No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

  As a Muslim, I had been taught from childhood that the doctrine of the Trinity was not possible because it was too complex and even self-contradictory. But the more mankind probes the universe, the more we discover its dazzling complexity. As my eyes opened to the deeper truths of the world, I accepted that complexity does not somehow invalidate the Trinity. Why must we assume the Creator is any simpler, any easier to understand, than his creation?

  I might suggest that the opposite must be true: By definition, we cannot comprehend God. If God created our minds, then he must be greater than their comprehension. Who are we to demand that he be simple enough for us to understand him?

  But as we have seen, the Trinity is not contradictory. There is no contradiction in asserting that the one God exists in three persons. The common challenge from Muslims that the Trinity is unrealistically contradictory and complex is not a valid problem. Quite the opposite, as we have already learned through the story of the Mihna, the Islamic formulation of divine simplicity causes problems in explaining the eternality of the Quran. As we will learn now, the simplicity of tawhid has another flaw.

  TAWHID, THE TRINITY, AND THE SELF-SUFFICIENCY OF GOD

  Let us consider again the basic teaching of tawhid: God is absolutely one. This means that, in eternity past, before he had created anything, Allah was alone. One person, all by himself. It was not until he chose to create the universe that Allah had anything to relate with. This is a significant theological problem because, through the ninety-nine names and otherwise, Islam teaches that Allah is a relational being. But if he had nothing to relate with before creating the universe, how could he be a relational being?

  It is important to note that here I am using the word relational not in the sense of intimacy but in the sense of existing in relation to something else. For example, Islam teaches that Allah is ar-Rahman and ar-Raheem, the Gracious and the Merciful. Every devout Muslim knows this, because these are two of the most commonly invoked names of Allah. But these qualities imply that Allah is relational, that he is gracious to someone and that he is merciful to someone. He might have the potential to be gracious all by himself, but he cannot actually be gracious until there is something else to be gracious toward. The same is the case with mercy; something else needs to exist and receive his mercy for Allah to be intrinsically merciful.

  So in order for Allah to actually be gracious and merciful, he has to first create the universe. In other words, Allah is dependent upon his creation in order to be Allah. He cannot be ar-Rahman or ar-Raheem until he creates the world to be gracious or merciful toward. Allah’s qualities are contingent upon creation. Therefore it is irrational to say, as does traditional Islamic teaching, that Allah is intrinsically gracious or merciful or any other relational attribute, whether found in the ninety-nine names or not. If Allah is a monad, he needs his creation to be relational.

  On the other hand, the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that the three persons of God have eternally loved one another with a selfless love. God has always been relational, always been loving. His mercy and justice are not contingent upon his creation, because they are the expression of his eternal love toward humans. That love was never contingent upon mankind’s existence.

  Because of tawhid, Allah depends on mankind in order to be Allah. Because of his triune nature, Yahweh is truly independent and self-sufficient.

  So the simplicity of tawhid proves to be a fatal flaw for orthodox Islam on two accounts: its inability to explain the eternal Quran, and the consequence that it makes Allah dependent upon his creation. Far from being self-contradictory, the complexity of the Trinity is what makes him logically consistent and self-sufficient.

  A more apropos question that Muslims ask regards Scripture. Jews and Muslims agree that God is a monad, not three persons. Doesn’t the Jewish understanding of monotheism come from the Bible, and doesn’t it deny a Trinity?

  THE SHEMA: “THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE”

  The most important Scripture for considering Jewish monotheism is the shema. It is the Jewish analogue of the shahada, and it is found in Deuteronomy 6:4. It reads, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD Our God, the LORD is one” (NIV). But we must be careful to understand the Hebrew and its nuances. In the first place, the verse can be translated: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone,” as the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates it. But even if we translate it as “the LORD is one,” what kind of “one” does the Hebrew refer to? An absolute unity, like tawhid teaches, or a composite unity, like male and female making up one mankind, as we saw in Genesis 1?

  The word for “one” used in the shema is echad, and this is often the word the Old Testament uses to refers to a composite unity. To illustrate, let’s revisit Genesis 1. Verse 5 says that evening and morning make one day. In other words, one day is a composite of evening and morning. Since the Scripture is referring to something that is one but made up of multiple components, it uses the word echad. In Numbers 13:23, a cluster of grapes is referred to as echad, since the one cluster is composed of many grapes. In Ezekiel 37:17, Ezekiel is told to hold two sticks together as if they were one; again, in Hebrew the word echad describes this compound unity. As a final example, referring back to the image of male and female, the Bible says that, through marriage, man and woman become one. The word the Bible uses to express two-in-one? Of course, echad. So when the shema says, “The Lord is echad,” the Bible specifically uses that word, which allows it to mean a composite unity.3

  Putting this together with our Scripture references from earlier in the chapter, the Bible tells us that there is only one God, Yahweh. The New Testament is clear that three separate persons are each God, but they are not each other. So we must conclude that the one God subsists in three persons. The Old Testament, starting from the first page, frankly suggests that God is multiple in persons, and the shema uses verbiage we would expect if Yahweh wanted us to know that he is one God in three persons.

  JEWS AND THE TRINITY

  When I mention these findings to Muslims, they often ask me why Jews do not interpret the Scriptures to say that the one God might have multiple persons or expressions. They are surprised when I respond that some did! One example is the Zohar, the famous and highly revered foundational text of Jewish mystical thought. While considering the wording of the shema, it says: “These three are one . . . So it is with the mystery of the threefold Divine manifestations designated by ‘the Lord, our God, the Lord’—three modes which yet form one unity.”4

  But the belief that Yahweh was multiple in person or expressions goes beyond the mystical rabbis to the time of Jesus himself. Alan Segal, a Jewish scholar, argues that some first-century Jews held a “binitarian” notion of God.5 Daniel Boyarin, himself an orthodox Jew and a scholar, argues that rabbis declared such notions to be heretical only in response to Christian theology, not before.6 In other words, according to some notable Jewish scholars, views like the Trinity were present among Jews when Jesus was teaching in Israel. Only after Jews and Christians parted ways did rabbis declare such notions heretical, as a reaction to Christian theology.

  CHAPTER 8

  DO MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS WORSHIP THE SAME GOD?

  In April 2015 I had an opportunity to encourage Christian students to reach out to their Muslim neighbors. It was a chapel service at a Christian college in upstate New York, and at the center of the mostly Caucasian audience was an Iraqi woman clearly distinguishable by her hijab, the headscarf that Muslim women commonly wear.

  I have learned the hard way that, whenever I address an audience, I should try my best to present my message without offending people more than I have to. If people are going to find the gospel offensive, I would rather it not be on account of my presentation. So for the allotted hour, I was trying to read her reaction to my arguments and testimony, but she showed no reaction whatsoever. She simply listened. At least she was not obviously offended—so far so good!

  At the very end of my presentation, a woman in
the audience asked me a controversial question: “Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?” My answer to this question had offended Muslims in the past, and I was worried it would do so again. But another thing I have learned the hard way is, when asked a question, I should try to answer it directly. So I offered a quick prayer in my heart and began.

  I started by stating the obvious: Christians worship Yahweh, the Trinity, whereas Muslims worship Allah, a monad. This is not an incidental difference; Islam makes every effort to condemn the Trinity as blasphemy (4.171). The Quran rejects the relational aspects of God, saying that he is not a father (5.18) and he is not a son (112.3). It establishes its own doctrine of God, tawhid, in diametric opposition to the Trinity, and that doctrine becomes the central doctrine of Islamic theology.

  Most people who say Christians and Muslims worship the same God are aware of this difference, but they treat it as relatively inconsequential. This is not a trivial difference, though; it has major implications. Since mankind is made in the image of the triune God, love is woven into our very nature. The Trinity gives us the most consistent, most powerful basis for being self-sacrificial and altruistic.

  This is an important point to unpack. Of course, many people are very altruistic, regardless of their worldviews. A person does not need to believe in God to genuinely care for others, as secular humanists demonstrate. There are even people who do not believe in any kind of morality yet still desire to care for people. Ultimately, though, such ungrounded altruism is a sentiment, something a person just wants to do. Unless one believes in a transcendent basis for altruism, one’s desire to care for people is unanchored and ephemeral, little more than a whim. According to this amoral worldview, nothing behooves a person to be kind. Even though someone might wish to be altruistic, in the next moment it would be entirely consistent with their worldview if they chose to be selfish.

  Others believe in a morality that is essentially derived from evolutionary theory. People ought to take care of one another because the enterprise of life is to survive, and we ought to be mindful of other members of our species. Although this is a somewhat more grounded basis for altruism, it is ultimately still a weak foundation: Why should I, a thinking individual, subscribe to the enterprise of life? What if I do not want humanity to survive? Furthermore, is it really altruistic of me to care for others if my main purpose in doing so is to care for my own species, and by extension, to care for myself?

  So atheistic altruism, though it may be sincere and practicable, is ultimately either sentimental or utilitarian and selfish. To root altruism more firmly, one needs to consider theistic models. In the case of Islam, Allah commands Muslims to take care of orphans, widows, paupers, wayfarers, and others. A Muslim can obey out of selfish purposes, such as a desire to avoid hell or obtain heaven, or he can obey out of a selfless desire to please God. So theism, as in the case of Islam, offers a more deeply grounded form of altruism.

  But the Christian model of theism goes further still. Much further. Remember that the eternal love of God is intrinsic to who he is; each person of the Trinity loves the others selflessly. It was out of this selfless love that God created mankind. In other words, we were made in the image of a selfless, loving God, so in our very nature we are designed to be selfless and loving. When we are self-centered instead of selfless, we act against our very nature.

  From the Christian perspective, people ought to be selflessly loving toward others not just because it is a good idea, not just because it helps our species survive, not just because it earns us a reward, and not just because it pleases God. People ought to be selflessly loving because it is who we are. Humans are made in the image of a selfless God; loving others is what makes us truly human.

  No other worldview so deeply embeds into mankind the obligation to love and care for one another. As a foundation for altruism, nothing outstrips the Trinity.

  So I answered the woman’s question by emphasizing that Christians worship a triune God, and that this makes a great difference in how we see ourselves and the world around us. Shortly after my answer, the Iraqi woman approached me. With a thick Arabic accent, she thanked me for my talk, and with a thick American accent, I thanked her in return for listening so patiently. I asked what brought her to the Christian college, assuming it had been a Christian friend. Her answer gave me more than I bargained for.

  She responded that, just five weeks prior, she had seen Jesus in a dream. He told her to go to a specific church in her town to learn the truth about him. At the church, a woman befriended her and shared the gospel with her. Without hesitation, she renounced her Islamic faith and accepted the good news of Jesus. Since that day, she had learned all she could about God, and when her friend found out I was speaking at the Christian college, she brought her along. It was her friend who had asked the question about whether we worship the same God!

  So it turned out that the Muslim woman in the audience was not Muslim after all, but a new Christian sister. Out of curiosity, I asked her friend why she still wore a hijab, to which her friend responded they were so busy discussing Jesus that they had not yet had the opportunity to talk about it! I was very glad to hear that answer. There is nothing inherently wrong with a headscarf, and focusing on it would be a waste of time in comparison with learning the truth about Jesus.

  The question of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God is complex, and there is much more that could be said.1 Ultimately, when we understand the Trinity, we realize that the doctrine is not just a theological curiosity. It has far-reaching implications for how we ought to live and how we see the world, and it makes the Christian God categorically different from the Muslim God. It is what makes God relational, what makes his love eternal. It is how God can be in us through the Holy Spirit, while being over us as the Father, and suffering for us in the Son.

  And it is the Son that most distinguishes the Christian God from the Muslim God. We need to learn about him not only in light of the Trinity but also in light of his life on earth. Now that we understand the doctrine of the Trinity, that the one God subsists as three persons, we will better understand what Christians mean when they say that the second of the three persons entered into this world as a human named Jesus.

  PART 3

  MUHAMMAD OR JESUS?

  TWO DIFFERENT FOUNDERS

  CHAPTER 9

  THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA

  The church held no political or military power in its first three hundred years, subsisting on faith and perseverance in the face of persecution. Christian martyrdom did not mean dying with sword in hand, but laying down one’s life instead of one’s faith. The words of Jesus were still fresh in their memory—“All who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matt. 26:52 NIV)—and the young church fought no battles whatsoever.

  Ironically, Roman efforts to kill were the midwife of the church. It was the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate, who unwittingly aided in laying the foundation of Christian faith by ordering Jesus’ crucifixion. A few years later, Nero heinously accused Christians of a crime he himself committed. The Roman historian Tacitus reports that Nero “falsely charged with guilt, and punished with the most fearful tortures, the persons commonly called Christians.”1 It was during this time of persecution by the emperor that Peter and Paul were executed. But by killing Jesus and the fathers of the church, the Roman empire galvanized the Christian spirit: Many welcomed martyrdom, that they might be given the honor of following their Lord and his apostles in suffering for the sake of God. Tertullian testified to this indomitable spirit with his famous words: “We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.”2

  Christians faced these imperial or local persecutions episodically for almost three hundred years, and the night grew darkest just before the dawn. In February of AD 303, Emperor Diocletian ordered the destruction of a church and its Holy Scriptures, issuing edicts that the same be done to churches throughout the Roman Empire. The historian Eusebius, an eyewitness t
o these events, tells us in his Ecclesiastical Histories, “Royal edicts were published everywhere, commanding that the churches should be razed to the ground, the scriptures destroyed by fire . . .” He goes on to say that the persecutions intensified in the coming days: “The first decrees were followed by others commanding that . . . those who refused (to offer sacrifices to Roman gods) should be tormented with countless tortures. Who could count at that time, again, the multitude of martyrs?” It was during this, the greatest and most sustained persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire, that a young man named Constantine rose to imperial office.

  In October of AD 312, Constantine was preparing to fight an army twice the size of his. While leading his soldiers on a march on the eve of battle, Constantine, according to Eusebius, was dazzled by a vision: a radiant cross above the sun, with words written in the sky, “By this, conquer.” The vision mystified Constantine, but that very night, Jesus appeared to him in a dream and told him to use the sign as a safeguard in all his engagements. So Constantine ordered his men to mark their shields with the Christian symbol. One can only imagine the soldiers’ reluctance to bear the signs of a persecuted minority on their shields, but they complied. The next day, the soldiers won a decisive victory, and Constantine marched into Rome as its victorious Emperor.

  After his supernatural encounter, Constantine immediately worked to reverse the persecutions of Diocletian. By issuing the Edict of Milan in AD 313, he granted freedom of worship for all religions, Christianity as well as other persecuted minorities. This was a watershed moment in the history of the church: Not only were Christians allowed to worship without risking their lives, but also they were allowed their Scriptures and the ability to openly assemble. Finally, for the first time since the crucifixion of Jesus, all Christian leaders could openly gather to discuss their Scriptures and doctrines under the patronage of the empire, without retribution.