The Christian faith as a whole is based on belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one triune God. The Church Fathers left many books that attempted to explain and interpret everything related to the Trinitarian doctrine, defending its validity. The First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicaea (325), also approved a brief formula for the Christian faith, known as the Constitution of Faith, which includes a recognition of one God and belief in one God, and details about this one God, the triune Persons of the Creator Father, the Son incarnated in human history, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life. .

Before the emergence of Islam, Christians were widespread in the outskirts of the Arabian Peninsula (the Syrian desert, Sinai, Yemen, and Mesopotamia), but they were few in the Hijaz. The few Christians who were known in the Hijaz were not rooted in their religion or delved into its teachings. It is not surprising, as there were no institutes where Christians could receive the principles of their faith, and the Holy Scriptures were most likely not translated into Arabic. We can also say that those Christians who were living in the Arabian Peninsula at that time were not members of the Orthodox Church.

The orientalist scholar Trimmingham mentions in his book Christianity in Arabia Before the Time of Muhammad that some Arab tribes believed in a kind of traditional Semitic trinity. Although these tribes did not call that pagan trinity the same names, the basic structure of their relationship with each other was as follows: God (the Most High God), Al-Lat (the Great Mother), and their son Baal (the Lord). It seems that this pagan concept of the Trinity appealed to some Arab Christians who were ignorant of the principles of their religion, or Christians who belonged to some non-Orthodox sects in the Arabian Peninsula. They confused the Most High God with the Father, between Mary and the Great Mother, and between Christ and the Lord, born in the flesh of God and Mary. This is, without a doubt, a terrible distortion of straight Christian belief.

The Qur’an, in most of its verses that contain words about the Trinity, denounces beliefs that degrade the nature of God. This agrees with what Christians have long denied, namely that God gave birth to a son, or that Mary and Jesus are two gods alongside a third god, which is God, or that God is only one among others. Three gods. There is no mention in the Qur’an of what the historical churches, especially the Orthodox and Catholic churches, teach about the nature of God, the Triune Persons. The Qur’an denounces the primitive belief of people who were influenced by paganism and embraced some of the Christian religion, thus distorting it. This belief is rejected by the Church in the same way as the Qur’an is rejected. What is mentioned in the Qur’an about this topic?

The Qur’an denies that God has a child. This is because the Qur’an rejects God having a fertile wife. His idea of a child is closely linked to the idea of marriage, and God forbid that he should be married. In this regard, the Qur’anic verse says: The Creator of the heavens and the earth. How could He have a son when He did not have a companion? He created everything and is All-Knowing of all things (Surat Al-An’am, 101). Of course, this verse does not contradict a sound belief of Christians, as none of them say that God has a son or a wife so that she can bear children like any other human husband. It is not mentioned in any Christian text, past or present, that Mary is, God forbid, the wife of God.

In another place, the Qur’an denounces the belief of some in the divinity of Mary, as it appears in the verse: And when God said, “O Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as gods besides God’” (Surat Al-Ma’idah 116). Here the Qur’an rejects what has long been rejected by Christians who honor Mary, ask for her intercession with her son, the Lord Jesus, and raise her icons in their homes, not to worship her, as Christians only worship God, but because she obeyed the word of God and accepted to conceive and give birth to the word of the eternal God in the flesh. The Third Ecumenical Council adopted the name of the Mother of God for Mary, rejecting her elevation to the rank of gods.

There are also two verses in the Qur’an that reject two types of the Trinity that Christianity does not claim. The first verse says: Those who said that God is the Messiah, the son of Mary, have disbelieved (Surat Al-Ma’idah, 72). The Christian heritage does not limit God to Christ alone. None of the Christians said that God is Christ. This is an incomplete statement. God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As for Christ, He is a complete God, and He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are in one essence. Therefore, this verse does not refer to us, either from afar or from afar. The second verse says: Those who say that God is the third of three have disbelieved, and there is no god but one God (Surat Al-Ma’idah, 73). Christianity does not say that there are three gods, and God is one of them. Rather, it says that God is one. Therefore, this verse does not concern us either.

Orthodoxy regarding belief in the Holy Trinity does not believe in what the Qur’an denounces. It is true that the Qur’an does not call for belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but at the same time, when it rejects the Trinity in its verses, it does not seem that what is meant is the Trinitarian belief that the Orthodox Church has adopted in its universal heritage. There is no doubt that there are definite differences between Christianity and Islam, but dialogue for the sake of clarification and clarification, as Bishop George (Khader) says, is sufficient to illuminate some ambiguities and remove prejudices, as in the issue of the Christian belief in the Holy Trinity.

About my parish bulletin
Sunday, May 8, 2005
Issue 19