Weaver1has's Blog

30^th July 2020

Trinity

So, Christians and Muslims believe that God is one but how this Oneness is explained moves the two great religions in different ways of interpretation.  For Christian theology we can talk about ‘The economy of God’.  God has revealed himself in three Persons as, Father the Creator, The Son as Redeemer and the Holy Spirit as Sanctifier.  This is a movement within perichoreses.  This does not mean three God and the Trinitarian Persons are One in Essence.  This is a very fine line to walk but it is the Biblical witness that was thrashed out at various councils of the Church.   Before moving onto the theology within these councils it is incumbent on us to look at the Biblical witness on the Trinity.

29^th July 2020

Verse 6b continued

Now we need to look at this verse from a Christian faith point of view.  We move away from Islam here and there is no way of bridging the gap as Tawhid prohibits this.  For the Christian Believer it is of great importance.  As we said earlier Paul pointed out that all the gods were not gods.  For the Christian there is only one God revealed in the three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

“…we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.”

If there are any mistakes in what I say they will be all mine but I have to say these words are seriously important.  So before commenting more I want to go through each section so that we are crystal clear on what they mean.  I have broken the verse into 5 sections (A B C D E )so that you can follow my argument.

My Translation

Section A = Yet for us there is One God the Father out of Whom are all things.

ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατήρ, ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα

Here God is the subject of the sentence.  The bit where I translated ‘out of ’ this is ‘ex’ (for example exodus God called His people out of Egypt).

Section B= ‘we in Him’  

καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς αὐτόν

The word eis being a preposition here can be translated in various ways;

1.     Locative; ‘in’ or ‘into’  KJV uses ‘in’

2.     Time;   for example, ‘came into’ but not appropriate here

3.     Or purpose; ‘for’

Section C =  ‘and one Lord Jesus Christ’

καὶ εἷς κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός

This is straight forward

Section D =  ‘’Through’ or ‘by’ all things’

δι’ οὗ τὰ πάντα

Section E  =  ‘and we through or by him’

καὶ ἡμεῖς δι’ αὐτοῦ

My final translation for verse 6

‘Yet for us there is One God the Father from Whom are all things. We in (or exist for) Him and one Lord Jesus Christ by all things and we through Him’.

Interpretation

So, we see the all things flow from the father including our own existence that is why some translations use the word ‘exist’ and then purpose ‘for’.   It is no accident that the Lord Jesus Christ the ‘Son’ is mentioned.  We can only come to the Father through the agency of the Son. This is very clear in this verse.  I can also see why ‘in’ is not the favoured translation (although it is used in the KJV).  The reason for this is that the ‘in’ becomes ambiguous in English;

The ambiguity ‘In’;

1.     ‘In’ puts us directly in relation to the Father and circumvents the agency of Christ.  This goes against the Greek.

2.     It relates us to Christ which is the correct reading. 

28^th July 2020

So, from looking at the evidence, the Koran is correct in the formulation that there was a heretical religious group that claimed to be Christians and they did make Mary out to be a god.  The problem here is that this was localized and did not actually speak about the universal Trinitarian point of view.  Even so looking at verse 116 in the Koran God is asking a question.  It is the ulema that have given this interpretation of the Trinity.

I did some research and these wiki’s page is helpful;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyridianism

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/collyridianism

This is the end of our excursion into The Trinity.  We have looked at one germ root for the Trinity in St Paul.  We also looked at the Koran (In English)

We learned that;

1.     There were people in the Middle East that worshiped Mary as a goddess

2.     The Islamic response was to question this worship.

3.     The Koran doesn’t claim 100% that this is the Trinity

4.     The Ulema (Muslim scholars) need to revisit these verses and be honest about them.

5.     The Holy Trinity as taught universally is not this so-called trinity mentioned in the Quran.

27^th July 2020

The prophet of Islam who in his commercial enterprises travelled from the Arab Peninsula to Damascus and Aleppo became acquainted with the Miriamists.  He listened to the tenets of their religion and formed an idea.  The most regrettable formulation in his mind was to equate the Miriamists with the Christians.  Being illiterate according to Islamic legend he considered Jesus Christ an element in their teaching.  This opinion passed into the Quran.  The Muslim prophet, not having understood the true Persons of the Holy Trinity strayed to erroneous beliefs and practices.  Following the spread of Islam, the Miriamists this time embraced the Prophet’s religion, and their cult withered.  But the essence of this deviate teaching could not be wiped out.  It even influenced Islam considerably in its reverence of ‘Mother Mary’.

 If the Muslim chooses to study the evidences of objective history, he can delve into the depth of the encumbrances and misgivings which trouble him.  Quite likely they will evaporate, and the spring of heretical teachings will be exposed before his eyes.  When a religion is deprived of objective search and evidence the followers find themselves in perplexing quandaries, sailing in rough waters.”

Taken from

http://cosmades.org/articles/tathlis.htm