Seeking a Christian response to Tawhid
Hi, perhaps I haven't tried looking hard enough, but I haven't yet found a Christian response to the Islamic notions of Tawhid and shirk. For me this is a really fundamental theological concern and one in which the Islamic position seems to make so much more sense than the Christian one. What are your beliefs as they relate to this issue, or are you aware of any Christian apologists/theologians who have addressed it? I'm aware of the Christian position, but I suppose I'm looking for more of a serious defense of it rather than a description, but I'm also looking to listen rather than argue, hence posting here.
Posted Aug 31, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC
322
We are Christians, so an explanation of what Tawhid and Shirk is might be necessary.
My apologies (also to u/supercatbutt). Tawhid is basically absolute monotheism; essentially the idea of the absolute singleness and indivisibility of God. Shirk is the opposite – associating others with God, asserting divisibility of God, worshiping anything other than God (secular or sacred). The implications of this for Christianity are that to me/Muslims the idea of the trinity, and perhaps particularly Jesus (ﷺ) as the son of God/God Himself, seems like it's reducing, even insulting, God. It's difficult for me to comprehend how the highest being (to put it extremely crudely) could be divisible. So I'm wondering, metaphysically, theologically, how Christianity responds to this. Hope none of that comes across as rude, I don't want my views to dominate this discussion, I'm just wanting to hear the Christian perspective because Islam is very clear on it (including addressing Christianity very directly), but I haven't heard much from Christians on the matter.
Probably not the kind of answer you are asking for, but the trinity of God is mysterious.
The trinity is beyond human understanding. God knows there are certain truths that will be confusing to us, that is why he says, “my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts,” and “Trust God with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
If you read the scriptures, the existence of the trinity is very clear, but a clear and complete explanation of the trinity is never given. I believe this is because it can’t be properly explained with our limitations.
I don’t think the existence of God in three parts is degrading to him, nor can I see why it would. All three parts in themselves are entirely holy and bring glory to the Father.
It’s really not the same as worshipping idols or created things. No part of the trinity was ever created. Also, no one worships any part of God singularly. No one excludes parts as not being equal.
I think the way our human bodies function, as parts that make a whole, is more reflective of God in this way since we are made in his image.
This is one of the few instances of the anonymous Bible authors acting with some cleverness.
They probably anticipated that people would poke holes in their half-baked stories about Yahweh, and so they got out in front of it and handwaved away any existing or future plot holes by claiming that humans wouldn't understand Yahweh anyway.
This is a solid move that has been picked up by seemingly every cult to exist in the last century. If you explain away your plot holes before a non-believer discovers them, then it looks like that was the plan all along. :)
That helps a lot. I just dont want to strawman you on the basis of a Wikipedia article.
So Christianity also holds to monotheism. However Christianity makes a distinction between persons, and the substance of the divine. So in the case of the trinity the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit are of the same substance. They are not the same person. If you are familiar with the Council of Nicaea in 325, this was the hot topic. Arius was running around saying and singing that there was a time when Christ was not. Meaning he was just a person. Then St. Nicholas punched him in the face.
The key word in the Nicaean Creed is ὁμοούσιον, that Father and Son are of the same substance. The substance is not divided among them and semantics play a huge part in this creed. There was division on hetero-osious, versus homo-osious versus similar substance. The Greek escapes me for a moment. They share the substance but it is not divided. How we reach that conclusion is on the basis of facts we pull from scripture. Its set up like a logical syllogism. Its not a direct revelation but a logical conclusion of the revelation itself.
We know that:
We worship one true living God
That God said there would be a Messiah
That Messiah is Gods Son
God did not create the Son
The Son did not create the Father
The Son and the Father are one
The Son and the Father are different persons
The Son has seen the face of the Father, yet no man has seen the Father
The Father the Son and the Holy Spirit were all present during Jesus’s Baptism.
If these premises hold true, and for the moment I would ask you take my ipse dixit on them (a cursory google search on each point will show the relevant scriptures) you conclude something that resembles a Trinitarian framework.
So the Nicaean Creed is a scripturally derived Creed, and its only as valid as the scripture it pulls from. John 1:1, 8:28, anytime Jesus says Ego Eimi and incites a mob, the Baptism of Jesus, are all relevant passages. This was definitely one of the more important councils but that would be the Christian Trinitarian response. As far as the visible inter-Trinitarian actions we can see they act as one, and they share the same substance but there are distinguished differences between say the Father and Son.
The Muslim position in the Shahada results in the same message as God being one, and I would say that as well, from the Shema, but what we mean would be different. We agree there is no division in God however both positions take highly nuanced approaches to the same conclusion. If that makes sense.
Thanks, this is very helpful. I'm not convinced, but I think dwelling on it like that will help me achieve a more sympathetic view, which is what I was hoping for.
In name only. There's nothing son-like about Jesus to Yahweh.
Why are you here?
In Islam, this same debate arose during the middle ages. Except the issue wasn't how many persons there are in God; the issue was whether God has a multiplicity of attributes and actions, or not.
One faction (Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes to a lesser extent) argued that God must be absolutely simple, because if he isn't, then he is a dependent being; this meant that all of his actions have to be one action, all of his attributes have to be one attribute, and those have to be numerically identical to his essence. Everything about God is really the same one thing.
But the theologian Muhammad Al-Ghazali disagreed. He argued that, for God to be the God of the Quran and the other Abrahamic scriptures, he must be complex in some sense, having a multiplicity of diverse attributes.
To put a long and tumultuous story short, Al-Ghazali won the argument, in the popular Islamic mind. One-ness was understood not as an absolutely simple one-ness, but as a more composite one-ness.
I think implying an analogy between Al-Ghazali and Christian Trinitarianism is an immense reach, but I'm not really interested in discussing that here. I'm purely interested in response to the Christian perspective on Tawhid, not intra-Islamic ones, which I am familiar with already.
I don't find it a reach, at all, my dear apologist.
What is more deficient than an absolutely simple being? What could be more corrupt, imperfect, impotent?