The Trinity and Islamic Objections

The Trinity is a foundational doctrine of the Bible. The Tawhid is a foundational doctrine of the Quran. This sermon compares the two concepts of God and addresses objections that Muslims raise against the doctrine of the Trinity. 

https://www.anushjohn.com/post/the-trinity-and-islamic-objections

anushjohn.com

Transcript

unknown 0:00

Alright.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Alright, thank you, Mark, for the introduction. Today we're going to talk about the Trinity versus Islamic objections. I've divided this session into four parts. In the first part, we will look at the Christian God, the Trinity. Then we will look at the Muslim God, the Tawhid. Then we will look at Muslim objections to the Trinity. I've got five objections that Muslims often give to the Trinity. And the fourth part is the main part how can I teach the Trinity to the Muslims? Alright, so first let's look at the Christian God. The doctrine of the Trinity is unlike any other monotheistic doctrine. And there are five main statements that we see in the doctrine of the Trinity. Five main statements. One is that there is only one God, two is that the Father is God, three is that Jesus is God. And so Jesus is fully God and fully man, and the confession Jesus is God is central to the Christian faith. And then the fourth statement is the Holy Spirit is God. And the fifth is that these three are distinct persons. And this is what makes it the Trinity. If it were not for that fifth statement, it could be polytheism. Okay. Now, what verses can you say from the New Testament that shows the Trinity? So that's the verse I have, yep. And then another verse would be the benediction at the end of 2 Corinthians. I think it's 13, verse 14, that says, Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. It's in one verse. All three. Other verses are in Philippians chapter 2, verse 10, it talks about Jesus. At the name of Jesus, every knee should bow. And this is actually a quote from Isaiah 43, 45, 23, which says to me, every knee will bow, except that the Yahweh in Isaiah 45 is substituted with Jesus in the New Testament. And so in John chapter 14 and through 16, it talks about the Father sending the Son, and the Spirit proceeds and teaches about Jesus and glorifies Jesus. In 1 John 4, it talks about the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. So there are plenty of verses in the New Testament that talk about the Trinity. Now, what illustrations have you used to discuss about or to explain the Trinity? So let me tell you four illustrations that I use, and these four illustrations are in two categories. Okay? And they're very simple, very like one-sentence illustrations. One is H2O is steam, H2O is water, H2O is ice, and it's all the essence is the same, but the three forms are different. Another illustration is the sun radiates as UV radiation, has heat, and it has light. A third illustration is if I put three fingers in a bowl of water, and there's a fish in the bowl, the fish can see the three fingers, but let's say in this illustration, the fish doesn't look up and it does not see the hand that's connected to the three fingers. So as far as a fish is concerned, there are three different entities, but the reality is that there is actually it's from one hand. A fourth illustration that I give is let's say that I drew on a piece of paper, I drew a square. A person in a two-dimensional world on the piece of paper sees four lines. But now let's say I put a cube on top of that paper. The person in the two-dimensional world still sees only four lines. And the reason why is he doesn't have that third dimension to see the part that's sticking up out of the paper. Now, these four illustrations are in two categories, and the first two illustrations tries to explain what the Trinity is. The second two illustrations, they don't try to explain what the Trinity is, but they try to explain why we cannot understand the Trinity, why we will never fully understand the Trinity. And that is part of what the Trinity is. One of the games I watch is called American Football. And I've watched it for the last 23 years or so. Unfortunately, my team lost in the Super Bowl two days ago, and I'm sure all of you are upset about it. And one of the things about this game is that about two weeks ago, I was watching the, not two, but three weeks ago, I was watching the game, and there was a foul that was called. And I've watched the game now for about 22 years. I didn't know what the foul was about. I had to wait for the expert, the NFL expert, to explain what the foul was about. And there are nuances of the game that I still don't know about. On a much bigger level, on an infinite level, there will be concepts of the Trinity, concepts of God that we will never fully understand, and we can never put it together in a few illustrations, even if we had all the illustrations in the world, even if we had all the knowledge in the world. So the Christian concept of the Trinity is an ununderstandable one. I mean, it's we will never fully understand it. Now let's look at the uh the Muslim concept of God called the Taheed. And Taheed is the core Islamic belief that Allah is absolutely one and unique, without partners, equals, or any shared divinity. Okay, and I want to tell you three things about the Muslim God Allah. And one is that he is unapproachable. Allah is unapproachable, he intentionally keeps himself removed from humans, he remains behind a veil, so to speak, and he speaks to humans only through angels. So in the Quran 42, verse 51, it says, It is not for any human being that Allah should speak to him except by revelation or from behind a partition, or that he sends a messenger to reveal by his permission what he will. So, first, Allah is unapproachable. And as I go through these three different things about Allah, we'll see how it significantly contrasts with the Christian God. Second, Allah is not seeking a relationship with humans. Humans cannot know him intimately. Humans cannot know him intimately. Now you've heard that Allah has 99 names, right? That's part of the doctrine of Islam that Allah has 99 names. But of the 99 names, there is no name that Allah has that shows that he wants to have a relationship with humans. There are two names of Allah that are close. One is called Al-Wali, which means a patron. But this is not about Allah wanting to have a relationship. This is Allah, the patron, as a protector of people. So it's not about a relationship. A second name that comes close to having a relationship of the 99 names is called Al-Wadud, Al-Wadud, which means loving. And this name for Allah is used twice in the Quran. But it is not that he is trying to establish a relationship, it is just used as an expression of Allah, like Allah the affectionate. It's a name of Allah, not about being in a relationship. It's not talking about his nature, it's just an expression like Allah the affectionate. So Allah is not seeking a relationship with humans. A third um characteristic of Allah is that he prefers only a creature-creator relationship, not a parent-child relationship. He specifically does not want a father-child relationship with people. So in 112 verse 3, it says, He has never had offspring, nor was he born. So Allah is not a father. In 5 verse 18, it says, When the Jews and the Christians each say, We are the children of Allah and His most beloved, say, O prophet, why then does He punish you for your sins? No, you are only humans like others of His own making. So Allah specifically rebukes the idea of Allah's spiritual fatherhood. In chapter 50, verse 16, it says, Indeed, it is we who created mankind and fully know what their souls whisper to them, and we are closer to them than the jugular vein. The jugal vein part is very interesting if you study about the death of Muhammad. But this verse says that we that Allah is close to us. And you think, man, Allah is fantastic, He's close to us, He's having a personal relationship with us. But if you look at the context of this verse in 50, verse 16, it's not a closeness for a relationship, but it is a closeness for judgment. It's essentially saying that Allah knows your thoughts so well that he's going to throw doubters into hell. So the Muslim God Allah is not seeking a close parent-child relationship with his creatures, even as a creator. And this is in stark difference to the Christian God, who is a loving relational God. In fact, for the Christian God, love is the basis of any relationship. The main two commands that Jesus spoke about is love the Lord God and love yourself and love your neighbor. Love for self we already have, but love your neighbor. So love is the basis of the Christian faith, and love is not the basis of our relationship with Allah. Now, what are some problems with the Tawheed? Let me point to three problems with the concept of the Tawhid. The first one is the Tawheed and the attributes. Now, the basic teaching of Tawheed is that God is absolutely one. Allah is absolutely one, which means that He was alone before creation in eternity. And so until creation, he had nothing to relate to. And this is a theological problem since Allah is taught in Islam to be a relational being. Not that he wants a relationship, but that he is a relational being in that he relates. And that is the kind of being he is. But how can he be a relational being if he has nothing to relate to? Isn't it? Allah is our Rahman and our Rahim, which is the gracious and the merciful. So it means that Allah is gracious and merciful to someone. But if that someone didn't exist before He created them, how were his attributes of grace and mercy, how was it effective? So the potential exists, but it's not practical unless there is someone to relate to. So because of the monadic Tawheed concept, and due to its simplicity, the attributes of Allah are dependent on His creation. And this is opposite to the Trinity, because the Trinity allows God to be relational within the Trinitarian Godhead without the necessity of creation. Alright, so second, let's look at the Tawheed and the Quran. The Tawheed and the Quran. Alright, so Allah is absolutely one. And the Islamic theologians, not me, the Islamic theologians of the 6th to the 9th century, they said that the absolute unity of Allah means that he cannot have attributes. The absolute unity of Allah means that he cannot have attributes, because attributes are something that he has rather than what he is. And so what the Islamic theologians said is that Allah is eternal, but the attributes are not. And if the attributes are not, then his word is not eternal. Because the Quran is an attribute of speech. And so the first position is that the Quran is not eternal but created. Now, this was a position that was held by the Shia rationalists who argued that the Quran was created. And the two arguments that they gave in favor of the fact that the Quran was created is they asked the question: how could an eternal text talk about historical details? Because it wasn't a prophecy, it was just mentioning historical details as if it happened, as if it was being narrated. How could an eternal text narrate historical details? And as you know, um, an example of a historical detail would be the battle at Badr, where Muhammad essentially established power, which is written in the Quran chapters 3 and 8. So, how did the battle of Badr have a description in an eternal Quran? And so the Shia rationalists said it's not eternal, the Quran is created. A second reason that they gave to show that the Quran is created is in 43 verse 3, it says, Certainly we have made it a Quran in Arabic, so perhaps you will understand. So the Quran itself claims to be made. So, well, it's not uh eternal, it is created. So at that time, anyone who believed that the Quran was eternal was questioning the Tawheed, which says that only Allah is eternal and He is one. So if you said that the Quran was eternal, you were essentially saying there's something else eternal in addition to Allah. And so anybody who said this, that the Quran was eternal, they were killed in what is called as the Mina Inquisition. So let me just give you a quick background of the history. I'm not gonna go too much into it, and you probably already know about it. So soon after Muhammad was the age of the companions of Muhammad, and then came the Umayyad Caliphate, which lasted for about 90 years. Then through revolt and war, as you know, you know, war uh goes with each of these caliphates. Uh, through revolt and war, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Abbasid Muslims came to power. So first was Muhammad and the age of uh the companions of those four, those who were guided, and then was the Umayyad, and then was the Abbasid Muslims that ruled for 750 years. Now, the seventh Abbasid Caliph, he imposed what is called as a Mina Inquisition. And he wasn't a Shiite, but he started to embrace Shia principles. He aligned himself with the Shia rationalism that said that the Quran could not be eternal. And so, over a period of 15 years and three caliphs, people who believed that the Quran was eternal, they were seen to be questioning the Tawhid, and so they were killed. They were questioned, they were flogged, they were interrogated, and they were killed. In fact, one of the caliphs, it's not the seventh one, maybe the eighth or the ninth um Abbasid Caliph. He executed somebody right in front of him. He went and executed somebody and sent his body to Baghdad to, as an example, to say, don't say that the Quran is eternal because it questions the tuhid. Finally, it was the 10th Abbasid Caliph who abolished this Mina Inquisition. And how did he abolish it? He just forbade any arguments about the Quran. And so he wasn't really concerned about the theology. He said, Let's not talk about it, and if we don't talk about it, then uh then let's get rid of this problem whether the Quran is created or eternal. So the uh the first view is that the Quran is created, the second view is that the Quran is eternal. Now, today this seems to be the thinking that the Quran is eternal despite the problem it causes for the Tahi. Now, during this whole time, this is between the 7th and the 9th century, there was another man by the name of Al-Ashari in the 9th century who facilitated this uh thought that the Quran is eternal. Now, how can the Quran be eternal without challenging the absolute unity of the Tawheed? And his response to this problem is what is called as billa keif, and that means without how. So if you ask, how can the Quran be eternal when Allah is eternal and there'll be a problem with two eternal simultaneous beings? And the answer to the question is billa keif. Without how, without knowing how. We don't know how. In other words, there is no rational resolution, it's just that the Quran is eternal, and this somehow does not contradict the Tawhid. So this position is the standard view right now. The interesting thing is there is not one verse in the Quran that says that it is eternal. There is a verse that says that it is made, but there's no verse in the Quran that says that it is eternal. So anyone now who says that the Quran is created faces persecution. There's multiple examples in 1995. There was this highly respected Egyptian scholar by the name of Nasser Abu Zayd, who was declared an apostate because he implied that the Quran need not be eternal. So he was raising questions. So anybody who says that the Quran is created now will have issues. Let me just give you a third view. A third view of the Quran and the Tawhidus, what is called as a unity of being. This is a Sufi thought. As you know, Sufism is a mystical part of Islam. Um, it can be both Sunni. Uh Sufis can be both Sunni or Shia, and they believe that the entire universe is God. So there's accusations of pantheism, um, but they believe that their knowledge of Allah is the most intimate. So there are multiple views of the Tawheed, and this was not clear-cut from the beginning. So, to the question, is the Quran eternal? If you say yes, then it creates a problem for the Tawheed because there should be no division within Allah. And then how do you explain the historical reference when it's not a prophecy of the Battle of Badr, for example, and about the verse that the Quran is made? If you say no, then the issue is that the Quran is dependent on Allah. And if it is dependent on Allah, then if Allah creates It, then he can supersede it in the future if he wants. So, but now, like we all say, you know, how do you how do they explain this without uh without rationalism? You can just say, Billa Kaif, this is how it's supposed to be, let's not ask questions about it. And if you ask questions about it, then you are going against your belief, or whatever the case may be. A third problem with the tohi is is there a trinitarian concept in the Quran? So we know about the eternal Allah, we know about the eternal word. Okay, the Quran is eternal according to the Sunni thinking. So we have an eternal Allah, we have an eternal word, and is there an eternal spirit? Because if there, if that's the case, then there would be a Trinitarian concept in the Quran. In Mariam chapter 19, verses 17 through 19, this is what it says. So she took a veil to screen herself from them. Then we sent to her our spirit, and there appeared to her a well-made man. She said, Surely I fly for refuge from you to the beneficent God, if you are one guarding against evil. He said, I'm only a messenger of your Lord, that I will give you a pure boy. Now, what's going on here is that this is talking about the virgin birth of Jesus. And in the virgin birth of Jesus, see what it says. It says, We sent her our spirit. And you can say, Well, me, it says the spirit, and it can be Allah who's coming as a spirit. But then you read the second half of the verse, and it says, I am only a messenger for your Lord. So this is not Allah, this is another person other than Allah, who's a messenger of Allah, who's coming now to give the virgin birth of Jesus to Mary. And so here you see what seems to be a spirit that is uh not Allah and not the Quran, and seems to be a third person. If that's the case, if Allah is uncreated and there seems to be an uncreated word and an uncreated spirit with Allah, then the Islamic Tawheed faces the conceptual problem similar to what the Muslims accuse the Trinity of. Whereas the Bible openly affirms one God with an eternal word, as in John 1.1 in the beginning was a word. We we claim the eternal word, we claim the eternal God, the eternal word, and the eternal spirit. And that's okay, that is acceptable in the biblical concept, but the same three things seem to appear in the Quran, and it is not okay because of the concept of the Tawheed. Alright, so now let's look at Muslim objections to the Trinity. So let's look at five objections that Muslims have to the Trinity. And the obvious first one is polytheism. Is polytheism. Let's just read a few verses in uh four verses 171. It says, O people of the book, do not go to extremes regarding your faith. Say nothing about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, Son of Mary, was no more than a messenger of Allah and the fulfillment of his word through Mary and the Spirit created by a command from him. So believe in Allah and His Messengers. It do not say Trinity, stop for your own good. Allah is only one, glory be to him. He's far above having a son. So in this verse, it denies the deity of Jesus and the Trinity, so it seems. Those who disbelieve among them will be afflicted with a painful punishment. And 5 1 16 in the same chapter, and on judgment day, Allah will say, Oh Jesus, Son of Mary, did you ever ask the people to worship you and your mother as gods besides Allah? And uh here the Quran sees the Trinity as three gods, and who are the three gods? Allah is one God, Jesus is the other God, and the Quran thinks that Mary is the third God. So any attribution of divine sonship or plurality is viewed as a shark and is therefore gravely condemned. So since uh you know the Trinity is seen as polytheism and a corruption of pure monotheism. So what response will you give? So somebody says this, what response will you give? This Naside. So when I grew up in a Hindu Muslim context, I had Muslim friends say some stuff. Um and you know, and they say the Bible is corrupted, for example. I had nothing to say because I didn't learn about it, and when I thought about it, when you read the Bible, you will learn about the Bible, but you also learn about Gnostic thoughts, right? Because some parts of the Bible they counter Gnostic theology. When you read the Quran, you learn the Quran. Let's say a young Muslim is reading the Quran, you learn about the Quran, but you also learn about some biblical concepts and how to counter some biblical concepts, because the Quran is essentially written as a reaction to the Christians, among other things. So the average Muslim knows more to counter Christians than the average Christian knows to counter Muslims. And so that is why we need to learn extra to counter, because the Quran mentions about the Bible and stuff in the Bible, which the Bible does not mention about stuff in the Quran, obviously, because it is written 600 years later. But the response to this is like we said, the Trinity is one God, not three gods. The distinctions are of person, not essence. If it's one God which equals one person, that is Islam. If many gods equal many persons, that's polytheism, that is Hinduism. If it's one God that equals three persons, that is Christianity. Now the interesting thing is that the Quran is actually rejecting polytheism, it's not rejecting the Trinity. So throughout the Quran, when Allah says that there is only one God, it is always as a rejection of polytheism. The Quran actually never rejects the possibility of one God in three persons, it rejects three gods, and sure, so do we. We reject three gods. We agree with them that we reject three gods, but the Quran never rejects the possibility of one God in three persons. So this may be an interesting question to bring up. So if they say you worship three gods, we're like, no, we don't worship three gods. The difference is not in essence, the distinction is in person. So the Quran rejects polytheism, so does the Bible. Which brings us to our second objection. Isn't this a self-contradiction? And the response is uh no, it is not a self-contradiction because there is a difference between being and person. What is the difference between a being and a person? What is the difference between a being and a person? Because essentially that's what it is. If we said there are three beings, yes, that's polytheism. And we reject that, just like the Quran does. But we believe there is one being and three persons. So then we need to know what is the difference between a being and a person. A being is what we are, a person is who we are. A being is what we are, a person is who we are. What are we? We are humans, right? That's why we are called human beings. What kind of being are we? We are a human being. But who are we? Who am I? What am I? I'm a human being, but who am I? I am Anush. That's the person I am. The what is I'm a human being, the who is I am a anush, I am Anush the person, and so a human being has only one person. And there are medical conditions out there where they can have multiple personalities. There's a difference. There's only one being, but multiple personalities in this one being, but that is a pathological state. That's not normal. So that pathological state has one being and multiple personalities, multiple persons. Uh, but the normal is one being equals one person, and that is how the human being is. But God is one being and three persons, he is one Yahweh in three persons: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. He can exist like that because he is God. Who are we to say that God cannot exist like that? And so the third objection is this does not make logical sense. Of course, it doesn't make logical sense because we will never understand the concept of God. If God is truly infinite and we are finite, we will never fully understand. We can only come up. Um, you know, the church struggled to come up with finite words to describe God, who is this infinite being. Uh, you know, in in mathematics we believe in infinity. Anything divided by zero is infinite, isn't it? But our minds cannot grasp the concept of infinity. And one of the philosophical arguments that we studied when we were studying about the eternity of the cosmos and the universe and so on is to imagine the highest number you can think. Imagine the highest number you can think. And you can add one more number to it. And you can add one more number to it. Somehow, our minds cannot cross over from finiteness to infinity. It just cannot cross over. Think about the highest number ever that you can ever come up with. You can still add one more to it. And so that crossover from finite to infinite can never happen. And therefore, for us to even try to even grasp a basic concept of God is difficult. And that's why you know each illustration helps to understand it better. The persona on stage, one person who's doing three roles, one human being doing three different roles helps to add to the illustration of our understanding, but we will never fully understand it. But the issue is that even though we will never fully understand, we cannot reject something about infinity just because it doesn't make logical sense. In fact, if God is truly God and therefore infinite, we should not be able to understand him fully. Because if we do, that means God is finite. We can understand finite things, we can understand finite numbers, but can we think of an infinite number? No, because it's beyond our finite understanding. Instead, what we should be looking for is to see whether the concept fits with the picture of God in the text. So, for example, does the concept of the Trinity, even though we cannot fully understand it, does it fit with the rest of the Bible? Does the concept of the Tawheed fit in with the rest of the Quran? So the discussion should be more on revelation and not on understanding, because we should not understand it and we will not understand it logically and fully. A fourth objection is that the Trinity is not in the Bible. The word Trinity is not in the Bible. How would you answer this? Neither is Tawheed. Neither is Tawhid. The Quran does not have the word Tawhid in the Bible. In fact, it doesn't have the whole shahada in the Quran. But just because it's it's uh not mentioned as a word doesn't mean the concept is not there in the Bible. All right. The last one is Trinity in the Old Testament, and this is a deeper level objection. It's for those who know the Bible a little more. Uh, that they ask when you talk about uh John and Jesus and the Word and the infinite and the eternal word and the Spirit and so on, uh they think yes, Jesus came in the New Testament, and that's then the New Testament. But is the concept of the Trinity in the Old Testament? Can you think of some verses where the Trinity is mentioned, obviously not as a word, but the concept of the Trinity is mentioned in the Old Testament. Genesis 126. Psalm 110 is the most quoted uh chapter in the New Testament. So there are plenty of verses in the Old Testament. Uh Genesis 1.1, Elohim is plural 126, as we said, it says the word us. Um it cannot be the plural of it cannot be the plural of majesty because the Hebrew doesn't does not use it, and the literary device was likely not invented yet. Genesis 127, 1924. There are so many verses. Amos, God is in the third person, Amos 4, 9, Isaiah 48, all three persons are mentioned. So from Genesis 1 onward, the Bible seems to show the Trinity. So from the beginning, the concept is there. Of course, the word is not there, but the concept is there. And in Proverbs 8, it talks about wisdom personified and so on, multiple verses in scripture. If they come, if you have a discussion deep enough for somebody to ask, is the Trinity in the Old Testament? They are further along on their journey to Christ than anybody else. Add some other stuff, but I guess I can mention it. The uh Hero Israel, the Shema, Hero Israel, the Lord our God is one. What kind of one is this? Is it an absolute one, like the Tohid teaches, or a composite one? Like uh like may God made male mankind which are male and female in Genesis 1. And when you look at the this word that's used here, Israel, the Lord of God, our Lord is one, it seems to be a composite one. It that doesn't mean it cannot be used in an absolute sense, but it seems to have composite meaning. So other places where this has been used is in Genesis 1, 5, evening and morning make one day. It's a composite one. Numbers 13, 23, a cluster of grapes is referred to as Ekkad, which is a one. Ezekiel is told to hold two sticks together as if they were one. And Genesis 1, as we mentioned, is male and female are one in marriage. So it seems to say that when the Bible says the Lord, when the Shema says the Lord is one, it is using, it is allowing for a composite unity. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. We'll see you next time.