Notes

Introduction

. Surah Muminoon 23:84-89; Surah az-Zukhruf 43:9; Surah az-Zukhruf 43:87; Surah al-Ankaboot 29:63; Surah az-Zumar 39:3; Surah Yunus 10:18; Surah al-Kafiroon 109:2-5; Surah Sad 38:5; Surah al-Mumtahinah 60:24; Surah al-Fath 48:6.

. Thomas R. Thompson, “Trinitarianism Today: Doctrinal Renaissance, Ethical Relevance, Social Redolence,” Calvin Theological Journal 32 (1997): 10.

. John of Damascus is also known as John Damascene. I will refer to him as John.

. The Trinity as it is understood in the Qur’an.

. F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1619.

. W. E. Ward, s.v. “Hypostasis,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013). Accessed through Credo Reference online.

. Mike Higton, s.v. “Hypostasis” in Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. Ian A. McFarland et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Accessed through Credo Reference online.

. Ward, “Hypostasis.”

. Otto, Randall E., “The Use and Abuse of Perichoresis in Recent Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 54, no. 3 (2001): 366-84.

. Thomas H. McCall, “Relational Trinity: Creedal Perspective,” in Two Views on The Doctrine of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), 129.

. James T. Dennison Jr., ed., Francis Turretin Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992), 253.

. James W. Sweetman, Islam and Christian Theology: A Study of the Interpretation of Theological Ideas in the Two Religions, vol. 2 (London: Lutterworth Press, 1945), 225-26.

. Imad Shehadeh, al-Aab wa al-Ibn was al-Roḥ al-Qudus ilah waḥid, amin: Daroret al-Ta’adudiya fi al-Wiḥdaniya al-ilahiya [The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit On God Amin: the Necessity of the Multiplicity in the Divine Oneness], (al-Matin, Lebanon: Dar al-Manhal, 2009), 31.

. Awad Sim’an, Allah fi al-Masiḥiya [God in Christianity] (Cairo: Qassir Ad-Dubara Church, 2004), 16.

. As for the transliteration from Arabic to English, I am using Billie Jean Collins, Bob Buller, and John F. Kutsko, The SBL Handbook of Style: For Biblical Studies and Related Disciplines, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014).

. Daniel J. Janosik, John of Damascus: The First Apologist to the Muslims (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016).

. Charles C. Twombly and Myk. Habets, Perichoresis and Personhood : God, Christ, and Salvation in John of Damascus (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2015).

. Andrew Louth, St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

. Peter Schadler, John of Damascus and Islam: Christian Heresiology and the Intellectual Background to Earliest Christian-Muslim Relations (Boston: Brill, 2017).

. Melkites are Orthodox Christians who follow the Chalcedonian definition.

. Sara Leila Husseini, Early Christian-Muslim Debate on the Unity of God: Three Christian Scholars and Their Engagement with Islamic Thought (9th Century C.E.) (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2014).

. This study will call Nestorians “The church of the East.” This appellation was attributed to the Eastern Syriac-speaking region in the eighth and ninth centuries. For further information, see Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 110; and Dietmar W. Winkler, “The Age of the Sassanians” in The Church of the East: A Concise History, ed. Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2003), 7.

. Wafik Nasry, The Caliph and the Bishop: A 9th Century Muslim-Christian Debate: Al-Ma’mūn and Abū Qurrah (Beirut: CEDRAC Université Saint Joseph, 2008).

. Najib George Awad, Orthodoxy in Arabic Terms: A Study of Theodore Abu Qurrah’s Theology in Its Islamic Context (Boston: De Gruyter, 2015).

. John C. Lamoreaux, “The Biography of Theodore Abi Qurrah Revisited,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002): 25-40.

. Nestor Kavvadas, “Icon Veneration as a Stumbling Block: Theodore Abu Qurrah and Byzantine Orthodox Iconoclasts in the Early Abbasid Society,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 72 (1-2) (2020): 71-82.

. Mohd. Nasir Omar, “The Life of Yahya Ibn ‘Adi: A Famous Christian Philosopher of Baghdad,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER 6 no. 2 S5 (2015): 308-14.

. Samir Khalil al-Yasu’ī, “’Maqala fi al-Tawhid [An Article in Divine Oneness]” in al-Turath al-Arabi al-Masiḥi [the Arabic Christian Heritage] (Jounieh, Lebanon: Al-Maktaba al-Boulissiah, 1980).

. Nadine Abbas,“al-Falsafa wa al-Lahoot was al-Akhlaq ‘ind Yaḥya ibn ^cAdī [The Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics of Yaḥya ibn ^cAdī],” Tafahum Magazine (2015): 138-68. Retrieved from https://tafahom.mara.gov.om/storage/al-tafahom/ar/2015/048/pdf/07.pdf.

. Nadine Abbas, Mafhoom al-Ulohiya ‘ind Yaḥya ibn Adi in the Book of Maqala fi al Mawjoodat [Yaḥya’s concept of divinity in the book ‘the Reply to al-Waraq and the Article of the Findings’],” Dar Al-Machreq Magazine 87, no. 1 (2013): Kindle.

. David Thomas, ed., Routledge Handbook on Christian-Muslim Relations (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2018).

. Daniel King, ed., The Syriac World of the East (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019).

. Alfredo Tradigo, Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church, trans. Stephen Sartarelli (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004).

. Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology (Leiden, NY: Brill, 1993).

. Imad N. Shehadeh, God With Us and Without Us, Volumes One and Two: The Beauty and Power of Oneness in Trinity versus Absolute Oneness (Carlisle, UK: Langham Creative Projects, 2020).

. Imad N. Shehadeh, God With Us and Without Us, Volume Two: The Beauty and Power of Oneness in Trinity (Carlisle, UK: Langham, 2019), 7.

. Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).

. W. Montgomery Watt, Islam and Christianity Today: A Contribution to Dialogue (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983).

. Gregory A. Boyd, “The Self-Sufficient Sociality of God: A Trinitarian Revision of Hartshorne’s Metaphysics,” in Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God, ed. Joseph A. Bracken and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1997), 73-94.

. Boyd, “Self-Sufficient Sociality,” 73.

. Terence E. Fretheim, Michael J. Chan, and Brent A. Strawn, What Kind of God? Collected Essays of Terence E. Fretheim (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2015).

. Fretheim, Chan, and Strawn, What Kind of God?, 26.

. Sami Paavola, “Abduction through Grammar, Critic, and Methodeutic,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 40, no. 2 (2004): 261-62.

. Mark Tschaepe, “Guessing and Abduction,” Transactions of The Charles S. Peirce Society 50, no. 1 (2014): 118.

. Carl R. Trueman, Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 102.

. Trueman, Histories and Fallacies, 104.

. David Baggett and Jerry Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 54.

. Zaki Saritopark, “Allah,” in The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia, ed. Oliver Leaman, (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005), 38-40.

1 The Rise of the Abbasids and the Golden Age of Islam

. Hugh Kennedy, When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam’s Greatest Dynasty (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), 44.

. Kennedy, When Baghdad Ruled, 44.

. Amina Bittar, The History of the Abbasid Dynasty (Damascus: Damascus University Press, 1997), 322.

. Kennedy, When Baghdad Ruled, 13.

. Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasaid Society (2nd-4th/5th-10th c.) (London, UK: Taylor & Francis Group, 1998), 17.

. Gutas, Greek Thought, 24.

. Gutas, Greek Thought, 19.

. Gutas, Greek Thought, 56-58.

. Mustafa Necati Barış, “First Translation Activities in Islamic Science History and their Contribution to Knowledge Production,” Cumhuriyet Ilahiyat Dergisi 22, no. 1 (2018): 716.

. Muhammad ibn Isḥāq Ibn al-Nadīm, The Fihrist of Al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 586-90.

. Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims In the World of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 106.

. The word Melkite comes from the Arabic word malik, which means “king.”

. Sidney H. Griffith, “The Melkites and the Muslims: The Qur’ān, Christology, and Arab Orthodoxy,” Al-QanṬara 33, no. 2 (2012): 414.

. Griffith, Church in the Shadow, 107.

. J. W. Childers, “Baradeus, Jacob (c. 500–578),” in The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, ed. G. T. Kurian Wiley (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

. Dietmar W. Winkler, “Monophysites,” in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. G. W. Bowersock, Peter Robert Lamont Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

. A. A. Luce, Monophysitism Past and Present: A Study in Christology (New York: The Macmillan Co. 1920), 1.

. Philip Wood, “Christians in the Middle East, 600–1000: Conquest, Competition and Conversion,” in Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia, ed. A. C. S. Peacock et al. (New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), 24.

. “Yahya ibn ^cAdi,” in Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, vol. 37 (Detroit: Gale, 2017). Accessed December 7, 2020. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631010726/BIC?u=vic_liberty&sid=BIC&xid=c5dd4b6a.

. Mohd. Nasir Omar, “The Life of Yahya Ibn ‘Adi: A Famous Christian Philosopher of Baghdad,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER 6 no. 2 S5 (2015): 310.

. Gutas, Greek Thought, 14.

. Mun’im Sirry, “The Public Role of Dhimmīs during ʿAbbāsid Times,” Bulletin of SOAS, 74, no. 2 (2011): 188.

. Norman A. Stillman, “Dhimma,” in Medieval Islamic Civilization, ed. Joseph Meri, vol 1, (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2016), 205.

. Christian C. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 6.

. Unless otherwise noted, all qur’anic passages referenced are in The Quran, ed. M. H. Shakir (Medford, MA: Perseus Digital Library, 2016).

. Ḥadīths are the collective records of the traditions of Prophet Mohammad’s words and acts. Many of the Ḥadīths are treated as authentic (which goes directly in unbroken chain to the prophet himself) and second in authority to the Qur’an. These Ḥadīths are called Ḥadīth Ṣaḥīḥ (correct Ḥadīth). This study will use only Ḥadīth Ṣaḥīḥ.

. Mālik Ibn Anas, Al-Muwatta of Imam Malik ibn Anas: the first formulation of Islamic law, Book 17, Ḥadīth no. 46. Accessed December 14, 2020. https://sunnah.com/urn/506220.

. Tirmidhī, Muḥammad Ibn, ʻĪsá, “Jami’ at-Tirmidhi,” Book 7, Ḥadīth no. 634. Accessed December 14, 2020, https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi/7.

. Muhammad Iben Ahmad Al-Qortobi, Tafsir Al-Qortobi (Ar-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2003). Accessed December 13, 2020. https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/qortobi/sura9-aya29.html#qortobi.

. Al-Qortobi, Tafsir Al-Qortobi.

. Stillman, “Dhimma,” 206.

. Amira K. Bennison, The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 123.

. Stillman, “Dhimma,” 206.

. Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 155.

. Bennison, Great Caliphs, 122.

. Kennedy, When Baghdad Ruled, 240.

. Sirry, “public role,” 188.

. Mark N. Swanson, “Saints and Sainthood, Christian,” in Medieval Islamic Civilization, ed. Joseph Meri, vol 2, (New York: Taylor And Francis, 2016), 688.

. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam, 2.

. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam, 6.

. Gutas, Greek Thought, 64.

. Caesar Farah, Islam: Beliefs and Observance (Hauppauge, NY: Barrons Educational Services, 2000), 207.

. John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 69.

. Ignác Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 95.

. Sara Leila Hussaini, Early Christian-Muslim Debate on the Unity of God: Three Christian Scholars and Their Engagement with Islamic Thought (9th Century C.E.) (Danvers, MA: Brill, 2014), 23.

. Sidney H. Griffith, “Eutychius of Alexandria on the Emperor Theophilus and Iconoclasm in Byzantium: A Tenth Century moment in Christian Apologetics in Arabic,” Byzantion 52 (1982): 161.

. Gutas, Greek Thought, 64.

. Lapidus, History of Islamic Societies, 158.

. John Abdallah Nawas, Al-Ma’mun, the Inquisition, and the Quest for Caliphal Authority (Columbus, GA: Lockwood Press, 2015), 21.

. Hussaini, Early Christian-Muslim Debate, 31.

. Kennedy, When Baghdad Ruled, 250.

. Hussaini, Early Christian-Muslim Debate, 31.

. Hussaini, Early Christian-Muslim Debate, 32.

. Check out A. Yusuf Ali’s translation of the holy Qur’an and Muhamad Asad’s translation of the Qur’an.

. James White, What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Qur’an (Grand Rapids, MI: Bethany House Publishers, 2013), 90.

. Muhammad Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr al-Tabarī. Accessed December 12, 2020. https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/tabary/sura5-aya72.html#tabary. Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī was one of the earliest and trusted commentators on the Qur’an with al-Qurtubī and Ibn Kathīr. He is not to be confused with Ibn Raban al-Ṭabarī.

. Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Al-Qurtubī, Tafsir Al-Qortoby. Accessed December 28, 2020. https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/qortobi/sura5-aya72.html.

. Abi Al-Fida’ Ismaeel Ibn Kathīr, Tafsir Ibn Katheer. Accessed December 29, 2020. http://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/katheer/sura5-aya72.html.

. Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Al-Qurtubī, Tafsir Al-Qortoby. Accessed December 28, 2020. https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/qortobi/sura5-aya76.html#qortobi.

. Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Al-Qurṭubī, Tafsir Al-Qortoby. Accessed December 28, 2020. https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/qortobi/sura6-aya101.html; Muhammad Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr al-Tabarī. Accessed December 12, 2020. https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/tabary/sura6-aya101.html#tabary; Abi Al-Fida’ Ismaeel Ibn Kathīr, Tafsir Ibn Katheer. Accessed December 28, 2020. https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/katheer/sura6-aya101.html#katheer.

. Tertullian, Against Praxeas 3. Accessed March 25, 2021. www.tertullian.org/articles/evans_praxeas_eng.htm.

. Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 1.2.4.

. Muḥammad ibn Ismāʻīl Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī, Ḥadīth no. 7439. Accessed April 28, 2020, https://sunnah.com/bukhari/97.

. Mark Beaumont, “Muslim Readings of John’s Gospel in the ^cAbbasid Period,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 19:2 (2008): 180.

. Rifaat Ebied and David Thomas, eds., The Polemical Works of ʿAlī al-Ṭabarī (Boston: Brill, 2016), 2. Sami K. Hamarneh, “Al-Ṭabarī,” in Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, ed. H. Selin (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9188.

. Muhammad ibn Isḥāq Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, ed. M. Riḍā-Tajaddud (Tehran: Dar al-Masirah, 1971), 354.

. Ebied and Thomas, Polemical Works, 41.

. Beaumont, “Muslim Readings,” 181.

. Ebied and Thomas, Polemical Works, 69.

. Al- Ṭabarī does not include biblical references, but he seems to quote the biblical translation that was available to him.

. Ebied and Thomas, Polemical Works, 73.

. Ebied and Thomas, Polemical Works, 73-74.

. Al-Ṭabarī does not use the known verbatim of the Nicene Creed. His resources are unknown. He could be paraphrasing what he had memorized earlier in his childhood.

. Ebied and Thomas, Polemical Works, 155.

. David Thomas, “Abū ʿīsā Al-Warrāq and the History of Religions,” Journal of Semitic Studies 41, no. 2 (1996): 275

. Muḥammad ibn Hārūn Abū ^cĪsā Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic in Early Islam: Abū ^cĪsā al-Warrāq’s ‘Against the Trinity,’ ed. and trans. David Thomas, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 10.

. Thomas, “Abū ʿīsā Al-Warrāq,” 1.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 3.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 12.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 77.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 89.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 93.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 95.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 97.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 109.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 111.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 127.

. Al-Warrāq, Anti-Christian Polemic, 129.

. W. Madelung, Der Imam al-Qasim ibn Ibrdhim und die Glaubenslehre der Zaiditen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1966), 86-96. Binyamin Abrahamov, “Al-Ḳāsim Ibn Ibrāhīm’s Theory of the Imamate,” Arabica, T. 34 (1987): 80.

. Al-Qāsim Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Husnī Al-Rassī, al-Rad ‘Ala al-Nassara [The Reply to the Christians], ed. Hanafi Abduallah (Cairo, Egypt: Dar -al=Afaq al-Arabia, 2000), 15.

. Al-Rassī, al-Rad ‘Ala al-Nassara.

. Abrahamov, “Theory of the Imamate,” 80.

. Al-Rassī, al-Rad ‘Ala al-Nassara, 40.

. Al-Rassī, al-Rad ‘Ala al-Nassara, 43-44.

. The editor adds two wrong citations in his footnotes (Mt 16:13-16 and Mk 8:27-29).

. Al-Rassī does not mention angel Gabriel, but he uses a plural description of angels.

. Al-Rassī, al-Rad ‘Ala al-Nassara, 45.

. Al-Rassī, al-Rad ‘Ala al-Nassara, 46.

. ^cabd al-Majīd al-Sharafī, The Islamic Thought about the Reply to the Christians: To the End of the Tenth Century (Tunisia: al-Dar al-Tunisya LilNashir, 1986), 6. Al-Sharafī concludes that most of the Islamic replies to the beliefs of the Christians after the tenth century were copying the arguments of the previous centuries, especially the ninth and the tenth centuries.

. Hugh Goddard, “Muslim and Christian Beliefs,” in Contemporary Muslim-Christian Encounters: Developments, Diversity, and Dialogues, ed. Paul Hedges (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 294.

2 The Iconoclastic Effect of the Qur’anic Perception of the Trinity

. Abū Mūsa Al-Ḥarīrī, Qiss was nabi [A Monk and A Prophet] (Diar Aqil, Lebanon: Dar Liajil al-Ma’rifa, 2005), 2.

. Al-Ḥarīrī, Qiss was nabi, 33.

. Bukharī, Ṣaḥīḥ Bukharī, Hadīth no. 3392. Accessed March 3, 2021. https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3392. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Hadīth no. 160a. Accessed March 13, 2021. https://sunnah.com/muslim:160a. The extent of the Gospel according to the Hebrews is no longer known. Few quotations are preserved in the writings of Clement of Alexandria (second century), Origen (third century), Eusebius (fourth century) and Cyril (fourth century).

. Al-Ḥarīrī, Qiss wa Nabi, 32.

. Al-Ḥarīrī, Qiss was nabi, 35-36.

. Al-Ḥarīrī, Qiss was nabi, 37.

. John Kalner, Ishmael Instructs Isaac: An Introduction to the Qur’ān for Bible Readers (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 272.

. W. Montgomery Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 1991), 23.

. Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounter, 23.

. G. Kruger, s.v. “Collyridian,” New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia. Accessed February 11, 2021. https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc03/encyc03/Page_162.html.

. Epiphanius, Panarion 73.23.

. Jamāl al-Dīn Al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 6, (Cairo: Dārihyāʾ al-kutub al-ʿarabiyya, 1957), 2008.

. Samuel M. Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam. (New York: The Caxton Press, 1900), np.

. Michael P. Carroll, The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological Origins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 44-45.

. Marvin Meyer, Gospel of Thomas (Polebridge Press, 1992, 1994), 101. “For my mother gave me falsehood, but my true mother gave me life,” The Nag Hammadi Library. Accessed February 12, 2021. www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom-meyer.html. Wesley W. Isenberg, Gospel of Philip, “Some said, Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit. They are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman?” The Nag Hammadi Library. Accessed February 12, 2021. http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gop.html.

. Sebastian Brock, Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition, vol. 9 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013), 3-8.

. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Feminine Imagery for the Divine,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly (1993): 119.

. Harvey, “Feminine Imagery,” 119.

. Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounter, 23.

. Harvey, “Feminine Imagery,” 121.

. Mun’im Sirry, “Other Religions,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾan, eds. Andrew Rippin and Jawid Mojaddedi (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2017), 329.

. Sidney H. Griffith, “Al-Naṣārā in the Qurʾān: A hermeneutical reflection,” in New Perspectives on the Qur’ān: The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds (London: Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2011), 311.

. Gabriel Said Reynolds, “On the Presentation of Christianity in the Qur’an and the Many Aspects of Qur’anic Rhetoric,” Al-Bayan—Journal Of Qur’ān And Hadîth Studies 12, (2014): 48-49.

. Pierre du Bourguet, L’art Copte (Paris: Ministere D’Etat Affaires Culturelles, 1967), 92.

. André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of its Origins (London: Princeton University Press, 1980), 321.

. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 320.

. Martyrium A. Grabar, Recherches sur le culte des reliques chretien antique, vol. 2 (Paris: Collège de France, 1946), 572.

. Grabar, Recherches, 572.

. J. McGuckin, “The Paradox of the Virgin-Theotokos: Evangelism and Imperial Politics in the 5th-Century Byzantine World,” Maria, A Journal of Marian Theology 2, no. 1 (2001): 12.

. Thomas Mathews and Norman Muller, “Isis and Mary in Early Icons,” in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 2005), 4.

. Charles Bayet, Byzantine Art (New York: Parkstone International, 2008), 26.

. G. R. D. King, “The Paintings of the Pre-Islamic Ka ‘ba,” Muqarnas 21 (2004): 222.

. St. Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 8, ed. John J. O’Keefe, (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 148-52.

. Cyril, Festal Letters 8, 148-52.

. Sarah Jane Boss, “The Title Theotokos,” in Mary: The Complete Resource, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 52.

. St. Cyril of Alexandria, “The Epistle of Cyril to Nestorius with the XII Anathematisms,” in The Seven Ecumenical Councils, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Henry R. Percival, vol. 14 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900), 205.

. The Council of Ephesus, “Counter-statements to Cyril’s 12 Anathemas,” New Advent. Accessed February 23, 2021. www.newadvent.org/fathers/2701.htm.

. Jaroslav Pelikan, “The Theotokos, the Mother of God,” in Mary Through the Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 56.

. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 35.

. Averil Cameron, “The Theotokos in Sixth-Century Constantinople: A City Finds its Symbol,” The Journal of Theological Studies 29, no. 1 (1978): 79.

. Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age Before Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 8 (1954): 128-29.

. Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era C. 680–850: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 35-36.

. Brubaker and Haldon, Byzantium, 35-36.

. Ioli Kalavrezou, “Images of the Mother: When the Virgin Mary Became ‘Meter Theou,’” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990): 168.

. Nicholas N. Patricios, The Sacred Architecture of Byzantium: Art, Liturgy, and Symbolism in Early Christian Churches (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 346-47.

. Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 128-29.

. Brubaker and Haldon, Byzantium, 107.

. Brubaker and Haldon, Byzantium, 114.

. Moshe Barasch, Icon: Studies in the History of an Idea (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 265.

. Griffith, “Al-Naṣārā in the Qur’ān,” 303.

. Muhammad Hamidullah, “Aqdam Dustur Musajjal fi-l-ʿAlam,” Islamic Scholars Conference 1 (1937): 98. Accessed February 14, 2021, retrieved from https://abulhasanalinadwi.org/book/aqdam-dastoor-musajjal-fil-aa/.

. Hamidullah, “Aqdam Dustur Musajjal fi-l-ʿAlam,” 99.

. A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Isḥāq’s Sirat Rasūl Allah (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 79.

. Richard Gottheil, “A Christian Bahira Legend,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 13 (1898): 192.

. Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, xix.

. Recep Senturk, Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Meri (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 167.

. Bukharī, Ṣaḥīḥ Bukharī, Hadīth no. 3. Accessed February 16, 2021. https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3.

. Bukharī, Ṣaḥīḥ Bukharī, Hadīth no. 3.

. Brian C. Bradford, “The Qur’anic Jesus: A Study of Parallels with Non-Biblical Texts” (PhD diss., Western Michigan University, 2013), 141.

. Abu Musa Al-Ḥarīrī, Priest and Prophet (Diar ‘Akil, Lebanon: Dar Li’ajl al-Ma’rifa, 2005), 272-82.

. Hishām Ibn-al-Kalbī, The Book of Idols, trans. Nabih Amin Faris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), 40.

. Ibn-al-Kalbī, Book of Idols, 40.

. Irfan Shahid, Byzantine and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995), 711.

. C. Jonn Block, “Philoponian Monophysitism in South Arabia at the Advent of Islam With Implications for the English Translation of Thalātha’ In Qurʾān 4. 171 And 5. 73,” Journal of Islamic Studies 23, no. 1 (2012): 71.

. Irfan Shahid, Byzantine and the Arabs in the Fourth Century (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1984), 89.

. Ibn-al-Kalbī, Book of Idols, 40.

. Irfan Shahid, The Martyrs of Najran: New Documents (Bruxelle, Belgique: Société des Bollandistes, 1971), 7.

. There are several Syriac letters that document several stories about martyrdom and persecution against the Ḥimyarite Christians in Najrān. Ignatious Ya^cqūb, al-Shuhada’ al-ḥamiriyoon al-‘Arab fi al-Watha’iq al-Syrianiya [the Arab Himyarites Martyrs in Syriac Manuscript] (Damascus: Syrian Patriarchate of Antioch, 1966), 24-82.

. Tereza Heintaler, al-Massiḥiyiin al-‘arab Qabil al-Islam [The Arab Christians before Islam], trans. Lamis Fayed (Cairo: Dar al-Nashir al-Usqufiya, 2017), 203. Ya^cqūb, al-Shuhada’, 13-14. Shahid, Martyrs of Najran, 36-37.

. A. A. Luce, Monophysitism Past and Present: A Study in Christology (New York: The Macmillan Co. 1920).

. Shahid, Arabs in the Sixth Century, 711.

. Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 108.

. Brock and Harvey, Holy Women, 108.

. Block, “South Arabia at the Advent of Islam,” 51.

. Ellen Muehlberger, trans., “John Philoponus, Fragments on the Trinity,” in The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings, ed. Andrew Radde-Gallwitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 359.

. Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 179.

. Abī Ḥasan ^calī al-Waḥidī, Asbāb al-Nuzūl [The Reasons of Revelation], ed., ^ciṣām al-Ḥmīdān (Dammam, Saudi Arabia: Dar al-Iṣlāḥ, 1992), 97. The Arabic version of al-Waḥidī even mentions some names: the prince’s name is Abdul Massīḥ, the bishop’s name is Al-Ayham, and the pontiff’s name is Abū Ḥāritha ibn ^calqama. The English version is published by “The Tafsirs,” but it does not include the names of the Najranites’ deputation. www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=1&tTafsirNo=86&tSoraNo=3&tAyahNo=59&tDisplay=yes&UserProfile=0&LanguageId=2. Accessed February 17, 2021.

. Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 179.

. Al-Waḥidī, Asbāb al-Nuzūl, 97.

. Abū al-fidā Isma^cīl Ibn Kathīr, Tafseer al-Qru’an al-Atheem [The Explanation of the Great Qur’an] (Beirut: Dar Ibn Ḥazm, 2000), 369-71.

. Al-Mawsoo’a al-Lahootiya [Theological Encyclopedia], s.v. “Mubāhaleh,” vol. 36, (Kuwait, al-Awqāf Ministry, 1996).

. Al-Mawsoo’a al-Lahootiya, [Theological Encyclopedia], s.v. “Mubāhaleh,” vol. 36, (Kuwait, al-Awqāf Ministry, 1996).

. Ibn Kathīr, Great Qur’an, 371.

. Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 180.

. ‘A’isha ‘abd al-Rahman, Nisa’ al-Nabi [The Prophet’s Wives] (self-published), 218-21. Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 653.

. Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an (London: Oneworld Publications, 2013), 163.

. Mathews and Muller, “Isis and Mary,” 9.

. Abū al-^cabās al-Balādhurī, Kitāb Futḥāt al-Buldān The Origins of the Islamic State, trans. P. K. Hitti (New York and London, 1916), 100. In the footnote of the same source, the writer explains that tamathīl means sculptures.

. Ibn-al-Kalbī, Book of Idols, 28.

. Abī al-Tawlīd Al-Azraqī, Akhbar Makkah wa ma ja’a fiha min Akhbar [The News of Makkah and Its Ruins], (edited and published by Abdula Dahīsh, 2003), 248.

. Al-Azraqī, Akhbar Makkah, Ḥadīth no. 179, page 250.

. Al-Azraqī, Akhbar Makkah, 251.

. It should be mentioned that the unauthenticated Ḥadīths suggest that Mohammad ordered to keep Jesus and his mother’s relics. Al-Azraqī, Akhbar Makkah, Ḥadīth no. 181, page 251, Ḥadīths no. 185, 187, page 253.

. Al-Azraqī, Akhbar Makkah, 250.

. Bukharī, Ṣaḥīḥ Bukharī, Hadīth no. 427. Accessed February 2, 2021. https://sunnah.com/bukhari:427. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Ḥadīth no. 528a. Accessed February 2, 2021. https://sunnah.com/muslim:528a.

. Imam Khatib at-Tabriz, Mishkat al-Masabih, vol. 22, Hadīth no. 195, accessed February 20, 2021, https://sunnah.com/mishkat:4508.

. Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī, Ḥadīth no. 5950, accessed March 9, 2021, https://sunnah.com/bukhari/77.

. Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Hadīth no. 2109c, 2110a, 2110b, accessed March 9, 2021, https://sunnah.com/muslim/37.

. Ignác Goldziher, “Zum Islamischen Bilderverbot,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 74 (1920): 288.

. Vasile-Octavian Mihoc, “Aesthetics as Shared Interfaith Space between Christianity and Islam,” Ecumenical Review 71, no. 5 (2019): 683.

. Mihoc, “Aesthetics,” 683.

. Muḥammad Ibn Aḥmad al-Muqaddasī, Kitab Ahsan al-taqasim fi maʿrifat al-aqalinm, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 159.

. Mark N. Swanson, “the Cross of Christ in the Earliest Arabic Melkite Apologies,” in Christian Arabic Apologetics during the Abbasid Period (750–1258), ed. Samir Khalil Samir and Joren S. Nielsen, vol. 63, (New York: Brill, 1993), 116.

. Nancy Khalek, “Icons John the Baptist and Sanctified Spaces in Early Islamic Syria,” In Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 96.

. John of Damascus and Theodore Abū Qurrah were both iconophiles, defending the veneration of icons because they saw it as a public form of worship and exercising religion. The prostration to Jesus’ icon and the cross was seen as an act of respect and worship of the person of Jesus, not to the icon itself. Muslims, however, perceived this act as being similar to the polytheistic worship of idols. Despite the fact that the iconoclasm argument is related to the icon’s investigation, which this study has presented, John and Theodore’s defenses were chronologically after Mohammad, and, consequently, they did not affect his understanding of the Trinity.

3 The Christian Explanation of the Trinity in the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Centuries

. Joseph Nasrallah, Mansoor ben Sarjon al-Ma’roof bil Qidiis Youhana al-Dimashqi: ‘Asroh, Hayatoh, Mo’alfatoh [Mansoor the Son of Sarjon the Damascene: His Time, Life, and Writings], trans. Antoin Wehbi (Beirut, Lebanon: Al-Maktaba al-Boulisya, 1991), 42-46. Daniel J. Janosik, John of Damascus: The First Apologist to the Muslims (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016), 25.

. Janosik, John of Damascus, 27.

. Daniel J. Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam: The Heresy of the Ishmaelites (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1972), 42.

. Kamal al-Yazaji, Youhana al-Dimishqi: Ara’oh al-Lahootiya wa Masael ‘ilm al-Kalam [John of Damascus: His Theological Opinions and the Issues of Theology] (Beirut: Manshūrat al-Nūr, 1984), 34-36. Nasrallah, Mansoor ben Sarjon, 84.

. Frederic H. Chase, trans., John of Damascus: The Fathers of the Church Writings, vol. 37 (Washington, DC: Ex Fontibus, 2012), xxviii.

. Janosik, John of Damascus, xv.

. There is no historical evidence indicating whether John of Damascus was a monk in Mar Sabas. Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 40; Janosik, John of Damascus, 31.

. Janosik, John of Damascus, 31.

. J. B. O’Connor, “St. John Damascene,” The Catholic Encyclopedia: New Advent. Accessed April 27, 2021. www.newadvent.org/cathen/08459b.htm.

. It is also called “The Dispute.” This study will be using J. P. Migne’s translation: John of Damascus, “The Discussion of a Christian and a Saracen,” trans. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 94 (1864): 266-73. The authorship of this document is not definitively known. It was first ascribed to John of Damascus by Robert Grosseteste, who translated it in the thirteenth century. Louth and Sahas suggest that the content of “The Dispute” was used by the Arab Christian theologian Theodore Abū Qurrah in the ninth century. Therefore, it is plausible that Abū Qurrah based his writing on John’s oral teaching. Sahas, John of Damascus,” 102. Louth, St John Damascene, 77-78. Janosik, John of Damascus, 136. J. P. Migne divides John’s argument and Abū Qurrah’s in his translation.

. Al-Yazaji, Youhana al-Dimishqi, 45.

. Nasrallah, Mansoor ben Sarjon, 100-103.

. Frederic H. Chase, trans., Saint John of Damascus Writings (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1958), xxiii.

. Louth, St John Damascene, 7.

. Janosik, John of Damascus, 1.

. Abdullah Saeed, Islamic Thought: An Introduction (Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2006), 47.

. Saeed, Islamic Thought, 71.

. Saeed, Islamic Thought, 68.

. Janosik, John of Damascus, 86.

. Most Sunnis believe that the Qur’an is eternal, but it was descended from heaven in three stages: the first one is when the Qur’an descended to Al-Lawh Al-Mahfūẓ (the Book of Decrees/the Preserved Tablet) (Surah 57:22; 85:22). Al-Lawh Al-Mahfūẓ is a tablet that Allah had saved in the highest heaven, where all the ecumenical events that have happened and all that will happen are kept in the tablet forever. The second descension was when the Qur’an descended as a whole to Beit Al-Iza (the House of Glory), which is another place in heaven, where angel Jibril has access to the words of the Qur’an. Finally, the third descension took place when the verses of the Qur’an came down to the heart/mind of Mohammad. While the Qur’an descended as a whole to Al-Lawh Al-Mahfūẓ and to the dwelling place of Jibril in Beith Al-Iza, it partially and gradually came down to Mohammad.

. Duncan Black Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Theory (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), 135.

. George Makdisi, “Ashʿarī and the Ash’arites in Islamic Religious History I,” Studia Islamica 17 (1962): 37.

. Janosik, John of Damascus, 98.

. Frederic H. Chase, trans., “The Orthodox Faith,” in Saint John of Damascus Writings (New York: Fathers of the church, 1958), 165.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 165.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 177.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 176. It is important to note that John mentions Sabellius in this book; however, his explanation of the Trinity helps Christians to convey their orthodox belief to their Muslim neighbors as well because it clears out many misconceptions that Muslims have about the Trinity.

. It is important to mention that John’s method in explaining the Trinity is biblical and creedal at the same time. He combines the biblical verses with the creedal statements and adds his own words in between to clarify meaning, without referring to the Nicene Creed or the Chalcedonian Creed.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 178.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 177-78.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 178.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 178-79.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 183.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 184.

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 186.

. Saeed, Islamic Thought, 68.

. The authorship of chap. 101 of “On Heresies” is debatable; however, Sahas believes that it is “undoubtedly, a work of John of Damascus.” See Sahas, John of Damascus,” 55-58.

. The root of Mushrikūn is shirk in Arabic. It is the ultimate sin in Islam to associate another entity or being with Allah, and thus derogate from the unique sovereignty of God.

. Frederic H. Chase, trans., “On Heresies,” in John of Damascus: The Fathers of the Church Writings, vol. 37 (Washington, DC: Ex Fontibus, 2012), 156.

. It is also called “The Dispute.” John of Damascus, “Discussion,” 266-73. J. P. Migne divides John’s argument and Abū Qurrah’s in his translation. Sahas, John of Damascus, 102. Louth, St John Damascene, 77-78. Janosik, John of Damascus, 136.

. During the Umayyad government, the Mu^ctazilite’s belief about the uncreatedness of the Qur’an was considered a heresy because it was linked to man’s free will. The Umayyad enforced the belief in the ultimate sovereignty of Allah (Allah controls all men’s actions) in order to establish their rules and control their subjects as they wished. A number of Mu^ctazilites were executed because of their beliefs under the Umayyad, such as the leader of the Jahmite groups, Jahm B. Safwan. Janosik, John of Damascus, 156 and Sahas, John of Damascus, 114-15.

. Sahas argues that the Greek word for “created” must have been copied incorrectly because the word “uncreated” fits the context better. Janosik, however, disagrees with Sahas. Janosik, John of Damascus, 159.

. John of Damascus, “Discussion,” 266.

. John of Damascus, “Discussion,” 267.

. This issue reflects the early controversy of the Orthodox Muslims with the Jahmites and the early Mu^ctazilites over the passages where God appears to be speaking in the Qur’an. The Jahmites believed that the words of the Qur’an are the words of God, but they are created in order to convey God’s will and his command. Check Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (London: Harvard University Press, 1976), 266-67.

. Chase, John of Damascus, 169.

. Chase, John of Damascus, 267.

. Janosik, John of Damascus, 159-60.

. Sahas, John of Damascus, 117.

. Jerry R. Halverson, Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam: The Muslim Brotherhood, Ash’arism, and Political Sunnism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 16-17.

. Wolfson, Philosophy of the Kalam, 265.

. Saeed, Islamic Thought, 66.

. Louth, St John Damascene, 84.

. Ignatius Deek, “Maymar fi Wujud al-Khaliq wa al-Din al-Qawim [An Article about the Creator’s Existence and the Right Religion],” in al-Turath al-Arabī al-Masīḥī (Jouniey, Lebanon: al-Maktaba al-Boulisiya, 1982), 43.

. Deek, “Maymar fi Wujud al-Khaliq,” 43.

. John Lamoreaux disagrees with earlier scholars who suggested that Abū Qurrah was a monk in Mar Sabas Monastery. He has exerted great labor in a historical investigation to highlight the complex relationship between Abū Qurrah and the available resources that talk about his environment. However, the work only seeks to disassociate the bishop of Harrān from Mar Sabas, while the abundant evidence of Abū Qurra’s relationship with the Jerusalem patriarchate alleviates some of Lamoreaux’s conclusions. John C. Lamoreaux, “The Biography of Theodore Abū Qurrah Revisited,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002): 25-40. David Bertaina questions Lamoreaux’s argument, wondering why Abū Qurrah would “travel throughout Palestine and have a personal familiarity with the patriarchate of Jerusalem if he is only bishop of an insignificant see, particularly since his immediate jurisdiction was under the patriarch of Antioch? Wouldn’t Theodore have had a close relationship with the monasteries of Jerusalem? In fact, Mar Sabas monastery did not only include the monastery just southeast of Jerusalem in the Judean desert, but it included a house in Jerusalem (and in Constantinople and Rome as well).” He brings to the attention of the reader the similarity of thoughts between John of Damascus and Abū Qurrah and the fact that his works have been copied and found in Mar Sabas Monastery. David Bertaina, “An Arabic Account of Theodore Abu Qurra in Debate at the Court of Caliph al-Ma’mun: A Study in Early Christian and Muslim Literary Dialogues,” (PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 2007), 214-17.

. Sidney H. Griffith, “Images, Islam and Christian Icons: A Moment in the Christian-Muslim Encounter in Early Islamic Times,” in La Syrie de Byzance a l’Islam: VIIe-Ville siècles, Colloque 1990, ed. Pierre Canivet and Jean-Paul Rey-Coquais (Damascus: Institut Frangais de Damas, 1992), 121-38.

. Sidney H. Griffith, “Reflections on the Biography of Theodore Abu Qurrah,” Parole de l’Orient: revue semestrielle des études syriaques et arabes chrétiennes 18 (1993): 165. A. Van Roey, Nonnus de Nisibe, Traiti Apologltique, Etude, Texte et Traduction (Bibliotheque du Museon, vol. 21; Louvain, 1948), 18. See also Sidney H. Griffith, “The Apologetic Treatise of Nonnus of Nisibis,” ARAM 3 (1992), 115-38. Deek, “Maymar fi Wujud al-Khaliq,” 44-45.

. Griffith, “Biography of Theodore Abu Qurrah,” 165.

. Sidney H. Griffith, Theodore Abū Qurrah: A Treatise on the Veneration of the Holy Icons (Louvain, Belgique: Peeters, 1997), 13.

. John Lamoreaux, trans., Theodore Abū Qurrah (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005), xv.

. Griffith, “Biography of Theodore Abū Qurrah,” 13.

. Griffith, “Biography of Theodore Abū Qurrah,” 3.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, xviii.

. Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq Ibn al-Nadīm, The Fihrist of Al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, vol. 1, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 42.

. Miriam L. Hjälm, ed., Senses of Scripture, Treasures of Tradition, vol. 5, (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2017), 12-13.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, xvii.

. It should be noted that the historicity of this debate is not entirely authenticated. The manuscripts of the debate are found throughout Melkite and Jacobite monasteries; however, the scribe who copied the debate seems to be somehow affiliated to Theodore Abū Qurrah, but not a direct pupil. Abū Qurrah’s debate was likely used in a monastic context for educational purposes. It also has served as a rhetorical tool to train monks who were interested in engaging Muslims in apologetics.

. Griffith, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 13. Deek, “Maymar fi Wujud al-Khaliq,” 52.

. Qusṭanṭine Bashā, Mayamir Theodore Abū Qurrah Usquf Ḥārān: Aqdam Ta’lif arabi Nasrani [Mayamir Theodore Abū Qurrah Usquf Ḥārān: The Oldest Arabic Christian Writings] (Beirut: Al-Fou’ad Printing Press, 1904), 27.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 9.

. According to the Routledge Dictionary of World Philosophy, the term Bilā kayfa literally means “without how,” which denotes the Islamic theological principle according to which one should not question revelation when one cannot understand it. This principle was invoked by Abū Ḥasan al-Ash‘arī (AD 935) and others—e.g., Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal (AD 855)—regarding the Quran’s anthropomorphizing expressions such as “Hand of God,” and “Face of God,” which attribute human features to God. According to these thinkers, though having a hand and having a face cannot be attributes of God, these expressions have to be taken literally without asking how.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 10.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 12.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 13.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 13-14.

. Bashā, Mayamir Theodore Abū Qurrah, 27.

. Najib George Awad, Orthodoxy in Arabic Terms: A Study of Theodore Abu Qurrah’s Theology in Its Islamic Context (Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), 101.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 179.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 180.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 183.

. It should be noted that Abū Qurrah never explains the term ’Uqūum or Aqānīm by using the Arabic term shakhṣ (pl. ‘ashkhās), which was the practice of other Christian writers and of many Muslim scholars who wrote about Christianity.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 184.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 184-85.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 185.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 186.

. It is important to emphasize the idea that Abū Qurrah never thought that his examples were perfect. He states, “We do not think that the tongue and the mind or the rays and the sun or the craftsman’s hand and the craftsman or the eye and the brain are more closely united than the Father and the Son—and this, because of the refinement of the divine essence, which is unimaginably more refined than the most refined creatures” (Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 186).

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 188.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 189.

. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah, 190.

. Mentioning the full name alongside the names of his father, grandfather, and son is an Arabic habit indicating historic accuracy.

. Mohd. Nasir Omar, “The Life of Yahya Ibn ‘Adi: A Famous Christian Philosopher of Baghdad,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER 6 no. 2 S5 (2015): 308.

. Max Meyerhof, “‘Alī al-Bayhaqī’s Tatimmat Siwān al-Hikma: A Biographical Work on Learned Men of the Islam,” The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society 8 (1948): 160.

. Omar, “The Life of Yahya Ibn ‘Adi,” 309.

. Abū Sulaymān Al-Sijistānī, Muntakhab Siwan al-Hikma, ^cAbd Arahman Badawī (Teheran: Foundation Cultilrelle de l’Iran. 1974), 327. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist of Al-Nadīm, 24.

. Nicholas Rescher, Tatawer al-Mantiq al-‘Arabi [The Development of Arabic Logic], trans. Mohammad Mahran, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964), 94.

. Richard Walzer, “New Light on the Arabic Translation of Aristotle,” in Greek into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 77.

. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist of Al-Nadīm, 631.

. Gerhard Endress, The Works of Yahya Ibn ^cAdi: An Analytical Inventory (Wiesbaden, West Germany: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1977), 124.

. Omar, “The Life of Yahya Ibn ‘Adi,” 310. Nadine Abbas, Nathariyat al-Tawhid wa al-Tathleeth of Yaḥya Ibn Adi fi Kitabihi ‘al-Rad ‘Ala al- Warrāq’ [Yaḥya Ibn ^cAdī’s Philosophical Theory of Monotheism and Tri-theism in his book The Reply to al-Warrāq’] (Beirut, Lebanon: Centre de recherche et de publications de L’orient Chretien, 2014), 61-62.

. Omar, “The Life of Yahya Ibn ‘Adi,” 310.

. Omar, “The Life of Yahya Ibn ‘Adi,” 311-12.

. Samīr Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid Lil Sheikh Yaḥya Ibn Adi (898-974) [Treatise in Divine Unity to Sheikh Yaḥya Ibn Adi (898-974)] (Jounieh, Lebanon: Al-Maktaba al- Boulissiah, 1980), 115.

. It is important to mention that Yaḥya does not use the word “person” to refer to Aqanīm because of the human reference that this term may convey, which could lead one to understand the Trinity in terms of three gods.

. Abū Nasr al-Farābī, The One and the Unity (Casablanca: Dar Tobqal Publishing, 1990).

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 223.

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 224.

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 226-28.

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 230. All translations from the Arabic works of Yaḥya are my own, unless otherwise indicated.

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 231.

. Al in Arabic is equivalent to the definite article the in English. However, when it is added to an attribute describing the divine, it means God is the one being described.

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 170-71.

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 172.

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 173-74.

. Khalīl, Maqala fi al-Tawhid, 176.

. Al-Bari’ is another name of God that Arab Christians and Muslims use to describe the Creator.

. Yaḥya was a tenth-century scholar and mentioned the cosmological argument a century before al-Ghazālī, to whom the Kalam cosmological argument is attributed.

. Gerhard Endress, “Theology as a Rational Science: Aristotelian Philosophy, the Christian Trinity and Islamic Monotheism in the Thought of Yaḥya Ibn ^cAdī,” in Ideas in Motion in Baghdad and Beyond: Philosophical and Theological Exchanges between Christians and Muslims in the Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries, vol. 124, ed., Damien Janos (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2015), 233.

. Endress, “Theology as a Rational Science,” 263-64.

. These dilemmas are presented in chap. 1 of this volume.

. Abbas, Nathariyat al-Tawhid, 159.

. Abbas, Nathariyat al-Tawhid, 164.

. Abbas, Nathariyat al-Tawhid, 166.

. Abbas, Nathariyat al-Tawhid, 251.

. Abbas, Nathariyat al-Tawhid, 301.

. Abbas, Nathariyat al-Tawhid, 251.

4 Western Contemporary Explanations of the Trinity

. Rik Van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to Medieval Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 2.

. John T. Slotemaker, Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 25.

. Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten), trans. Mary J. Gregor (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 65-67.

. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, trans. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 738.

. St. Gregory Nazianzen, The Sacred Writings of Gregory Nazianzen, trans. Charles Gordon Browne (Altenmunster, Germany: Jazzybee Verlag, 2017), 121.

. Richard Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?,” The Heythrop Journal 43 (2002): 280.

. St. Gregory Nyssen, The Sacred Writings of Gregory of Nyssa, trans. Henry Austin Wilson (Altenmunster: Jazzybee Verlag, 2017), 232.

. Augustine, On the Trinity 7.2.3. www.newadvent.org/fathers/130107.htm. Augustine, On the Trinity 6.10.12. www.newadvent.org/fathers/130106.htm.

. Augustine of Hippo, “On the Trinity,” in St. Augustin: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Arthur West Haddan (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 3:29-30.

. Augustine, On the Trinity 1.11.22.

. Thomas H. McCall and Michael C. Rea, “Introduction,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5.

. Michal Valčo et al., “Ecumenical Trinitarian Reflections and the ‘De Régnon Paradigm’: A Probe into Recovering the Social-Trinitarian Emphases of the Cappadocian Fathers,” Constantine’s Letters / Konštantínove Listy 12, no. 1 (2019): 79.

. Valčo, “Ecumenical Trinitarian Reflections,” 77.

. Brian Leftow, “Anti Social Trinitarianism,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 21, no. 3 (2004): 53.

. Patrick Miron, Catholic & Christian: A Book of Essential Catholic Catechesis (UK: Trafford Publishing, 2016), 253.

. Allan Coppedge, The God Who Is Triune: Revisioning the Christian Doctrine of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007), 108.

. Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought, s.v. “Identity.”

. McCall and Rea, “Introduction,” 9.

. McCall and Rea, “Introduction,” 10.

. H. E. Baber, “The Trinity: Relative Identity Redux,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 32, no. 2 (2015): 161.

. McCall and Rea, “Introduction,” 10.

. Richard Swinburne, “Richard Swinburne—Short Intellectual Autobiography,” Faculty of Philosophy: University of Oxford. Accessed June 24, 2023. https://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/.

. Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 170.

. Richard Swinburne, “The Trinity,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, eds. Thomas H. McCall and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 171.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 172.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 174.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 175.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 177.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 174.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 179.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 181.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 182.

. Swinburne, “The Trinity,” 189.

. William Lane Craig, “Biographical Sketch,” Reasonable Faith (website). Accessed June 28, 2023. www.reasonablefaith.org/william-lane-craig.

. William Lane Craig, “Toward a Tenable Social Trinitarianism,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, eds. Thomas McCall and Michael Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 89.

. Craig, “Tenable Social Trinitarianism.”

. Craig, “Tenable Social Trinitarianism,” 99.

. William Lane Craig, “Another Glance at Trinity Monotheism,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, eds. Thomas McCall and Michael Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 126.

. Brian Leftow “Curriculum Vitae,” Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. Accessed July 1, 2023. https://philosophy.rutgers.edu/people/regular-faculty/regular-faculty-profile/182-regular-faculty-full-time/954-leftow-brian.

. Brian Leftow, “Anti Social Trinitarianism,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, eds. Thomas McCall and Michael Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 52.

. Leftow, “Anti Social Trinitarianism.”

. James Sullivan, “The Athanasian Creed,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia: New Advent. Accessed July 4, 2023. www.newadvent.org/cathen/02033b.htm.

. S. Thomae de Aquino, Summa Theologiae (Ottawa: Studii Generalis, 1941), 39, 5 ad 2, 245a. Edmund Hill, The Mystery of the Trinity (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), 103.

. Leftow, “Anti Social Trinitarianism,” 53.

. Brian Leftow, “A Latin Trinity,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 21, no. 3 (2004): 307-8.

. Leftow, “Latin Trinity,” 308.

. Leftow, “Latin Trinity,” 312.

. Leftow, “Anti Social Trinitarianism,” 79.

. Peter van Inwagen, “Biography,” University of Notre Dame. Accessed July 14, 2023. https://philosophy.nd.edu/people/emeritus/peter-van-inwagen/.

. Peter van Inwagen, “And Yet They are Not Three Gods but One God,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, eds. Thomas McCall and Michael Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 218.

. van Inwagen, “Not Three Gods,” 229.

. van Inwagen, “Not Three Gods,” 231.

. van Inwagen, “Not Three Gods,” 236.

. van Inwagen, “Not Three Gods,” 238.

. van Inwagen, “Not Three Gods,” 239.

. Stanley Grenz, David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999).

. Some scholars believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son together, and others believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.

. Grenz, Guretzki, and Nordling, Pocket Dictionary.

. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1981), 160.

. Seung Goo Lee, “The Relationship between the Ontological Trinity and the Economic Trinity,” Journal of Reformed Theology 3 (2009): 90-107.

. Paul Molnar, “The Function of the Immanent Trinity in the Theology of Karl Barth: Implications for Today,” Scottish Journal of Theology 42 (1989): 370.

. Thomas Torrance, “Predestination in Christ,” Evangelical Quarterly 13 (1941): 116.

. Readers who are interested in studying this topic further can read George Hunsinger, Paul Molnar, and their reply to Bruce McCormack.

. I am following Millard Erickson’s titles and definitions of these views that he mentions in his book Who’s Tampering with the Trinity? An Assessment of the Subordination Debate (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2009).

. Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 37.

. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 51.

. Kevin N. Giles, Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: HarperCollins, 2006), 18.

. Stanley Grenz and Denise Muir Kjesbo, Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 114.

. Erickson, Who’s Tampering?, 79.

. Erickson, Who’s Tampering?, 172.

5 A Contemporary Christian Answer to Islamic Objections Against the Trinity

. Veli-Matti Karkkainen, Trinity and Revelation: A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 71.

. According to Tim Winter, “For most of this ‘classical’ period [tenth to thirteenth centuries] the kalām, literally ‘discourse,’ that is to say, the formal academic discipline which one scholar aptly calls ‘Islamic doctrinal theology.’” Tim Winter, ed., “Introduction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2.

. Qusṭanṭine Bashā, Mayamir Theodore Abū Qurrah Usquf Ḥārān: Aqdam Ta’lif Arabi Nasrani [The Articles of Theodore Abū Qurrah the Bishop of Ḥārān: The Oldest Arabic Christian Writings] (Beirut: Al-Fou’ad Printing Press, 1904), 27.

. Alexander Hall, “Scotus: Knowledge of God,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed January 22, 2022. https://iep.utm.edu/scotuskg/.

. Hall, “Scotus: Knowledge of God.”

. Oliver Leaman, “The Developed Kalām Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 81.

. Kallistos Ware, “The Holy Trinity: Model for Personhood-in-Relation,” in The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology, ed. John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 107.

. This list of Allah’s attributes is taken from Al-Gazālī, Ninety-Nine Names of God in Islam: A Translation of the Major Portion of Al-Gazālī’s al-Maqsad and al-Asnā, trans. Robert Stade (Ibadan, Nigeria: Daystar Press, 1970).

. Robert Cooper, “Peripheral Vision: Relationality,” Organization Studies 26, no. 11 (November 2005): 1691.

. J. T. Paasch, Divine Production in Late Medieval Trinitarian Theology: Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 139.

. Helen C. Boucher, Serena Chen, and Molly Parker Tapias, “The Relational Self Revealed: Integrative Conceptualization and Implications for Interpersonal Life,” Psychological Bulletin (2006): 151-79. Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968).

. Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 83.

. Kamal Al-Yazaji, Ma’alim al-Fikir al-‘Arabi fi al-‘Asar al-Wasit [Highlights of the Arab Thought in the Middle Ages] (Beirut: Dar Al-^clm Lilmalayīn, 1979), 151-57. Imad N. Shehadeh, God with Us and Without Us, Volumes One and Two: The Beauty and Power of Oneness in Trinity versus Absolute Oneness (Carlisle: Langham Creative Projects, 2020), 109.

. William Thomson, “Al-Ash^cari and His Al-Ibanah,” The Muslim World: A Quarterly Review of History, Culture, Religions & The Christian Mission in Islamdom 32, no. 3 (1942): 253.

. Bukharī, Ṣaḥīḥ Bukharī, Hadīth nos. 6410, 2736, and 7392. Accessed January 8, 2022. https://sunnah.com/bukhari:6410. Sunan ibn Majah, Hadīth no. 3861. Accessed January 8, 2022. https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:3861. Jami^c At-Tirmidhī, Hadīth 3507. Accessed January 8, 2022. https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi/48.

. H. Laoust, “Ahmad b. Hanbal,” in P. J. Bearman et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam Online, 12 vols. (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2004). www.encislam.brill.nl. This idea is related to the doctrine of bila kayfa (“without asking how”).

. Abdullah Saeed, Islamic Thought: An Introduction (Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2006), 65.

. Al-Juwaynī, A Guide to the Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief: Al-Irshad, trans. Paul E. Walker (Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing: 2001), 86.

. Jerry R. Halverson, Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam: The Muslim Brotherhood, Ash’arism, and Political Sunnism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 19.

. Dar Al-Ifta Al-Missriyyah, “Who are the Ash’arites?” Accessed January 8, 2022. www.dar-alifta.org/Foreign/ViewFatwa.aspx?ID=8001.

. Dar Al-Ifta Al-Missriyyah, “Who are the Ash’arites?”

. Halverson, Theology and Creed, 21. The issue of the attributes of acts is complicated.

. Shehadeh, God with Us and Without Us, 112.

. John Renard, Islam and Christianity: Theological Themes in Comparative Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 105.

. Saeed, Islamic Thought, 65.

. Al-Yazaji, Ma’alim al-Fikir, 17.

. Shehadeh, God with Us and Without Us, 111.

. Shehadeh, God with Us and Without Us, 112.

. Al-Shahrastānī, Nihāyat Al-Iqdām fī ^clm al-Kalām [The End of the Process of Kalam Science] (Cairo, Egypt: Maktabat al-Thaqafa al-Diniya, 2009), 341.

. Al-Shahrastānī, Nihāyat Al-Iqdām, 341.

. The New Encyclopedia of Judaism, s.v. “Emanation.” Accessed March 24, 2024. www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/emanation.

. Joel Kraemer, Philosophy in the Renaissance of Islam: Abu Sulaymān Al-Sijistānī and His Circle (Studies in Islamic Culture and History), vol. 8 (Leiden: Brill Academic, 1987), 197, 219-22, 224.

. The exact wording of this Ḥadīth as ibn Taymiyya relates it does not appear in the standard collections of Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī, but his text is close to that found in 3190 and 3191.

. Jon Hoover, “Perpetual Creativity in the Perfection of God: Ibn Taymiyya’s Hadith Commentary on God’s Creation of This World,” Journal of Islamic Studies 15, no. 3 (2004): 294.

. According to the Sunni Creed, Al-Aqīdah al-Tahāwiyyah, Allah is “the eternal without a beginning and enduring without end. . . . He has existed with His timeless attributes before His creation, which added nothing to His essence that was not already among His attributes. As His attributes were before creation, so will they continue forever.” Abū Ja^cfar al-Ṭaḥāwī, Al-Aqīdah al-Tahāwiyyah, trans., Abū Amīna Elias, accessed March 3, 2024, www.abuaminaelias.com/aqeedah-tahawiyyah/.

. Islamic scholars use different ways/words to refer to Allah, such as Creator, Aḥad, Wāḥid, and so on. However, they rarely use the word person. Therefore, they do not agree whether person should be used to describe God. Those who call Allah a person quote Sahih Muslim Ḥadīth no.1499a, “No person is more jealous of his honour than Allah, and no persons, is more fond of accepting an excuse than Allah, . . . and no one is more fond of praise than Allah . . .” https://sunnah.com/muslim:1499a.

. Frederic H. Chase, trans., “The Orthodox Faith,” in Saint John of Damascus Writings (New York: Fathers of the church, 1958), 178, 183. Al-Ṭaḥāwī, Al-Aqīdah al-Tahāwiyyah.

. John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007), 166-67.

. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 167.

. Aziz Al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 285.

. Arne Rudvin, “Islam: An Absolutely Different Ethos?,” International Review of Mission 71 (1982): 59.

. For more elaboration on this idea, please see Shehadeh, God with Us and Without Us, 114-16.

. Ida Glaser, “The Concept of Relationship as a Key to the Comparative Understanding of Christianity and Islam,” Themelios, vol. 11, no. 2 (January 1986): 59.

. Glaser, “Concept of Relationship,” 58.

. Ash-Shahristānī, Nihāyat al-Iqdā fī cilm al-Kalām (Baghdad: Muthanah), 179.

. David Waines, An Introduction to Islam, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 27.

. James White, The Forgotten Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Bethany House Publishers, 1998), 14.

. St. Basil of Caesarea, Letters 38, 8. Accessed January 21, 2022. www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202038.htm.

. St. Basil, Letters 38, 229.

. It is called in the twelfth century perichoresis (Greek) and circumincession (Latin).

. Chase, “Orthodox Faith,” 202.

. Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (United Kingdom: Eerdmans, 1998), 209.

. Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationship, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 16.

. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 16.

. Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought, s.v. “Paradoxes,” ed. Kenneth McLeish (Bloomsbury: 1993).

. Millard Erickson explains, “In Latin, the term came to be translated by two words, which represent two different understandings of the nature of persons, and which together capture the full meaning of the Greek. The word, circuminsessio, means literally ‘to be seated in.’ It conveys the more static conception of being located within one another. The word, circumincessio, is a more dynamic concept. It comes from a word meaning to permeate or interpenetrate. Together, these ideas as found in perichoresis, mean both permanence of location with respect to another and ongoing interchange or sharing.” Millard Erickson, God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 230. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 31.

. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 31.

. J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, God’s Relational Presence: The Cohesive Center of Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 22.

. Shehadeh, God with Us and Without Us, 465-66.

. Duvall and Hays, God’s Relational Presence, 254.

. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization (New York: HarperOne, 2002), 3, 6.

. Brian Leftow, God and Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 195-97.

. Leftow, God and Necessity, 195-97. Leftow explains that it is possible to be more or less permanently perfect—if both A and B are perfect at all points in their lives, but A has a longer life, A is more permanently perfect than B. It is also possible to be more or less securely so. And by the same token, plausibly it is better to be more rather than less securely and permanently perfect. So perfection must be had with the maximum security and permanence with which it can be had.

. Leftow, God and Necessity, 197.

Conclusion

. Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority: God Who Stands and Stays, vol. 5 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1999), 130.

. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 351.

. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 205.

. Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1, 350.

. Thomas McCall, “Theologians, Philosophers, and the Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 339.

. Abū al-fidā Isma^cīl Ibn Kathīr, The Explanation of the Great Qur’an (Beirut: Dar Ibn Ḥazm, 2000), 1768.

. Nadine Abbas, “al-Falsafa wa al-Lahoot was al-Akhlaq ‘ind Yaḥya ibn ^cAdī” [The Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics of Yaḥya ibn ^cAdī], Tafahum Magazine (2015): 137. Retrieved from https://tafahom.mara.gov.om/storage/al-tafahom/ar/2015/048/pdf/07.pdf.

. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 84.

. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 148-49.

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