Freedom from Complaining

Browsing in the Moorhead Public Library, I recently came across A Complaint Free World, a small book by a minister from Kansas City, MO.  The basic premise of Will Bowen’s book, and of his purple bracelet campaign aimed at eliminating the menace of “complaining” from the world, is as simple as it is powerful.  The book begins with a quote from Maya Angelou.

If you don’t like something, change it.
If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
Don’t complain.

We all complain, some of us more than others.  Yet, most of the time we remain unaware of exactly what is it that we are doing, why we are doing it, why does it cause more harm than good, and how we may become a complaint-free person.  Will Bowen wants to change all that.

As a verb, the dictionary tells us, “complain” means ”to express grief, pain, or discontent.”  Now, it goes without saying that there is a tremendous amount of grief, pain, and discontent in the world . . . these have always been part of the human condition and, so far as the present structure of reality endures, they will continue to be part of the human condition.  It follows that an important element of human self-expression has always been, and will continue to be, the sharing and articulation of our grief, pain, and discontent.  If this is complaining, it seems rather cruel to declare it “bad.”  If we are hurt, why shouldn’t we cry?  If we are suffering, why shouldn’t we express our pain?  As the great Urdu poet Ghalib put it . . .

Will Bowen, however, seems to be referring to a different, but closely related, phenomenon when he uses words like “complaining” and “complaint.”  The problem is that the dictionary definition quoted above is too broad; the human expression of “grief, pain, and discontent” takes several different forms, and, strictly speaking, not all of them should be called “complaining.” 

Let’s take a common example, that of physical pain resulting from a minor accident, such as when I bump my head against a window.  The expression of pain that follows (and accompanies) the actual experience of pain can take the following forms: (1) I may utter a loud “ouch” and tears may come rolling out of my eyes; (2) I may swear at the person who left the window open (who might be none other than myself), at the window itself, at the laws of physics, or at nobody in particular; (3) I may visit the emergency room of the local hospital and tell the attending physician how this happened and how much my head is hurting; (4) I may let my spouse know about what happened, in order to share my feelings with a trusted person and, perhaps, to receive some tender loving care; (5) I may tell the building supervisor that the open window poses a hazard and that a cautionary sign needs to put up at the appropriate place; and (6) I may spend the rest of the day talking to my colleagues, friends, family members, neighbors, and anyone who cares to listen, explaining all about how I bumped by head against the window, how much it hurt, how it ruined my day, why am I so grumpy, why I hate the world in which heads get bumped against windows, how careless and incompetent the building supervisor is, how long I had to wait in the emergency room, how the stupid physician did not take my case seriously, why the pain in my skull proves the nonexistence of God, why I was right in not voting for Obama because he obviously hasn’t done anything to prevent such accidents . . .

The first expression of pain is largely involuntary, and may be quite useful both biologically and sociologically; it stops me from continuing to do what I was doing, allows me time to recover, draws the attention of others to my plight in case I need help, etc.  The second expression of pain is entirely cultural, serves no useful purpose, and falls under the category of “complaining.”  The third and fifth expressions of pain involve doing something positive–in one case to rectify the damage and in the other case to prevent the same from happening again.  The fourth expression of pain may help in the emotional processing of the traumatic experience as well as strengthen human connections by allowing the emergence of empahty.

The sixth expression of pain, however, constitutes the bulk of what is at stake in Will Bowen’s book.  He uses the word “complaining” to indicate precisely this kind of habitual and repetitive narration of one’s disapproval for the way things are and of one’s unhappiness about realities that are more or less immune to change.  One usually does not indulge in this form of verbal behavior for the purpose of improving the world or of learning to go beyond some negative experience.  On the contrary, such complaining is done for a range of psychological reasons, and serves certain pathological functions in a rather perverted manner.  We boost our egos when we express our disapproval or contempt for certain individuals, things, or situations, for the very act of complaining allows us to feel superior to the objects of our complaining.  So long as I am able to find faults or flaws in the way things are, which is another name for “reality,” I can imagine myself as standing at a higher, better place from where I can literally look down upon everything and everybody else.  

Overall, complaining does more harm than good; it causes more damage to the complainer than that caused by the problematic situation itself–e.g., the bump in the head.  Complaining neither benefits the complainer nor the individuals who become–willingly or unwillingly–the listeners and partners in crime.

Let me quote here some of the gems of wisdom from A Complaint Free World. 

There are two things upon which most people will agree:
(1) There is too much complaining in the world. 
(2) The state of the world is not the way we would like it. 
In my opinion, there is a correlation between the two.  We are focusing on what is wrong rather than focusing our vision on a healthy, happy, and harmonious world (p. 17).

Many people are an “ouch!” looking for a hurt.  If you cry “ouch,” the hurt will show up.  If you complain, you’ll receive more to complain about (p. 25).

Tired of meatloaf sandwiches?  You’re making your own lunch each and every day.  Change what you are saying.  Stop complaining.  Change your words, change your thoughts, and you will change your life.  When Jesus said, “Seek and ye shall find,” it was a statement of universal principle.  What you seek, you will find.  When you complain, you are using the incredible power fo your mind to seek things that you say you don’t want but nonetheless draw them to you.  Then you complain about these new things and attract more of what you don’t want (p. 37).

Am I opposed to gossip?  Absolutely not.  As long as: (1) What you’re saying about the absent person is complimentary.  (2) You would repeat, word for word, what you are saying if the absent person were present.  If you can follow these two simple rules, gossip all you want (p. 59).

You wouldn’t notice the faults in the other person if they were not also in you.  . . . Noticing it in another is the Universe’s way of inviting you to recognize it in yourself and heal it.  If you want to point out something negative in another, do some digging, see if it’s also within you, and be grateful for this chance to now be aware of the shortcoming and heal it within yourself (pp. 60-61).

Complaining is often a means of drawing attention to one’s self.  Everyone desires to be recognized, but people who complain a lot may be trying to attract attention because of low self-esteem.  They may complain to those around them as a way of demonstrating their discriminating tastes and sophistication, especially when they feel unsure about themselves in these areas.  The may also complain to legitimize and concretize self-appointed limitations to excuse themselves from stretching, growing, and improving their lives
(p. 106).

I will summarize here what I believe Will Bowen is trying to say. 

At one time or another, all of us feel strong sensations or emotions that may be called “grief, pain, or discontent.”  As social beings, we wish to communicate these sensations or emotions to those around us . . . this is quite natural.  Whether or not we are “complaining” in the negative sense of the term depends solely upon why we are sharing our grief, pain, or discontent; in other words, it depends solely upon our intentions. 

How do we know our own intentions?  Important clues to deciphering our intentions are found in how we express our grief, pain, and discontent; and to whom.  If we are alert and aware, we can usually judge ourselves accurately.  There are two positive ways of expressing grief, pain, or discontent, as follows: (1) expressing them with a person who may be able to guide us through the emotional turmoil and therefore help us move beyond the problematic situation; (2) discussing them with a person who may be able to partially or completely rectify the problematic situation, for us and/or for others.  All other reasons for expressing grief, pain, or discontent are negative, i.e., they constitute “complaining.”

Why is complaining counter-productive?  Complaining is the opposite of gratitude.  No matter how many things have “gone wrong” in our lives, there is always a great deal more for what we can be thankful than there are justifiable reasons for complaining.  The message is not that we should ignore our pain and suffering; on the contrary, the message is that we should learn to pay increasingly more attention to what is good and wonderful.  With this shift in where we choose to focus our attention, it is inevitable that we would start coming across more and more things that will generate gratitude, and less and less of what will make us complain.  It’s not that cultivating a ”positive outlook” will, in and of itself, make the world perfect in every way; instead, the idea is that by eliminating the habit of complaining we would be allowing ourselves the freedom to recognize what is already perfect.  The more thankful we become, the more reasons we are going to find for being even more thankful . . . until the urge to complain will collapse after having fully revealed its utter absurdity.

To get rid of the complaining habit, the first step is to know when we are complaining and be able to catch ourselves in the act.  This requires an awareness of our own thought processes, moment by moment.  Habits die hard, and so Will Bowen recommends an interesting device to help us kill the complaining habit: purple bracelet.  Each time you catch yourself complaining, change the bracelet from one wrist to the other.  You must go 21 consecutive days while the bracelet stays on the same wrist in order to qualify as a “complaint-free”  person.  This doesn’t mean you will never slip again; it does mean that you would have acquired enough self-awareness to know when you have slipped . . . which is the essential prerequisite for getting back up again.

A Muslim View of Trinity (4)

Why did Christians conceive of a triune God in the first place?  Why did they decide to wrestle with the interminable complexities of Trinity when they could have opted for a simple, unproblematic deity?  For Iqbal, the answer seems to be obvious, as already quoted.

The doctrine is another way of stating that the Absolute Unity must have in itself a principle of difference in order to evolve diversity out of itself.

This way of understanding the Trinity translates the question right back into the Islamic frame of reference.  If the doctrine of Trinity represents the Christian attempt to formulate the principle of differentiation within the Absolute Unity that is God, then it cannot be as strange or crazy as it typically appears to many Muslims.

The notion of Trinity is not mentioned in the New Testament.  It was formulated in the fourth century by Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus.  Essentially, the doctrine was conceived on the basis of the key distinction between God’s essence (ousia) and God’s actions and operations (energeiai), a distinction first made by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who was a contemporary of Jesus.  According to the Christian formulation of this doctrine, God has a single essence (ousia) which is unknowable to creatures (as Philo had postulated), but, according to the Scriptures, God has made himself known to us in three manifestations (hypostases), viz., the Father, the Logos, and the Spirit.  These three are divine energeiai that help mediate the ineffable and incomprehensible divine essence to our limited intelligence. 

Like Christians, Muslims too have encountered the problem of affirming the reality of diversity within God’s self-expression, and of doing so without compromising the implications of the first shahada, “there is no god but God.”  In the Christian tradition, the problem is addressed through the doctrine of the Trinity.  In the Islamic tradition, it is addressed through the doctrine of divine names and attributes.  When I hear that “God is three persons in one substance,” my response, as a Muslim, is to ask: Why stop at three?  If there is one divine “substance,” then on what basis do we limit the self-expression of that One into only three forms?  I say this, obviously, due to my Islamic bias. 

According to the Qur’anic worldview there is only one God, but this one God happens to have a great many names.  A famous hadith enumerates 99 names of God (al-asma al-husna = the most beautiful names) but the tradition insists that divine names are, in fact, countless or innumerable . . . infinite.  These names denote divine attributes; to say that God has an infinite number of names is to acknowledge that no creature can identify all of divine attributes.  The multiplicity of divine attributes is the key, for it introduces the principle of differentiation within (or alongside) the Absolute oneness of God.  This principle does not compromise divine unity, however, which remains true as regards the divine ”essence.”  The diversity of created forms is then understood as manifestation of the multiplicity of divine attributes in virtually infinite combinations and configurations. 

The same principle of differentiation, however, raised the classical issue of contention between the Mu’tazilites and the Ash’arites, i.e., whether or not the “essential” attributes of God (knowledge, power, life, hearing, sight, will, speech) are co-eternal with God?  The Orthodoxy subsequently resolved the problem by insisting that divine attributes are neither the same as divine essence nor are they distinct from it.  Before that could happen, however, the most famous controversy in this regard–on the nature of the Qur’an as God’s kalam (speech)–produced the only inquisition in Muslim history.  The debate sounds silly from a modern viewpoint, but it was nothing of that sort.  As an “essential” attribute of God, “speech” could be understood as co-eternal with God, which somehow made the Qur’an “uncreated” for one group of theologians.  The other group, rejecting the plurality of eternal entities, insisted that the Qur’an must be understood as “created” in time.  In fact, these two are not the only options, but that’s exactly how the debated was framed. 

This is how Farid Esack describes the nature of the controversy in his book The Qur’an: A Short Introduction.

The focal point of Mu’tazilite theology was thier emphasis on the absolute unity of God and on God’s justice . . . .  In dealing with the issue of God’s attributes, therefore, and in particular with the attribute of speech, their primary concern was to uphold God’s absolute unity, uniqueness, and immutability.  To suggest that anything, even divine revelation, shared in any of these characteristics, they argued, would detract from God’s utter beyondness.  Their principle of divine justice resulted in a rejection of notions of God’s arbitrary rule and predestination.  If the Qur’an were eternal, they reasoned, it followed that all the events narrated therein were pre-ordained; the players in all of these events would thus allhave had their fates saeled, even before birth.

Esack notes that initially this issue remained confined to a narrow circle of scholars, and that most mainstream scholars simply opted to “suspend judgment” rather than take one or the other extreme positions on a matter that was clearly speculative.  They would acknowledge that “the Qur’an is God’s speech” but were prudent enough to say nothing further than this fundamental article of faith.  The situation changed, of course, when the Abbasid rulers in the early ninth century CE attempted to make the Mu’tazilite view of the “created” nature of the Qur’an into an official doctrine and forced the entire Muslim community to accept it as the only true option–or face persecution.  To make a very long story short, the democratic impulse of the community not only rejected the Abbasid inquisition but, partly as a reaction against the extremism of the Mu’tazilite view, went all the way to the other extreme.  After the inquisition was over, the orthodox Muslim view emerged in the form of affirming that the Qur’an, as divine speech, was “uncreated.”  Soon, “created” was understood as “temporal” while “uncreated” became synonymous with “eternal” or “co-eternal with God.”

The Christian parallel, of course, was the great controversy between Arius and Athanasius on the nature of Christ.  While Muslim theologians struggled with the createdness or eternity of the Qur’an in the ninth century, several hundred years ago their Christian counterparts had already experienced a similar struggle with respect to the createdness or eternity of Christ. 

The controversy arose in the late third century and extended throughout the fourth.  It is fair to say that the aftershocks are still being felt today.  It began when Arius posed the question whether Jesus Christ was co-eternal with God the Father, or was he created by God the Father.  The resulting doctrine, sometimes called Arianism, is summed by the Encyclopedia Britannica as follows:

It affirmed that Christ is not truly divine but a created being.  Arius’ basic premise was the uniqueness of God, who is alone self-existent and immutable; the Son, who is not self-existent, cannot be God.  Because the Godhead is unique, it cannot be shared or communicated, so the Son cannot be God.  Because the Godhead is immutable, the Son, who is mutable, being represented in the Gospels as subject to growth and change, cannot be God.  The Son must, therefore, be deemed a creature who has been called into existence out of nothing and has had a beginning.  Moreover, the Son can have no direct knowledge of the Father since the Son is finite and of a different order of existence.

The fact that a prominent leader of the Church was able to make this argument indicates that the Christian community did not yet have a firm, fixed position on this issue.  The theological doctrines were still under construction, and it was still very much possible to shape and direct them from within the community.  Since there was no orthodox view yet, Arianism was not a heresy.  It became a heresy only after this view was officially declared to be so.  As Arianism gained followers, Athanasius emerged as the main rival who proposed that Christ was as divine as God the Father, and was begotten, not created in time.  The rivalry between these two opposing views on the nature of Christ did not remain limited to the Church hierarchy but soon came to involve laypeople, monks, and members of the Roman imperial family.  The Emperor Constantine had to intervene, and the First Council of Nicaea in 325 condemned Arianism as a heresy.  The Nicaean Creed declared belief in “one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father . . . .”

There is much in common between the Mu’tazilite vs. Ash’arite controversy on the nature of the Qur’an in the ninth century, and the Arius vs. Athanasius controversy on the nature of Christ in the fourth century.  In both cases, each side had strong theological arguments and support from scriptural texts; in both cases, the matter was resolved not solely on the basis of the strength of arguments but more so according to social and political realities.  The outcomes were very similar too.  In the end, the Christian community accepted that Christ was co-eternal with God the Father; in the end, the Muslim community accepted that the Qur’an was uncreated divine speech.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a simple, unproblematic deity.  Theologians would not allow such a deity to exist!  And yet, it would be unfair to place the entire blame on theologians.  The issue is inherent in the structure of reality, more specifically in the relationship between the Creator and the creation.  To posit a single God who cannot be reduced to any form, image, or place is to de-divine the created universe, to de-sacralize the world of forms.  This prevents idolatry, which is an important achievement, but also introduces an infinite distance between the Creator and the creation . . . thereby making God practically inaccessible, removing the mysteries of love and passion from religious life, and reducing the human-divine relationship to a dry, mechanical formality.  Both the Christian doctrine of Trinity and the Islamic doctrine of divine names and attributes aim at managing the same dilemma, i.e., how to let God be God (as Martin Luther famously said) while still keeping God easily accessible to thought and imagination, as a friend and a lover?  Christians have found a mediating presence in Christ (as well as in the Holy Spirit).  Muslims do so through recognizing the reflections of divine names and attributes in all created things.

A Muslim View of Trinity (3)

Yet another aspect of Christian doctrine that Muslims find scandalous concerns the belief in Jesus Christ as the “Son of God.”  The Qur’an seems to be particularly appalled at the very possibility of such a blasphemous notion.  The Qur’an acknowledges Jesus as a messenger of God, and as Christ, while emphatically denying the claim that he was/is the “Son of God.”  The following verses  are probably the strongest expression of that rejection in the entire Scripture.

The translation is by A. J. Arberry.

And they say, “the All-Merciful has taken unto Himself a son.”  You have indeed advanced something hideous!  The heavens are well nigh rent of it and the earth split asunder, and the mountains well nigh fall down crushing; for they have attributed to the All-Merciful a son!  And it behoves not the All-Merciful to take a son.  None is there in the heavens and earth but he comes to the All-Merciful as a servant.  (Maryam 88-93)

Given the generally mild and conciliatory attitude of the Qur’an toward Christians, the above strongly worded condemnation should make us pause and reflect.  There is more here than a simple doctrinal disagreement or religious polemic.  Indeed, the Qur’anic rejection is not aimed solely at the notion of God having a son; it extends with equal intensity to the notion of God having a daughter or daughters.  The latter was a commonly held pagan belief in pre-Islamic Arabia, one that the Qur’an repeatedly denounces and even ridicules.  According to the Qur’an, the belief in God having daughters with a divine status of their own was irrational because it contradicted the Arab pride in male offspring.  Typically, an Arab man would proudly celebrate the birth of a son but would feel terribly ashamed among his peers if the newborn were a daughter.  Given this patriarchal mindset, in which a son was always better than a daughter, the worship of female deities stood out as a major cultural contradiction. 

In the following verses, the Qur’an names the three central goddesses of Arabia, points out the contradiction caused by the patriarchal logic, and asserts that these so-called “daughters of God” are merely names without any referents . . . “names” that have been invented by “fathers,” i.e., by powerful men.

The translation is by Abdel Haleem.

Consider al-Lat and al-’Uzza, and the third one, Manat — are you to have the male and He the female?  That would be a most unjust distribution! — these are nothing but names you have invented yourselves, you and your forefathers.  God has sent no authority for them.   These people merely follow guesswork and the whims of their souls . . . (Al-Najm 19-23)

The Qur’an seems to reject the very notion of God having an offspring, regardless of whether that offspring is construed as male or female.  If the gender of the offspring being attributed to God is not relevant to the Qur’anic argument, then we may conclude that Christians are not being singled out for a polemical attack.  Something much more important is at stake. 

It may be kept in mind that the Qur’anic view of God had been clearly articulated very early in the process of revelation.  Well before any mention of Christians or their beliefs, the revelation had proclaimed in an early surah that God does not give birth.

Here is Arberry’s translation:

Say: “He is God, One; God, the Everlasting Refuge; who has not begotten, and has not been begotten; and equal to Him is not any one.”  (Al-Ikhlas 1-4)

The problem with attributing a son or daughter to God in a metaphysical sense is that it compromises God’s absolute singularity.  An offspring resembles the parent, and so the parent cannot claim absolute uniqueness after having given birth to a son or daughter.  What is at stake here is the “individuality of the Ultimate Ego,” as Iqbal puts it in his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (p. 50).  What does it mean to be an “individual”?  Iqbal quotes Henri Bergson on this issue, noting with approval the latter’s insight that “individuality is a matter of degrees and is not fully realized even in the case of the apparently closed off unity of the human being.”  He then goes on to quote from Bergson’s Creative Evolution:

In particular, it may be said of individuality, that while the tendency to individuate is everywhere present in the organized world, it is everywhere opposed by the tendency towards reproduction.  For the individuality to be perfect, it would be necessary that no detached part of the organism could live separately.  But then reproduction would be impossible.  For what is reproduction but the building up of a new organism with a detached fragment of the old?  Individuality, therefore, harbours its own enemy at home.

In nature, Bergson seems to be saying, there is an inherent tendency to achieve uniqueness, singularity, individuality.  Even though the disposition is there, creatures do not, in fact, reach perfect individuation because the species’ need for reproduction allows a part of each creature to survive independent of the source.  After quoting Bergosn, Iqbal goes on to offer his own remarks:

In the light of this passage it is clear that the perfect individual, closed off as an ego, peerless and unique, cannot be conceived as harboring its own enemy at home.  It must be conceived as superior to the antagonistic tendency of reproduction.  This characteristic of the perfect ego is one of the most essential characteristics of the Qur’anic conception of God; and the Qur’an mentions it over and over again, not so much with a view to attack the current Christian conception as to accentuate its own view of a perfect individual. (pp. 50-51)

If God is to be conceived as the Ultimate Ego who is absolutely and unconditionally unique–as the Qur’an does, in fact, suggest–then the belief in an offspring of that God would rupture the principle of divine individuality from within.  We can see why the Qur’an uses unusually strong language to drive this point home.  Iqbal’s interpretation helps us to move beyond religious polemics and apologetics, allowing us to appreciate the deeper significance of the Qur’anic assertion that God does not give birth.  The main purpose of the Qur’anic arguement is not to refute any given formulation of religious doctrine in a limited polemical context; rather, its main purpose is to convey with maximum emphasis that the Ultimate Ego is a unique individual in every sense of the word.  God does not beget, nor is God begotten!

At the same time, it is important to remember that there are two overlapping ways in which religious language functions.  A religious utterance may take the form of a metaphysical assertion, or it may be a metaphorical expression of a deeply experienced conviction, intuition, or feeling.  If a divine son or a divine daughter is posited as a metaphysical principle, i.e., as a being who is capable of existing apart from, and independent of, the parent—as a human offspring does- then this clearly negates and compromises the integrity of God’s own individuality.  It brings God down to the level of imperfectly individuated creatures.  Such a notion is unacceptable from a Qur’anic viewpoint.

And yet, in many contexts people may use phrases like “children of God” merely to indicate the close and intimate connection between God and the human race, without intending to make any metaphysical claims.  This is an example of metaphorical language, which must not be taken literally, i.e., in a metaphysical sense.  Generally speaking, Muslims do not like to use this language, mainly out of their concern for preserving God’s transcendence and, above all, for maintaining God’s individuality.  There are, however, some exceptions to this rule.  In a hadith, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is reported to have said: Al-khalq ayal Allah, which means, literally, “all creation is God’s family,” or even “all creation is God’s progeny.”  This is obviously a metaphorical use of the word “family” or “progeny,” not to be taken in a literal sense!  The hadith does constitute an example of how a religious utterance can be metaphorically structured with no metaphysical implications. 

There is considerable evidence that the phrase “Son of God” was used in classical Jewish culture merely as a metaphor denoting a man’s exalted status; it wasn’t until much later in Christian history that the phrase acquired some of its metaphysical connotations.  The Qur’anic critique of the notion of God having an offspring is clearly aimed at preserving God’s individuality; it does not negate the possibility that some human beings may be quite exalted in God’s eyes.  A close study of the phrase “Son of God” as found in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament does not reveal the same range of metaphysical meanings as were developed later by Christian theologians; and yet, the metaphorical meaning of this phrase has not been completely eclipsed. 

Muslims cannot decide on their own what Christians believe; only Christians can say what they believe, and what their beliefs mean to them.  Whether the word “begotten,” as used in the Nicene Creed, is intended to be a metaphysical principle or a metaphorical one is obviously a very important question . . . for Christians.  As far as I have been able to understand as an outsider, the best explanations of the Trinity do not seem to posit Christ as the “Son of God” in the sense in which this belief–according to Iqbal’s interpretation–would jeopardize God’s individuality.  After all, the doctrine of Trinity does not assert three deities, each of which would be capable of existing apart from the other two!  It actually asserts a single God with three distinct manifestations.  This does not mean, of course, that all Christians actually understand this subtle theological point.

The Latin version of the Nicean Creeds begins as follows: “Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipoténtem, Factórem cæli et terræ, Visibílium ómnium et invisibílium.”  Translation: “We believe in one God, Almighty Father, Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”  If we assume that “Father” is intended metaphorically rather than metaphysically–and we may make that assumption simply by giving the benefit of the doubt to those who composed this wording–then I cannot think of any reason why a Muslim would not recognize this statement as accurately representing his/her own belief.

There is, of course, much more to the Nicean Creed then the sentence quoted here, some of which we may not find as compatible with Islamic beliefs as the opening sentence.  The point I am making in this post, however, is simply this:  Words do not have simple, straightforward meanings.  Words that have hundreds of years of theological controversies behind them cannot be assumed as representing single, obvious, and uncontested meanings.  Case in point: the phrase “Son of God” and the range of beliefs that are associated with it.  Regardless of what Christians do or do not believe, Muslims ought to appreciate the difference between the sense in which certain phrases/beliefs would clearly compromise the Qur’anic conception of God, and the sense in which the same phrases/beliefs may not necessarily have that effect.

God knows best.

A Muslim View of Trinity (2)

Perhaps no aspect of the Christian doctrine of Trinity causes more scandal for Muslims than the part about the divinity of Jesus Christ. 

A Muslim View of Trinity (1)

Several years ago, I was speaking to a small group in an Islamic Center when the topic of Trinity came up, almost out of nowhere.

What Pilots Know

Any kind of work that demands specialized skills–any trade, craft, or art–can only be acquired slowly, in small increments.

The Arithmetic of Marriage

Marriage is a social institution and a cultural practice that brings together two individuals–traditionally a man and a woman–and somehow joins them.

Acceptance (3)

Acceptance, then, is only another word for our alignment with reality, which, in turn, is simply another word for God.

Acceptance (2)

Acceptance or taslim takes place outside the realm of moral judgments, prior to the categorization of reality according to our desires and wants.

Acceptance (1)

In a previous post, I suggested that the act or attitude of islam–usually translated as submission or surrender–can be imagined as falling into two categories.