Conclusion
Conclusion
CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM RELATIONS in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries resulted in the rise of Islamic theology (kalām). The House of Wisdom established by Hārūn al-Rashīd, the translation work that was carried out by the Syriac scholars, and the debates between Muslims and Christians in the presence of the caliphs paved the way for the development of Islamic theology. Christians (Chalcedonians, Jacobites, and the Church of the East) were already known for being multilingual and profoundly rooted in Greek philosophy, and they spent centuries developing their theology against various heresies—especially in relation to the Trinity and Christology. During this time, many learned, wrote, and preached in the Arabic language because Muslims were not willing to learn the local languages, but they spread Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, in schools and public systems. As a result, the first part of the Abbasid century saw an unprecedented rise in Arabic Christian apologetic writings directed against Islam.
Various Islamic schools of thought started emerging during this time of history, forming many standard belief systems (e.g., Qadarites, Jabrites, Ashcarites, Muctazilites, Murjicites, Kharijites, and Shicites). Muctazilites enjoyed a golden period of theological and political dominance during al-Ma’mūn’s reign, which had implications for the nature of the Christian-Muslim debates during this period. The discussion about Allah’s speech, the nature of the Qur’an, and Allah’s attributes started in this period and carried on until the Ashcarites became the majority view in the eleventh century, in addition to many Christian apologies that were devised to defend Christian beliefs against Islamic objections.
During this time, the doctrine of the Trinity was widely accepted in most Christian communities. By the end of the fourth century, the expression “one ousia and three hypostases” was settled within the Christian tradition. However, the historical discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity is completely ignored in the Qur’an. The Qur’anic understating of the Trinity includes Mary as a divine person within the Godhead. This perspective was never part of orthodox Christianity throughout its history; however, it seems that Mohammad perhaps inferred the divinity of Mary from another source. Many studies written on this topic suggest that Mohammad learned about the nonconventional Trinity (God the Father, God the Mother, and God the Son) from cultic Christians or nonorthodox communities who lived in the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century. This research shows that while the previous studies are possible, there is no sufficient Islamic historical information that suggests that Mohammad was in contact with such communities. The Christian information about cultic Christianity in Arabia is scarce, and the historical Islamic records suggest that Mohammad was in contact with Christians who had decorated churches. During that time of history, holy icon veneration was rejected by the Western church, but venerating icons was flourishing in the East. The Theotokos icon and many other icons were widely spreading and decorating the Eastern churches. Mohammad probably developed a nonorthodox understanding of the Trinity by observing Christian icons, especially the Theotokos icon.
The first objection this study addresses is classified as nonhistorical because the Qur’an ignores the historical development of the doctrine of the Trinity, especially the Nicene Creed. While Mohammad was in contact with Christians in the Levant, Arabia (Makkah and Medina), and Africa (through his wives), he heard and most likely saw the Christian icons—the most famous of which is the Theotokos icon. His contact with this icon probably happened in the Levant when he was a young man, in Makkah inside al-Kacaba, or from his wife who went to Ethiopia at the beginning of his calling and came back reporting about a magnificent icon of Mary she had seen in Africa. Since there is no historical evidence—from Islamic or Christian sources—that suggests that Mohammad learned about the divinity of Mary from orthodox or cultic Christians, it is reasonable to think that his understanding of Mary and her divine role was acquired by inference rather than by cultic teachings. In other words, knowing that Christians believe in the Trinity and seeing them venerating the icons—especially the Theotokos icon—might have played a major role in Mohammad’s misunderstanding of the Trinity, which he then conveyed in the Qur’an.
The second group of objections is semantic in nature and related to the three Aqanīm. The titles “Father” and “Son” are understood in both literal and anthropomorphic senses. The Father had a wife who bore him a son, and they called him Isa. The Father, Son, and Spirit are three deities who resemble the polytheistic nature of the Christian worldview. Theodore Abū Qurrah, who was attentive to this objection, argues that every perfection apparent in creation must also be a prediction of the creator. He based his argument on Surah 3:59: “Surely the likeness of Isa is with Allah as the likeness of Adam.” If Adam did not beget a son, then he would be the head and the representative of animals, such as pigs, asses, and worms, who have a paltry nature compared to humans. In this way, Adam would be just a representative of what is below him in nature. Begetting a son makes Adam the head and the representative of all humanity. In the same sense, those who say God does not beget attribute deprivation to his divinity by making him ruler over what is less than he is and unable to rule over what resembles him.
In relation to this objection, Abū Qurrah distinguishes between logical and nonlogical names. He explains that logical names indicate persons, such as Peter, Paul, and John, and nonlogical names indicate natures, such as man. While logical names can be many, nonlogical names are collective in nature and singular in form. The number three does not apply to the names because it indicates human nature. While it is correct to say Peter, Paul, and John are three men, it is not correct to say Peter is mankind. In the same sense, God is a name that indicates divine nature; whereas Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are names that indicate three divine Aqanīm. The essence of God cannot be plural, and the titles Father, Son, and Holy Spirit attribute plurality to the Godhead, not to his essence.
The third group of objections is called the nonrational objections, which are agreed upon by most ancient, medieval, and contemporary Muslim scholars who accuse Christians of being nonlogical in their explanation of the Trinity. The idea of believing in three persons and calling them one God is illogical to the Muslim mind. Yaḥya Ibn Adī takes the rational route and provides answers that might be applied to the semantic and the nonlogical objections. Using philosophy, he discusses the concept of al-wāḥid. Muslims call Allah al-wāḥid to convey that he is one (divine being) in a numerical sense. Yaḥya, who was attentive to this objection, was the first Arab Christian philosopher to argue that the creator is one in one sense and multiple in another sense. Being one is one aspect of the meaning of al-wāḥid, not the full meaning, because wāḥid can be understood in many different senses. God is one as a divine person, but he cannot be one in genus, species, relation, or continuum because all these types of essences require either the existence of others or a causal connection to exist. However, God is the uncaused cause of everything. While he causes other things to exist, he cannot be caused by anything/anyone else. Moreover, it is semantically and philosophically wrong to understand wāḥid in one sense, which is the numerical, because wāḥid does not refer only to quantity but also to quality, such as qualitative names referring to color and taste. Restricting the meaning of wāḥid to the numerical sense is a mistake because the word has several meanings and can be understood in different senses. Some of them can be applied to God, while others cannot.
While Muslims follow the doctrine of bila kayfa in regard to Allah’s attributes, they refuse to compare Allah to any of his creation. They believe that Allah is transcendent and that it is demeaning to the divine nature to be compared with human nature, for there are no similarities that can be discovered. John of Damascus, Abū Qurrah, and Yaḥya, on the other hand, base the doctrine of God’s attributes on the concept that every perfection apparent in creation must also have precedence in the creator. Realizing that the attributes of perfection in God are unrestricted and eternal in contrast to those in man, Yaḥya explains that it is wrong to say that nothing is similar to God because similarity does not require complete matching identification. There are no two similar persons/things that are identical in all their attributes. If two persons/things are similar, it is necessary that they do not match. They are similar in one aspect, but they are different in many. They are not identical, and not all their attributes align. Yaḥya’s explanation answers the problem of anthropomorphism and logically explains that Christians are not wrong when they look at the virtues of human beings to extract the attributes of God.
The danger of separating God’s actions from his nature is that it impairs a person’s knowledge of what is real and objective about God as he is in himself. Separating the attributes of action from the attributes of essence deprives the essence of its content and meaning, for God is not a mere substance essentially separated from his attributes. Such a notion would reduce the divine essence to a barren concept, a hypothesis devoid of content and meaning. “God’s being is not the bearer of the divine attributes; rather, God’s essence and attributes are identical.” Thus, preventing reflection on the essence of God amounts to preventing God from revealing wonders about himself, and this robs humankind of understanding God’s relationship with his creation and his purposes for it. This is a narrow but revealing point that can be identified at the end of the eighth and early ninth centuries as Muslims came to a greater awareness of Christian thoughts about the divine attributes, the sifat Allah. This encounter helped bring Islam to a greater theological and philosophical maturity, while Christians confronted the challenge of translating traditional doctrines into a new idiom.
While many Muslim scholars refuse to compare Allah to any of his creations to learn about his transcendence, Western philosophers use reason, philosophy, and metaphysics to learn about the nature of God. They believe there is no problem using human reason as long as they admit it is fallible. While Western philosophers know that learning the divine nature is almost impossible, they believe that learning something about it is possible and it should be done. It is better to try and fail, than not to try at all. Analytic theologians and philosophers can learn and improve each other’s arguments by debating, conversing, and reviewing them, instead of just criticizing and declaring those who try as heretics.
The best example of this that I can think of is Brian Leftow’s argument of the Latin Trinity and how it can form an excellent answer to the neoorthodox theologian Karl Barth, who rejected the view of the divine persons and the distinct centers of consciousness and will. Barth explicitly believes that the numerical unity of the essence of the persons should be presumed. He also proposes the term “mode of being” as a replacement for the traditional term person/s. He cautions against thinking there is anything like an “I—Thou” relationship within the Trinity: “we are speaking not of three divine I’s, but thrice of the one divine I.” Thus there are not
three different personalities, three self-existent individuals with their own special self-consciousness, cognition, volition, activity, effects, revelation, and name. The one name of the one God is the threefold name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The one “personality” of God, the one active and speaking divine Ego, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Otherwise we should obviously have to speak of three gods.
If we do, then we will be speaking about mythology. Instead, Barth insists on understating the modes of being of God as God revealed three times in different senses. God the Son is God a second time in a different way. The divine name, “The name of the Father, Son and Spirit means that God is the one God in threefold repetition.” There is one divine “I,” who subsists simultaneously in three different ways or three different modes of being. At the same time, Barth wanted to use the three-person account. He regularly speaks of the love and fellowship between the Father and the Son. But how can this love be manifested if there are no persons?
Brian Leftow’s model becomes handy here because both Leftow and Barth resist the social-trinitarian model, they both insist on the numerical oneness of God in threefold repetitions, and they both want to avoid modalism and polytheism. But where Barth leaves the reader perplexed and confused, Leftow provides an analogy and set of claims that offer help to Barth’s model. As McCall states, “If Leftow’s model successfully avoids modalism, it might offer coherence to Barth’s account—which otherwise remains puzzling at best and perhaps even internally unstable.” This is not to say that I believe in the Latin trinitarian model, but this is to illustrate the importance of discussions, debates, and collaborations that happen among scholars.
Building on the early Christian Arab and Western apologies on the Trinity, the topic of the relationality of God emerges as the most important aspect of this study. Relationality of God is an essential divine attribute that was not given much attention in Islamic and Christian Arab theologies. The trinitarian model of divinity demonstrates that God is eternally relational because he is intrarelational and interrelational. He is intrarelational within himself in the Godhead, as the three Aqanīm live in eternal harmonious relationship of love, honor, and respect. God is fundamentally a community of divine Aqānīm, who has never experienced loneliness and isolation, whether with or without the world. God is in need of nothing to practice his relationality. He is not dependent on his creation to be able to see, hear, communicate, and love. He is the seer, the hearer, the communicator from eternity to eternity. Such is the richness and the fullness and the completion of the social relationship that exists in the Trinity.
Although Muslims believe that Allah interacted and communicated with humanity, the nature of the interrelationality of God with creation is shown differently within Islam and Christianity. In Christianity, the triune God moves closer to human beings throughout history, further revealing the personal nature of the Godhead. In the Old Testament, God pursues human beings in the Garden. When the fall occurs, he offers help and guidance on how to live a holy life. In the New Testament, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, takes on human flesh in order to dwell among human beings, ultimately repairing their personal relationship with God (Phil 2:6-11). Additionally, the third person of the Trinity—the Holy Spirit—following Jesus’ ascension to heaven, is sent to dwell and live within believers. God pursues his creation through the incarnation of the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
The divine Islamic concept of relationality, on the other hand, is not eternal. Because of absolute oneness, Allah is contingent in his relationship with creation. When there is no concept of plurality in the Godhead, his relational attributes seem to be dysfunctional, and therefore, God’s essence is dependent on his creation. In Islamic theology, Allah is attributed as the seer (the one who sees everything) and the hearer (the one who hears everything); however, based on the absolute oneness model, he was not always able to see or hear everything because before creation there was nothing to see or hear. This presentation of the divine makes some aspects of the deity contingent on creation.
The Islamic view differs from the Christian view in two aspects: (1) the creation of human beings is not Allah’s priority. (2) The most important goal in creating the world is to show Allah’s power and magnificence. The Islamic understanding of creation implies that the created world has more value than human beings. Mohammad states, “Certainly the creation of the heavens and the earth is greater than the creation of the men, but most people do not know” (Surah 40:57). Man is not the greatest creative act of Allah, and the universe is far more complex and magnificent than man. The ultimate purpose, however, for creating human beings is for them to worship Allah (Surah 51:56). In other words, Allah created human beings to show his glory and majesty, not to start a relationship with them. Ibn Kathīr explains in his commentary that “worship Allah” means “I [Allah] created them to command them to worship me, not because I need them.” Despite the fact that God’s relationality does not necessarily mean that he needs his creation, in the Islamic view, creation is the natural consequence of the creator who cares about showing his power and dominion more than expressing his love toward his creatures. The concept of the ultimate power of the divine is the most important aspect in Islamic belief; however, it ignores the relationality of the divine.
If Allah is the greatest, how can human beings know, acknowledge, and worship his greatness without having a relationship with him? Relationality is what teaches humanity about the divine. It implies that the value the world has for God is in expressing, not in constituting. Moreover, the eternal relationality of God increases the value of the world before God—precisely because God does not need it to be God. The world, therefore, takes on the beauty of grace and free love that is greater than the necessity of power and domination. God saves because he loves and has mercy, not only because he is free. His love is based on a decision he made long before the world was created.
Worshiping the divine for his absolute power and magnificence without having a relationship with him makes human beings slaves. In this scenario, their relationship with the divine is to acknowledge his grandeur and majesty without being able to closely open up to him. He is like a master receiving honor rather than a father who cares about the well-being of his sons and daughters. While the slave-master relationship is based on command and obedience, the father-son relationship is about respect, nourishment, and protection. Slaves seek to please their masters because they fear punishment, whereas sons and daughters seek to please and honor their father because they love him and he loves them. Love, respect, and sustenance are the foundational elements of this relationship, not fear and trembling.
Unfortunately, when twenty-first century Christians think about the word God, they do not think about the Trinity. Like in the Islamic view, people think of God as the most powerful, eternal spiritual being who is the creator of the universe. In most people’s understanding, God is also a moral judge who will ultimately decide who gets to spend eternity in heaven or in hell. The hope of this study is to encourage Christians to think of God as the Trinity first before contemplating his majesty, expectation, and commands. The eternal existence of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was the central affirmation of the ancient church and the fundamental truth from which all other theological understanding flowed, and I hope this notion continues and does not fade into obscurity.
Finally, it is significant for the purposes of Christian-Islamic discussion that the parties involved in such debates and apologetical writings understand themselves to be seeking a common end—a clearer expression of true statements about God and all of creation. The purpose of this study is directed toward this goal. It is not the writer’s intention to offend the Islamic presentation of the divine but to push the conversation toward a more reformed view that honors God. A successful participation in such dialogue means not simply that one has convinced one’s opponent, but hopefully that the discussion is furthered toward a better end.
The status of Christianity in Arabia is a fascinating topic that deserves more attention and research. Few scholars have attempted to write on this topic because of political reasons. For more than fifty years, Saudi Arabia was a closed country ruled by Sharica law. However, recent changes have introduced more liberties in the kingdom that might usher in educational opportunities that need to be taken advantage of. Excavation was banned in Saudi Arabia; therefore, most of the historical arguments about cultic Christianity were either arguments from silence or based on the limited testimonies of early church fathers. Mohammad’s connection with these cults cannot be historically confirmed, such as the case with the Collyridians/Marian cults. Hopefully, such research will be allowed soon in the Arabian Peninsula, which might reveal more information regarding Christianity in that community, the Syriac community in the Arabian gulf, and the Christian community in Najran.
The project of commending Christian doctrine in an Islamic environment is an area that should be further explored for three distinct reasons. First, learning the source of Mohammad’s understanding of the Trinity would help with further discoveries about other topics, such as Jesus’ nature and his miracles in the Qur’an. Further findings about Christian doctrine in an Islamic environment will help apologists immensely today. Second, learning about the history of Christianity in the Arabian Peninsula would help with the study of historical Mohammad. Many European scholars are advocating for the nonhistorical view of the Islamic prophet, pushing the origination of Islam to the Levant under the Umayyad dynasty. Excavation works in the Arabian Peninsula would help reveal whether their arguments are factual or false. Third, excavations in general have an unpredictable nature regarding what scholars might find. Sometimes excavations affirm their predictions, and sometimes they surprise them completely with new discoveries. Scholars might be able to find additional biblical manuscripts, apocryphal literature, and hymnals that early Arab Christians used in their masses and prayer times.
There are several Arab Christian theologians and philosophers that are not known in the West. This study has shed some light on Theodore Abū Qurrah’s theology and Yaḥya Ibn cAdī’s philosophy, especially related to their defense of the Trinity. Grasping their works and presenting their ideas to the public arena of Western thought is one of the unfinished projects of this study. Abū Qurrah left a great inventory of literature in Greek and Arabic that has not yet been translated into English. There are potential studies to be written about Abū Qurrah’s theological and apologetical methodology, his defense against iconoclasm, and his theory of human free will, among other things.
Like Abū Qurrah, Yaḥya’s Christian philosophical works are not translated into English and deserve considerable attention. In fact, what makes his apologetics unique is his Aristotelian philosophical background. He was one of those who translated the works of Aristotle into Arabic. He also was a student of the famous Islamic philosopher al-Fārābī. His discussion of al-waḥid is unique because he took most of his ideas from his Muslim professor and applied it to his understanding of the divine. The most important book he left is about morality, called Tahdhīb al-Akhlāq [Refining Ethics]. According to Nadine Abbas, it is one of the most important books about the philosophy of ethics in the Arabic world. Translating this book into English will contribute profoundly to the fields of ethics and theology.
Among the points most relevant and most worthy of further consideration is the doctrine of creation in Islam in relation to the doctrine of tawḥīd. The multiple views of the doctrine of creation and the schism between traditionalists and philosophers would lead to multiple understandings of tawḥīd and potentially to a misunderstanding of the doctrine of Allah. Traditionalists deny the philosophers’ suggestions regarding the creation of the world. As briefly presented in this study, some medieval philosophers believed in the eternality of time, and others believed in creation by emanation. Their beliefs threaten the doctrine of tawḥīd because they assume an eternal nature of the universe is necessary. However, creating another eternal reality alongside Allah is inconsistent with the nature of absolute oneness because it makes Muslims binitarian monotheists, not unitarians as they claim.
The same problem might be applied to the Qur’an when scholars assume its eternal nature. The eternal nature of the Qur’an makes Muslims binitarian as well, requiring them to clarify how the Qur’an relates to Allah’s absolute oneness. The Qur’an’s purpose is to deliver a divine message that has a dialogic character. If this is true, how can the Qur’an (the eternal) communicate with human beings (the noneternal)—especially since the Qur’an is written for people, not for angels? To speak of the Qur’an as a distinct eternal reality to Allah is similar to speaking of the Logos as a distinct eternal reality to the Father. Muslims reject such belief and consider it a shirk (association). Therefore, further illumination is required as to the double standard of allowing the Qur’an and the creation to have distinct eternal realities from Allah, but not granting this liberty to the Logos. Why is otherness allowed to be predicated in Allah by Muslims and not considered shirk, whereas Christians are not allowed such concept in their theology?
Moving from Islam’s foundational era to more modern theological developments, the topic of the relationality of God has an apologetic potential against process theology. To classify the relationality of God as an attribute of essence is to make God a personal being. Process theologians, such as Paul Tillich, advocate for the concept of “God as Being.” In Tillich’s view, God is not a Being, because that would describe God as one “being” among other beings. Rather, “God is being itself”—or “the ground of being.” If God as the ground of being infinitely transcends everything, then whatever one knows about a finite thing one knows about God, because it is rooted in him as its ground. At the same time, anything one knows about a finite thing cannot be applied to God, because he is, as Tillich says, “ecstatically experienced and symbolically expressed.”
Another topic Tillich talks about is the distinction between a “sign” and a “symbol.” “Signs” (like letters and written words) have no essential connection to what they represent but are merely used to point to their referent. “Symbols,” on the other hand, have a stronger similarity or “participation” with the thing to which they refer. Religious symbols negate themselves in their literal meanings but still have something to say about God, including his qualities, actions, and manifestations. They have a symbolic character, but the meaning of “God” is completely missed if one takes the symbolic language literally. God’s “fatherhood” for instance is a symbol because of the fatherly qualities that God and other fathers share. The letters G-O-D share nothing essential with God and are therefore only a “sign” for God. Process theology turns God from a personal being into an idea; therefore, by focusing on the relational aspect of God, conservative theologians have an argument to turn God into a Being in a personal way, not just as a symbol. While someone might suggest that all “Godtalk” is symbolic and does not exhaust the mystery of God’s being, the analogy of personal encounter and the use of person as a theological model have distinct advantages over impersonal approaches to the problem.
To Christians, the centrality of the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be denied. To them, the Trinity is not a problem to be solved but rather a beauty to be discovered, a mystery to be clarified, and a Being to have a relationship with. Their readiness to receive God’s revelation of himself, like a beauty and a mystery, provides growing knowledge with no end. The Trinity is not a contradiction or a barrier to belief; rather, it is the being of God, whose discovery is an unending worship.