nor the does Christianity make a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Mother, though the Qur'an appears to teach that Christianity holds to this -- .
According to that flawed approach ,one could argue that the Quran view christians and Jews as polytheist for the reason (taking a great deal of priests as gods) as long as it mentions :
Holy Quran 9:31 They
take their priests and their anchorites to be their lords in derogation of Allah, and Christ the son of Mary; yet they were commanded to worship but One Allah. .
Anyway all such verses been explained linguistically well,in previous posts..eg,
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/134280510-quran-trinity.html
and no excuse for christians or others too,for misunderstanding the exact meanings in Arabic and Islamic terms...
given the Qur'an's misunderstand of Christian teachings regarding the Trinity (for instance we do not say three, trinitarian Christianity most definitely claims that there is only one God, not three).
I find it astonishing whenever I find a christian accuses a Non trinitarian of attacking the trinity cause he doesn't understand it !!! ,as the fact Trinitarians themselves confess it to be a mystery !
Wikipedia
Trinitarians say that "the doctrine of the Trinity is a deep mystery that cannot be fathomed by the finite mind". Criticism of the trinitarian doctrine includes the argument that its "mystery" is essentially an inherent irrationality, where the persons of God are claimed to share completely a single divine substance, the "being of God", and yet not partake of each others' identity. the perplexity of the Trinitarian arguments, which has included the use of philosophy, is contrary to the Biblical principles of simplicity and clarity in doctrine.
All those non-Trinitarians (not only Muslims,but also the rest of the whole world apart from the trinitarians from the very beginning during the formulation of the creed) criticized the creed ,and all agreed that Trinity and Tritheism are synonymous.....
Not only Muslims and Jews but also all the non-Trinitarians ,described the creed as a cornerstone of polytheism
The Church in History 1964 B. K. Kuiper
"The heathen believe in many gods. Arius thought that to believe that the Son is God as well as that the Father is God would mean that there are two Gods, and that therefore the Christians would be falling back into heathenism."
Documents of the Christian Church 2nd Ed 1963 Henery Bettenson
"The decisions of Nicea were really the work of a minority, and they were misunderstood and disliked by many"The majority of the bishops at the council of Nicea believed in what is called subordinationism, which is a belief that Jesus Christ is subordinate to God the Father, not coequal, not coeternal, and not God the Son. The teachings of Arius were condemned in 325, but the teachings of Arius did not die, by 359 Arianism was widely accepted, that is until the minority trinitarian bishops found another emperor that they could get to propose their trinitarian creed at the Council of Constantinople in 381.
Voltair:
-- That to maintain, as do their adversaries, that there are several distinct "persons" in the Divine Essence, and that it is not the eternal who is the only True God, but that the Son and the Holy Ghost must be added to them, is to introduce the crudest and most dangerous error into the church of Jesus Christ, since it manifestly encourages polytheism.
- That it implies a contradiction to say that there is only one God and that nevertheless there are three "persons", each of which is truly God.
-- That this distinction, one essence and three persons, was never in scripture.
-- That it is obviously false, since it is certain that there are no fewer "essences" than "persons", nor "persons" than "essences".
That the three persons of the Trinity are either three different substances, or accidents of the divine essence, or that same essence without distinction.
-- That in the first case three gods are created.
That in the second case God is composed of accidents and one worships accidents and metamorphoses accidents into persons.
-- That in the third case an indivisible subject is uselessly and groundlessly divided, and what is not distinguished in itself is distinguished into "three".
-- That if it is said that the three "personalities" are neither different substances in the divine essence, nor accidents of that essence, one would have to be at some pains to convince oneself that they are anything.
-- That it must not be believed that the most rigid and the most convinced "Trinitarians" themselves have any clear idea of the manner in which the three "hypostases" subsist in God without dividing his substance and consequently without multiplying it.
-- That Saint Augustine himself, after he had advanced a thousand reasonings as false as they are obscure on this subject, was obliged to admit that nothing intelligible could be said about it. Then they quote this father's words, which are in fact very singular: "When it is asked," says he, "what are the three, human language is found inadequate, and there are no terms to express them: yet it is said that there are "three persons", not in order to say something, but because we must speak and not remain silent. "Dictum est tres personae, non ut aliquid diceretur, sed ne taceretur"." (De Trinitate, V. ix).
-- That when they are asked what they understand by this word "person", they explain it only by saying that it is a certain incomprehensible distinction that causes one to distinguish in a numerically single nature a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost.
-- That the explanation they give of the terms "to beget" and "to proceed" is not more satisfactory since it comes down to saying that these terms indicate certain incomprehensible relationships between the three persons of the Trinity.
-- That from all this we can gather that the basic argument between them and the orthodox turns on the question whether there are in god three distinctions of which we have no notion and between which there are certain relationships of which we do not have any notion either.
From all this they conclude that it would be wiser to abide by the authority of the apostles, who never spoke of the Trinity, and to banish from religion for ever all terms which are not in the scriptures, such as Trinity, person, essence, hypostasis, hypostatic and personal union, incarnation, generation, procession, and so many more like them, which, being absolutely meaningless, since they have no real representative in nature, can provoke only false, vague, obscure and incomplete ideas in the understanding.
Other Quotes
Bernard Lonergan “The Trinity is a matter of five notions or properties, four relations, three persons, two processions, one substance or nature, and no understanding.”
Man’s Religions John B. Noss 1968
"The doctrine of the trinity he [Michael Servetus] felt to be a Catholic perversion and himself to be a good New Testament Christian in combating it. . . According to his conception, a trinity composed of three distinct persons in one God is a rational impossibility;"
The Encyclopedia Americana 1956
"Christianity derived from Judaism and Judaism was strictly Unitarian (believing in one God). The road which led from Jerusalem to Nicea was scarcely a straight one. Fourth century trinitarianism did not reflect accurately early Christian teaching regarding the nature of God; it was, on the contrary, a deviation from this teaching."
Edward Gibbon's History of Christianity: "If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism of the first Christians . . . was changed, by the Church of Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of belief."
The New Encyclopedia Britannica 1976
"Neither the word trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament: 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord' (Deut. 6:4). . . The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. . . . By the end of the 4th century . . . the doctrine of the trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since."
The Story of Civilization: Part III, Caesar and Christ, 1944, pp. 594-595 .
“It seems incredible that the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel should have come from the same hand. The Apocalypse is Jewish poetry, the Fourth Gospel is Greek philosophy....Just as Philo, learned in Greek speculation, had felt a need to rephrase Judaism in forms acceptable to the logic-loving Greeks, so John…sought to give a Greek philosophical tinge to the mystic Jewish doctrine that the Wisdom of God was a living being, and to the Christian doctrine that Jesus was the Messiah. Consciously or not, he continued Paul’s work of detaching Christianity from Judaism.…Now the pagan world—even the anti-Semitic world—could accept him as its own. Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.”—
Those who claim to be true monotheists and yet believe in the Trinitarian formula ,remind me of the Egyptian proverb...
(I believed you when I listened to your words ,yet feel wonder when I see what you do)
As I said before the problem is not our misunderstanding what Trinity
Is, it is the Trinitarian failure to understand what trinity
ISN't
....
peace
