17 September 2004

Rowan Williams at Al Azhar

: "The Archbishop of Canterbury rebutted one of the major Muslim misunderstandings of Christianity, that Christians worship three Gods, in his lecture at al-Azhar in Egypt, one of the main centres of Islamic learning. "
There appears to be a lot of good stuff said in this. Of course the Muslim community has a problem in hearing this particular thing; the Qur'an makes the claim that Christians worship three gods; Father, Son and virgin Mary. So they may not entirely believe us when we claim to worship the unity and that the nature of the trinity is conceived of somewhat differently. To my mind it must surely put a major question mark against the divine origin of at least that bit of the Qur'an; if it can't get it right about what Christians believe ...

Three cheers to Rawan also for saying this: “God is a loving God, as we all agree; but, says the Christian, God does not love simply because he decides to love. He is always, eternally, loving. His very nature, his definition is love,” And of course that is implicitly indicating a more-than-one-ness about Godhead: non-necessary/uncontingent love must be self-sustaining and yet must also have subject and object ... Perhaps one reason Islam doesn't call God 'love' is precisely an intuition that this naming of God would undermine their conception of tawhid [oneness/unity]?

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