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| THE RACE - ISSUE 30 |
April 2001 |
One or Three?
Sura 5:73 (chapter 5:73 from the Qur'an): "They do blaspheme who say:
Allah is one of three in trinity, for there is no God except one God."
God, for a Muslim, is One and has no partners, no equals. Since He is
unique, no one else can share even an atom of His Divine power and
authority.
A survey administered amongst North American converts to Islam cited
monotheism, in opposition to the doctrine of "Trinity", as their
greatest attraction to Islam. Of great concern to the converts is the
relationship of Jesus to God, because it associates a human with God.
They ask, "How would God ever lower Himself by associating Himself
with a human, how would He allow that human to be killed?"
Obviously, this kind of belief in the uniqueness of God, i.e. a
totally transcendent God entails a rejection of Jesus as the Son of
God. How can God be both THREE and ONE? Isn't this illogical? To our
Muslim friends we say that from the Scriptures we find revealed a
divine unity of three Characters: God the Father, God the Son, and God
the Holy Spirit. These make up the "Trinity".
Muslims ask where in the Scriptures the word "Trinity" appears. We
must say from the outset that the word "Trinity" never appears in the
Bible. Not once! It is a word that did not even exist at that time.
The early church theologians wrestled with the difficulty of defining
God from what is revealed in scripture with the limitations of the
human language which had no word to express the reality of one God,
who is three (even this definition in English seems illogical, and
illustrates the point). For centuries theologians adopted many words
to try to express God's revelation of Himself as three in one (for
instance, words such as "three prosopon," "hupostasis," and
"trias"-you know, words which you use in everyday language!!!).
As an example of the difficulty which concepts like these engendered,
the early North African church theologian, Tertullian (145-220 A.D.)
created 590 new nouns, 284 new adjectives, and 161 new verbs to help
explain this and other theological ideas found in the Scriptures,
ideas which because of their sophistication needed new terminology for
us to understand them. It was Tertullian who came up with the word
""Trinity"" over five hundred years before the writing of the Qur'an,
where its validity is disputed. Over the years ""Trinity"" became the
accepted word for this concept.
It is impossible to fully define the mystery of God as "triune." Yet
the doctrine that One God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the mostbasic Christian belief. All Christian beliefs depend upon the truth of
that single statement.
Let us pray that God would lift the veil of disbelief and
misunderstanding concerning the "Trinity" off from over the spiritual
eyes of millions of Algerians. Pray that God would allow them to see
and to know Jesus for Who He really is. God. Lord. Savoir. Only
God can make "sense" of the idea of the "Trinity" for the searching
Algerian heart.
The Algerian Team
therace@therace.ws
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