Since September 11, we have heard it said again and again that Islam is just another Abrahamic faith—as though it were not really very different from Christianity. So it may come as a surprise to learn that the God of Islam is actually more akin to the nonpersonal Absolute of neo-Platonism and Hinduism than to the God of the Bible.
Yet it is true, and the central reason is that Islam rejects the Trinity. Without that concept, it cannot hold a fully personal conception of God. Why not? Because many attributes of personality can be expressed only within a relationship—things like love, communication, empathy, and self-giving.
Traditional Christian doctrine maintains a personal conception of God because it teaches that these interpersonal attributes were expressed from all eternity among the three Persons of the Trinity. A genuinely personal God requires distinct “Persons,” because that alone makes it possible for love and communication to exist within the Godhead itself. Islam denies the Trinity, however, which means there is no way for its conception of God to include these relational attributes.
This nonpersonal conception of God also explains why Muslims express their faith in near-mechanical rituals: Muslim believers recite the Koran over and over, in unison, word for word, in the original Arabic.
As sociologist Rodney Stark explains, religions with nonpersonal gods tend to stress precision in the performance of rituals and sacred formulas; by contrast, religions with a highly personal God worry less about such things, because a personal Being will respond to a personal approach through impromptu supplication and spontaneous prayer.
- Nancy R. Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, 2004.
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