TRINITY IN THE QUR'AN: A HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

DOI

10.2991/icqhs-17.2018.8How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Trinity, official Christian church, Nestorian.

Abstract

This article focuses on historical accounts about the different views between the Qur'an in the period of its formative in the 7th century and the official Christian church since the 3rd century AD. Theologically, what is meant by the Trinity in the Qur'an is a belief in three Gods: God (Allah), Jesus (Isa), and Mary, as the three independent Gods, while the Christian belief confirms that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit (not Mary) are one God, not three independent gods. The only one is in "three ways of being". Historically, the explanations of Olaf Schumann, Parrinder, Kurt Aland, Anton Wessels, and Fazlur Rahman, indicate two important things. First, the Christians in Arabia and whom Muhammad met in Mecca and Medina were dominated by the Nestorians who emphasized the humanity of Jesus and the One Almighty God. That is why the Qur'an sharply criticizes the system of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus and Mary. However, both Schumann and Parrinder believe the Qur'an's criticisms of Christianity are misdirected, in a sense not to the official Christian Trinity doctrine. The starting point was wrong and so at last. Second, since Mecca is a very international, there are probably many Christian people or communities with different streams. But, as Schumann stated, they were merchants, not theologians. Schumann, Parrinder and many Christian and Jewish scholars agreed that the Christian and Jewish communities in the time of the prophet subjected to criticism of the Qur'an are sects deviating from the legitimate doctrine. Moreover, when the prophet lived, there had been no acceptable philosophical explanations of the great thinkers concerning the doctrine of both Jewish and Christian monotheism to those who were thoughtful. In other words, the prophet only heard and received any information about the theology of both Christian and Jewish from ordinary people or priests who were not master at esoteric knowledge.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Media Zainul Bahri
PY  - 2017/11
DA  - 2017/11
TI  - TRINITY IN THE QUR'AN: A HISTORICAL ACCOUNT
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Qur'an and Hadith Studies (ICQHS 2017)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 51
EP  - 55
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icqhs-17.2018.8
DO  - 10.2991/icqhs-17.2018.8
ID  - Bahri2017/11
ER  -