The Trinity Unveiled: Why I can't become Muslim

 

        

  When I was 24 years old, I became interested in the Abrahamic faiths. Christianity was culturally closest to me, so I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about learning more about it at the time. Judaism felt exclusive, and not being a Jew made it feel spiritually distant. Islam, on the other hand, immediately struck me as exotic, orderly, and pious. I read about the Quran, delved into several surahs, and explored the corresponding hadiths. I quickly concluded that each of these religions forces its adherents to a crossroad, particularly regarding their conflicting claims about who Jesus was. Was he just a man? A messenger of God? Or was he divine? I believe the answer lies in putting each of these perspectives to the test.

God is One

    This was made clear to the ancient Hebrews for hundreds of years. Both Islam and Christianity claim to be the rightful heirs of this tradition, and both religions echo the same adage: God is one. So, why do we disagree?

The Trinity and the Mistake of Defining God

The Trinity is a doctrine that describes God as three persons in one essence: three "who's" and one "what." Humans are numerous, and persons are numerous; God is unique, and within God are three persons. If we try to tether God to human restrictions, 2,000 years of teaching and scripture become incoherent. God transcends all human understanding, and any time we describe God or attribute anything to Him, we inevitably fall short. When we say God is a person, it's more accurate to say God is more of a person than we are, because His essence contains a personhood infinitely more perfect than anything we can conceive. What God is and what He can potentially be is not for us to decide based on our own imaginings. We can only know God in the way He has revealed Himself to us: in something tangible, understandable, incarnate.

    Muslims make a category error when engaging with the doctrine of the Trinity. When Christians say Jesus is God, we simply mean that he possesses the attributes that make him divine—not that the man Jesus, while on earth, was the source of all creation. The Greeks and Jews referred to this source as the Father. It was inconceivable to them that this source could beget a son. Yet, Jesus was walking around Judea, exercising authority given to him by this source. He also referred to this source as his Father. Their relationship was so unique that only Jesus could fully understand the Father, and the Father alone could fully understand him—unless the Son revealed the Father to us. As it says in Matthew 11:27, 600 years after Jesus came and went, Muslims couldn’t understand that God had the ability to beget a son within creation. I was not going to make their mistake. Jesus was clearly unique, from heaven, and existed before the world was.

Plurality within a Unity. ’e·ḥāḏ

  How can God be one yet three? The same way many pluralities can be many yet one—like Israel, Adam and Eve, the Ummah, the apostles, the Father and Son. There are many instances in the Hebrew Bible where the word ’e·ḥāḏ is used not only to mean singular but also to mean united or undivided. There exists one ruling power in heaven, yet the plan of salvation involved three distinct persons of divine origin. If this is hard to grasp, that's okay. Just because something is simple doesn't make it more true. Never-ending complexity exists behind the veil of even the simplest concepts. Sorry, Tawhid.

    I have had long discussions with both studied and casual Muslims and have put considerable effort into understanding the Quran, its teachings, history, and the philosophy of Islam over the years. One error that Muslims make a lot is claiming that God cannot partake in His creation in any way He chooses. They overlook our metaphysics and insist that God cannot become a man, as if He would be changing His nature. But that’s not what we are saying. Jesus is a miraculous unification of the divine and creation. If Islam allowed me to keep my deeply held belief that Jesus is divine and worthy of the same honor as the Father, I would take my Shahada today.