Skip to main content

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).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Exposition of Genesis 2:24

An Exposition of Genesis 2:24 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Lots can be said about this wonderful verse. In it, we see the actions of God who created the wonderful gift of marriage. Thanks to God, we humans are capable of creating many things but to conceive of something as powerful as marriage is probably beyond us. Through His creative works, God has demonstrated his goodness and awesomeness. But if we stop there then we will never perceive God’s full goodness and awesomeness.  God’s goodness and awesomeness is not restricted only to His creative works. This verse is ultimately a command, and like all commands we find in the Bible, the one who never fails at obeying them is Christ alone. In the first part of this verse we see that it is decreed that a man shall leave his father and mother . Of this Christ Jesus did perfectly and in doing so, he demonstrated his condescension to us thoug...

The Heinous Crime at the Temple

A recent reading of the accounts of "Jesus cleansing of the temple" brought some new insights with details that I have never observed before.  In fact, looking at the picture above, I have come to realize the artist (Carl Bloch) who drew the above had noticed the aforementioned details and had been very careful in producing his painting. I will attempt to illumine with what has been shown to me. The accounts given to us in Matthew and Mark ( emphases mine ): And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons . He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” (Matthew 21: 12-13) "And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats o...

2 Samuel 3 - Civil War in Israel and when Generals Run Amok

2 Samuel 3 – Civil War in Israel and when Generals Run Amok      The setting of 2 Samuel 3 describes Civil War in Israel. Perhaps Bible summaries have done us a disservice by describing David as the Second King of Israel after Saul and that is right, to some extent. But before David was king, there was Civil War in Israel where David was king in Judah, and Saul’s son Ish-bosheth was king over the Benjamin, and the rest of Israel. 2 Sam 3:1 documents for us: “There was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David. And David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul became weaker and weaker.” We as readers know what will happen, for 1 Samuel already describes for us a time when Saul’s kingdom will go to David. But 2 Sam 3 is important for us. In both kingdoms, there are two generals, who overrule their kings. Abner overrules Ish-bosheth and Joab overrules David in these two kingdoms. First Abner, who by this time has gr...