With rare exceptions atheists and naturalists don’t bother to criticize trinitarian doctrines, beyond the passing joke or dismissal, rightly seeing issues about monotheism generally, and about the teachings and status of Jesus Christ as more fundamental. Serious critics of trinitarian doctrines are nearly always fellow Abrahamic monotheists. Objections by Christians are discussed in the supplementary document on the history of trinitarian doctrines, section 2.2, and the supplementary document on unitarianism; here we survey Islamic and Judaic objections.
Recent Muslim apologists argue that Jesus never claimed to be God, but only a servant and messenger of God, Paul and others having changed Jesus’ message (Mababaya 2004). Unfortunately, such works are often marred by historical inaccuracies such as reliance on the late medieval forgery The Gospel of Barnabas as a guide to Jesus’ thought and life (Geisler 2002, 303–7). Muslim apologists have always appealed to several passages in the Qur’an which appear to be directed against the Trinity and Incarnation doctrines, with the complication, however, that these passages seem to presuppose something other than the mainstream doctrines (Wolfson 1976, 304–10; Shah-Kazemi 2012, 87-8).
While recent Jewish polemics against Christianity usually focus on the status of Jesus, his alleged Messiahship, and the New Testament use of the Torah, one careful and informed Jewish scholar recently argues at length that the Christian Bible as a whole doesn’t support trinitarianism, and properly interpreted teaches many things incompatible with it, such as Jesus’ subjection to the Father, and the impersonality of the holy spirit (Sigal 2006).
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Author: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Dale Tuggy)
Keywords: Logos, Word made flesh, Jesus is the Word, trinitarianism, Tri-unity, Pre-existent word, Pre-existence, Pre-existent, Jesus is God, God the Son, hypostasis, Jesus existed before Abraham, Christ existed before Abraham, Greater than Abraham, Existed before Abraham, Before Abraham, Trinity, Trinitarian, Preexistence, Jesus preexisted, Jesus pre-existed, Jesus preexisted before he was born, Jesus' preexistence, Jesus' pre-existence, Christ preexisted, Christ pre-existed, Christ's preexistence, Christ's pre-existence, Jesus's preexistence, Jesus existed before he was born, Deity of Christ, Deity of Jesus, Triunity, Arianism, Arian, Three in one, Three gods, Three gods one person, Three persons, Johannine comma, Johanine comma, Johanine coma, Johannine coma, Comma, False doctrine, False teaching, Arius, Arias, Nicene Creed, Nicaea, Nicea, Athanasian Creed, Athanasius, Father son holy spirit, Father son holy ghost, Triune, Three persons in one God, eternal sonship, god manifest in the flesh, God incarnate, incarnation, incarnate, God made flesh, God manifestation, eternal son, eternal son of God, Christology, Christologies, Binitarian, Binitarianism, Jesus is divine, Christ is divine, God in three persons, divinity of Jesus, divinity of Christ, Homoiousian, Homoousian, Homoousion, Adoptionism, adoptionist, Islam, Moslems, Muslims, Judaism
Bible reference(s): Matthew 28:19, Mark 12:29, John 1:1-3, John 1:14, John 1:18, 1 Corinthians 8:6, 1 Timothy 2:5, 1 John 5:7-8
Source: Dale Tuggy, “Judaic and Islamic Objections,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016.
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