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Addressing Surah 5:73

لَّقَدْ كَفَرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ ثَالِثُ ثَلَاثَةٍ ۘ وَمَا مِنْ إِلَٰهٍ إِلَّا إِلَٰهٌ وَاحِدٌ ۚ وَإِن لَّمْ يَنتَهُوا عَمَّا يَقُولُونَ لَيَمَسَّنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا مِنْهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ

"They have certainly disbelieved who say, " Allah is the third of three." And there is no god except one God. And if they do not desist from what they are saying, there will surely afflict the disbelievers among them a painful punishment."


 A recent answer to a Quora question prompted me to think further about this in relation to what our Muslim friends hold. On the surface, it seems like there is nothing wrong, it is typical Muslim theology addressing Christian theology.

Now I have seen this surah being quoted before but today for some reason I paid more attention to it and I thought, wait a minute that is not what Christians think at all.

Christians do not believe that God is the third of the three. Christians believe that the Father is the third of the three.

Now this nuance makes all the difference in the world.

We can talk about light as particle, wave or energy. They are all simulatenously light but to talk about light in its all encompassing form we must talk about it being all three at the same time. Take any away and you have an incomplete version of light.

Christians argue, that God reveals Himself to be trinitarian, not that there are three Gods (thus relegating God to one of the three - which is what the Sura claims). To take any of them away is to arrive at a picture of God that is incomplete, i.e. one contrary to the one He revealed.

Now this poses more difficulties with this sura. I try to break down why in a few statements:

(1) If the Quran is the perfect revelation, we should expect that it correctly represent all forms of knowledge, including those that it is against

(2) This Sura does not seem to understand Christian Trinity

(3) Therefore, this Sura does not understand all knowledge

We thus end up with (3) contradicting (1).

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