Trinity Meaning

TRINITY. Arabic Tas̤līs̤ (تثليث‎), “Holy Trinity,” as̤-S̤ālūs̤u ʾl-Aqdas (الثالوث الاقدس‎). The references to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the Qurʾān occur in two Sūrahs, both of them composed by Muḥammad towards the close of his career at al-Madīnah.

Sūrah iv. 169: “Believe, therefore, in God and His apostles, and say not ‘Three.’ ”

Sūrah v. 77: “They misbelieve who say, ‘Verily God is the third of three.’… The Messiah, the Son of Mary, is only a prophet, … and his mother was a confessor; they both ate food.”

Sūrah v. 116: “And when God shall say, ‘O Jesus son of Mary, hast thou said unto mankind: Take me and my mother as two Gods besides God?’”

Al-Baiẓāwī, in his remarks on Sūrah iv. 169, says, the Christians made the Trinity consist of Allāh, al-Masīh, and Maryam; and Jalālu ʾd-dīn takes the same view. Al-Baiẓāwī, however, refers to a view taken of the Trinity, by some Christians in his day, who explained it to be, Ab, Father, or the Essence of God; Ibn, Son, or the Knowledge of God; and Rūḥu ʾl-Quds, the Life of God.

In a work quoted in the Kashfu ʾz̤-Z̤unūn, entitled al-Insānu ʾl-Kāmil (written by the Shaik͟h ʿAbdu ʾl-Karīm ibn Ibrahīm al-Jīlī, lived A.H. 767–811) it is said that when the Christians found that there was at the commencement of the Injīl the superscription باسم الاب و الابن‎, i.e. ‘In the name of the Father and Son,’ they took the words in their natural meaning, and [thinking it ought to be Ab, father, Umm, mother, and Ibn, son] understood by Ab, the Spirit, by Umm, Mary, and by Ibn, Jesus; and on this account they said, S̤ālis̤u S̤alās̤atin, i.e. ‘(God is) the third of three.’ (Sūrah v. 77.) But they did not understand that by Ab is meant God Most High, by Umm, the Māhīyatu ʾl-Ḥaqāʾiq, or ‘Essence of Truth’ (Quidditas veritatum), and by Ibn, the Book of God, which is called the Wujūdu ʾl-Mut̤laq, or ‘Absolute Existence,’ being an emanation of the Essence of Truth, as it is implied in the words of the Qurʾān, [647]Sūrah xiii. 9: ‘And with him is the Ummu ʾl-Kitāb, or the Mother of the Book.’

In the G͟hiyās̤u ʾl-Lug͟hāt, in loco, it is said the Nazarenes (Naṣārā) say there are three aqānīm, or principles, namely, wujūd (entity), ḥayāt (life), and ʿilm (knowledge); and also Ab (Father), Ibn (Son), and Rūḥu ʾl-Quds (Holy Spirit). [INJIL, JESUS, SPIRIT.]

It is evident neither Muḥammad nor his followers (either immediate or remote), had any true conception of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, but the elimination of the Holy Spirit from the Trinity is not strange, when we remember that Muḥammad was under the impression that the angel Gabriel was the Holy Ghost.

As the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is one of several stumbling-blocks to the Muslim’s reception of Christianity, we cannot refrain from quoting Charles Kingsley’s words addressed to Thomas Cooper on the subject (vol. i. p. 311):—

“They will say ‘Three in one’ is contrary to sense and experience. Answer, ‘That is your ignorance.’ Every comparative anatomist will tell you the exact contrary, that among the most common, though the most puzzling phenomena, is multiplicity in unity—divided life in the same individual of every extraordinary variety of case. That distinction of persons with unity of individuality (what the old schoolmen properly called substance) is to be met with in some thousand species of animals, e.g. all the compound polypes, and that the soundest physiologists, like Huxley, are compelled to talk of these animals in metaphysic terms, just as paradoxical as, and almost identical with, those of the theologian. Ask them then, whether granting one primordial Being who has conceived and made all other beings, it is absurd to suppose in Him, some law of multiplicity in unity, analogous to that on which He has constructed so many millions of His creatures.

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“But my heart demands the Trinity, as much as my reason. I want to be sure that God cares for us, that God is our Father, that God has interfered, stooped, sacrificed Himself for us. I do not merely want to love Christ—a Christ, some creation or emanation of God’s—whose will and character, for aught I know, may be different from God’s. I want to love and honour the absolute, abysmal God Himself, and none other will satisfy me; and in the doctrine of Christ being co-equal and co-eternal, sent by, sacrificed by, His Father, that He might do His Father’s will, I find it; and no puzzling texts, like those you quote, shall rob me of that rest for my heart, that Christ is the exact counterpart of Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being.”