There is no god but GOD, and He is Triune

For Dr. Michael Dauphinais' Triune God classs, November 15, 2020

Welcome to our continuing series of Theology on Tap. This will be our final meeting for this semester. As I said at our last session, tonight I’ll be discussing Islam’s affirmation that “there is no god but God,” and responding to their critique of Christians for violating the unity of God by worshiping Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

One of the documents of the Second Vatican Council is Nostra Aetate, which promulgated by Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965. It relates, for the most part, to the Church’s relation with Judaism. But towards the end, there’s this one paragraph about Islam, It begins:

“The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth . . . who has spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own.”[1]

Islam worships God, the creator of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham. The Islamic profession of faith begins with the statement,

“there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger.”[2]

This echoes the Shema, the prayer of Judaism taken directly from Deuteronomy, which states

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”[3]

But does Islam worship the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Christianity? Hidden in Deutoromy’s statement is the Trinity. Our God is one, but he is Father, Son, and Spirit. Nostra Aetate continues:

Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet, his Virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting.”[4]

I hold that Islam, in not recognizing the Trinity, is worshipping not the same God we know, but one of their own distorted design. Islam does not identify as a Christian religion:

“All three religions [Judaism, Christianity, and Islam] were born in the Middle East and are inextricably linked to each other. While Christianity was born from within the Jewish tradition, Islam developed from both Christianity and Judaism. In fact, Islam sees itself as the culmination of the Abrahamic faiths, the final revelation by God in the monotheistic tradition.”[5]

Islam positions Jesus as a prophet, and believes Mohammed to be last and greatest prophet. Thus, logically, if Jesus is but a prophet, and Mohammed is the greatest prophet, Jesus is therefore less great than Mohammed, and certainly not God himself.

Islam is clear, there is only one God:

“In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. Say, “He is God, the One. God, the Absolute. He begets not, nor was He begotten. And there is none comparable to Him.”[6]

Since Islam’s God begets not, he is not the same God that Christianity teaches. We pray every Sunday in the Nicene Creed that we believe in “one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God.”[7] If the Son was begotten, then the Father begets. The Son is “consubstantial with the Father”[8] and is not only comparable to the Father, but has equality with the Father, as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one. Further, if God begets not, Jesus is not begotten. If Jesus is not begotten, he is not Son. If Jesus is not son, but simply a prophet, he is not be the second person of the Trinity. If Jesus were not the second person of the Trinity, salvation history is broken

When we look at the beliefs of the various Orthodox and Protestant churches, we can trace their development, and can see that, in general, our differences come down to different interpretations of the same facts. When we look at Islam, the facts themselves are not aligned with the Bible. Where, then, are the origins of Islam?

In On Heresies, John of Damacus, writing in the seventh century, dissects the origin of the Quran. In one section, he states:

“From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration.”[9]

That’s hardly a sympathetic telling of Mohammed’s story, is it? I could be wrong, but I don’t know of any instance of Martin Luther’s _______ being referred to as “tidiculous compositions.”

John of Damascus continues his _________:

“[Mohammed] says that the Christ is the Word of God and His Spirit, but a creature and a servant, and that He was begotten, without seed, of Mary the sister of Moses and Aaron.”[10]

I don’t know what Old and New Testaments Mohammed read, but it’s obviously not the same ones I know. I can’t give a definitive answer to when was Moses born, but dates I’ve found referenced ranges from about 1300 BC to about 1600 BC. If his sister gave birth to Jesus, either she was much, much, much younger, or we are erasing hundreds of years of Jewish history. In my bible, the five books of the Pentatuch take up 158 pages. If Mohammed’s description is right, does that mean we then delete the remaining 687 pages? And what of the 42 generations set forth by Matthew? Does it all fit into the estimated less than 450 years between Abraham and Moses? That would give us a bit more than ten years between generations. Was Mohammed’s bigger difficulty reading comprehension or math skills?

John of Damascus makes a rather compelling argument for our dismissing Mohammed’s teachings. But before we do that, let’s look into a few more theological differences between Islam and Christianity.

The Quoran states:

“Such is God, your Lord. There is no god except He, the Creator of all things; so worship Him. He is responsible for everything.”[11]

That sounds right, Genesis tells us

“When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.”[12]

This passage, however, is one that Islam rejects. Keating tells us:

“At its heart, the Qur’ān is a critique of any notion that God is, much less chooses to become, like anything in creation. This is the truest meaning of lā ilāh illa Allāh--"there is no god but God." Conversely, nothing in creation bears any resemblance to God, including human beings. To say otherwise is the worst of all sins--shirk.”[13]

Here, as in other places, Islam seeks to “correct” the Bible, denying that God made us in his image and likeness, not as his equal, but as in some way a reflection of him. Islam’s version of god would not stoop to having a creation which bears a connection to him. For us to claim to be in the likeness of God is to claim to have a type of connection to him, which Islam denies.

For Islam, Jesus is simply another human, one who is both prophet and servant. Islam holds that Christ was not crucified, he did not die, and that not only did Jesus never claim to be the Son of God, but tells the god of Islam that

“sinful men have written that I made this statement, and they have lied about me and have fallen into error.”[14]

This denial of the divinity of Jesus is at the heart of the difference between Christianity and Islam. Islam has no understanding of the Trinity. For Islam, Jesus is not the Son. This, of course is in direct contrast to the New Testament, particularly the baptism of Jesus (REF), the Transfiguration (REF) and Peter’s confession (REF AND QUOTE). Islam holds that not only is Jesus not the Son but that he was not crucified and he did not die:

“[the Jews] seized His shadow and crucified this. But the Christ Himself was not crucified, [Mohammed] says, nor did He die, for God out of His love for Him took Him to Himself into heaven.”.[15]

Now, we know the Jews did not have the right to crucify anyone, although I suppose we can safely assume that the law was silent on their right to crucify a shadow, and I do wonder how they were able to get hold of a shadow and attach it to a cross. But Islam raises another issue here: Christ did not die, at all. If Christ is not the Son, and is not himself divine, and did not die on the cross for us, salvation history is broken. For without Christ, how do we atone for our sins and regain heaven? Islam does not give this role over to Mohammed, who himself is not considered God, for “there is no god but God.” REF How then are we redeemed from original sin? For Islam, this is not a problem, for they don’t accept the biblical story of Adam and Eve. It seems to me that, if Islam developed from the Judeo-Christian tradition, or if it were the culmination of Abrahamic tradition, it would not exclude_________________

Keating states

“It has long been recognized that what unites Muslims and Christians is monotheism, what divides us is Trinitarian monotheism.”[16]

Is monothesism enough to unite two disparate religions? Judaism and Christianity are both monotheistic, and beyond that, they share the same God through the shared texts of the Torah and the Old Testament. Islam makes that same claim of sharing the same God, but cannot claim to share the same texts. The Qu’ron not only does not share any texts, it offers a version of God that rejects much of what the Bible states about God.

In Keating’s article, she discusses the October 2007 statement by a group of Muslim intellectuals, scholars, and clerics, known as “A Common Word between Us and You.” She states:

“it emphasizes the call to a common understanding between Muslims and Christians based on what is similar between the Qur’ān and the Holy Bible, while clearly rejecting the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. It seeks to formulate concord upon a common monotheism while calling upon Christians to reject their own "heretical" distortion of that monotheism.”[17]

This reimagining of God has been rejected by Church Fathers. Keating states:

“[John of Damascus states] that to strip God of life and word is to make the divine being more akin to a stone, and this is much worse than to say God is like human beings in trying to explain the relationship between God's life, word, and being.”[18]

Keating explains the writings of ninth century theologian Abū Rā'ita, who, in his work

On the Holy Trinity, laid out

“a systematic response to Muslim objections by demonstrating that it is not contradictory to say God is one and three, drawing on Aristotelian and Pythagorean arguments that would have been familiar to his readers. . . . In a nutshell, Abū Rā'ita argues that just as Muslims speak of the divine attributes (the sifāt Allāh) of living, knowing, and wise, Christians recognize that these attributes are persons (aqānīm)--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Further, it is only because of these attributes that God lives, creates, communicates, sends prophets, etc., as even the Muslim sacred book states. Without the sift God is lacking. Thus, rather than being contradictory in saying that God is both one and three, Christians recognize the true necessity of the Trinity.”[19]

Keating states that A Common Word

“emphasizes the human obligations to God and one another. God's commands, according to the Qur’ān, make clear how we are to live as creatures and servants of God.[20]

Keating responds:

with these requirements. But the Christian response must be that in the Incarnation, God has revealed the perfection of human beings and human community--that God's very self is made known as a loving triune community who has healed the broken relationship with humanity through divine selfsacrifice. God is not simply the omnipotent, omniscient Lord of all creation, the merciful and just judge; God is the triune Lord who loves and calls those who bear within themselves the divine image.[21]

Keating concludes:

“ The confession that there is one God is what we have in common, but what makes Christian faith unique (and true) is the recognition that Christ reveals to us the triune nature of God--that God is in his very nature relational, and so God's self-sacrificial love for us is possible. That makes all the difference.”[22]

Overall, John of Damascus makes a rather compelling argument for our dismissing Mohammed’s teachings. But before we do that, let’s look into some of the differences between Islam and Christianity.

“In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds. The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Master of the Day of Judgment. It is You we worship, and upon You we call for help. Guide us to the straight path. The path of those You have blessed, not of those against whom there is anger, nor of those who are misguided.”[23]

“[John of Damascus states] that to strip God of life and word is to make the divine being more akin to a stone, and this is much worse than to say God is like human beings in trying to explain the relationship between God's life, word, and being.”[24]

Keating explains the writings of ninth century theologian Abū Rā'ita, who, in his work On the Holy Trinity, laid out

“a systematic response to Muslim objections by demonstrating that it is not contradictory to say God is one and three, drawing on Aristotelian and Pythagorean arguments that would have been familiar to his readers. . . . In a nutshell, Abū Rā'ita argues that just as Muslims speak of the divine attributes (the sifāt Allāh) of living, knowing, and wise,

Christians recognize that these attributes are persons (aqānīm)--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Further, it is only because of these attributes that God lives, creates, communicates, sends prophets, etc., as even the Muslim sacred book states. Without the sift God is lacking. Thus, rather than being contradictory in saying that God is both one and three, Christians recognize the true necessity of the Trinity.”[25]

Overall, John of Damascus makes a rather compelling argument for our dismissing Mohammed’s teachings. But before we do that, let’s look into some of the differences between Islam and Christianity.

[1] https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

[2] https://www.mtholyoke.edu/projects/lrc/arabic/women_deceit/texts/Shahaada.html

[3] Deut 6:4-5 BIBLE

[4] https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

[5] Ra’fat Al-Dajani,

[6] Quran 112 https://www.clearquran.com/112.html

[7] Nicene Creed

[8] Nicene Creed

[9] John of Damascus 153

[10] John 153

[11] Quran, 6:102 https://www.clearquran.com/006.html

[12] Genesis 5:1-2