Trinity and Tawhid – The Same or Unique?

Staff Writer


Table of Contents

The concept of monotheism is the belief that there is only one God. It is a concept of theism that specifies itself as distinct from other theisms, such as polytheism, ditheism, or tritheism. The concept of monotheism is distinctive and accepts indivisibility while maintaining the uniqueness of God. The question that comes to mind is: who is this God? What about Him?

The Christians, with a few exceptions, agree that “there are three persons in one God, God the Father, God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, Christians profess that God is a Trinity, which is the focal point of the Christian concept of monotheism. When compared to Islam, it is completely a different understanding.

For Muslims, “there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God.” This is normally put in this way: “ašhadu ʾan lā ʾilāha ʾilla -llāhu, wa-ʾašhadu ʾanna muḥammadan rasūlu -llāh,” that is, "I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God."

The first part of the Shahadah is a profession of the uniqueness of God, that is, the Tawhid which is central to the Islamic concept of monotheism. Thus, are the concepts of Trinity and Tawhid one and the same thing? Does each say the same thing but in a distinctive way?

As part of this writing, the words ‘God’ and ‘god’ will be clearly defined, and their differences will be explored to give meaning to the understanding of the concept of monotheism as both a Trinity and a Tawhid in this manner:

  • God/god Explained
  • Trinity and Tawhid: The Same or Unique
  • Trinity and Tawhid: Synonyms and Polysemy

God/god Explained

The word ‘God’ or ‘god’ is no new concept. People of every nation, culture, language, tribe, civilization, and orientation have different meanings ascribed to concepts of ‘God’ or ‘god.’ To say the list, this will be another area of research for someone who wants to get involved in comparative studies on the different names of gods.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines God as “a superhuman person” whose reverence and awe are due, who controls nature and human fortunes. It also considers God, a deity. It argues that the words ‘God’ and ‘god’ are used to refer to a ‘Being’ outside of mankind and that even when the term God is applied to the objects of polytheistic worship, the word has often a colouring derived from Christian associations.

As the use of God as a proper name has throughout the literary period of English been the predominant one, it is natural that the original heathen sense should be sometimes apprehended as a transferred use of this; ‘a god’, in this view, is a supposed being put in the place of God, or an imperfect conception of God in some of His attributes or relations. 

Between the terms ‘God’ and ‘god,’ there is no phoneme. They are the same and their meaning is indistinguishable if they remain as spoken words. One can only decipher which ‘God’ or ‘god’ is meant through writing. On the level of spoken words, they are very identical. There is no difference between them. An idea of the difference comes to mind only when they are written down.

In every study of God, this distinction must be made. The concept of ‘God’ and the concept of ‘god’ are not the same. But they are just the same on the level of speech. The different symbols and representations of the above two concepts are comprehensible only when they are written down.

 Over 40 years ago, Derrida (1981) attempted to distinguish between speech and written words by developing a neologism called: différance; which is an emphasis on the ‘a’ of différance. When interviewed by Henri Ronse on the Implications of the ‘a’ in différance, what it signifies? Derrida argued that:   

I do not know if it signifies at all – perhaps something like the production of what metaphysics calls the sign (signified/signifier). You have noticed that this is written or read but cannot be heard. First off, I insist upon the fact that any discourse - for example, ours, at this moment – on this alteration, this graphic and grammatical aggression, implies an irreducible reference to the mute intervention of a written sign. The différer, on which this noun is modelled, ties together a configuration of concepts I hold to be systematic and irreducible, each one of which intervenes or rather is accentuated, at a decisive moment of the work.

The concept of monotheism can only make sense when this distinction is made. Phonetically, it is difficult to identify the ‘God’ or ‘god’ that is meant in both Christian and Islamic concepts of monotheism because each alludes to ‘persons’ for Christians and ‘god’ for Muslims. Though, Derrida went on to emphasize that: “Now the word (vox) is already a unity of sense and sound, of concept and voice, or, to speak a more rigorously Saussurian language, of the signified and the signifier.”

The word ‘God’ the (signifier), the form which the sign takes, has its (signified), the concept it stands for. For Christianity and Islam, it is that which represents the Supreme Being, the God Absolute. Contrarily, the word ‘god’ is another (signifier), the form which it takes, has its separate (signified), the concept it stands for.  They are two different concepts (signified), though the words are identical in sound and are spelt and pronounced in the same way.

Same or Unique?

The concept of Tawhid has the claim to this one God who is unique. It submits and affirms that “there is no god but Allah” or “there is no god but God.” There is a need to make some clarifications here. The profession of faith: “There is no god but God” may suffer from the problem of socio-cultural meaning. In the English language, the word ‘God’ seems to be confused with the word ‘god’, especially at the spoken level. In Arabic, the word ‘Allah’ is a contraction of ‘al-ilah’ (the deity). It is also a proper noun, a term which refers directly to an entity.

It is not a proper name like Zeus but an appellative like ‘theos, Deus, Dieu’ and therefore is to be translated as ‘God’. ‘Allah’ has a plural form (as does ‘el’, the Hebrew word for God), but aliha is used only for the ‘gods’ of the pagans and never for the one true God.

Western scholars and even some Islamic scholars have come to use the name God for Allah. The difference between the terms Allah (God) and aliha (gods) must be made.

When Muslims say: “There is no god but God”; the emphasis “no god” suggests “there is nothing.” To a neophyte who hears the first part of the Shahadah “There is no god but God”, they might consider it to be tautological.

This is the problem with saying two identical spoken words without providing equivalent written texts. It is fallacious because the speaker is using identical words and practically saying the same thing twice.  

From other perspectives, the analysis of the proper name of ‘God’ suggests that:

This methodological awareness of the social and linguistic conditioning of language about God has come to the fore in this century in discussions of the nature of religious language. Some seek to explore what is distinctive about religious language or about “God talk” by examining specific types of language, such as “limit” expressions; others ask whether religious language involves speech acts that entail a specific existential commitment of the speaker as well as propositional affirmations.

The awareness is that the Qur’anic methodology insists that the use of the word ‘god’ before the word ‘God’ is to portray that ‘there is nothing that can be associated or equaled to ‘God.’ The proclamation says it all: “There is no god but God.” It stresses the importance of Islamic monotheism. 

Between Christianity and Islam, their idea of the nature of God is a Trinity and Tawhid respectively. Therefore, the concept of monotheism can form a coalescing space for dialogue between them. Is the idea of God something difficult to comprehend? The idea of God within the Christian and Islamic definitions will be examined from another perspective, that is synonyms and polysemy. 

Trinity and Tawhid: Synonyms and Polysemy

The application of synonyms and polysemy to the concepts of Trinity and Tawhid reiterates the argument of conflictive differences and seeming similarities. The issue of ambiguity shows up. There is a need to emphasize the point of ‘lexical ambiguity.’ Below is an illustration of the ambiguity that surrounds the different concepts of monotheism.

Trinity and Tawhid as synonyms or polysemy

The word ‘monotheism’ has two senses. For this context, one sense is Trinity and the other sense is Tawhid. From the above illustration, monotheism is a polyseme. The concept of the Trinity expresses the belief in one God. So is the concept of Tawhid. God/Allah is a word that has the sense of a Supreme Power. The words ‘God’ and ‘Allah’ are synonyms. Therefore, polyseme-monotheism can be a reason for the construct of identity by the Christians and Muslims with claims to orthodoxy and castigations of heresy as well as a coalescing space for dialogue between them.

The Christian Trinity can be understood in like manner the Tawhid is understood as a concept of monotheism. It upholds that “there are three Persons in one God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” For Christianity therefore, three Persons are in one God, and these three persons are not three ‘Gods.’ The two concepts of monotheism acknowledge that there is one God, but the only difference is the degree of the uniqueness of the oneness of God.

Christian theology seems to speak in metaphors about their idea of God. Different scholars have “presented programs of God talk in basically metaphorical terms” and centre their ideas of God from the categories of our experiences, such as:

The images and metaphors used to express the divine are taken from several areas: family and personal relations, various occupations, political life, the world of nature, and modern scientific thinking. Images from the family often convey the intimacy of a personal relationship (God as father, mother, friend, and helper). Images drawn from occupations provide examples of activities that may be regarded as important ways of viewing the divine (shepherd or caretaker, potter, builder, warrior, or commander). Other images are drawn from political life (king, lord, master), from nature (spirit [wind], force, power, ground), and from science (evolution, ecology, field of force).

The above suggests that Christian theology is full of tropes while explaining the idea of God. To answer the fundamental question about God’s existence, there is a need to find out what kind of God there is. Richard Niebur tries to explain the nature of God from Trinity’s perspective:

If God is identified only as a father, then one tends to see the created order in terms of the will of God (creator of that order) and its fulfilment; however, if God is identified mainly as Christ the Saviour, then salvation and redemption, in contrast to the present created order, are emphasized; if God is viewed exclusively as spirit, the ecstatic elements in religious life become highlighted. Here the trinity, with its images of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit has implications not only for the conception of God but also for the understanding of human life.

The Qur’an itself considers the Christian Trinity from another perspective and insists on the uniqueness of God. “And behold, Allah will say: ‘O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, “Worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah”?’ He will say: Glory to Thee! Never could I say what I had no right (to say)” (Al-Ma’idah 5:116); “They do blaspheme who say: ‘God is Christ the son of Mary.’ They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One God” (Al-Ma’idah 5:72-73).

There is a great amount of thinking in Judaic, Biblical and Qur’anic traditions that suggests that the idea of God in all unity of purpose can stand as a family proper name. God is “God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob” (Luke 20:37). God can be said to be the family name for the diversified humanity. The term ‘God’ or ‘god’ could be an intercultural converging point of different religions. Medina in his analysis of categories of families using Wittgenstein’s view of identity observed that:

When we use a concept such as ‘game’ or ‘chair’, we treat all kinds of different things as the same although they are not strictly identical in any respect; that is, in our categorizations, different things are treated as instances of the same category even though there is no feature (or set of features) that they all have in common: many different kinds of activities are called games and many different kinds of artefacts are called chairs…

Again, that is not the end. When new things are invented or made, they are added to the list.

“… we can always add new items to the list of things that fall under these concepts (we can always invent new kinds of games and produce new kinds of chairs). Wittgenstein suggested that these concepts are like families, whose members resemble one another in many ways: some may have similar hair, others similar noses, others may share ways of talking, or similar laughter, etc.”

Conclusion

We can consider the concept of monotheism, in the light of the Trinity and Tawhid as the same even though they are not identical in any respect. The interrelation between the Trinity and Tawhid as concepts of monotheism accepts alterity. Each concept exists for the other to have meaning. If there were no Trinity as a concept of Monotheism, there wouldn’t have been the concept of Tawhid. Now both concepts exist, the misunderstanding between Christian and Islamic religions is the idea that one concept should replace the other or trying to make one concept of monotheism from two established concepts; a form of homogeneity that excludes all differences.   

Further readings

Bradley, H., Craigie, WA., Murray, JAH & Onions, CT (eds.) 2004, The Oxford

English Dictionary, 2nd edition, vol. IV. Creel-Duzepere; vol XIII. Quemadero – Roaver;  vol. III. Hat – Intervacuum;  vol. X. Moul – Ovum;  vol. XIV. Rob – Sequyle; vol. VIII. Interval – Looie;  vol. VI. Follow – Haswed, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Saussure, F 1983, Course in General Linguistics, translated by Roy Harris, Duckworth, London.

Niebuhr, HR 1960, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, Harper, New York.

McFague, S 1987, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age, Fortress Press, Philadelphia.

Medina, J 2003, ‘Identity Trouble: Disidentification and the Problem of Difference’,

Philosophy Social Criticism, 29, 655.

Kung, H 2007, Islam: Past, Present and Future, translated By John Bowden,

Oneworld Publications, Oxford.

Fiorenza, FS & Kaufman, DG 1998, ‘God’ in Taylor C Mark, (ed.) Critical Terms

 for Religious Studies, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Derrida, J 1976, Of Grammatology, Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The

Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Derrida, J 1981, Positions, translated by Alan Bass, The Athlone Press, London.

Carter, R., Goddard A., Reah D., Sanger K & Bowring M 2005, Working with texts:

a core introduction to language analysis, 2nd edition, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London.

Carter, R & McCarthy, M 2006, Cambridge grammar of English, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge.

 

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