Subtleties and Allusions

1. The Disbelief of Trinitarians

The statement “God is the third of three” (thālith thalātha) is disbelief (kufr); but “God is the fourth of three” (rābiʿ thalātha) is monotheism (tawḥīd), because the meaning of the first statement is that God is one of three equal and countable persons (aqānīm), and the Qur’an considers belief in this to be disbelief and polytheism (shirk): “They are certainly faithless who say, ‘God is the third of three’” (5:73). However, when three people are together in a place engaged in secret conversation (najwā), according to rational analysis, a fourth being has encompassed their inner and outer aspects without mixture (imtizāj); yet He is not in their rank, because He does not have numerical unity (waḥdat ʿadadī) to be counted: “Have you not regarded that God knows whatever there is in the heavens and whatever there is in the earth? There is no secret talk among three, but He is their fourth, nor among five but He is their sixth, nor less than that, nor more, but He is with them” (58:7). He is “the fourth of three” (rābiʿ thalātha); not the fourth of four (rābiʿ arbaʿa), because “the fourth of four” (rābiʿ arbaʿa) is the same as quadruplicity (tarbīʿ) which, like Trinity (tathlīth), leads to disbelief.

2. The Septuplicity and Octuplicity of the Ashʿarites

Fakhr al-Rāzī, after labelling the Christians’ discourse about “Trinity” (tathlīth) as incoherent, writes:

“If their intention from the three persons (aqānīm thalātha) is to affirm three attributes (ṣifāt) for the essence (dhāt) of the Lord, there is no problem, and we too consider Him to possess multiple attributes.”(113)

Fakhr al-Rāzī then writes: “I do not see in the world a doctrine more crude and more distant from reason than the doctrine of the Christians.”(114)

It should be noted that the contribution of Ashʿarite thought is septuplicity (tasbīʿ) or octuplicity (tathmīn), because they say that God, in addition to His essence (dhāt), possesses various attributes of perfection (ṣifāt kamālī) such as knowledge (ʿilm), power (qudra), life (ḥayāt), hearing (samʿ), sight (baṣar), and so on. The consequence of this statement is hidden polytheism (shirk khafī), because if God’s knowledge is other than His essence and is originated (ḥādith), it leads to the absence of knowledge in eternity (azal), and if it is eternal (qadīm), it entails the multiplicity of eternal beings (taʿaddud qudamā), which is worse than Trinity.