"The Trinity-An Insurmountable Obstacle?: For Jesus himself, the central problem was this: In the face of the coming Kingdom of God, how to overcome legalism by fulfilling God's will in love? For the Christian Church, however, the central issue shifted, over the course of time, to the person of Jesus and his relation to God. And the controversy between Christianity and Islam remains wholly concentrated on this question. Up till now, the decisive Christian objection was that Islam denied the two basic, interconnected dogmas of Christianity; the Trinity and the Incarnation. As a matter of fact, the Qur'an addresses Christians as follows: "People of the Book, go not beyond the bounds / in your religion, and say not as to God / but the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, / was only the Messenger of God, and His Word / that He committed to Mary, and a Spirit from / Him. So believe in God and His Messengers, / and say not, 'Three.' Refrain; better is it / for you. God is only One God. Glory be / to Him-that He should have a son!" (sura 4, 169) it might seem that for all the points of agreement in the Muslim and Christian understanding of God and man, we have finally come to a dead end. The situation resembles that of the most recent declaration of the German Catholic bishops "On the Church's Relations with Judaism" (1980). The statement does acknowledge that the Christian belief in the "Son of God, equal in essence to Him" strikes "many Jews as absolutely contradictory . . . to strict monotheism, if not as downright blasphemous." But instead of offering an answer to this central difficulty, which is just as disturbing to Muslims, the bishops make only a gesture of easy resignation: "The Christian must be understanding about this matter, even if he himself sees no contradiction to monotheism in the doctrine of Jesus' divine sonship." (pp. 21 Q But we may wonder what good it will do Jews and Muslims if Christians are "understanding," if they are not at the same time ready to have their own Christian self-concept seriously questioned. The same is true of the otherwise very helpful "Orientations pour un dialogue entre Chretiens et Musulmans," by the Roman Secretariat for Non-Believers (1969). For this reason it was sharply criticized by the Catholic side. (See Y. Moubarac, "L'Istam et le dialogue islamo-chretien," Beirut 1972-73; unfortunately the revised edition of "Orientations" [ 198 11 does not take cognizance of this criticism.) It is by no means the case, as Christian apologists often claim, that all Muslim theologians without exception have mistaken the Christian doctrine of the Trinity for tritheism. Admittedly, the Qur'an labors under the misapprehension, possibly based on certain apocalyptic traditions, that the Trinity consists of God the Father, Mary the Mother of God, and Jesus the Son of God. But even well-informed Muslims simply cannot follow, as the Jews thus far have likewise failed to grasp, the idea of the Trinity. They do not see why faith in one God, the faith of Abraham, which both Moses and Jesus and, finally, Muhammad, clung so firmly to, is not abandoned when, along with the one godhead, the one divine nature, Christians simultaneously accept three persons in God. Why, after all, should one differentiate between nature and person in God? It is well known that the distinctions made by the doctrine of the Trinity between one God and three hypostases do not satisfy Muslims, who are confused, rather than enlightened, by theological terms derived from Syriac, Greek, and Latin. Muslims find it all a word game. What are they to make of the conglomerate of hypostases, persons, prosopa, two processions, and four relations-in the one and only God? What are all the dialectical artifices for? Isn't God absolutely simple, rather than composite in this way or that? What is the meaning of a real difference in God between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that nonetheless does not do away with the real unity of God? What, on the other hand, is a logical difference between the Father and the nature of God that still has a foundation in reality? Why should anyone want to add anything to the notion of God's oneness and uniqueness that can only dilute or nullify that oneness and uniqueness? The Qur'an says, "They are unbelievers / who say, 'God is the Third of Three' [or threefold in trinity]." This position, which Muhammad takes to be quite out of the question, is flatly rejected: "No god there is but / One God." (sura 5, 78) Muslim Criticism Of The Trinity: A literature of controversy between Islam and Christianity was quick to appear on the scene, We see it in the tenth century, for example, which for Rome (then a dilapidated provincial city) and Christianity was a saeculum obscurum, but for Islam was a century of brilliant culture and science, with the Abbasids in Iraq and the Fdtimids in the Maghreb and Egypt. In this period a man named Hasan ibn Aiyfib wrote a long letter to his brother to explain why he, who had once been a Christian, after twenty years of doubts, especially about the Trinity and the Incarnation, had finally become a Muslim-even though conversion brought a break in family ties and all sorts of insecurity into his life. (Kung, Hans, Christianity and the World Religions, p112)

"The Rage For Defining: Historians always note with surprise how little power of resistance Christianity has shown (even compared with Judaism, so much weaker numerically) in competition with Islam. Aside from Islam's great military, political, and organizational strength, a major cause of this shortfall seems to have been the inadequate rationale of the "central" Christian dogma: the Trinity and, along with it, the Incarnation. (Kung, Hans, Christianity and the World Religions, p115)

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Written By Steve Rudd, Used by permission at: www.bible.ca