Yes, I agree that what has been revealed of Allah's (swt) nature has been in 'small bite-sized bits of revelation'. From my perspective the revelation of Allah's (swt) attributes in the Quran are 100% compatible with each other and are not self-contradictory.
OK. I affirm that this is your persepctive.
However, to say that the Father is fully God and that Jesus is fully the same God yet fully human are contradictory statements Father=God=Jesus and Jesus=God=human.
I cannot affirm that this even represents what I am saying from my perspective.
It is completely and irrefutably illogical to say that Jesus praying to the Father is an illustration of the Unity of God.
I quite agree. Jesus praying to the Father is NOT an illustration of the Unity of God. It is an illustration of the distinctions between the persons within the greater and larger unity of God.
Christianity never argues that there are no distinctions between the person of the Son and the Father and the Spirit. Indeed, if there were no distinctions, I doubt that you would think that we were ascribing partners to God. The problem is that you think of God as only referring to the Father. And is that when speaking of the Father separate from the Son and the Spirit we are no more fully speaking of God than when speaking of the Son separate from the Father and the Spirit. If you think speaking of the Son is to ascribe partners to God, then understand that when we Christians speak of the Father we would be doing the same. One does not have an eternal Father without an eternal Son. If, to your understnading, the Son cannot be Allah, please don't equate the Father with Allah then either. For what you mean by Allah is what we mean not by the Father, but by God who is all three in one. (I will try to cover this more at the end or perhaps with a follow-up post.)
I don't deny the attributes of Allah (swt) that have been revealed in the Quran, nor do I try to explain away as 'allegorical' that which I can't comprehend. The nature of Allah's (swt) hands, His speech or His seeing is known only to Him.
I wasn't trying to "explain away" anything as allegorical. I was simply explaining that I understand the intent in the writing itself was to use allegory in order to better convey understanding to the original audience.
Perhaps, we have a misunderstanding because I agree with what is in bold and I understand that you are saying I disagree????
I shall have to go back to find what it was that led me to think you were saying this. But perhaps I don't need to. If I understand you correctly now we are in agreement: "God is not bound by space or time in any way." So, God indeed can be omnipresent (i.e., in every place and in every time all at the same time)?
However, I don't think that you understand that I see the Father and Jesus as being distinct and separate beings.
Actually I do understand that this is how you see them. And I too see them as distinct persons, but I do not see them as separate beings. And I understand that for you those two statements reek of illogic. Yet for me they are simply revealed truth.
I see that the 'Father' is the term that the NT uses to refer to the Divine Being that Jesus (as) prayed to and worshiped as exemplified by the Lord's Prayer and at Gethsemane. I equate the Being that Jesus (as) prayed to as being one and the same as Allah (swt) without implying any 'fatherhood' to Him. If the 'Father' is Allah (swt) and Jesus is distinct from the Father, then Jesus (as) is distinct and separate from Allah (swt). Since Jesus (as) is distinct from Allah (swt), to worship him as a god is indeed shirk from the perspective of any Muslim.
If in the first sentence you were to substitute the term "person" for "being", I would agree with you. However, as I stated above, one should not equate Allah with the Father alone separate from the Son and the Spirit, for to do so divides God into multiple beings which we Christians would never do. And we would not do so, specifically because we do indeed believe that there is just one God -- a single divine being who in his nature exists in community within himself as three distinct persons, but who is nevertheless wholly one being.
My main issue with the Trinity is not that it is beneath the dignity of Allah (swt) to do the things that humans do (even though it certainly is not befitting of His majesty), but rather my primary issue is in not being able to see how distinct and separate beings or persons can be an illustration of the Unity of God.
Yes, your problem with this issue is rather obvious. Even the way you misrepresent what it is makes it clear that you have a problem with it. (And I don't mean that you do so with malice or even intent, but you just don't speak of the Trinity meaning by it what we mean by it.)
Quoting from an earlier post:
"I see that the Christian belief about God can be equated to saying that someone can be in Egypt and at the same time in New York, or that someone can be 100% African and 100% Caucasian, or 100% female and 100% male. I believe that God is One and that in and of itself precludes Him from being divisible into different persons with the first person saying to the second, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased", or the second praying in Gethsemane to the first, "not my will, but yours be done", or the first sending the third in the name of the second (John 14:26). My mind can't comprehend how these examples illustrate Unity. I suspect that your mind can't either and that you accept it on faith with your saying the 3 are one makes it so."
Well, the omnipresence of God, not the Trinity, would be the reason for speaking of God as being in Egypt and New York and for that matter Mississippi all at the same time. And when God is present, then of course it is all of him that is present. To say that God cannot do this is to say that God is limited with regard to space and time. And I don't believe God to be so bound. And according to what you said above you don't either. Or do you? I'm still unclear.
I don't know how to your comment about God being 100% of different races or different genders at the same time. I don't recall anyone every saying any such thing. I would argue that God has neither race nor gender. That even the use of the personal pronoun "he" is a convention and not meant to be description of the gender of one who in his image creates us both male and female. That doesn't sound like one to whom a specific gender should be ascribed.
Again, the passages you reference indeed do point to a distinction between the persons of the Father and of the Son, or between the Son and the Spirit. There are many more besides these that you have named. We Christian don't deny, rather we affirm that there are distinctions between the persons of the Trinity. But we would also point out that there are passages that point to oneness as well. And whether we are comfortable doing it or not might be questions, but most certainly we do hold these passages in tension affirming both to be revealed truth. It is out of that affirmation that the doctrine which you know as an articulation of the Trinity developed.
You say that I accept this as a statement of faith. Well, of course it is. It is an affirmation of what I believe to be the revealed truth. And it then gives expression to those beliefs as a synthesis of our best understanding of the totallit of all those passages.
Your expression of the oneness of Allah is similary not something that you arrived at by logic, but by declaring your faith in the truth as you best understand it revealed. Now, having arrived at that belief, I am sure that is seems logical to you. But what I observe of human nature is that we arrive at our beliefs first by faith, and then find those beliefs to be logical, not the other way around. Though surely there is someone who with me having now made such a statement will tell their personal story and prove me wrong. C'est le vie!
With your knowledge of the Bible and of Christianity, surely you can explain how Christian theology is monotheistic and without shirk.
[/quote]Well, I have written already a great deal on how it is that we Christians see the nature of God. How though we see a distinction between three persons, that we still understand that we are speaking of one divine Being, one singluar essence. I have written in other posts how we Christians begin with the concept that God is one and that there are no other gods. And yet, in the course of time how we came to believe that God had revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Yet, since we affirm that there is just the one God, if Jesus was God revealed in the flesh then it followed that within our understanding of the one God we had to allow for the possibility that this one God existed within himself in community. Holding these two concepts to both be true and yet seeming running contrary to each other, the early church church wrestled with what this revelation meant. And in the end, the present Nicene formulation is what emerged.
Now, I don't expect that such an explanation in the single paragraph I provided above is going to be sufficient to answer all the questions that are raised. I would very much like to try to be more complete if afforded the opportunity. Indeed, I had considered during the time that I was away from the forum earlier this year to devote myself to an intensive study of the Trinity and to bring my own thoughts back to here to share. I don't know if that would be acceptable given the rules of the forum. But if so, I would like to discuss how it is that monotheistic Jews, as the disciples of Jesus all were, should nontheless find it necessary to express their conviction that Jesus was himself God incarnate. I would like to show how the ideas that we eventually find articulated as the doctrine of the Trinity, are actually rooted in the Jewish understanding of God, and how the Christian understanding of the Trinity is as much a statement about the oneness of God as it is about the distinctiveness of the three persons. But such a project thus far has been beyond my time to initiate, and I fear might be beyond the tolerance of this forum to allow posting.
