Muhammadan Objections

120	OBJECTIONS TO SOME CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES

God like other prophets. If God sent Jesus, then God must be greater than Jesus.

C. These are some of the difficulties which the doctrine of the Trinity helps us to understand. They help to prove that doctrine, for all Christ's teaching must be true, if He is even a true prophet: and He made these and other statements about Himself (e. g. His oneness with the Father) which can be reconciled with one another only by accepting that doctrine. Christians have always acknowledged that the Father is the "Fountain of Deity," and that in this sense the Son is subordinate¹ to Him, just as the ray of light springs from the sun; but the sun would not be the sun if it were devoid of rays, nor would the Father be Father without the Son. (Vide § 114.)

103. M. How can Jesus be Divine when He said that He could do nothing of Himself (John v. 19, 30)?

C. A careful study of the passage will show that in it He claimed to do all that God did. How then can He be less than God? Besides, the context shows that He was proving that what He did was in

¹ The Rev. P. Z. Easton says "The fundamental Muhammadan objection to Christianity is that Christianity does not teach the Unity of God. This objection is not met and cannot be met by any presentation of Christianity which either denies or ignores the doctrine of the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father. There can be no question of Arianism so long as the Son is set forth as the Eternal Logos, nor of Sabellianism so long as the Father is set forth as the root and fountain of Deity."

AS ALLEGED TO BE TAUGHT IN THE BIBLE

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accordance with the will of God His Father, and not contrary thereto, as His enemies were trying to show.

104. M. How can the "Word of God" be God?

C. We shall see by and by what is meant by calling Christ the "Word of God," as the Qur'an¹ does as well as the Bible. We shall then see that it is impossible that the "Word of God" should be other than Divine.

105. M. How is it possible for the Divine to mingle with the human, the Infinite with the finite?

C. We clearly teach that the Divine nature was not confounded or mingled with the human in Christ, but that the Eternal Word of God assumed human nature without any lessening of His own Divine nature. Of course our knowledge of the Divine nature is too limited for us to understand the whole mystery of the Incarnation, but our reason teaches us that what God has revealed must be true. We cannot understand how our own immaterial spirit acts upon our material body; how much less can we understand how the Divine can unite with the human. We must therefore accept what God has taught us in the New Testament. So too we cannot understand how the Resurrection will occur, or how God created all

¹ It may be said that the value of the testimony of the Qur'an in this matter is annulled by its very different teaching on the subject elsewhere. But if the Qur'an contradicts itself, that is an argument against the book. Muslims have to take it as it stands.

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