The Challenge of Islam

On a tour of the ruins if Didymus, Miletus, and Priene, our Muslim guide took the opportunity to explain why he believed Islam, and not Christianity, was the true religion. First, he argued, Islam is the latest; so it sums up all the previous ones. Second, if you accept that God has a son, he said, that means two gods. If he has a mother, that means three gods.

Let me respond with the Christian view.

Islam is not the latest religion. If this is the test of truth, then the guide ought to convert to Sikhism, or Bahai, or Mormonism, all of which are later. Along with a thousand others.

He might argue, in response, that these are much smaller faiths than Islam. But then, if Islam’s claim to truth is founded on being larger than any succeeding religion, it must still stand aside—for Christianity, which has about twice as many adherents as Islam.

As to the problem of God being two—this arises only if you posit unity as superior to diversity. Is it? If it is, you have a whopping problem of evil: if God is all-good and all-powerful, how did diversity then come to exist? In creating creation, and man as an independent being, and so creating diversity, wasn’t God then himself preferring evil to good?

Consider this too: are you arguing that God cannot divide himself? If not, then he is not all-powerful, and so he is not God. Alternatively, are you arguing that he can, but he will not? But, in creating the universe, he did.

So it is logical to assert that God has chosen to divide himself into three distinct persons. As God, he can; and all creation shows he values such diversity.

This also neatly solves that old philosophical riddle of whether God can create a stone too heavy for him to lift. Yes he can: God the creator can make a stone that God incarnate as the Son cannot lift.

Now here is another philosophical riddle. By definition, God is both eternal and perfect, right? It seems to follow that he cannot change; for any change would be from one state to another, and both states would then be incomplete versions of God in themselves, hence imperfect.

But if this is so, how is creation possible? For before creation, God would not yet have been a creator, and hence incomplete in comparison to his later being. More broadly, if we say God cannot change, we are obviously limiting him, and he is not omnipotent.

To reconcile this, it actually seems absolutely necessary to posit two or more separate persons of God: both “before” and “after” in the above equation must eternally coexist. In other words, God has always had (at least) two persons or states, the one eternally begetting the other. If so, God has always been creator, and did not change in state or nature through the material creation. The one is the uncreated creative agent, and the other the eternally created logos, the essence of creation. The former does not change; the latter can.

Therefore, in insisting on the absolute unity of God, Islam seems to have here a philosophical problem which Christianity resolves.

So there.