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1.  The 99 Names of God in the Qur’an

The Qur’an, the Sacred Book of Islam, teaches “To God belong the most Beautiful Names, so call on Him [by them]” (7: 179).  This Qur’anic verse does not elaborate on the number of names of God, but the Islamic tradition holds that 99 different names of God are mentioned in the Qur’an.  That is, Muslim scholars of the Qur’an have, down through the centuries, searched the sacred text and collected the various appellations given to God and have arrived at a list of 99 names.

This effort has been encouraged by a saying transmitted from the Prophet Muhammad, attributed to Abu Hurayra, which states: “To God belong 99 Names, a hundred less one; for He, the Unique one, likes (to be designated by these names) one by one.  Whoever knows the 99 names will enter paradise.”  Knowing God’s names and worshiping God by invoking Him with those names is thus no less than a guarantee of eternal happiness.

Muslim scholars agree that the beautiful names given to God in the Qur’an are not limited to 99.  Many more could be included.  On the other hand, some of the names in the traditional list do not appear ad litteram in the Qur’an.  As a result, the list of 99 names offered by various scholars and commentators on the Qur’an is not always consistent, but contains minor variations which, however, do not affect the meaning.

2.  The Beautiful Names

Because of its importance, some Muslims set God’s proper name “Allah” apart and do not include it among the 99.  The popular commentary on the Qur’an written by Jalalayn (“the two Jalals”) takes this approach.  More frequently, the name “Allah” is placed first in the list of 99 and the 67th name al-wahid, meaning “The One” is then suppressed and combined with the 68th name al-ahad, which has the same meaning, so that the list of 99 names remains unaffected.

One remarkable passage in the Qur’an brings together in three short verses no less than 17 names of God.  The list of 99 Divine Names, as it is memorized and recited by Muslims usually begins with the names found in this brief passage:

He is Allah besides Whom there is no god; the Knower of the unseen and the seen; He is the Compassionate, the Merciful. He is Allah, besides Whom there is no god; the King, the Holy One, the Giver of peace, the Granter of security, Guardian over all, the Mighty, the Supreme, the Possessor of all greatness. Glory be to Allah from what they set up (with Him). He is Allah the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner; His are the most beautiful names; whatever is in the heavens and the earth declares His glory; and He is the Mighty, the Wise (59:22-24).

The proper name of God, Allah, appears four times in the passage, underlining its preeminence for Muslims.

Two other Divine names found in the aforementioned passage bear special attention.  They are “The Compassionate One” (al-rahman) and “The Merciful One (al-rahim).  Together with the name “Allah”, these two names begin every chapter but one of the Qur’an in the phrase, Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim (“In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.”) The phrase is used to begin every recitation of the Qur’an and on many other occasions as well: e.g., to begin a work or activity, to set out on a journey, to take a meal etc.

Both al-rahman and al-rahim are derived from the Arabic root al-rahm, which means “womb.”  The idea is obvious.  God is compassionate like a mother who feels sympathy with and concern for the child of her womb; God is merciful with the kind of mercy that a mother shows to the fruit of her womb.  The phrase, which is repeated many times daily by pious Muslims, is thus a constant reminder that the God proclaimed by the Qur’an is One who has a tender and merciful disposition toward those who believe.

3.  The names of God in Muslim piety

The Qur’anic verse cited above (7: 179) not only states that God has the most beautiful names but it enjoins Muslims to call upon God by those names.  Thus, it is considered a praiseworthy act of worship to call upon God by His most beautiful names.  Muslims can do this in many ways, but the most common is by use of a rosary (tasbih, subha).  The complete Muslim rosary has 99 beads in nine strands of eleven beads, and the Muslim recites one of God’s names on each bead.  As the full rosary can be rather bulky, the “pocket rosaries” carried by most Muslims more commonly consist of 33 beads, with which a Muslim can recite all 99 names by making three circuits.

Every name (ism) of God refers to one of God’s characteristics or qualities (sifah).  For example, God is Al-Quddus, “The Holy One.”  This name refers to one of the Divine qualities, that is, God’s holiness; similarly, God’s name “The Compassionate One,” refers to God’s quality of compassion, “The Merciful One”, to God’s mercy etc.  Hence, a when Muslim prays the Islamic rosary reciting the Most Beautiful Names, the prayer is in fact a meditation upon the attributes and characteristics of God.

4.  The names of God in Islamic theology

In classical Islamic theology, the treatise on the Divine names formed one of the chapters of theological writings and were the subject of controversy.  In discussions which parallel debates in medieval Christian scholastic circles, one current of thought held that the names were simple descriptions of God, words which humans employed to say something about God’s qualities.  The names add nothing to God’s nature but are simply terms which human reason employs in order to understand and express something, however inadequate, about God.  In classicla Muslim theology, this line of thought was that of the Mu’tazila.

The second point of view, usually called that of the Ash’arites after its early exponent Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari, held that the divine names were not “empty” words, terms, or descriptions, but that each name referred to a really existing quality of God.  Thus, the Qur’anic names of God such as The Powerful, Noble, Generous, Knowing, Living, Provider etc. each refer to a Divine quality that exists independently of human reason, that is, God’s power, nobility, generosity, knowledge, life, provision etc.  The attributes exist not only as convenient, if necessary, tools of human communication so that humans can know and speak about God, but they are real aspects of God’s own nature which, if God were lacking in one of them God would not be the God announced by the Qur’an.

The logical conclusion of the Ash’arite position is that if God’s qualities (sifat) are real attributes of the nature of God, which does not change, then they must have been part of God’s nature from all eternity, which would seem to imply a multiplicity of eternals.  To be consistent with their view of the names and attributes, the Ash’arite theologians declared that the Qur’an, as an expression of God’s eternal speech, was itself eternal.  The Mu’tazila saw in this an implicit denial of divine unity, if at least God and the Qur’an existed from all eternity.

Down through the centuries, Sunni orthodoxy tended to affirm and develop the Ash’arite position, while the Shi’i scholars in general opted for the Mu’tazili position.  The Islamic theology taught and studied for over 1000 years in Sunni institutions in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, and North Africa for over 1000 years has been a development and refinement of the Ash’arite position on the divine names and attributes, just as that taught in Shi’i institutions such as those of Qum in Iran and Lucknow in India are elaborations of the Mu’tazili view of the divine names.

5.  Christian parallels

Christians acquainted with the history of dogma can find many parallels to the controversy between Ash’arites and Mu’tazila over the divine names and qualities.  The early debate between  Athanasius and Arius, two 4th century theologians of Alexandria, spread to all parts of the Christian church and led to the calling of the Council of Nicea.  The controversy between Athanasius and Arius can be regarded in the light of the later Muslim debate.

Athanasius and Arius agreed that God’s Word took flesh and dwelt in the man Jesus.  However, they dif­fered concerning the nature of the Word.  Athanasius held that the Word, God’s Speech which took flesh in Jesus, was eternal and uncreated, and was with God in the beginning.  Arius held that the Word of God was not eternal, but created in time by God before the creation of the universe.  According to Arius, that which took flesh in Jesus was not the eternal, un­created Word, but a creature.  There are strong parallels, both in logic and terminology, between the position of Athanasius and the later Ash’arite position, while Arius is, like the Mu’tazila several centuries later, intent on preserving the unicity of the Divine eternal.

6.  Implications for Christian-Muslim polemics

When Christians and Muslims began debating theological questions in the 8-9th Centuries, firstly in Damascus and later in Baghdad, Muslim scholars accused Christians of positing multiplicity in God through the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.  The Christian scholars responded that just as Muslims learned of God’s beautiful names in the Qur’an and that each of these names corresponded to one of God’s characteristics or qualities (sifat), which were essential to God’s nature, so Christians held that of all God’s names and characteristics, three are essential to God’s nature, so that if one of these sifat were denied or ignored, God would not be the God announced in the Bible.  In short, they contended that Muslims worshiped one God with 99 essential names and attributes, and that Christians worshiped one God in 3 essential names and attributes.

This argument, which has a certain consistency and persuasive power, can only be considered a serious response to the Ash’arite position.  In fact, Mu’tazili theologians like ‘Abd al-Jabbar accused Ash’arites and Christians of taking the same position on the divine qualities and condemned Ash’arites for “denying” divine unity by adopting a “Christian” position.  For their part, Ash’arites did not deny the Christian formulation of one God with three essential characteristics, but asked Christians why they arbitrarily (from an Islamic point of view) limited the divine names and attributes to three.  Why not five, or twelve, or ninety-nine?  Down through the centuries, Arab Christian theology, which developed within a social context of Christian-Muslim interaction, consistently employed the notion of “one God in three essential attributes.”

7. One and the same God?

These speculations lead one to ask whether Muslims and Christians actually believe in the same God.  From a Christian point of view, does the Islamic denial of the Trinity result in such a fundamentally contradictory conception of God’s nature that Muslims cannot be regarded as worshiping the same God as Christians?  Conversely, for Muslims, does Christian Trinitarian doctrine remove Christians from the family of monotheist believers?

The idea that the terms God and Allah refer to distinct and rival divinities is not new.  For example, Giuseppe Verdi’s 1843 lyric opera I Lombardi alla prima crociata reflects the popular European perception of his time in the Crusader chorus “O stolto Allah, sovra il capo ti piomba / Già dell’ira promessa la piena” (O foolish Allah, upon your head will crash / the fullness of promised wrath.)  It is clear that the 19th Century librettist regards Allah as a rival deity to the God professed by Christians.

Conversely, Arabic theological tradition, both Muslim and Christian, including the polemical writings mentioned above, has never raised the issue of distinct divinities, but has always presumed that Allah is the common name for the One God about whose nature the two communities have points of agreement and disagreement.  Even today, Arab Christians pray to Allah in Arabic, and the Divine Name is the usual translation of both Yahweh and ho theos in Arabic translations of the Bible.

8.  Modern declarations

The question continues to have practical implications.  Some conservative Christians refused to accept the Pope’s invitation to take part in the Days of Prayer for Peace in Assisi in 1986, 1993, and 2002 because they denied that Jews, Muslims and, a fortiori, followers of other religions would be praying to the same God.  On the other side, some Muslims in Malaysia have sought to restrict the use of the term Allah to Muslims because they reject the notion that Christians worship the same God as the One revealed in the Qur’ân.

For Catholics, the issue would seem to have been settled by Lumen gentium, the Second Vatican Council statement on the Church, that “they [Muslims] worship with us the One God.”  Lest any doubt remain, Pope John Paul II repeatedly stressed that Muslims and Christians believe in and worship one and the same God.  Among the many examples which could be given, three must suffice.  In his ad­dress to Muslims in Morocco in 1985, he stated: “We [Christians and Muslims] both believe in one God, the only God, who is all justice and all mercy.”  In the same year, in Rome, he stated to a visiting Muslim delega­tion: “Your God and ours is one and the same, and we are brothers and sisters in the faith of Abraham.”  Referring to Muslims in a May, 1999, catechesis he stated, “We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection.”

As early as the 1970s, statements of the World Council of Churches, while not binding on member Churches, have made similar declarations.  For example, in a joint statement in Ghana in 1974, the Muslim and Christian delegations affirmed: “Both [Muslims and Christians], in their recognition and adoration of the One God, share a monotheistic tradition.”  Perhaps Kenneth Cragg, former Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, with his grammatical image, has stated the issue most clearly and succinctly: “When we [Christians and Muslims] refer to God, the subject is the same.  On the predicates we differ.”

For Christians, there is a deeper motivation than mere adherence to statements of their leaders why they must affirm the essential identity of the God of the Judaic, Christian, and Islamic traditions.  It is the same God encountered by Moses, the God in whose name the prophets spoke, whom John the Baptist pro­claimed, and whom Jesus taught his disciples to call ­Abba who is the one God worshiped by all three communities of believers.  Rejecting the Allah of the Qur’an is tantamount to rejecting the consistent affirmation of the Hebrew Scriptures and the great figures of the Gospels.  What Christian would dare to claim that the God of the patriarchs and prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures or the God of John the Baptist, Mary, and other Gospel figures is not the God of Christians because their understanding lacked a specific Trinitarian content?

9. Did the Qur’an misunderstand Christian belief?

Christians often claim that the Islamic rejection of the Trinitarian nature of God is based on a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine.  Some go further to root this misconcep­tion ­­­­in Qur’anic passages, an assertion which Muslims find offensive, as it implies that Muhammad, rather than God, was the author of the Qur’an or else, what is even more blas­phe­mous, that the Divine author of the Qur’an was guilty of misunderstanding Christian teaching.

The Qur’anic passages which appear to reject the Trinity are not numerous but are emphatic in their rejection of Trinitarian concepts.  Two passages, both taken from Surat al-Mâ’ida, are typical: “They disbelieve who say: ‘God is one of three’” (5: 77); and “Recall when God said, ‘O Jesus, son of Mary, was it you who said to the people: Take me and my mother as two gods apart from God?’ He replied: ‘Glory be to You! It is not for me to say what is not true. Had I said it, you would know it’” (5:116).  Such affirmations would seem to place a unsurmountable barrier to Muslim-Christian understanding on the nature of God.

However, such affirmations must be considered in their historical context.  For centuries before the time of Christ, the “Semitic triad” was evident in the religiosity of both nomadic tribesmen and settled populations of the Syro-Arabian region.  Although the names of the divinities changed from place to place, from tribe to tribe, there was widespread belief in a “trinity” consisting of the High God, called by some Arabs Allâh, that is, “the God”; his consort, sometimes called Allât, “the Goddess”; and their son Ba’l (or Ba’l Shamîm), that is, “the Lord, or “Lord of the Heavens.”  It was natural for superficially Christianized tribespeople, poorly schooled in their faith, to identify the persons of this traditional triad with God “the Father,” Mary “the Mother of God,” and their son Jesus “the Lord.”

It can be argued that it is this primitive, pseudo-Christian Semitic understanding which is strongly rejected by the Qur’an, implying, as it does, the physical generation of Jesus from a type of sexual union of God with Mary.  This concept has also been consistently rejected by Christian theologians, bishops, and councils.  One can, in fact, find parallels in authoritative Christian sources, both before and after the time of Muhammad, to every Qur’anic condemnation of any form of multiplicity and association in God.  Thus, the Qur’an can be read as rejecting these same unworthy understandings of God, proclaiming God to be far above such improper intermingling and, in effect, agreeing with Christian condemnations of similar erroneous interpretations.  The Qur’an pronounces neither positively nor negatively on orthodox Christian trinitarian doctrine, because such was not encountered among the few semi-Christian­ized Arabs of the Hijaz region in which Mecca and Madina are located.

This argument is intriguing and somewhat convincing.  One could wish for more hard evidence that the Semitic triad was worshiped not only by settled populations but also by nomadic Arabs.  Moreover, most of the examples cited by researchers are taken from the northern reaches of the Arabian desert.  In any case, so little is known about the form or forms Christianity may have taken in 7th Century Hijaz, or even whether Christianity in the Hijaz had progressed beyond the stage of isolated individuals who were attracted by or adopted some elements of Christian belief, that it is difficult to move beyond conjecture and speculation.

10. Arab Trinitarian formulations

However, the assertion, that if Muslims correctly understood Christian Trinitarian belief, they would find nothing in it opposed to true monotheism, requires closer examination.  The great Muslim polemicists, such as Ibn Taymiyya and ‘Abd al-Jabbar did not reject the primitive understanding of superficially Christianized Arab tribes, but rather the highly sophisticated Christian formulations of Baghdad, Damascus and Constantinople.

The two factors which influenced and shaped the development of Arab Christian theology in the Umayyad and Abbasid periods were the internal controversies between Byzantine (called Melkite in Arab sources), Nestorian, and Jacobite proponents and the ongoing polemical debates with Muslim scholars.  As Muslims argued against proffered Christian formulations, the Christian arguments were revised and refined, inadequate terminology was replaced with new terms and concepts, and the debate resumed.  On their side, as Wolfson has shown, Muslims were engaged in a similar process and it was largely through the symbiotic interaction of Muslim and Christian Arab scholars that the terminology and conceptualization of Islamic and Christian kalâm  evolved.

The early Christian Arab thinkers used terms borrowed from Greek to define Trinitarian concepts, such as the term uqnûm, from the Greek (<f:0 (intellect), to indicate the divine hypostases.  However, uqnûm with its connotations of individuality referring to an autonomous subject of being and activity, was gradually replaced by the native Arabic sifah, meaning “attribute” or “character­istic.”

Thus, the Arab Christian theological tradition developed in an intellectual context which contained two factors absent in the theological speculations of scholarly circles in Byzantium and Western Europe. Firstly, among Arab Christians, the Melkite theology which accepted the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon was but one of three vibrant currents of theology in compe­ti­tion for adherence by Christians.  In Baghdad, for example, Nestorian “low” Christology was more deeply rooted than the Byzantine, while in Egypt the Monophysite or Jacobite “high” Chris­to­logy was dominant.  This is in sharp contrast with the situation of Byzantine and Western Euro­p­ean Christendom, where so-called Nestorian and Monophysite views could be summarily dismissed as heretical.

The second factor is that Arab Christian theology developed in an environment where any conceptualization of the Trinity had to be tested, even as it was being formulated, by the way in which that formulation would necessarily be heard and perceived by the omnipresent Muslim.  This is in sharp contrast to Trinitarian theology developed by scholastics in Europe who were geographically and conceptually distant from Muslim thinkers and posers of objections.

This latter factor led all three competing Christian theologies in the Arab world to formulate their Trinitarian under­standing in terms of sifât as the normal translation into Arabic of the hypostases defined by the early Councils.  The common Trinitarian understanding in Arab regions has always been that of “One God with three essential attributes,” which produced an understanding significantly different in nuance from the Western tradition that translated hypostasis into Latin as persona and was ultimately transformed into the concept in modern European languages of “One God in three persons.”  The Latin persona underwent a considerable historical evolution in meaning from its original sense in theater indicating a “mask” or “role,” (which survives in the phrase dramatis personae) to its modern understanding as referring to “a being possessing indepen­dent consciousness or ration­ality.”

11. Three persons in One God, or One God in three modes of subsisting?

Karl Rahner, one of the few modern European theologians who has attempted to formulate Christian Trinitarian doctrine in full awareness of Islamic monotheist sensitivities, has noted that the terminology of “three persons in God” is, to say the least, “misleading and open to misunder­stan­ding.”  Although one can find an orthodox explanation of the phrase by redefining “person” out of its normal usage, the modern Christian and non-Christian will almost inevitably think in terms of a kind of committee, of “three subjects differing from one another in their subjectivity, knowledge, and freedom, and wonder what kind of logic it is that permits three persons understood in this way to be simultaneously one and the same God.”

Just as in the 7th Century the Qur’an may well have been responding to something other than the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity, so Muslims of today, in their denials of Christian Trinitarian doctrine, may in fact be denying Christian propositions that do not express well the content of that doctrine.

A more accurate statement of what Christian faith says of the Triune God can be achieved by use of the term hypostasis defined by the early Councils, which can perhaps best be translated as “mode (or manner) of subsisting,” which Rahner prefers, or “mode of being” as suggested by Karl Barth.  Speaking of the one God who subsists in three distinct modes is closer as well to the traditional Arab Christian formulation of one God with three essential characteristics or sifât.

An objection often raised against regarding the trinitarian hypostases as “modes of subsis­tence” or “manners of subsisting” is that this is a reformulation of the modalist error of the 2nd Cen­tury theo­logian Sabellius, whose writings were con­demned by the Council of Nicea.  How­ever, at Nicea, the concept of modality as such was not condemned and, in fact, the Nicean Fathers in­cor­por­ated much of Sabellius’ theology into their teaching.  What was condemned in Sa­bel­lius’ thought was his view that the divine modes of being and acting were not part of God’s eternal nature, but rather ways of being which God adopted in time.  The hypostatic modes were seen by Sabellius as being extrinsic to God’s unchanging nature, historically conditioned “accidents” rather than pertaining to God’s essence.

One must grant that Sabellius’ effort to preserve the Divine Unity departed from the theological understanding of orthodoxy.  The Council of Nicea affirmed the traditional belief that the Divine hypostases, or modes of God’s being and acting, were eternal rather than originating in time, real rather than logical constructs, and essential, that is, pertaining by necessity to God’s essence and not extraneous characteristics added on to God’s nature.  If any modern modalistic formulation of the Trinity is to remain faithful to the Conciliar understanding, it must affirm the One God whose three modes of subsistence are eternal, real, and essential to the Divine nature.

12. Mutual challenge of monotheist believers

We must proceed beyond the matter of adopting the most suitable terminology to the more central question about the nature of God which religious monotheists pose to one another.  On the one hand, Muslims (and Jews) must continually ask Christians whether their profession of faith in the Triune God does not amount to a disguised tritheism, or how that belief can be imple­mented religiously by one for whom the acknowledgment of one God is ­the very heart of the believer’s faith.  On the other hand, the Christian must continually ask the Muslim (and the Jew) whether they need to go farther in order to achieve a radical­ monotheism whose expression Christians find in the doctrine of the Trinity.

For all monotheist believers, questions regarding God’s oneness are not speculative ontological problems whose solution is to be sought in metaphysics, but rather efforts to know better this Living God who creates, teaches, saves, and gives life.  Christians’ experience of the history of revelation and salvation is of a threefold nature.  It is an experience of the one God, who does not live and remain in a metaphysical remoteness, but continually seeks to impart God’s own self to created humans in truth and love as our own eternal life.

From a Christian point of view, it is not a question of God’s revealing something other than God, but rather God’s own self-revelation to humankind in both our historical contingency as well as at the transcendent core of our existence.  God’s histori­cal self-revelation Christians find in the incarnation of God’s eternal message or Logos in the person of Jesus Christ.  God’s active, transcendent presence at the heart, not only of human nature, but of the whole created universe, Christians call the Holy Spirit.

If our concept of God is not that of the distant totally Other, but rather God who has freely chosen to be part of contingent and transient human history and who remains actively present at the innermost core of creation, it is not sufficient to speak of an eternal Message embodied in a covenant, a people, or a sacred text.  We must consider God’s active presence in terms of divine self-revelation: God’s self-revealing presence in the vicissitudes of human life and God’s transcendent self-revelation in every particle of the cosmos.  A radical monotheism requires that the one God have these two ways or modes of presence and activity in history and in creation and, moreover, that these modes be not created and not different from God.  For if we are speaking of a genuine self-communication of God to the creature, then the modes of communication must be themselves divine and not some created mediation.

For a believer who is content to worship and obey the incomprehensible God from an infinite distance, this discussion might appear irrelevant.  But if one admits the possibility that God might also be intimately near, and if one responds to a religious thirst for intimate communica­tion with this radically present God, this would imply that God has ways or modes, which are them­selves divine, not created, and not separate from God, by which God enters definitively into human history and also remains as a life-giving presence at the transcendent core of the created uni­verse.  Anything less would lead to created mediations and unacknowledged poly­theism.  In the Islamic tradition, cannot the Mu’tazili rejection of the real (or “hypostatic”) nature of the divine attributes, and thus rejection of the eternal, uncreated nature of the Qur’an, be seen as an effort to avoid an implied duality and to assert a more radical monotheism?

The key differences between the Christian and the Islamic perceptions of the Living God would seem to come down to two.  The first is the distinction between revelation and self-revelation, that is, between a God who reveals a Message and God who reveal’s God’s own living presence.  Islamic faith speaks of revelation, Christian faith of self-revelation.

Secondly, if one believes that God is radically present in human history and at the transcendent core of the universe, one is led to ask how God is present.  Speaking of the “how” is to speak of modalities, the ways God actualizes this Divine presence.  In my view, Islamic faith does not address the question of modality.  Christian faith holds that God’s ways are two: God’s historical self-revelation in the human person of Jesus, and God’s transcendent and active presence at the heart of creation.  Thus the two divine processions and two missions of classical Trinitarian theology.

If Trinitarian belief is ultimately concerned with the ways or modalities by which God is present in transitory human history and in the cosmos, one might seek to explain the Christian belief in terms of Divine presence.  A modern Arab theologian has formulated Trinitarian belief in just such terms, speaking of the forms of divine presence:  Allah hâdir la-na ,” “God present for us,” whom Christians call Father, Allah hâdir ma’-na,  “God present with us” in the incarnated Logos, Allah hâdir fî-na , “God present in us,” that is, the Spirit.  This is a faith in the one God who created and still creates, who reveals God’s own self to all men and women at all times, who freely chooses not to remain aloof from human history, but to enter into the human project and to accept the consequences that flow from that decision.

It is a faith that denies that everything in this universe is ultimately measurable, quantifiable, but affirms instead that at the heart of the smallest sub-atomic particle of matter, in the very energy that impels the expanding universe of galactic clusters, black holes, and cosmic threads is a divine spark, a transcendent something that cannot be grasped by human intelligence or instruments because it is divine and hence essentially beyond matter and energy, the stuff of creation.  In this way, Trinitarian faith can be seen as the radicalization of monotheism.

13. Conclusion

No doubt the debate between Muslims and Christians will continue for centuries to come.  Each has sound reasons and bases on which to challenge the other.  If the Islamic vocation in our world remains that of witness­ing to God’s true oneness and challenging any conceptualizations or formulations of the Divine which would diminish or deny that Unity, the Christian vocation is to bear witness that this one and same God is radically close to humankind, has become part of our changeable human history, and unceasingly lives and works at the heart of the cosmos.

One might say that Muslims approach the Divine with the basic question, “Who?” and the answer of Islamic faith is “Allah, the One God.”  Christians agree and then ask a second question, “How?” and the answer of Christian faith  is “in three essential modes of Divine presence.”