{"id":35169,"date":"2015-04-07T02:47:48","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T06:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=35169"},"modified":"2015-04-04T22:53:36","modified_gmt":"2015-04-05T02:53:36","slug":"qureshi-vs-ally-trinity-vs-tawhid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/qureshi-vs-ally-trinity-vs-tawhid\/","title":{"rendered":"Qureshi vs. Ally &#8211; Trinity vs. Tawhid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Ally vs.Qureshi\" href=\"http:\/\/rzim.org\/debates\/nabeel-qureshi-debates-muslim-apologist-shabir-ally\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-35170\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/trinity-or-tawhid.png\" alt=\"Tawhid or Trinity - the Qureshi-Ally debate\" width=\"427\" height=\"256\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/trinity-or-tawhid.png 600w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/trinity-or-tawhid-300x180.png 300w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/trinity-or-tawhid-420x252.png 420w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/trinity-or-tawhid-460x276.png 460w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/trinity-or-tawhid-90x54.png 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 427px) 100vw, 427px\" \/>This should be interesting<\/a>. Mr. Qureshi (a PhD\u00a0student in theology) is the author of the\u00a0fascinating\u00a0book <strong><a title=\"Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi\" href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/trinities-20\/detail\/0310515025\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus<\/em><\/a><\/strong> (<a title=\"Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus\" href=\"http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/trinities-20\/detail\/B00DL18FMU\" target=\"_blank\">kindle<\/a>). He&#8217;s a convert from <a title=\"explanation of Ahmadiyya Isalm from their website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.alislam.org\/introduction\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ahmadiyya <\/a>Islam to evangelical Christianity. He is bold, smart, and clear. Dr. Ally is an erudite and well-spoken Islamic apologist and an experienced debater.<\/p>\n<p>In the press release for this <strong>live-streamed, April 8<\/strong>, 2015 debate, Mr. Qureshi says that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>My goal is to dispel false beliefs about the Trinity and to replace them with truth&#8230;\u00a0I\u2019d like to <strong>explain the Trinity more deeply<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It will be interesting to see just what he presents <strong>&#8220;the&#8221; doctrine<\/strong> to be. I would be very surprised if he did not adopt the position that the catholic language has one main interpretation which all (really, most) Christians have always believed. Demonstrably not\u00a0true, but something most trinitarians are compelled by their historical narrative to assume. And a typical approach for evangelical apologists is to camp out on oversimplified traditional language (Jesus is God, the Father is God, the Spirit is God, and there&#8217;s only one God, so&#8230;Trinity!) and refuse to clarify, asserting that clarification is impossible. That&#8217;s a <a title=\"posts on negative mysterianism\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?s=negative+mysterian\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>negative mysterian<\/strong><\/a> move, which is heavily in tension with the &#8220;dance of three friends&#8221; kind of view (<strong>three-self<\/strong> or &#8220;social&#8221; theories). I&#8217;ll also be curious to see if he moves, as some Christians defending the Trinity vs. Islamic opponents have, <a title=\"posts on Islam-inspired modalism\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?s=islam+modalism\" target=\"_blank\">towards a <strong>one-self<\/strong> (or modalist) theory<\/a>. Or will he attempt to <a title=\"trinities podcast episode 58\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/podcast-episode-58-we-cant-prove-the-trinity-by-reason-alone\/\" target=\"_blank\">argue that from <strong>reason alone<\/strong>, we can know<\/a> that a &#8220;unipersonal&#8221; god, a god who just is a certain self, is imperfect?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-35181\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ready_to_rumble.jpg\" alt=\"ready_to_rumble\" width=\"350\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ready_to_rumble.jpg 350w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ready_to_rumble-281x300.jpg 281w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ready_to_rumble-90x96.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>As to Dr. Ally, will he <strong>rely wholly on the Bible<\/strong> for his arguments? If he does, he <em>might\u00a0<\/em>win this debate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>This doesn&#8217;t work:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Debater 1: <em>My<\/em> book says P.<\/li>\n<li>Debater 2: Oh, yeah, <em>my<\/em> book says not-P.<\/li>\n<li>(Audience: OK, but which book should we believe?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>But this <em>may<\/em> work:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My book, <em>and even your book<\/em>, says P. So, you should agree that P.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Christians have tried this on Muslims<\/strong>, arguing that even the Qur&#8217;an somehow implies a Trinity, or at least multiple &#8220;Persons&#8221;in God. I&#8217;ve read some such attempts, and honestly, they&#8217;re not convincing. You&#8217;re just not going to get anything like the Trinity by carefully reading the Qur&#8217;an. At best, you get God having multiple properties (so divine simplicity is false) &#8211; but that, arguably, is not much like the Trinity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conversely, some Islamic apologists have argued<\/strong> that the Bible implies that God is a single Person, a mighty self. <a title=\"How Trinity theories conflict with the New Testament\" href=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/how-trinity-theories-conflict-with-the-new-testament\/\" target=\"_blank\">They&#8217;re right about that<\/a>. But traditionally, they make so many mistakes (e.g. merely asserting that the Trinity implies tritheism and the falsity of monotheism, or asserting the red herring that the word &#8220;Trinity&#8221; isn&#8217;t in the Bible, or quoting the Quranic passages that seem to denounce a misunderstanding of the Trinity) that the Christian debater <strong>calls them out for misunderstanding<\/strong> &#8220;the&#8221; doctrine. And as a rhetorical move, the Christian will be well advised to <strong>change the subject<\/strong> from Trinity to Christology, because Islamic sources (7th c. and beyond) flatly contradict the main Christian sources (1st c.) on many important points. And in matters of history, generally, closer in space and time to the event in question is is better, and there&#8217;s yawning gap here when you compare the sources.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-35187\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ears-to-hear.jpg\" alt=\"ears to hear\" width=\"338\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ears-to-hear.jpg 338w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ears-to-hear-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ears-to-hear-90x60.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 338px) 100vw, 338px\" \/>On the other hand, if Dr. Ally tries Ehrman-style attacks on the reliability of the New Testament, he&#8217;ll just annoy his Christian audience, though he may delight his fellows. But that&#8217;s not how you win.<\/p>\n<p>I love debates. When done well, it is <strong>the truth that wins<\/strong>, and so also he wins who has ears to hear. Be sure to put on your ears!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This should be interesting. Mr. Qureshi (a PhD\u00a0student in theology) is the author of the\u00a0fascinating\u00a0book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (kindle). He&#8217;s a convert from Ahmadiyya Islam to evangelical Christianity. He is bold, smart, and clear. Dr. Ally is an erudite and well-spoken Islamic apologist and an experienced debater. In the press release for this live-streamed,&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/qureshi-vs-ally-trinity-vs-tawhid\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Qureshi vs. Ally &#8211; Trinity vs. Tawhid<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,21,16,15,54,59,8,38,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-bible","category-books","category-christology","category-debates","category-islam","category-linkage","category-monotheism","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35188,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35169\/revisions\/35188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}