“Say Not Three”: The Qur’an and the Trinity Taken from What Every Christian needs to know about the Quran by James R White. The word Trinity does not appear in the Qur’an, despite its appearance in some of the most popular English renderings. This is not to say the Qur’an does not attempt to address the Trinity— it seems clear that it does. But the question that demands the attention of Christians and Muslims is this: Does the Qur’an’s author show knowledge of the Trinity to where the criticisms offered are accurate and compelling? The reason for the question is self-evident: If the Qur’an is the very words of Allah without admixture of man’s insights or thoughts, then it would follow inevitably that its representations will be perfectly accurate and its arguments compelling. If one should say that the Trinity is difficult to understand and that the author, living in Mecca, might struggle reasonably to represent it accurately, we point out that according to Islamic orthodoxy, such an observation is irrelevant to the Qur’an. Even if Muhammad misunderstood the Trinity, that would not impact the Qur’an, a divine revelation. Everyone affected would affirm that by the early decades of the seventh century, God Himself would have a perfect knowledge of what the doctrine of the Trinity actually says. And if that doctrine does not accurately represent His own self-revelation, He would be in the perfect position to refute its falsehoods with devastating precision. But is this what we find in the Qur’an? As we noted, the exact term Trinity does not appear in the Qur’an, but the word three does, in the specific context of dealing with the “People of the Book,” which here refers specifically to the Christian people. Only a few references directly speak of this concept of three, and we will look carefully at them, for they are vitally important to the Christian/ Muslim dialogue. We examine the specific witness of the Qur’an regarding Jesus (Isa ibn Mariam) in chapter 5. The primary texts relevant to this study come from Surahs An-Nisa (4) and Al-Maidah (5). I cannot overemphasize for the Christian reader their importance. We now truly enter into the heart of our study, as with the background established we are ready to earnestly consider the Qur’an’s teaching on the central issues that separate us from our Muslim friends and neighbors: the doctrine of God (tawhid vs. Trinity), the person of Jesus (a prophet or the Incarnate Son of God), and His crucifixion, resurrection, and all the resultant issues of the gospel and salvation. We will invest great effort to examine the text fairly and honestly. If we do so more closely than might seem necessary, as Christians we must. Just as we ask the Muslim to handle the Bible fairly and listen to it in its own context, so as lovers of truth and consistency we extend the same courtesy. Surah 4: 166– 172: “Say Not Three!” Surah An-Nisa contains a vitally important section comprising ayat 166– 172. Though its final portion is the most directly relevant, it is important that we see the discernible flow of thought through this section. The possibility of following a context is unusual for major parts of the Qur’an, so when we find such a continuous thought, we must note it. Can we know the text’s background? As with so much of the Qur’an, it is difficult to say. But one recorded encounter at least is directly relevant to Muhammad’s final understanding of his message’s relationship to that of the Christian faith: his discussion with the deputation of Christians from Najran. In fact, one early Islamic source connects this very text to that event. We cannot really know what happened in the discussion, for we only have a much later Islamic version of the event. But the later retelling of the meeting can provide some understanding of how Muslims then “heard” what Christians were saying. Muslims today insist this is irrelevant for interpreting the Qur’an, since the understanding of Muhammad or of his earliest followers is not germane to divine revelation. But the critical question we face in this section of our study is this: Does the Qur’an accurately represent Christian belief in these texts where it condemns that belief, identifies it as excess and untruth, and teaches that those who refuse to abandon it will enter into hellfire? The Qur’an came into view long after Christian beliefs were clearly defined, so here we have as important a test as one could have for its purported divine nature. If it is what it claims, it certainly can withstand such critical scrutiny. One early source, the Tanwīr al-Miqbās min Tafsīr Ibn ’Abbās, directly connects the encounter with the Najran Christians with the text of Surah 4: Allah then revealed about the Nestorian Christians of Najran who claimed that Jesus was the son of Allah and that Jesus and the Lord are partners, saying: (O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate) do not be extreme (in your religion) for this is not the right course (nor utter aught concerning Allah save the Truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary) and through His word he became a created being, (and a spirit from Him) and through His command, Jesus became a son without a father. (So believe in Allah and His messengers) all the messengers including Jesus, (and say not “Three”) a son, father and wife. (Cease!) from making such a claim and repent (( it is) better for you!) than such a claim. (Allah is only One God) without a son or partner. (Far is it removed from His Transcendent Majesty that he should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth) are His servants. (And Allah is sufficient as Defender) as Lord of all created beings and He is witness of what He says about Jesus.[ 64] This early commentary clearly conveys the early Islamic understanding that when the Qur’an says “say not three,” the three in mind has to do (1) with a plurality of gods (i.e., polytheism), for the immediate assertion is made that “Allah is only One God,” and (2) the “three” is defined as “son, father, and wife.” The nature of “sonship” here— one of father + mother = son— is a frightfully erroneous grasp of the Christian view, both today as well as then.[ 65] But is this the view of the Qur’an? Christians do not feel themselves bound to every comment made by early Christian writers who might have had a less-than-full knowledge of the Christian Scriptures. Is this insufficient comprehension merely a fluke of history, or does it represent the Qur’anic understanding? That is what we must focus upon. 166. But Allah [Himself] bears witness concerning that which He has sent down to you; with His knowledge has He sent it down; and the angels also testify. And Allah is sufficient witness. 167. Those who disbelieve and obstruct [others] from the path of Allah, they have surely strayed far away. 168. Those who disbelieve, and do wrong, Allah will never forgive them, neither will He guide them to a road. 169. Except the road to Hell, to abide therein perpetually. And that is easy for Allah. Like so many others, this section begins with the assertion of the divine nature and origin of the Qur’an. Allah is the one who testifies that what has been sent down to Muhammad is divine, and “Allah is sufficient witness.” So clear and compelling is this testimony, we are told, that to reject it is to engage in disbelief. And it is one thing to disbelieve, but to obstruct others from Allah’s path is even more grievous. Any such ones will not receive divine guidance except to the path of hell itself. 170. O mankind! The Messenger has come to you with the truth from your Lord. Therefore believe; [it is] better for you. But if you disbelieve, still, surely to Allah belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and the earth. Allah is Knowing, Wise. The call goes out to all people, including (as we will see) Jews and Christians, to follow Muhammad, the deliverer of “truth from your Lord.” Even the disbelief expressed by those who opposed Muhammad is not relevant, for that does not change Allah’s ownership (lordship) over all things. This strong assertion of tawhid ar-rububiyah forms the foundation of the next exhortation. 171. O People of the Book! Commit no excess in your religion,[ 66] nor say anything but the truth about Allah. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a Messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His Messengers, and say not “three.” Cease, [it is] better for you! Allah is only One God. Far is it removed from His transcendence that He should have a son, when His is all that the heavens and all that the earth contain. And Allah is sufficient as [their] Custodian.[ 67] 172. The Messiah will never be too proud to be a slave to Allah, nor will the nearest angels. Those who are too proud to worship Him and are arrogant, all such will He assemble to Him. Here the Qur’an turns its attention directly to the Ahl al-Kitab. In this case we do not have to look hard to realize that the group in focus is the Christian (not the Jewish) community. It immediately identifies Jesus as “Messiah,” so plainly the Jews are not in view. The Christians ostensibly are those who were being summoned to Islam through the preaching of Muhammad. The first command is twofold. Positively, it is to speak only the truth about Allah, and on this, we can all agree to be sure. The negative aspect is, “Commit no excess in your religion.” The Arabic root, taghlu, refers to exceeding the proper limit, to be excessive, exorbitant. Christians here stand accused of going beyond the bounds of truthfulness in their claims about God. It is not a general accusation— the specific matter follows immediately. “The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a Messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from Him.” The accusation is of “excess” and untruthfulness in our view of Jesus. The Qur’an claims he is only[ 68] a messenger of Allah. The implication is that the text seeks to limit the nature of Jesus to avoid the error embraced by Christians. But the Qur’an does not stop there, and its phraseology here is used of no one else: “and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from Him.” His word? A spirit from Allah? Many have noted this text as indication that the Qur’an recognizes Jesus cannot be limited to “mere messenger” and acknowledges something much more about Jesus than modern Islamic theology admits. Christian missionaries have used it to point to John 1: 1 (Jesus, the “Word”) and other texts relating to his supernatural birth. For this very reason, Islamic orthodoxy insists this phrase refers to Allah’s command, “Be,” which brought Jesus into existence (Islam affirms the virgin birth). As famed Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir put it, ‘Isa is only one of Allah’s servants and one of His creatures. Allah said to him, “Be,” and he was, and He sent him as a Messenger. ‘Isa was a word from Allah that He bestowed on Maryam, meaning He created him with the word “Be” that He sent with Jibril to Maryam. Jibril blew the life of ‘Isa into Maryam by Allah’s leave, and ‘Isa came to existence as a result. This incident was in place of the normal conception between man and woman that results in children. This is why ‘Isa was a word and a Ruh (spirit) created by Allah, as he had no father to conceive him. Rather, he came to existence through the word that Allah uttered, “Be,” and he was, through the life that Allah sent with Jibril.[ 69] Though we would like to know much more about what the Qur’an means by this phrase, the text itself nowhere expands upon the concept. Whatever the positive teaching, the negative warning that follows is fairly clear: “So believe in Allah and His Messengers, and say not ‘three.’” To believe in Allah and His Messengers (Muhammad in particular) requires one not to say “three.”[ 70] Now, first we must ask whether this makes direct reference to the Trinity. Some translations even render three as “Trinity,” as in Yusuf Ali’s popular translation, “Say not Trinity,” and in Muhammad Asad’s, “and do not say, ‘[ God is] a trinity.’” But this is not the specific term for the Trinity, though it shares the same root as the ordinal number three. And the specific Christian phrase for the Trinity (Al-Aqanim-Al-Thalatha) does not appear in the Qur’an. So the central question is “Does the Qur’an understand the Trinity to assert the existence of three divine Persons within the one Being that is God (the correct understanding), or does it assume that the Trinity is teaching three separate and distinct gods, a form of polytheism?” And, if the latter, does it identify these gods? As we will see, the Qur’an’s early interpreters believed their holy book answered this question clearly. E. M. Wherry noted, “The commentators Baidhawi, Jalaluddin, and Yahya agree in interpreting the three to mean ‘God, Jesus, and Mary,’ in the relation of Father, Mother, and Son.”[ 71] As we will see, that is but a partial list of commentators to hold this view.[ 72] The Qur’an is clear: Christians are to cease saying “three.” Why? “Allah is only One God.” It seems plain that the meaning is “Do not say three [gods], for Allah is only One God.” That the Qur’an repeatedly asserts monotheism as the antidote for the Christian claim of “three” indicates the understanding of its author: Christians are in some fashion polytheists, denying, through their beliefs, true monotheism. If the Qur’anic argument is that the “three” in view are Allah, Mary, and Jesus, it is easy to see how such a triad would violate any meaningful concept of monotheism! But if that is the Qur’an’s view, we must conclude that its author was exceedingly confused as to true Christian belief.[ 73] The sentence “Far is it removed from His transcendence that He should have a son” strikes a recurring Qur’anic theme. Many of the idols in the Kaaba would have borne filial relations to each other, gods married to female gods and having sons and daughters. The famed “Satanic Verses” incident is one illustration, and the Qur’an raises the issue a number of times: If Allah had willed to take a son, He could have chosen anyone He pleased out of His creation: Transcendent is He! He is Allah, the One, the Irresistible. (39: 4) The Originator of the heavens and the earth! How can He have a child, when there is for Him no consort, when He created all things and has knowledge of all things? (6: 101) Clearly, in each text, the idea is of Allah as the male deity having a wife or partner by which he could have a child, or a son. We join the Qur’an in condemning such polytheism, for the Bible likewise condemns such things: There is none like You, O LORD; You are great, and great is Your name in might. Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? Indeed it is Your due! For among all the wise men of the nations And in all their kingdoms, There is none like You. But they are altogether stupid and foolish In their discipline of delusion— their idol is wood! Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, And gold from Uphaz, The work of a craftsman and of the hands of a goldsmith; Violet and purple are their clothing; They are all the work of skilled men. But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, And the nations cannot endure His indignation. Thus you shall say to them, “The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.” It is He who made the earth by His power, Who established the world by His wisdom; And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens. Jeremiah 10: 6– 12 But the Qur’an connects its condemnation of God having a “consort” and offspring with the Christian belief that Jesus is God’s Son. We cannot enter here into the abundant evidence that Christians had long before professed belief that the relationship between the Father and the Son was not marked by a female deity and an offspring. The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, had eternally borne that relationship to the Father. He did not become the Son at a point in time. The Father/ Son terminology refers to a relationship that has always been. There is no female deity, no multiple gods or celestial pregnancies or anything even remotely like this. And yet, when we turn to some of the most respected and widely consulted commentaries (tafsir) of the Qur’an, we repeatedly find these misconceptions relating to the Trinity tied directly to the interpretation of the text. We have seen how Ibn Kathir took this view (see note 7). Another is found in the Tafsir al-Jalalayn: So believe in Allah and His Messengers. Do not say, “Three gods: Allah, Isa and his mother.” It is better that you stop saying these things. Affirming the Divine Unity [is] better. Allah is only One God. He is too Glorious to have a son![ 74] Note what gloss fills out the meaning of “say not three,” that being “three gods: Allah, Isa and his mother.” The renowned commentator Abu al-Qasim Mahmud ibn Umar az-Zamakhshari, in the twelfth century, understood that the Qur’anic presentation differed from what he knew of Christian belief: The (word) three is the predicate to an understood subject. If one accepts the Christian view that God exists in one nature (jauhar) with three divine persons, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and (if one accepts) the opinion that the person of the Father represents (God’s) being (dhat), the person of the Son represents (his) knowledge (‘ ilm), and the person of the Holy Spirit represents (his) life (hayat), then one must supply the subject as follows: ‘God is three( fold).’ Otherwise, one must supply (the subject) thus: ‘The gods are three.’ But as a faithful Muslim, he was forced to bow to the ultimate authority of the Qur’an, even when that meant redefining pre-existing Christian beliefs! According to the evidence of the Qur’an, the Christians maintain that God, Christ, and Mary are three gods, and that Christ is the child of God by Mary, as God says (in the Qur’an): ‘O Jesus son of Mary, didst thou say unto men: “Take me and my mother as gods, apart from God”?’ (5: 116), or: ‘The Christians say: “The Messiah is the Son of God”’ (9: 30). Moreover, it is well known that the Christians maintain that in Jesus are (combined) a divine nature derived from the Father and a human nature derived from his mother. . . . At the same time these words [4: 171] exclude (the Christian view) that Jesus had with God the usual relationship between sons and (their) fathers . . .[ 75] This following reference is one of the most important we will provide. The earliest biography of Muhammad’s life, of Ibn Ishaq, contains a passage that not only demonstrates how primitive is this understanding of the Qur’anic teaching of “three” but also makes an astounding claim. Referring back to the deputation from Najran, we read, They were Christians according to the Byzantine rite, though they differed among themselves in some points, saying He is God; and He is the son of God; and He is the third person of the Trinity, which is the doctrine of Christianity. They argue that he is God because he used to raise the dead, and heal the sick, and declare the unseen; and make clay birds and then breathe into them so that they flew away; and all this was by the command of God Almighty, “We will make him a sign to men.” They argue that he is the son of God in that they say he had no known father; and he spoke in the cradle and this is something that no child of Adam has ever done. They argue that he is the third of three in that God says: We have done, We have commanded, We have created and We have decreed, and they say, If He were one he would have said I have done, I have created, and so on, but He is He and Jesus and Mary. Concerning all these assertions the Quran came down.[ 76] Ibn Ishaq records that Christians believe the Trinity is “He and Jesus and Mary,” as do numerous other sources, but note especially the last statement, “Concerning all these assertions the Quran came down.” This stupendous claim connects the very reason the Qur’an was revealed with refuting Christian beliefs about God! What makes it all the more important is that none of the beliefs Ibn Ishaq lists could possibly be described as encompassing an accurate summary of the doctrine of the Trinity. If we take him at his word, the Qur’an came down to refute assertions that were not being made.[ 77] This vital section concludes with “The Messiah will never be too proud to be a slave to Allah, nor will the nearest angels.” The Qur’an sees the servanthood of Jesus the Messiah as an argument against belief in Christ’s deity. But given the extensive discussions already penned by Christians, reflecting clear New Testament teachings (such as that found in Philippians 2: 5– 11) relating to the incarnation and Jesus being a perfect Man, this again betrays misunderstanding on the author’s part. Christians find nothing in His voluntary and proper submission to the Father that is contrary to our beliefs. In fact, we affirm openly and clearly that Jesus, the Incarnate One, submitted to the Father in all things and worshiped Him. How else could He be our perfect substitute? How could He fulfill God’s law if He did not worship? Surah 4: 171– 172 enshrines a view of the Trinity that believing Christians find confused and erroneous. We do not believe God the Son is the offspring of God and a wife named Mary. When we say “three,” we are saying three Persons, not three gods. So, one might well ask, where could such an idea have been derived? The Muslim who insists on divorcing the Qur’an from its historical context (as Islamic orthodoxy demands, at least as to its author’s knowledge and input) cannot even enter into the inquiry. But a suggestion that seems historically relevant and consistent with the context of Muhammad’s life would focus on his own experience as an outsider to the Christian faith. He would have had some exposure to Christianity in his travels via caravan into Syria. Again we ask what would a teenage boy have seen had he ventured to look into a Christian church or listened to conversations among Christians? Inside a small church in a Syrian village, he would have seen statuary. Possibly God represented as creating all things. The crucifix to be sure. The common artistic representation of the Holy Spirit was a dove, which would not, in and of itself, suggest to a young man from Mecca a divine figure. But what else? A woman. A woman in various exalted poses, a woman holding the baby Jesus. He would have seen and heard much about Mary, for the slow (and unbiblical) process of Mary’s exaltation had begun centuries before Muhammad’s birth. So in light of the religious experience that was his in Mecca’s polytheistic context, would it not be easy for him to interpret what he saw in the light of Allah, Mary, and their child, Jesus? This is not a possible answer for the believing Muslim, but it surely would explain why the Qur’an seems to impute to Christians a view of God that we have never held. To be continued.......
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 23:00:26 +0000
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