Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · 2. God in Islam

Beliefs should stem from revelation, not speculation

In short

1.No creedal formula about God's inner nature is found on the lips of Jesus in any Gospel.
2.The Trinity was assembled over three centuries of debate, exile and imperial arbitration.
3.The Qur'an criticises exactly this: following conjecture (**zann**) where certainty is required.
4.In Islam, belief about God is closed at revelation — no council may add to it.

The claim being examined

Core Christian doctrines are defended as the fruit of the Church's Spirit-led reflection over centuries.

The Islamic position

Islam holds that what we may believe about God must come from God: doctrine derived by inference and councils is human speculation dressed as revelation.

Analysis

The methodological question precedes the doctrinal one. If the criterion for a belief about God is that it was reached by the community through prolonged reflection, then the belief is only as reliable as that community's process — and the history of the fourth century shows a process shaped by politics as much as by piety. Islam's criterion is narrower by design: what God said about Himself, transmitted intact, is the whole of the theology.

From the Qur'an

Qur'an 10:36

وَمَا يَتَّبِعُ أَكْثَرُهُمْ إِلَّا ظَنًّا ۚ إِنَّ الظَّنَّ لَا يُغْنِي مِنَ الْحَقِّ شَيْئًا

Most of them follow nothing but conjecture, and conjecture avails nothing against the truth.

Qur'an 17:36

وَلَا تَقْفُ مَا لَيْسَ لَكَ بِهِ عِلْمٌ

Do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge.

Sources

Abu Zakariya, Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah — ch. 2, pp. 54-60

The spoken script for this entry is inside the app.

Members get the word-for-word delivery guide — how to open, what to say, the likely replies and how to close warmly — plus notes, a dawah journal and the study assistant.

Open the app