Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ ,

Today we’ll be examining the Christian concept of God and the Islamic concept of God. In Islam, our belief about Allah can be derived from Surah 112 of the Qur’an, that is Suratul Ikhlas, which reads:

“Say, “The truth is that Allah is One. ¹ (1) Allah is Besought of all, needing none. ² (2) He neither begot anyone, nor was he begotten. (3) And equal to Him has never been any one.” (4)”

These 4 verses, summarize the Islamic concept of God, we believe that Allah is one, there is no other God, no other person, nothing similar in any way to Him, similarly, the Bible agrees with this statement, in Deuteronomy 6:4 we read:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

When Jesus the Christ was asked about the most important commandment of all, he replied:

 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” – Mark 12:29

In Islam, the belief about the oneness of God is also our most important belief and it’s called “tawheed”. The Christian belief of God however is fundamentally different, because while Christianity regards God as echad or “one”, the Trinitarian doctrine regards God to be one in three persons. Hence the meaning of the Trinity can be broken down to mean, “Tri or Three (persons), United as One (God)”.  As Muslims we disagree with this concept of God and that’s because the logic behind it is irrational. Now, give me moment to explain, we have a saying in Latin, deomnibus dubitandum, or “question everything”. So let’s question the reasoning behind the Trinitarian doctrine.

• We can start by defining God as an all knowing being, therefore He knows the past, present and future.
• If God is all knowing  and He learns something, it means that before He was not all knowing and He has now become all knowing, as His knowledge is now complete.
• If God is all knowing and He forgets something or does not know something, then now He is not all knowing.

Both Muslims and Christians should agree with this reasoning, therefore if we were to see that God either increases or decreases in knowledge this would prove that such a being cannot be a God. Thus we read from the Bible in Genesis 6:6, “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled”. This presents a problem. The only reason you can commit regret, is if you made a mistake and you can only make a mistake if you did not know the consequences of your actions. Therefore, as it is, the Christian concept of God, cannot be considered to be all knowing.

For something a bit clearer and to the point, let’s read Mark 13:32, which says, ““But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. This presents another problem, if Jesus was God and all knowing, He should know the hour. Some might say that this  verse refers to the hypostatic union, that Jesus was both man and God, and this verses refers to his manly existence. The problem with this concept is that the verses specifices the Father alone is complete in knowledge and the Son is not, it is comparing the supreme nature of the Father in comparison to the other person in the Godhead, his Son. Why would this verse be comparing God’s divine nature with a man’s limited knowledge? If that were the case then it would not have needed to specify, ‘only the Father’, hence as it is presented the verse is referring to both the Holy/ Divine nature of the Father and the Son. It does this while completely failing to mention the knowledge of the Holy Spirit on this issue. Therefore if the three persons in the Godhead are fully God, then we should expect them to be co-equal (re: Nicean Creed), but since the Bible presents the case that only one of these three persons is complete in knowledge, then by logic, the other two persons cannot be God, since they are not all knowing.

Therefore it is not that we as Muslims are ignorant of the Christian beliefs which is why we disbelieve in your faith, but it is because we believe that these concepts of God which you hold, cannot be qualified and as aptly demonstrated, regresses into an erratic and inconsistent belief system.

wa Allaahu ‘Alam,
and God Knows Best.