Selected Exegesis

After refuting the false beliefs of the Jews, this verse proceeds to refute some of the vain suppositions of the Christians. First, at the beginning of the verse, it calls the belief in the divinity of Jesus son of Mary disbelief (kufr); then it points to the invalidity of this baseless notion with several arguments:

1. The expression “the Messiah, son of Mary” (al-Masīḥ ibn Maryam) which indicates his created nature, because the child of a created being is certainly created, and a created being can never be a deity, since divinity is inseparable from lordship (rubūbiyya) and lordship is inseparable from creatorship.

2. The sentence “worship God, my Lord and your Lord” (uʿbudū Allāh rabbī wa rabbakum) is Jesus’s confession of servitude, so he himself did not claim divinity.

3. One who believes in that personage’s partnership in divinity is deprived of Paradise and his place is the Fire.

The deprivation of the polytheist (mushrik) from Paradise and his being destined for Hell is a constitutive (takwīnī) ruling, not a legislative (tashrīʿī) one.

From the sentence “and there are no helpers for the wrongdoers” (wa mā lil-ẓālimīn min anṣār) it becomes clear that polytheism (shirk) is wrongdoing (ẓulm) and the polytheist is a wrongdoer (ẓālim), because an apparent noun has been brought instead of a pronoun.