The Deen Show MailBag on the Trinity

The Trinity, Former-Christian Testimonies, and the Problem of Celebrity Conversions

Right in the middle of the Yusuf Estes appearance on the Dean show, they did a mailbag segment with another commentator who likewise identifies himself as a former Christian. Now I'm not going to do with this what I did with Yusuf Estes because if it's possible, it's even worse than Yusuf Estes and there just isn't any reason to do that.

I'll just use text to identify the various errors as I play it. But there were two things I did want to address very briefly. He starts off by saying the trinity can't be true because then God would need help from somebody.

He doesn't explain why. It's painfully obvious he doesn't understand what the trinity is. He later says it's three gods and that one god created another god. And here's someone who claims to be a former Christian and again has absolutely no concept of what allegedly he once believed.

He says later on, he said, we were told something about the word, but we weren't told who the word was. Anybody in a meaningful Christian church knows what John 114 says in the beginning. Well, of course, John 1 in the beginning was the word of God, the word was God.

Then 114, the word became flesh. We tell our people who the word is. I don't know how this person could have missed that. I don't understand any of this. How people can sit in front of a television camera, say I am a former member of such and such a religion, and I am now going to demonstrate to you that I never knew what my religion actually taught.

To me as a Christian, that once again demonstrates that a lot of this, and Muslims aren't the ones to do this, don't get me wrong, but this conversion syndrome, this idea that, oh, look, this guy came over to our side, that must mean you're wrong.

The vast majority of instances, conversions can happen for a million different reasons. Most of the time, they're not even theological reasons at all. And so often, those who convert demonstrate that they never had any grounding, any foundation whatsoever in the faith that they claim they were once a part of.

And that's one of the reasons I do not push people who have come into Christianity for another faith. Don't push those people out there and try to turn them into celebrities. Let them get grounded. Let them demonstrate maturity, growth in faith.

Get them into a good church. And if five, 10 years down the road, once they have a foundation and they really have demonstrated a consistent faith, then maybe they might be someone who might want to start utilizing some of their expertise.

But get them grounded first. Don't turn them into, quote unquote, celebrities. So here's the mailbag segment. I'm just going to put some citations, some text on the screen. No reason to go through this, because we refuted all this so many times before.

And it's very plain. These objections are based upon gross ignorance of the doctrine of the Trinity itself.

The Mailbag Introduction and the Question About the Trinity

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. And welcome to the mailbag on the Dean's Show, where we answer the questions of our viewers and our listeners about Islam, and hopefully clear up some of the misconceptions that many of us may have about the reality of Islam.

Let's look and see what we have today. OK, this writer asks, why don't you Muslims accept that God can be a Trinity? Well, thank you for that very good question. We can't possibly accept that God can be a Trinity, because it's not necessary.

Because in order for God to be a Trinity, that means that he would have to require help. In order for him to require help, that means he would be dependent upon another god, which obviously doesn't exist, or he would be dependent upon something that he himself had created.

And so it's an obvious contradiction, dear listener, that to even expect, or think, or even hope that God would have to be a Trinity is a contradiction to the actual existence of Almighty God. Because in order for there to be a Trinity, then he would have to require the assistance, as we said, of something else that he has created.

That means that in order for there to be a Trinity, he would have to create another son that he would need assistance from. He would have to create a ghost that he would need assistance from. So there can't be a Trinity.

There's not three gods. That means that one of the gods had to come first if there was three gods. And God himself is only one, and he doesn't require any help from anyone. That would take away, and it's an insult and contradictory to the existence and the fact that God is one and God is the Almighty.

How can we dare say that God is Almighty, and we call him Almighty God, and then still, on the other hand, on the other side of the coin, say, again, that God is a Trinity, that he has to be three in one?

Why would he have to be three in one? Why would God, who is not created, who is the beginning, who is the end, who is the alpha and omega, this one supreme God who brought about the entire creation? In Christianity, we were taught that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh, and the flesh dwelt among us.

But we weren't taught what that Word was. In Islam, we're taught what the Word was, the Word that was the beginning. The Word that brought about the beginning of creation was Qum, which means be. And the Quran says, Qum fayakum, be, and it is.

So this is how God brought about creation. But it's not how God brought about himself, because God did not have to bring about himself. God was not created, nor was he even self-created. God himself is the beginning.

And you can't think past God. So in order to think that God needs two other beings to help him to rule the universe, then that means that there would have to be something that came before God, or came along with God, or that God himself had created.

But God himself is no need for a trinity, and God does not do unnecessary things. The creator of the heavens and the earth is complete, without form, without description, and he has no limitations. He has no height, no weight, no depth, no width.

He has nothing that can be described by human beings, and therefore, there's no need for Almighty God to be a trinity, and it's impossible to expect that God would even have to be a trinity, because in order for him to be a trinity, then he would have to be reliant upon something that he has created, because no one else has the ability to create anything.

Things can only be done by the help, and the will, and the plan of Almighty God. That's why we cannot believe, nor can we possibly expect, even with our wildest imagination, that God could be a trinity, because it's contradictory to the very existence of Almighty God.

We hope we answered your question. That's it for this session of The Mailbag on The Dean Show. Tune in next time. Thank you.