Islam-Inspired Modalism – Part 2

Last time we looked at an exchange between Christian and Muslim apologists in the early 14th century, in which the Christian side, under pressure from longstanding Muslim accusations of polytheism, spells out the doctrine of the Trinity in a plainly modalistic way. This practice is ongoing, as we’ll see.

Thomas F. Michel is a Jesuit priest and scholar who edited and translated the largest response we know of to The Letter from the People of Cyprus, by the Musilm theologian Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328). The original title of Taymiyya’s response is The Correct Answer to Those who Changed the Religion of Christ. In his Foreward, Michel calls this

…a work whose length and scope have never been equalled in Muslim critiques of the Christian religion and whose depth of insight into the issues that separate Christianity and Islam sets it among the masterpieces of Muslim polemic against Christianity. (A Muslim Theologian’s Response to Christianity, p. vii)

Today’s post, however, is on a short paper by Michel, “The Trinity as radical monotheism”, who it seems has long been interested in inter-religious dialogue (he’s listed as the Jesuits’ Secretary for Interreligious Dialogue).

One interesting claim he makes is that the actual, orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is not, contrary to widespread and longstanding Muslim opinion, condemned in the Qur’an.

The Qur’anic passages which appear to deny 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, which imply that the Christian doctrine regards God as a composite of Allah, Mary, and Jesus, would seem to place a unsurmountable barrier to Muslim-Christian understanding on the nature of God.

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’ân or else, what is even more blasphemous, that the Divine author of the Qur’ân was guilty of misunderstanding Christian teaching.

However, such passages 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 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.” It was natural for Christianized Arabs, 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.”
One can argue that it is this primitive, pseudo-Christian 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. Moreover, 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, confirming 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.

The weakness of the argument lies in the fact that we know so little about the form or forms that Christianity may have taken in 7th Century Arabia or even whether Christianity in the region of Mecca 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. (Section 1, emphases added)

Michel repeats, and places strong emphasis on, the idea (oft heard from present-day theologians) that the Greek hypostasis of the classic creeds meant not what “we moderns” mean by person (i.e. thinking or rational thing/substance/entity), but rather something like “mask” or “role”. (I have my doubts about this claim, but I’ll leave those aside for now.) Michel says,

I believe that a more accurate expression of what Christian faith teaches about the triune God can be achieved by returning to the original meaning of hypostasis as defined by the early Councils. This 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 also closer to the traditional Arab Christian formulation of one God with three essential characteristics or sifât. (Section 3, my emphases)

Ain’t that modalism, the heresy of Sabellius? No, says Michel:

What was condemned in the thought of Sabellius 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 upon creating the universe. 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, while his formulation had much to commend it, departed from orthodox Christian understanding. The Council of Nicea corrected Sabellius’ views by affirming 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. (Section 3, bolded emphasis added)

Michel is a modalist, as I use the term. What I understand him to be saying, in my terminology, is as follows: unorthodox modalism is so because it denies one or more of these: (1) all of God’s modes are intrinsic properties (or his having of intrinsic properties), (2) all of God’s modes are essential to him, (3) all of God’s modes are eternal – none begins or ceases in time. And orthodox trinitarianism is just noumenal, concurrent modalism, plus the claim that the divine modes are essential.
But what and how many modes are we talking about here? On this, as far as I can tell, Michel is inconsistent. Sometimes he seems to be espousing what I call SH modalism, and at other times, FSH modalism. In the first vein, he seems to identify God and the Father, while thinking of the Son and Spirit as his modes.

Whereas 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, which we call the Spirit. Thus the two divine processions and two missions of classical Trinitarian theology. (Section 3, my emphasis)

In other places, though, the Father also is counted as a mode of God, rather than being numerically identical to God. Thus at the end of this article,

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.” (Section 4, my emphasis)

Why the ambiguity? Here’s a guess – it just seems neat and simple to make all three of the divine “persons” modes of God. Hence, the FSH modalism. On the other hand, Michel seems well aware that the New Testament nearly always seems to use “Father” (etc.) and “God” (ho theos) as coreffering terms, two names for Yahweh, the god of the Jews. (I’ve argued this in print in my “Deception” paper.) Well, which is it – does “the Father” name a mode of God, or God himself? Not that it matters too much. On either of Michel’s proposals, S modalism is implied, and that, I’ve argued, sinks the ship. (See also here.)