If a Muslim mocks you about the trinity, oh you who believe, say…
The first question to ask a Muslim who mocks the trinitarian belief by saying “1+1+1=1” or some similar quip is simply this, “Who are the three persons in the trinity?”. At that point the Muslim would respond by saying, “the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. The next question is to ask, “Who are the three persons in the trinity according to Allah?”.
As simple as this is, it is a devastating question because Allah explains the persons of the trinity thus,
“And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah?…”
(Surah 5:116)
The question then becomes, “How come every ordinary, run of the mill Muslim (and non-Muslim) has basic knowledge of the three persons in the trinity and Allah, the all-knowing and the all-wise, does not?”. Is this Muslim more informed than Allah on Christian theology?
Allah believes the trinity consists of himself, Jesus and Mary. This is why in debunking the divinity of Jesus, he lumps Mary in there as well,
“They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no Allah save the One Allah. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.
The Messiah, son of Mary, was no other than a messenger, messengers (the like of whom) had passed away before him. And his mother was a saintly woman. And they both used to eat (earthly) food…”
(Surah 5:73,75)
Is this Muslim willing to admit Allah is ignorant? Or is he going to acknowledge that he knows something Allah does not know?
The next step is to ask the Muslim about the Word of Allah. What exactly is the Word of Allah? The Quran? The Muslim would of course agree or else he would be a heretic.
Are Allah and his word the same? No
Are Allah and his word eternal? Yes
Is Jesus the word of Allah according to the Quran? Yes
“(And remember) when the angels said: O Mary! Lo! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a word from him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious in the world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near (unto Allah).”
(Surah 3:45)
So, we have Allah, we have his word which is the Quran, we have his word which is Jesus. Allah is not the Quran and the Quran is not Jesus yet Jesus is the word of Allah and the Quran is the word of Allah. So we almost have some sort of trinity vibe going on here.
Now, to say Jesus is not eternal is to say the word of Allah is not eternal and to say Jesus is created is to say the word of Allah is created and no Muslim would want to say that because wars in the Muslim community have been fought and hundreds of Muslims killed each other over whether the Quran was created or uncreated.
We prod further and ask who exactly the Holy Spirit is in Islam? We read,
“…We gave unto Jesus, son of Mary, clear proofs (of Allah’s sovereignty), and We supported him with the Holy spirit…”
(Surah 2:87)
And again,
“When Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Remember My favour unto thee and unto thy mother; how I strengthened thee with the holy Spirit…”
(Surah 5:110)
Jesus is strengthened with this Spirit. Islamic jurisprudence, without any authority from the Quran states that the Holy Spirit is the angel Gabriel. Now, this Holy spirit is a spirit from Allah because the Quran says, “We strengthened Jesus with the Holy Spirit”. Gabriel on the other hand, is an angel. In fact, the Quran mentions the Holy Spirit differently from Gabriel, 10 verses apart, in Surah Al-Baqarah (Chapter 2) and says nothing about them being the same person.
“Say (O Muhammad, to mankind): Who is an enemy to Gabriel! For he it is who hath revealed (this Scripture) to thy heart by Allah’s leave, confirming that which was (revealed) before it, and a guidance and glad tidings to believers;
Who is an enemy to Allah, and His angels and His messengers, and Gabriel and Michael! Then, lo! Allah (Himself) is an enemy to the disbelievers.”
(Surah 2:97)
The Spirit of Allah is also said to have appeared to Mary as a perfect man,
“…Then We sent unto her Our Spirit and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect man.”
(Surah 19:17)
So the Holy Spirit is a Spirit from Allah but Gabriel who is an angel is also that Spirit. However, the Quran also says Jesus is a Spirit of Allah,
“ …The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him.”
(Surah 4:171)
So the Spirit from Allah is the Holy spirit, the angel Gabriel and Jesus. However, the Holy Spirit, the angel Gabriel and Jesus are distinct persons. Are we not seeing the problem here?
And before someone makes the argument, “it says Jesus is a spirit from Allah!” not “Allah’s spirit”, may I refer you to prophet Muhammad himself in the hadith, Context here is people seeking who to open the door of paradise to them and going to Moses who says the below,
“…I am not in a position to do that; you better go to Jesus, the Word of Allah and His Spirit…”
(Sahih Muslim Book 1 Hadith 388)
In the above hadith by the way, even Jesus’ the very Word and Spirit of Allah says he cannot open the door to paradise and then refers people to Muhammad. So the Word of Allah and the Spirit of Allah who is said to be sinless in the Islam cannot open the door to paradise, but Muhammad, the guy who had intercourse with a nine year old girl and delivered Satanic verses mistaken them for revelation from Allah, that’s the guy with the keys to paradise. The height of megalomania! If you still believe Muhammad is not trying so hard to be God in Islam at this point, I have nothing else to say to you.
But, I digress…
Point is Jesus is the Spirit of Allah.
So, let us put all of this together, Allah is not his word and is not Jesus. Allah is not the Quran. The Quran and Jesus are still somehow the word of Allah. The Muslim has no problem with this.
The Holy Spirit is mentioned differently from Gabriel and differently from Jesus yet somehow according to Islamic jurisprudence, all of Gabriel, the Holy Spirit and Jesus are the Spirit of Allah. The Muslim has no problem with this.
The hypocrisy of the Muslim mocking the trinity is that they do not bother to reconcile any of the above. They pretend it does not exist and all of Islamic theology according to the sources is about “One God!”. Jesus is the Word and Spirit of Allah yet not Allah and yet a created being which Allah could destroy if he really wanted to according to Surah 5:17,
“They indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. Say: Who then can do aught against Allah, if He had willed to destroy the Messiah son of Mary, and his mother and everyone on earth”
How in the world can Allah destroy his own word and spirit? Allah knows best! Notice, Allah again threatens to destroy the mother of Jesus here thus confirming his erroneous understanding of the trinity as being Mary, Jesus and Allah.
The Muslim can reconcile all of this incoherency in his head and worst case scenario, can throw up his hands and go “Allah knows best!” but somehow when it comes to the trinity, the Muslim becomes Sherlock Holmes in his prime and nothing makes sense! The facts just do not add up! The trinity is not logical! How can God be one and three at the same time?
So when the Muslims want, they are first rate philosophers and logicians. When they want and especially when it comes to their own theology, they close their eyes to logic and say “Allah knows best!”.
Now, why is it difficult to explain the trinity to a Muslim? Because Allah himself does not understand it! Every single time he tries to articulate the doctrine in the Quran is a disaster,
On the one hand, he accuses Christians of saying the Messiah is Allah,
“They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary…”
(Surah 5:72)
Then he (accurately) accuses Christians of saying the Messiah is the son of Allah,
“…the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah…”
(Surah 9:31)
Then he accuses Christians of saying Mary and the Messiah are “Two gods” besides Allah in Surah 5:116.
So according to Allah do Christians say Allah is one of three? or is Allah the Messiah, which would make him one of two alongside Mary? Have Christians ever claimed to worship more than one God? or said the trinity is three gods?
If Allah himself does not understand the trinity, what chance does your average Muslim have?
The best way to start to make headway with a more open Muslim is to circle back to the Word of Allah bit. Is the Quran the word of Allah? Yes
Is the word of Allah the physical book of the Quran? Yes.
If someone were to burn a Quran or rip pages out of it or efface it, would it affect the word of Allah? No. So the word of Allah has two natures doesn’t it? One physical nature, i.e. the book, the Quran, then a spiritual nature which is ethereal and beyond harm or corruption. This is precisely what we say about Jesus.
Now, when the Bible says, the Word became flesh (John 1:14) it means the eternal God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. So Jesus simultaneously has a divine nature as God eternal, like the spiritual nature of the Quran and also a human nature which men like John saw and touched (1 John 1:1–3), like a physical copy of the Quran.
Paul writes as much,
“concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”
(Romans 1:3–4)
Jesus is the Son of God in His divinity and seed of David according to the flesh simultaneously. So the physical nature of Jesus could suffer pain, hunger, thirst and could even be killed but the divine nature of Jesus as God, which gives life to the dead, cleansed lepers, cast out demons all on His own authority (not by leave of Allah as the Quran claims, in the Bible, He says to the dead, “I say to you arise…”) remained unaffected by any of this. It is this concept of the “Incarnation” that is missing from Allah’s understanding and this is why he absolutely struggles to understand the trinity.
Why did God have to die I hear you ask? Because the wages of sin is death and the soul that sins shall die (Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 6:23). Death is the penalty for sin and if a mere mortal dies, he is only paying for his own sins at best and at worst even his very death is insufficient to pay for his sins.
“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.”
(Hebrews 2:9)
But when the eternal God with His infinite holiness and righteousness steps into time and space to die for sins He did not commit, that, my friends is love. His infinite and inexhaustible line of righteous credit is more than sufficient to swallow all of the sins of mankind more than 1 trillion times and infinitively over, as it is written,
“…But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more”
(Romans 6:20)
The point is, this very trinity being mocked is absolutely crucial to God saving humanity. If there is no multiplicity of persons in God, the salvation plan in the person of Jesus, would not have been possible. The trinity is also essential to the core of the Christian faith, as it is written,
“Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”
(1 John 2:23)
I conclude this article by quoting the Quran to my dear Muslim friends, the sincere and the mocker alike.
Your Quran calls Jesus the Word and Spirit of Allah. It also says,
“They took their rabbis and monks as lords besides God and the Messiah, son of Mary, and they were not commanded except to worship He is the One, there is no god but Him. Glory be to Him above what they associate with Him.”
(Surah 9:31)
Now, the above verse is usually mistranslated in various translations because of the obvious implication of this. However translations like Arberry, Sahih International, Shakir and Yusuf Ali give the above reproduced reading once you ignore the brackets in the case of the latter three. It is inconsistent with the theology of Islam but still it signifies that the Messiah should be worshipped alongside God.
Remember the acid test of revelation according to the Quran is that it should line up with Christian and Jewish scriptures,
“And if thou (Muhammad) art in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those who read the Scripture (that was) before thee”
(Surah 10:94)
The above verse says if there is any doubt in the revelation of Muhammad, Muhammad (and by extension Muslims everywhere) should defer to us, the Christians to clear this up. The Jesus of Islam is massively incompatible with the rest of Islamic theology. As a Christian, I can tell you, it is because Jesus is the centre of the Christian and Jewish scripture,
“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”
(John 5:39–40)
Jesus is the divine Son of God. The true God is triune. There is no context where Jesus is anything other than divine, Islam tried to downplay and suppress Him, yet He stocks out like a righteous, holy and flawless thumb. I invite you, my dear Muslim, to come to Christ, the one who even according to the Quran is capable of giving life (Surah 3:49). The true Jesus Christ gives more than life, He gives eternal life.
Christ knocks my dear Muslim friends,
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.
(Revelation 3:20)
Please answer…
