not orthodox Christian doctrine, and certainly runs afoul of the Scripture in Matthew 3:16-17, where all three Persons of the Godhead are depicted simultaneously and independently,

"And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:  And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

The third Quranic error in understanding what the Trinity even is can be noted in both 4:171 and 5:73, where we see the statements,"They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah."
"Say not "Trinity" : desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah:"

Both of these statement suggest the attribution by the Qur'an of tritheism to the Christian belief in the Trinity.  This would be the belief that Christians worship three separate, independent Gods.

wkk5159

Muslim theology revolves around the belief in tawhid, a term meaning "unity" or "oneness", derived from the Arabic root whd.  Though Muslims often seem to emphasise the sense of "unity" (especially the more mystical sects like the Sufis), typical usage by Muslims, most notably seen in the shahada (la ilaha il Allah), "there is no god but Allah, suggests that the aspect of "oneness" may be more in mind, particularly the idea of Allah alone being god, without any others.  As such, the central Muslim creed is a statement of monotheism against polytheism, very much in keeping with the cultural milieu out of which Islam developed over the first "Islamic" century.  The antithetical concept then is shirk, associationism, whereby other gods are worshipped along side of Allah, most obvious in a polytheistic system such as what Islam developed out of.

wkk5159

Coming back to Muslim misconceptions about the Trinity, we see that the error the Qur'an commits in the ayat above is in its assumption that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three separate Gods.  However, that this is not the view held by Christians is implicit in the very term Trinity.  The term essentially means "one in three", and denotes the concept that there are three Persons who share a common essence and charactre.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three separate BEINGS who have differing fundamental essences.  The Father, Son, and Spirit are not three independent Gods each with their own wills, natures, etc.  They are all three manifestations of the One God, Persons in the sense that the manifestations have independent *functions* (more will be said on this below), but yet all three are completely INTERdependent in that they have the same essential charactre of Godhead.

Indeed, Christians are not inconsistent when they believe in the Trinity while yet affirming that there is only ONE God.  The Muslim concept of tawhid is thought to have stemmed from the earlier Jewish concept of God's oneness, as exemplified in the Sh'ma, Deuteronomy 6:4.  Though the Sh'ma is often thought to argue for a unitarian god, hence a god like the Muslim's Allah, this is not actually so, as I have demonstrated before here.  To say that God is ONE from the Sh'ma does NOT logically have to mean that God is unitarian, not a Trinity.  The statement that God is one may simply mean that God is united, in the sense that the ehad found in the Sh'ma indicates, which itself is an implicit, if indirect, argument for uniplurality in the Godhead (i.e. a Trinity, to follow the rest of Scripture).  Because the Trinity is understood by Bible Christians to be three distinct manifestations OF the ONE God, a statement that God is One does not contradict what Christians believe about God.  Some of the particulars in explaining the nature of the Trinity will be presented in greater detail below.

The essential crux of the matter at hand, however, is that the Quranic statement, "They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah", assumes a teaching of tritheism on the part of Christians in that Allah (for argument's sake, the Father) is taught to be the only God, and the Trinity is said to be thus adding two other separate beings to the Father, making three gods.  However, since the Son and the Spirit are understood to be indistinct from the Father as far as fundamental essence and existence are concerned, this Quranic critique of Christian doctrine does not properly address what Christians actually believe.

wkk5159

Many Muslims, when presented with the above, will simply choose to ignore it and continue on in the belief that Christians worship three gods, and what's more, that we know that we worship three gods.  This path is often chosen, despite the fact that it does not accurately reflect true Christian belief, because to admit that the Qur'an is incorrect about what Christians believe is psychologically unacceptable to Muslims.  However, Muslims need to understand that what their primary religious text teaches about the Christian Trinity does not represent what Christians ACTUALLY believe, and hence, the typical Muslim arguments against the Trinity, which approach it as a matter of associationism of other gods with the True God, do not carry any weight with knowledgeable Christians.  Christians, likewise, need to understand where the Muslim gets his perceived knowledge of the Trinity, so as to know rightly how to address him for correcting his misunderstandings.

sam1528

wkk5159 replied at 31-5-2015 12:00 PM
The term essentially means "one in three", and denotes the concept that there are three Persons who share a common essence and charactre.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three separate BEINGS who have differing fundamental essences.  The Father, Son, and Spirit are not three independent Gods each with their own wills, natures, etc.  They are all three manifestations of the One God, Persons in the sense that the manifestations have independent *functions* (more will be said on this below), but yet all three are completely INTERdependent in that they have the same essential charactre of Godhead.

I just don't understand it. Why are you trying your best not to answer a simple question. I repeat the question :

Why are you not concerned that your belief in the Trinity has no basis in the bible and also of you appealing to a fraudulent verse of 1 John 5:7 in your argument for the Trinity?

What is the difference between between persons and beings in context of the Trinity? One person is different from another and 3 persons cannot make up to be just one being.

If each person is God per your claim then all 3 persons must logically be the same individual. This would contradict the 3 distinct persons.

If each person is divine in a sense of sharing the same divine nature then it would imply 3 individuals. This is tritheism

There is no logic in the Trinity