5 A Contemporary Christian Answer to Islamic Objections Against the Trinity
5
A Contemporary Christian Answer to Islamic Objections Against the Trinity
NOW THAT THE STUDY HAS OFFERED background on the medieval period in the Middle East and three major Arab theologians and their defenses of the Trinity, it will move to present a modern defense of the doctrine of the Trinity against Islamic objections, especially the doctrine of tawḥīd. During the medieval period, Arab Christian scholars were preoccupied with proving the oneness of God over discussing the importance of God being manifested in three persons. They moved from the three Aqānīm to the one divine being. Western scholars, on the other hand, were influenced by Neoplatonism, in which “the presentation of Christian theology began from the one God and then went on to the God triune.” Therefore, they were preoccupied with the relational aspect of the three persons of the Trinity over proving the oneness of God.
To defend the Trinity, Christian Middle Eastern scholars discussed God’s attributes. John of Damascus, for instance, listed them to explain what kind of God Christians believe in; whereas Theodore Abū Qurrah and Yaḥya ibn cAdī expanded the explanation and used God’s attributes in their illustrations to define the Trinity and prove God’s oneness. Western scholars, on the other hand, did not neglect the discussion of divine attributes, but they included significant reorientations and revisions. Therefore, this current chapter serves as a bridge between the East and West to present a comprehensive, but not an exhaustive, trinitarian model showing God as the greatest conceived being.
THE GREATEST CONCEIVED BEING: A SUMMARY
Christian scholars always pursue ways to understand God. Throughout church history, they formed several creeds in order to fight heresies and defend orthodoxy. In similar fashion, Muslim scholars have always sought ways to talk about Allah. They call theology the science of kalām, which is used, not for the purpose of understanding Allah—Allah is supremely transcendent, and no one can understand him—but for the purpose of speaking about Allah as the Qur’an reveals him.
In both religious disciplines, Christian and Muslim scholars proceed with caution, especially in using terms that describe the essence of God. They believe that using absent terms—terms that have no fixed meanings—leads to people speaking about abstract concepts because no one knows what an author means by these terms. Christian theologians such as John of Damascus and Theodore Abū Qurrah realized this fact and encouraged their audience to seek comparisons between the attributes of God and the nature of man to discover the differences. Abū Qurrah argues that people can learn about God’s attributes by observing Adam’s virtues, acknowledging his defects, and affirming the gap between the human and the divine natures. If some ideas or experiences do not match or map onto the divine essence, then people know nothing about God and his perfection. As medieval Christian scholar John Duns Scotus puts it, “If things were really this bad, we would have no better reason to call God wise than a rock.” He adds,
Every metaphysical inquiry about God proceeds in this fashion: the formal notion of something is considered; the imperfection associated with this notion in creatures is removed, and then, retaining the same formal notion, we ascribe to it the ultimate degree of perfection and then attribute it to God. . . . Consequently, every inquiry regarding God is based upon the supposition that the intellect has the same univocal concept which it obtained from creatures.
When Christian scholars say God is the seer, the hearer, and the communicator, they know what vision, hearing, and communication are; however, they ascribe the ultimate and the perfect ability to see, hear, and speak with all creation to God who is omnipotent.
While this method of inquiry followed Christian theologians throughout church history, Muslim theologians resisted such comparison, acknowledging a wide chasm between Allah and humanity. As Islamic theology evolved, many Muslim traditionalists in the early years of kalām followed the principle of “man ṭalaba al-dīn bi’l kalām tazandaqa (whoever seeks religion through kalām becomes a heretic).” This slogan did not refer to the whole project of theology as represented by Usūl al-Dīn (the origin of religion), but to the investigation of the basic features of the nature of Allah, especially his attributes, which some early Muslim thinkers engaged in. Later generations of Muslim scholars accused other theologians of assuming too much about the knowability of the divine nature, so they created the doctrine of bila kayfa (without asking how). It means believing in certain attributes (Allah’s ninety-nine beautiful names) without attempting to understand them beyond their description in the Qur’an and traditions. The discussion of Allah’s attributes continued afterward in a very limited way.
Both Christian and Muslim theologians confess the perfect-divine theology. Divine perfection relates to a state of completeness or absolute wholeness. As stated in , the greatest conceived being has no ontological deficiencies, has no flaws, or depends on anything else. There is no greater being that can be thought of that deserves human worship except the greatest conceived being. This concept can be demonstrated with the following equation: maximally good + maximally perfect = maximally great. This is the definition of the greatest conceived being. In other words, God is maximally good and maximally perfect; therefore, he is the greatest conceived being.
Maximal divine goodness means God cannot be morally better; there is no room for him to obtain more moral skills. His goodness is maximal and full. If there is anything in the world that can contribute to or increase his goodness, then he is a minor God. In like manner, maximal divine perfection means he lacks no thing (e.g., skill, ability, attributes, etc.). There is nothing in creation that can add or subtract from him. God did not create the world because he must or ought to, nor because he needs to. God is self-sufficient; he does not need the world to be unsurpassably great. He is perfect with or without the world. Divine maximal goodness and aseity (self-sufficiency) make theists (both Christian and Muslim) believe that God/Allah is the greatest conceived being, and therefore, he deserves human worship.
Theists, however, follow two different models for divine perfection—Trinity and tawḥīd. The study advocates for the divine trinitarian model because it demonstrates divine perfection in an unsurpassable way. As Kallistos Ware states, “The doctrine of the Trinity is not just one possible way of thinking about God. It is the only way. The one God of the Christian church cannot be conceived except as Trinity.” Other nontrinitarian models of theism (especially tawḥīd) do not reveal God as unsurpassably perfect. Their presentation of the divine essence portrays God as contingently relational, especially before creation. Allah was alone with no other person to communicate with. All his divine communicative attributes were dysfunctional before the existence of creation because there was no one to practice these attributes with—for example, Al-Baṣīr (the Seer), As-Samīc (the Hearer), Ar-Razzāq (the Sustainer), Ash-Sahkūr (the Thankful), al-Ḥāfiẓ (the Preserver), al-Muqīt (the Nourisher), Ar-Raqīb (the Watcher), al-Karīm (the Generous), al-Mujīb (the One who Responds to Those Who Ask), and so on. Consequently, the Islamic presentation of tawḥīd shows that Allah is contingent upon his creation in order to communicate. This shortcoming in the divine nature affects the greatness of the divine and runs the risk of misperceiving the greatest conceived being.
The argument goes this way:
P1: One aspect of divine perfection is relationality—the greatest conceived being should be a relational being in order to be perfect and good (the greatest).
P2: The trinitarian model shows God as an eternally relational divine being (intrarelational and interrelational).
C: God as a Trinity is the greatest conceived being.
THE GREATEST CONCEIVED BEING IS RELATIONAL IN NATURE
Many theologians appeal to the concept of divine attributes in an attempt to discover the mystery of the divine essence. One of the ways to understand the greatest conceived being is by studying his attributes to ensure that none of them is in conflict with other attributes. The attribute that this chapter will focus on is the relational nature of God—God in relationship. It is rare to see the relationality of God discussed in theology proper as an attribute; however, the relationality of God in the sense of interconnectedness is undeniable in any theistic worldview. God communicates and connects with his creation. He hears his people’s prayers, answers their inquiries, and reveals his will. If God does not possess the ability to relate, then he is a lesser God. If he is nonrelational, then he cannot communicate with his creation. He cannot hear the prayers of believers and cannot communicate his divine revelation and will. In the theistic worldview, the greatest conceived being does not miss any attributes, which might make him imperfect. Therefore, within theism, God must be relational.
Relationality: An essential trait of divine personality. Relationality is essential in the theistic worldview. All theistic worldviews (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) believe that God connects with his creation in one way or another. God gave his revelation (the Bible and the Qur’an). He spoke directly with his prophets (Ex 31:18; Dan 5:25) and he communicated his message to human beings through angels and apostles. Today, the written revelation is completed, but God still communicates with his people. He listens to their prayers and answers their needs (Ps 4:3; Jn 9:31; 1 Jn 5:14; Surah 21:48, 76; 35:22). In other words, within a theistic worldview, God is still involved in his creation by communicating with his followers. He did not leave the world alone to wrestle with its challenges, as in a deistic worldview.
Relationality is essential to personhood. Relationality requires personal agency—an agent who can hear/listen and speak/talk. The form of communication is not important at this point, and it will not be addressed. The significant point, however, that this study conveys is that no relationship of any sort (such as father-son or master-slave) can be done without the ability to connect. The minimum requirement for starting a relationship is the ability to see, hear, and communicate. Objects, such as newspapers, televisions, and computers are all transmitters rather than ends in themselves. They do not represent or reflect themselves, but they point to a variety of things, such as the flux, flow, and changing circumstances around the world. They are unable to create or maintain a relationship, unless there is a personal agency behind them.
Relationality rules out indifference. Usually, objects are indifferent to what is around them. Scotus states, “Something with passive power is indifferent to contrary states of affairs, like how logs are indifferent to being hot or not being hot. After all, a log does not care, so to speak, whether it is one or the other, for there is nothing about a log that requires that it be hot, or that it not be hot.” On the contrary, an agency of a person who cares about the status of the log can interact with it by heating it up and causing it to receive heat. In the same sense, an active power, such as the sun, is indifferent to the many effects it can bring about to creation; however, an agency of a person (who has some control over the effects of the sun) is not indifferent to its effects. A personal agency is intentional about its effects on the creation because it seeks to emphasize virtue and minimize harm.
Relationality requires otherness—another agency to connect with. The communicative ability of a personal agency cannot be completed without another personal agency to receive, convey, and impart the information being transmitted. Relationships require at least two agents for meaningful interaction. It is pointless for someone to make a relationship with himself, or to be satisfied seeing the dirt or listening to the wind. Pure individualism or selfishness is not perceived as a virtue. Even psychologists, while they emphasize the traits of self-awareness for the sake of furthering and improving interpersonal relationships, do not recommend it for the sake of furthering individualism.
Relationality is essential for human flourishing. Relationality is fundamental for human flourishing. God does not only ask people to worship him, but he also promises to bless them if they believe and obey him. Those who are not believers will not receive his blessings, and those who believe will receive their deserved awards. In other words, the results of the divine relationality should lead to human flourishing (at least for those who are obeying the divine communication/revelation). Those who do not want to have a relationship with God might not enjoy human flourishing, but those who want to establish a relationship with God are promised a thriving life. If this is true, then God ought to communicate to establish a relationship with his creation. If he is unable to convey his message or listen to prayers, then his greatness is disputable.
Humanly speaking, some people are better than others in their relatedness and communication with other people. Some can make friends so easily—it comes naturally to them—whereas others struggle with making friends and relating to people. No matter how hard connecting with others is, the ability to communicate and relate is essential to any person, otherwise the individuals would be stripped of their humanity. Needless to say, human relationships are different from God’s relationship to the world. God is transcendent and does not need humanity to flourish (Eccles 5:2; Is 6:1; Surah 87:1; 2:255; 42:12). While this is true, there is a need to note that God is omnipotent (able to do all possible things; Rom 4:21: 2 Cor 9:8; 2 Tim 1:12; Surah 17:99; 23:17; 36:81; 46:33); therefore, being unable to establish a relationship with his creation (especially human beings) would not be a virtue, but a defect.
In a nutshell, relationality is a fundamental attribute to divine agency. Most theistic religions believe that God created human beings to worship him. Relationship with the divine started through the divine agency (God) who communicated to human beings their need and duty to worship him. Intuitively speaking, if the divine agency is unable to communicate this requirement, then he is to blame, not the human. In other words, the first step in relationality starts with the divine, who is communicated to be the supreme, the creator, and the omnipotent; subsequently, he deserves to be worshiped. God’s inability to communicate with his creation at any point in history would be considered a flaw, not a perfection.
The fundamental factor of relationality. Relationality: Intrarelational nature of the divine. Intrarelationality is essential to the divine agency because it shows God not only as relational but also as eternally relational. Christians and Muslims perceive God as an eternal divine being, which indicates that God has no beginning and no end. He was not born, does not have a starting point, and will not die (Rom 1:20, 16:26; 1 Tim 1:17; Surah 28:88; 55:27). As Stanley Grenz states, “To refer to God as spirit means to understand God as the Living One.” Living in this case implies the idea of always/eternally living.
Since creation has a starting point (at one time in history there was no creation), then scholars can think of divine relationality in two ways: the relationality of God before the creation and after it. The divine intrarelationality is related to God’s unity, and it refers to his sociality within the Godhead—God as a community and the way he perceives himself. This criterion helps thinkers understand God’s nature inwardly—whether he is alone (as one agent) or a communion of persons—and whether his relational nature is consistent with his eternality.
Relationality: Interrelational nature of the divine. Interrelationality is another type of divine relationality related to the communication between God and his creation. God is integrally involved with his creation. He is not static, but active and affected by the events of the world. Any relationship requires at least two agents: one speaks while the other listens, one loves while another receives the love, and so on. This criterion is important because it provides answers about the nature of the relationship of God with his creation. How does God relate/act with his creation and what does he require/expect from his creatures? After the fall, what did he do to save humanity? This criterion helps thinkers understand God’s nature outwardly through his actions.
ALLAH AND RELATIONALITY
The main Islamic theological schools: A historical overview. As stated in , during the Islamic formation of theology (kalām), theological and philosophical conflicts arose between two major Arabic schools of thought: the traditional and the rational. The traditional school, led by the Ashcarites, stressed the idea that revelation should precede reason. They viewed inspired writings as superior to human reasoning and believed that faith and surrender were therefore required. Consequently, “interpretation of the text was to be either limited or forbidden, and ignorance must be admitted.” On the other hand, the rational school, represented by the Muctazilites, recognized the necessity of reason. They placed reason above revelation. Faith was not complete without understanding. When a discrepancy between the mind and revelation occurs, interpretation is required. In the eleventh century, after a long dispute, the Muctazilites were accursed and the Ashcarites were recognized as the orthodox party. Based on this distinction, both Ashcarites and Muctazilites presented different perceptions of the divine attributes. While they both were intent on saving God’s unity, they became preoccupied with God’s power over God’s relationality.
Islamic overview of divine attributes. The two Sunni groups disputed the topic of Allah’s names/attributes. In the Qur’an, Mohammad states that “to Allah alone belong all perfect attributes. So call on Him by these” (Surah 7:180 Islam International Publications, 2015; 17:110; 20:8; 59:24). Following Mohammad’s commands, Muslims believe that they should not look to nature or the virtues that human beings enjoy in order to extract God’s attributes. Instead, they should only use the names that Allah and Mohammad used in the Qur’an. The dispute was over what names to include and what are the meanings of these names.
Using different methods of interpretation, the Ashcarites’ understanding of Allah’s attributes resulted in different interpretations from the Muctazilites. The most famous scholar the Ashcarites followed was Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (AD 855), who rejected the Muctazilites’ rationalism and gave precedence to divine revelation. Ibn Ḥanbal believed that the attributes of God, according to the teachings of the Qur’an, are not subject to human reasoning, and thus must be accepted without qualification. Asking whether God’s attributes are part of his essence (in him) or part of his will (without him) was an unacceptable religious innovation.
The ongoing issues between the Ashcarites and Muctazilites culminated in the question of anthropomorphism (tashbīh). The Qur’an speaks of God’s hands (Surah 38:75), eyes (Surah 54:14), and face (Surah 55:27). It also describes him as hearing (Surah 2:127; 17:1; 22:61), seeing (Surah 4:58, 134; 5:71; 17:30), and seating himself on his throne (Surah 20:5), apparently implying that he has a body. Many Ashcarite scholars, such as al-Bāqillānī, al-Juwaynī, and al-Ghazālī, argue that these verses must be understood metaphorically. As al-Juwaynī states, “What is correct, in our view, is that the hands [of God] should be construed as power, the eyes as vision, and the face as existence.” Ashcarites were eager to avoid anything that might be construed as anthropomorphism (tashbīh).
Dar al-Ifta al-Missriyyah, which is the highest religious authority in Egypt, issued a mandate on their website, commending Sunnis to
Believe in them [Allah’s attributes] and to receive them with acceptance and resignation. And to not engage in its interpretation, its refutation, likening the attribute to something tangible, and other problematic methodologies. It is incumbent to establish the attribute as it came and to leave interpreting its meaning and to resign its meaning to the One who spoke of it in accordance with the way of those who are firmly established in the faith . . . He [Allah] has castigated those who innovate in interpretation “But those in whose hearts is perversity follow the part thereof that is allegorical, seeking discord, and searching for its hidden meanings, but no one knows its hidden meanings except God.”
Dar al-Ifta al-Missriyyah also quotes Imam Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, who, regarding Allah descending to the sky of this earth and the scene on the day of resurrection, has stated that “we believe in these texts and we verify their truth without asking how, or without seeking a meaning and we desire nothing of this. We believe that what the Messenger of God brought is truth and we do not respond to him nor do we describe God with more than what He has described of Himself, ‘there is none like unto Him and He is the all seeing, all hearing.’” This statement affirms the attributes of Allah, and if any of them are ambiguous or equivocal, then Sunnis should accept them as is without further question.
What is important to our study is that the Ashcarites affirmed Allah’s attributes (sifat), divided them into two groups, and emphasized seven essential ones. The first group is the essential sifat. They are called Al-sifat al-dhatīya (attributes in essence): namely power, knowledge, life, will, speech, hearing, and sight, which eternally subsist in God’s essence. From eternity, Allah is omnipotent, omniscient, living, willing, speaking, all-hearing, and all-seeing. The second group is called Al-sifat al-ficlya (attributes in actions), such as mercy, love, wrath, and so on. These attributes exist only as Allah acts with his creation. The Ashcarites’ semantics regarding the attributes of actions is ambiguous. Some scholars say, “These attributes [attributes in actions] are therefore not eternal and do not subsist in His [Allah]Essence.” Other scholars say that these attributes are eternal, but they are not related to the essence of God but to his will.
Muctazilites, on the other hand, contributed to the attribute debate by presenting different views from the Ashcarites. According to John Renard, the Muctazilites’ views “flow from the first principle: since God is simply and irreducibly one, his ‘essential’ attributes (power, knowledge, existence) are identical with God’s being. But since God also acts in time, his speaking, hearing, seeing, and willing are separate from God’s essence and subject to change.” Muctazilites attempted to save a strict concept of monotheism, which, in their opinion, requires an uncompromized observance of the transcendence and the absolute unity of God. In their view, Allah should be pure in essence and has no attributes because assigning attributes implies multiplicity. If the attributes are identical with God, then they would have to be identical among themselves. God’s knowledge would thus be the same as God’s omnipotence.
The Muctazilites maintained the attributes of essence; however, they insisted that it would be blasphemous to acknowledge the attributes of action as defining what God is like. According to Shehadeh, “Muctazilites maintained that the attributes of action are not eternal, but created, and therefore, contingent, unnecessary and changing.” Allah’s attributes in actions are the abstract meanings, human semantics, and knowledge that were created to know Allah. Thus, it is easy to imagine a time when Allah did not have these attributes because they only came into being when he acted with his creation. As a result of this claim, Muctazilites made Allah mutable and subject to change.
The intrarelationality of Allah. Neither the Ashcarite nor the Muctazilite understanding of Allah’s attributes show him as relational before creation. Muctazilites do not believe that Allah’s attributes, such as seeing, hearing, and speaking, are eternal. Most of the Islamic dispute happened over God’s speech, in which Muctazilites view Allah’s speaking as an attribute of action; therefore, it is not eternal. Moreover, Muctazilites have different interpretations for Allah being the seer and the hearer. Al-Shahrastānī mentions several Muctazilite views on this topic. Al-Kacbī, for instance, believes that Allah being the seer and the hearer means “he is aware of what is being said and seen.” Other scholars, like Al-Jibā’ī, understood Allah (the seer and the hearer) as al-Ḥay (the living, who is not dead, full of life, and the existent). In other words, Muctazilites do not affirm the attributes of Allah as part of his essence; subsequently, they are not eternal. They interpret Allah being the seer and the hearer by alluding either to his life or his knowledge of the objects of seeing and hearing. To protect Allah’s unity, Muctazilites end up presenting a mutilated concept of the divine by making him unable to see or hear from eternity.
The Ashcarites, on the other hand, acknowledge that Allah sees and hears because it is written in the Qur’an that “He is the Hearing, the Seeing” (Surah 42:11, Shakir). The problem with this view lies in the idea that Allah could hear and see eternally before creating the world because these attributes are part of his essence. But here’s the question that Ashcarites never asked: Whom did Allah see or hear before the creation of the world? If he did not see or hear anyone, he only started seeing and hearing after the creation; consequently, his nature changed. Perhaps he had the potential ability to see and hear, but his attributes were dysfunctional until he created the world.
The eternal divine communication problem in Islam, which is mentioned in , extends to Allah’s speech. Remember, the Ashcarites’ view about Allah’s speech is understood by his perpetual state of being, as a substance (macna), not in the sense of a set of temporal ideas or representations, but as an eternal divine attribute. This understanding raises the same problem of seeing and hearing: Allah had no one to communicate with before the creation of the world. His ability to communicate was contingent on his creation.
The conflict between the Muctazilites and the Ashcarites regarding the relationality of Allah exposes the weakness of absolute oneness. Muslims encounter a dilemma with their concepts of tawḥīd based on their descriptions of Allah’s attributes. Those who affirm the eternality of the attributes—especially speaking, seeing, and hearing—mutilate their concept of the divine because Allah needs another agent to speak, see, and hear. Otherwise, Allah would be speaking, seeing, and hearing with himself, and that would be meaningless. Those who do not affirm the eternality of the attributes, on the other hand, end up presenting a minor image of the divine who could not communicate—speak, hear, or see—until after the creation came into existence because there was no subject of communication to fulfill his attributes with.
To answer this dilemma, later Muslim scholars suggested that Allah did not form creation ex-nihilo (out of nothing), but instead by emanation. The concept of emanation means that all created things are derived from something else in the sense that secondary things proceed or flow from the primary. Abū Sulaymān al-Sijistānī (AD 1001) believed in eternal creation. Time does not have beginning or end. According to Joel Kraemer, al-Sijistānī maintains that God’s power is “spread throughout the world permanently” and saw creation as “a non-temporal, eternal process.” This means God did not create out of nothing nor in six literal days as the Qur’an states. Instead, creation is perpetually existent with God. Ibn Taymīyya (AD 1328), who was regarded as a kalām theologian and not a philosopher, argues for the idea of continuous creation from eternity. Commenting on a Ḥadīth in Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī and a Quranic verse, he argues that Allah created this world while his throne was already in existence. It is written in the Qur’an that Allah “is Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days—and His Throne was upon the water” (Surah 11:7 Pickthall). This verse connotes the idea that water and Allah’s throne were already in existence when Allah created the world in six days. Jon Hoover notes,
God’s creative activity had a beginning. They correctly see that reason dictates that God could have become an agent after not having been one unless a prior cause originated to necessitate the change. That is, it is impossible that God arbitrarily started creating at some point in the past after never having created before. Here ibn Taymiyya endorses the philosophers’ axiom of efficient causality—every event requires a cause—and he rejects the Kalām view that it is in the nature of God’s will to decide without prior cause.
Despite ibn Taymīyya’s suggestion about the eternality of the world, the dilemma of the relationality of Allah remains unanswered. For even if water and Allah’s throne (or just basic atoms) is all that existed at the beginning (from eternity), Allah’s attributes as the hearer and communicator were not perfected until the creation of human beings. Allah was still unable to communicate in a relational way or demonstrate his relational nature until the creation of human beings. Allah’s inability to see, hear, and speak limits his power and perfection. Additionally, the idea of the eternal nature of water and God’s throne is problematic. For only Allah is eternal, and all that is eternal is Allah. If water or Allah’s throne was eternal, as ibn Taymiyyah claims, then other things were Allah or associating with Allah from eternity. This idea is completely rejected in Islam because it is inconsistent with the doctrine of tawḥīd—only the divine is eternal. In other words, the eternality of the universe limits the divinity of Allah because it presents something else as eternal, and this idea refutes the concept of tawḥīd.
The interrelationality of Allah. Allah’s attributes describe him communicating with his creation, which raises the question of the interrelationality of Allah. The Qur’an describes Allah speaking to angels, teaching them mysteries about the future, and ordering them to bow to Adam (Surah 2:30-34). The Qur’an also depicts Allah hearing the pleading of woman regarding her husband (Surah 58:1), seeing everything (Surah 17:1; 26:218; 96:14), and hearing everything (Surah 5:76; 6:13; 21:4). Perhaps most importantly, the Qur’an itself is the speech of Allah to his servant via the angel Jibril Mohammad (Surah 6:19).
Most theistic scholars believe that God is a person/agent. He is not a person as human beings are, but he is a person in a unique, divine way. The divine person, for instance, is eternal, having no beginning or end. He is not born, and he cannot die. The divine person is not a secondary but a primary and absolute notion in existence. As John Zizioulas states, “Nothing is more sacred than the person since it constitutes the ‘way of being’ of God himself.” Christians and Muslims, however, differ on the idea of whether God (as a person) exists in communion or alone. Christians believe that if God is a person, then he cannot exist in isolation or alone; whereas Muslims have no problem with God being alone and lonely. They believe that there is no plurality in him because his essential characteristic is that of unity. Nevertheless, his lack of plurality means he is not in relationship throughout eternity, for there is no other with whom he might relate.
The reason behind this difference is that Christians relate the idea of personhood to the idea of identity. Being a person means being unique and unrepeatable. Even if a person dies, she will still be remembered for who she was. Her skills, traits, characteristics (good and bad) will always be remembered. However, animals, who are not persons, are replaceable, and their traits and characteristics are repeatable. “They can be similar; they can be composed and decomposed; they can be combined with others in order to produce results or even new species; they can be used to serve purposes—sacred or not, this does not matter.” On the contrary, persons cannot be replaced, reproduced, combined, or used the same way animals are used—even the most sacred ones. Whosoever treats persons in such a way automatically turns them into a thing. When people die, they perish physically, but they bring into existence their personal particularity. As Zizioulas explains,
Death dissolves us all into one indistinguishable nature, turning us into “substance,” or things. What gives us an identity that does not die is not our nature but our personal relationship with God’s undying personal identity. Only when nature is hypostatic or personal, as is the case with God, does it exist truly and eternally. For it is only then that it acquires uniqueness and becomes an unrepeatable and irreplaceable particularity in the “mode of being” which we find in the Trinity.
Some Muslims might partially agree with this explanation; however, those who reject the idea that God is a person are trying to avoid the term because of its anthropomorphic connotation. Such Muslims prefer to use other titles and names of Allah, such as rabb (lord; Surah 40:28; 43:64), a word used to refer to the God of Mohammad or the God of al-Kacba. Ilāh (a god—pl. āliha), a word of considerably lower incidence in the Qur’anic text, is used often to refer generically to the false gods of others, including Jesus and Mary (Surah 5:116, 16:51; 20:88).
Whether Allah is defined as a person or a divine agent, his relationality to the world is essential. The Islamic presentation of divine attributes can be opaque because absolute oneness focuses on the power of Allah and the freedom of his will. A revealed action of God “deals with the will of Allah and not Allah himself.” Shehadeh thinks that “the emphasis was placed upon the phenomenon that there is never a promise given by God in the Qur’an that is not accompanied by a statement stressing his freedom and power to act according to how he chooses.” This is mainly because in Islam, human beings are created primarily to worship Allah rather than to have a relationship with him. Ida Glaser states, “The ultimate in relationship is willing submission rather than interaction.” Glaser adds, “God’s love may cause him to have mercy on his creatures, even to the extent of communicating with them; but it is a love that condescends in beneficence rather than a love that shares in relationship.” Relational love includes both benefits and relationship.
If the previous analysis is true, then God’s absolute power and authority over the whole universe constitute a master-slave relationship instead of a father-child relationship. It is his right alone to enforce the affairs of men as he wills, and it is the duty of the slave to obey and worship his master without questioning. Al-Shahristānī openly affirms this kind of relationship between Allah and everything in his creation (including human beings) by indicating that “Ar-Raḥmān [another one of Allah’s names] should not have a son because he is exalted. He did not become, nor was caused to exist; he did not beget, nor was begotten; but everything to him is as slavery to masterdom. All who existed in heavens and on earth become slaves to Ar-Raḥmān, and he is the master of everything and its [the world’s] creator, and the God of all that exists . . .”
The super-transcendence of Allah in Islamic theology presents him as above his creation because there are no signs of personal interaction with human beings. When Allah wanted to interact with his created beings, he sent them several prophets, such as Abraham, Moses, Jonah, and many others. When the age of maturity, or the age of reason approached, Allah sent prophet Mohammad to his people as the Seal of the prophets (Surah 33:40). He did not simply reveal the continuation of the Judeo-Christian faith, but he claimed to be the culmination of all previous revelations. Up to this point, Allah did not leave himself without a witness. He was still communicating with his people. He saw the conditions of humanity, heard their agony, and taught them what they need to know about his majesty. He corresponded with them by speaking, and he spoke by revealing. He communicated by sending a messenger, whom he gave supreme authority to reveal his will (Qur’an 42:51). After this point, Allah stopped communicating with human beings. He stopped sending prophets and revealing more messages. It seems that Allah gave humanity the moral law and taught them the ethical codes that they should apply, but he then left them on their own to struggle and fight. This part of Allah’s relationality is missing from Islamic theology. Allah seems to distance himself from the creation.
The original equation of God’s perfection + God’s moral goodness does not seem compatible with the Islamic presentation of the divine. For Allah to be the greatest, he must be maximally good and maximally perfect. Maximally good means God cannot morally improve. He cannot be nonrelational at one point of history, then become relational, and later stop being relational again. Being nonrelational at any point in history makes him a minor god. Similarly, God being maximally perfect means he lacks nothing. If he does not exhibit the feature of relationality necessarily, then he is a contingent being. He needs his creation in order to be relational. Before the creation of human beings, there was no one to hear, see, or speak to. The doctrine of tawhīd rejects the idea of relationship within the divine community and emphasizes the idea of oneness—Allah is Wāhid, Aḥd, and Samad. He is not a community of external persons who need no creation to communicate with, but he is contingently reliant on his creation to be relational.
Despite all the attempts to protect God’s transcendence and perfection, being morally contingent does not make the Islamic divine being necessarily perfect. Allah is either essentially morally perfect or essentially morally defective. For the greatness of Allah to occur, his goodness and perfection should match. Just as we understand God’s omnipotence to be threatened by God not being able to make water H2O, we need to take God’s greatness to be threatened by the fact that he cannot exhibit the attribute of relationality necessarily. The concept of God existing eternally independent of the world must here be judged as being strictly incoherent. By logical necessity, the concept of Allah’s self-sufficient sociality must be rejected.
THE TRINITARIAN GOD AND RELATIONALITY
As is commonly known, Christians believe in the Trinity. The Trinity to Christians is not just a doctrine or a concept. It is more than that. It is God himself. God is unique; he is totally unlike anything else. So, to define the Trinity is to define God. Is it possible to define the undefinable? Human language fails theologians in two ways: first, it is based upon time. While God is not limited to time, human beings speak of the past, the present, and the future. Thus, when they speak about God, they are forced to place misleading limitations upon his being. Second, words often carry with them “baggage,” which is to say that specific words might conjure up a particular mental image. The most obvious example is using the word person when we are describing the deity—the persons of the Trinity. Like Muslims, Christian theologians are aware that human beings (as persons) are unlike God. To avoid any confusion, Arab and Syriac theologians invented a special theological term and called it Aqānīm (sg. Uqnūm) to refer to the persons of the Trinity. The three Arab Christian scholars that were discussed in the previous chapter followed this pattern, and this study will follow the same pattern. Arab Christians who were conversing with their Muslim peers knew about the problem of anthropomorphism and its Islamic rejection. They saw the necessity of inventing theological terminology that helps clarify the meaning of the divine persons while honoring the distinction.
It has been argued in the previous chapter that most Chalcedonian Christians follow the definition of the Trinity of the Apostles’ Creed. God is one divine being manifested in three Aqānīm. Like Muslims theologians, Arab Christian theologians explained the doctrine of God by discussing his attributes. However, they did not classify the attributes into two categories (the attributes of essence and the attributes of actions); instead, they emphasized that the knowledge of God is possible through studying God’s actions and through observing humanity’s virtues while keeping the distinction between the divine and human virtues clear.
Most of these Arab Christian theologians did not include the relationality of God in their discussions. This attribute is closely related to the omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and the immutability of God. If God is not eternally relational, then he is a minor God who is an abstract concept, and not a being that deserves worship. If God is not relational in essence, then he is not maximally good because relationality is superior to nonrelationality, and lacking relationality indicates lacking ability, which makes God nonomnipotent. Finally, if God was not relational, but he became relational after he created human beings, then his nature changed. He was not perfect at one point in history because he was not able to practice all his virtues, but at another point in history, he became able to. This change in God’s nature indicates inferiority.
The next sections discuss in further detail how the relationality of God is important to show the perfection of his nature. In Christianity, God is eternally relational because the three persons of the Trinity are eternal in nature. The trinitarian model is the only way to show God as intrarelational within himself and interrelational with his creation, without compromising his omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and immutability—all of which reflect his perfection. For to construe God’s sociality as being world-dependent rather than self-sufficient presents weakness in the divine essence.
The trinitarian God is intrarelational. Christian theologians emphasize God in his revelation. God’s own eternal being and the salvific actions of the three divine Aqanīm in history reflect the intratrinitarian relations in the eternal Godhead. For all the attributes of the Father are beheld in the Son, and all the attributes of the Son belong to the Father, insomuch as the Son abides wholly in the Father and in turn has the Father wholly in Himself. Thus, the Uqnūm (person or hypostasis) of the Son becomes, as it were, the form and countenance by which the Father is made known, and the Uqnūm of the Father is made known in the form of the Son. Basil of Caesarea points out that the Son beholds the attributes of the Father, and the Son’s attributes belong to the Father, “in so much as the Son abides wholly in the Father and in turn has the Father wholly in Himself.” The Father and the Son interdwell with one another in an intimate relationship in which each fully knows and beholds the other.
John of Damascus was one of the prominent theologians who spoke about the intrarelationality of God. He developed what was later called the doctrine of perichoresis—the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit within the blessed Trinity. This doctrine grasps the circulatory character of the triune God in which the persons exist in one another. Perichoresis is seen in the mutual cleaving of the Aqanīm, in which
the abiding and resting of the Persons in one another is not in such a manner that they coalesce or become confused, but, rather, so that they adhere to one another, for they are without interval between them and inseparable and their mutual indwelling is without confusion. For the Son is in the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit is in the Father and the Son, and the Father is in the Son and the Spirit, and there is no merging or blending or confusion.
Each Uqnūm of the Trinity is vitally existing in the other two without losing his own identity. Miroslav Volf calls such a construct reciprocal interiority. We find this type of thinking predominantly in the Johannine writings in the New Testament. John sees the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father (Jn 14:11). Divine unity is an act of interiority; it is an expression of divine intrarelationality.
The doctrine of perichoresis provides a proper ground for claiming that God is not contingently relational, but that God is eternally relational because he is relational within himself. God is fundamentally a community of divine Aqānīm who displays love and functions in harmony within himself. Since God is triune in nature, perichoresis promotes the idea that God is never “alone.” According to Bruce Ware, God “never experiences, whether with or without the world he has made, a sense of individual isolation and ‘loneliness.’ He never has been lonely or alone, in this sense, nor could he ever be, even in principle. The one God is three! He is by very nature both a unity of Being while also existing eternally as a society of Persons.” God is a relational being. He is social within himself and in relationship with his creation. Ware adds:
In this tri-Personal relationship the three Persons love one another, support one another, assist one another, team with one another, honor one another, communicate with one another, and in everything respect and enjoy one another. They are in need of nothing but each other throughout all eternity. Such is the richness and the fullness and the completion of the social relationship that exists in the Trinity.
Perichoresis reveals that God is not a distant, alone, or lonely deity who foregoes intimate interaction with persons; rather, God is intrinsically personal and therefore reaches out in love and offers humans what they most desperately need—a personal relationship with him.
Against the Islamic understanding (especially al-Warrāq’s claim), the Trinity is not a contradiction but a paradox. According to Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought, a paradox is a Greek word that means “Against expectation, in mathematics, is a pair of mutually contradictory statements, or apparently contradictory statements, which are both deductions from statements which are accepted as true.” The Trinity is an apparent contradiction to those who do not understand the progression of divine revelation. Christians believe that the Trinity is not a contradiction, because if it is, then God is one and not one at the same time and in the same sense and relationship. However, the Trinity is one divine being in one sense and three Aqanīm in another sense. In God, we find the eternal and singular being existing and expressing himself in the three Aqanīm of the Father, (who is not the Son or the Spirit), the Son (who is not the Father or the Spirit), and the Spirit (who is not the Father or the Son). The three members of the Godhead work together in harmony and in complementary roles. They are not three and one in the same sense—otherwise the Trinity would be a logical contradiction (A and not A at the same time).
Many Christian scholars like to offer illustrations from life and creation to explain the Trinity, as Abū Qurrah and ibn cAdī did in the previous chapter. I personally do not like to use this method because, as stated earlier, the Trinity is not a mere concept: it is the being of God, and nothing in creation can be similar or equivalent to God. However, Ware’s musical illustration might be useful to explain the concept of perichoresis, which is a philosophical concept about the relationship between the three Aqanīm, and does not define the divine being. The perichoretic relationship between the Aqanīm might be illustrated as a musical band. There are different voices singing in different pitches. One carries the melody and others carry the strains of harmony to fill out and complement the melody. The one who carry the melody is important, but not alone, for all voices are important to achieve harmony. In order for this to happen, each part must be an expression of the same score and the same composition, expressing the mind of the composer. The concept of perichoresis is similar: “God’s unified nature expressed richly and beautifully in the three equal and full possessions and manifestations of that one nature, with each ‘voice’ contributing variously, yet with complete unity and identity of nature or essence.” As stated earlier, the three divine Aqanīm are not identical divine persons, but they are harmonious and complementarian in their roles of accomplishing God’s one purpose, goal, and salvific work, since they each possess fully the one, undivided divine essence.
The trinitarian God is interrelational. In Christianity, God is not only intrarelational but also interrelational. The relational structure of the concept of divine relationality also includes God’s relations with the world. Being relational means living in relationship with others and recognizing the interconnectedness with them. In a human sense, relationship with others means being engaged, centered, grounded, clear, generous, humble, and kind. A positive relationship with another person is always valued and hoped for. In Christianity, the triune God desires to have a personal, encountering relationship with his people and enter into a relationship with his creation. He is even willing to do more than that: he is willing to enter his creation to facilitate that relationship.
From beginning to end, and in virtually every chapter in between, the relational presence of God unifies and advances the biblical story. The Bible begins with God’s presence relating to his people in Genesis and ends with God’s presence relating to his people in Revelation. In the Old Testament, God enters into a covenantal relationship with Abraham and promises to bless him and his descendants. God’s powerful presence appears to Moses in the burning bush and on Mount Sinai and is seen in the tabernacle and later in the temple. God’s deliverance of his people from Egypt, protection through their journey in the wilderness, and direction into the Promised Land all point to God’s presence and his desired relationship with his people. Throughout much of the Old Testament, God’s covenantal relationship with Israel is revealed by an often repeated, three-part statement: “I will be your God” (Ex 6:7; Jer 11:4), “you will be my people” (Jer 7:23), and “I will dwell in your midst” (Ezek 43:7, 9; Zech 2:11). This indicates that the concept of God dwelling among his people is foundational to his covenant with Israel; yet as a result of their continuous sin and disobedience, Israel was expelled from God’s presence and sent into exile.
The restoration of God’s presence promised throughout the Old Testament (Zech 2:10-13) is fulfilled in the New Testament when Jesus, Immanuel (God with us), appears. As Duvall and Hays state, “The incarnation brings to a climax the relational presence of God, the theme that drove the entire OT story.” The apostle John presents Christ as the Logos in two senses. The first refers to ordinary speech among people: “my word” (Jn 8:37) and “the word of the woman” (Jn 4:39). The second refers to a theological title of a historical person: the Word (Jn 1:1-2, 14), the Word of life (1 Jn 1:1), and the Word of God (Rev 19:13). John introduces the Word as being always in a relationship with the Father, who came to the world (through incarnation) to disclose God and his nature to us. He came to reveal that the transcendent God, who is above humanity, draws near to be in relationship with human beings. The doctrine of the incarnation reveals that the Son became a human person at a specific point in time, being born as a baby and living life on earth as the God-man. Jesus, as “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature,” further reveals the deeply personal nature of the triune God (Heb 1:3 ESV).
As Shehadeh declares, God, upon his presence in the incarnation, “did not stop at giving humanity revelations to understand with their minds; he himself came to guide each individual personally. He did not stop at giving humanity laws to try to obey in their own efforts; he himself came to grant power to each individual personally.” While revelation stresses Jesus’ exalted and glorified status, it also affirms his incarnation as a significant aspect of God’s relational presence.
God’s relationality culminates in the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. While God longs for a relationship with humanity, their sins prevent that relationship. God is holy, and human beings are sinful. The only solution was for God to take upon himself the initiative to draw humanity closer through the death and the resurrection of Jesus. The end goal is to establish God’s kingdom, where he will dwell among his people forever.
The relational story of God and humanity does not end with Jesus’ death or resurrection; the last revelation of God does not end with Jesus nor with an eschatological hope for the future. In the book of Acts, after Jesus’ ascension, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within each believer. Just as the holy presence of God in the Old Testament dwelled in the temple, the promised Spirit comes on the day of Pentecost in fulfillment of God’s promise to live within and among God’s people (e.g., Acts 2 fulfilling the promise of Joel 2:28). Jesus refers to the Spirit as another (of the same kind) “advocate” or “helper” (Jn 14:16), who testifies about Jesus, reminds the disciples of his teachings, guides them into all truth, and discloses what is to come (Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:13). One of the primary roles of the Holy Spirit is to assure believers of God’s presence in their lives (1 Jn 3:24). God’s relational presence drives the story line from beginning to end, consistently unifying the biblical metanarrative and moving the divine plot toward the ultimate goal of God living with his people in the new creation.
CONCLUSION
The Qur’an reveals Allah as contingently relational. Because of the doctrine of tawḥīd, the extent to which Allah is a relational deity is debatable. Islamic scholars view Allah as the “One and Indivisible” (Surah 112:1) agent who created this world; therefore, he is highly transcendent above it. Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr affirms that “the Quran continuously emphasizes the Unity and the oneness of God, and it can be said that the very raison d’être of Islam is to assert in a final and categorical manner the oneness of God and the nothingness of all before the Majesty of that One.” This view, consequently, makes Allah alone before the creation of the universe. At that time, there was no one to see, hear, or speak to—especially before the creation of human beings. Arguably, without the concept of the Trinity, one cannot hold an eternally relational conception of God because many attributes of personality are expressed within the context of a relationship—in addition to things like seeing, hearing, and speaking there are things like love, communication, empathy, and self-giving. The functionality of such attributes before the world came into being is open to challenge, making it impossible to see as Allah intrinsically and eternally relational. If Allah is truly the seer, the hearer, and the communicator, one must presume that these attributes were dysfunctional until Allah created the world. In that case, Allah would be dependent on creation, which appears to be at odds with what Surah 112:2 says: “Allah—the Sustainer needed by all.” A dependent deity would be merely a minor deity because he needs his creation to be able to speak, see, and hear.
The Bible reveals God as eternally relational. The Christian view of the divine (one God who exists in three Aqanīm) seems to present God as eternally relational and independent of his creation. The three Aqanīm within the Godhead, (distinct, yet not separate) who exist in a relationship with one another, present the personal and loving nature of God. Their interpenetrating relationship exists at the center of the universe. Because of this special relationship within the Godhead (via the three divine Aqanīm), God does not need the creation to see, hear, communicate, or be compassionate. All his acts/attributes were functional before the creation of the world within the Godhead. All of God’s actions in history are expressions of this intimate, personal relationship that exists at the very heart of ultimate reality.
The reciprocal and mutual relationship between the three Aqanīm demonstrates the nature of God’s relationship with the world, which is the key to knowing God as well. The way God relates to himself and to creation helps human beings realize that the world arose not as a self-unfolding divine subject, but through the will of God, who as a free being brought forth a world out of an overflow of love. The world is the product of the mutual activity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not just a product of his power. God is relational—with the world or without it. He does not need the world to be social. He has accomplished his relationality within himself through the Aqanīm. Thus, God is not dependent on other agents to activate his attributes as the seer, the hearer, and the communicator.
The assumption is that Christians and Muslims agree when it comes to the perfect being theology because God already has specified his perfection in the Bible and the Qur’an. No improvement in respect to power, morals, duration, presence, or anything of the kind is possible for him. If whatever is divine is perfect, then it would be better to be necessarily perfect than to be contingently perfect. Therefore, being necessary relational is better than being contingently relational.
Being perfect does not allow an attribute that is incompatible with perfection to exist. If being relational in all respects is a perfection, then it is better to have it necessarily than contingently. If whatever is divine is perfect, then it is necessary that whatever is securely and permanently divine is securely and permanently perfect. “If it is possible to be securely and permanently divine, it is possible to be securely and permanently perfect.” Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly relational being who can maintain his relationality is more perfect than the one who cannot maintain his rationality (even if he chooses to). Therefore, an omnipotent God is the one who is able to secure things (e.g., seeing, hearing, and having a relationship) permanently So his rationality renders his choice permanent. The maximum of security and permanence in perfection would be having relationality of God necessarily. If an eternally relational divine being is better than a contingently divine being, and his relationality is compatible with the rest of his attributes, then perfect-being theology lies within the court of Christianity, and the doctrine of the Trinity, not the doctrine of tawhīd, is the only model that shows God eternally relational.