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THE QUR’AN’S PRESENTATION OF THE “CHRISTIAN TRINITY”

Our preferred Koranic scholar, M.M. Ali, lists only two verses about The Trinity in his comprehensive Index: i.e., Trinity, doctrine of, refuted, 4:171, 171c; 5:73, 73a. Ali’s commentary on just the two verses he has indexed in his Koran will give us very valuable insights into his views on the subject. However, we will look at those texts and commentary after the thoughts of our next “scholar”, Mensuah Mansoor. He says:

In Rodwell’s translation of this verse, the slightly different, perhaps more “westernised” wording, reveals a similar intimation of it, but differs markedly to M.M. Ali’s translation in the spelling of just one word --- but a very important difference in context.

Let’s consider M.M. Ali’s difference in spelling and thus intimation in one key word in this verse.

Reader, did you spot the key difference in just one word? In the last line of the text, both A.Y. Ali and Rodwell write “beside” Allah/God. M.M. Ali, by contrast, spells the same word, “besides”. (My underlining.)

Just one letter in one ordinary English word, yet it scribes a very different meaning to the notion of a Trinity ---- or Godhead. M.M. Ali’s literary expertise seems to have let him down here, for the two meanings are quite clear in the “differences in term” of either a “connecting-closeness” (beside), or a degree of “separateness” (besides). Of course, we well-know that Mary has no place in The Trinity of God; we simply point out that differences in word-meaning can produce non-intended consequences of translation or interpretation.

Therefore, every nuance of every aspect connected to The Coming of The One Whom we Proclaim as Imanuel must be regarded as crucial to a true and flawless picture in the whole stupendous Divinely-Ordained Event -- even something as seemingly innocuous as one extra letter in just one word.

To that end, Imanuel has written about the critical importance of language for human beings on earth. It is obviously the greatest gift for us, for how else would we communicate? Language, however, in its correct and therefore more ennobled form and thus use. Any other way of using it --- such as the practice of shortening words in “texting”, or phonetic spelling -- is, in the final analysis, totally aspiritual and unworthy of, now very rare, genuinely ennobled human beings.

With regard to correct language use, we will use the Lecture that offers us the greatest knowledge of the meaning and purpose of “Language”. Here is what we really need to know!

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IMANUEL:
THE “SPIRIT OF TRUTH”!

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“Everything must become new!”

Reader, in concert with the above Command, what we will comment on next, through critical, will simply not happen. So: In the present, the incredibly dire state of virtually all global societies, in retrospect, surely screams to us that that is what we needed to do in order to change “Everything”, so that we could have had the “new”.

Instead, all we have in our collapsing world are the pontifications of politicians of the U.N., the E.U., all governments and associated ‘lawmakers’, NGO’s, and any number of so-called “movers and shakers”; all convinced that they can “turn things around”! What a sad and pathetic picture the nightly news channels reveal to us all.

In PART III, an essential Discourse will look at how the English language of the Western world has fared in its more recent ‘development’, particularly in the social, and social media, arena. A Sub-section of it, “Language in Entertainment”, will tell the real story!

While we are on this subject, let’s also note that the “Other Son” admonished His Disciples to watch what they said and the way in which they said it. From Matthew 15:11:

The last sentence was intended as a direct rebuttal of the Pharisaic obsession with the dietary Laws of the Torah –- the “Letter of the Law”, not the “Spirit” of It.

Well, reader, much information to clarify the ramifications of an s on the end of a word, or not an s on the end of it. An apparently small thing, but one of crucial import in understanding the actual association of The Two Sons to God! Whilst we are on this subject, let’s for a moment put aside Islam’s view of The Trinity and look at another Biblical reference to Two! It takes the form of a question-and-answer session, Verses 2 to 14, the Fenton Bible, between the Prophet, Zakariah, and a Messenger.

The Messenger then tells Zakariah more about Zerubabel and the stone for the laying of the Second Temple. He then tells Zakariah to “rejoice”, for there on the stone chosen by the hand of Zerubabel are the “Seven Eyes of the EVER- LIVING that traverse all the earth.” Zakariah, however, wants to know more about the two Olive trees.

Let’s examine a few points and pointers to that exchange. Note that Zakariah’s vision shows two, not one. Before the “messenger” answered Zakariah’s insistent questions; each time he in turn asked; “Do you not know?” Perhaps Zakariah, as a “Prophet of The Lord”, should have “known”, understood, what he was “seeing”. Yet, in that exchange, a “messenger of The Lord” was nonetheless with him to answer his queries. Was that to ensure the correct interpretation would be recorded by Zakariah to reach down through millennia to the present time to strengthen a Two Sons Proclamation?

A number of different ideas as to the actual meaning of that sequence of Scripture have been put forward by various Bible “scholars”, where the two have been referred to as ‘companions’ or ‘servants’. Two Sons-of-oil who stand near the Master of all the Earth; what does that mean? Well: No human being is or can be Master of all the Earth, and/or have two Sons-of-oil standing near him. Reader, we leave it to you to work out Who They are.

What we do have in that last message to Zakariah is confirmation of the single letter and single word that signalled this assessment:

So, the two Sons-of-oil stand beside; ‘‘at the side of’ or ‘next to’, thus near; and not under the meaning of: ‘Besides’: ‘in addition to’; or ‘apart from’.

Who would be the most “anointed” of God? Quite obviously, “the Two Who stand beside Him”! So: A digression from our current theme, perhaps, but yet still in serious concert with the content and purpose of this Discourse.

Whilst the Koran indexes Zacharias as an Old Testament prophet, there is no mention in M.M. Ali’s Koran of “two Sons-of-oil”. So, that is how it stands with Sura 5:116. Noting M.M. Ali’s one crucial letter difference, we need to hear his lengthy judgement on that particular verse.

For a relatively short text, some serious and controversial statements, assumptions, and doctrines certainly abound in it. In the powerful and unassailable context of our current Discourse, we cannot pass by Ali’s commentary without offering some incontrovertible and perhaps brutal truth and logic here.

For it forever astounds me that counted among Christians of all denominations are tens of thousands of ‘scholars’, all with some or many ‘letters’ after their name; many who are Ph.D.’s in their “field of religious expertise”. Most “inhabit’ what are termed “prestigious” universities and colleges, and they probably number in the hundreds in the Western world alone. Yet despite all that brain power, some really simple things in the Bible that are clearly not religious but just simply profound in their “soaring reality”, escapes them all completely.

Take note of this, reader! The problem is the same with all academics in this field; too much brain activity, meaning total reliance on their intellect, and not anywhere near enough spiritual intuition leading to revelation. The latter way is never wrong. It cannot be, for it is the essential part of who and what we really are: --- Spirit!

On the other hand, the brain and its intellectualism, forever tied to the Material World, is thus the lower aspect of being a complete human being. As we have previously exclaimed; ‘intellectual activity” is irreversibly tied to “brain activity”, and therefore it all ends up “rotting away” at the end of the entity’s earth life. Spiritual intuition, however, possesses “eternal values”, and is therefore “not left behind to rot away”. So, let’s get to grips with Ali’s commentary and smash a few things away with the power of “Spiritual discernment” in the first instance, but in the far greater second instance, from the knowledge brought to earth by:

IMANUEL, THE SON OF MAN --- and --- SPIRIT OF TRUTH!

Asterisk (*) and (**): Mariolatry and “mother of God”. Nowhere in the “Face-book of Christianity -- the Bible -- does it say that Mary is to be elevated to any level of reverence, and certainly not worship. She was not the mother of God; how could she be? “No man hath seen God at any time.”

We’ve already been through this. Notwithstanding the incredible honour among all women of being chosen to bear the earthly foetus of Jesus to full term and birth; nonetheless, that is exactly what it was under the aegis of precise Creation-Law. His necessary development to adulthood wrought “recognition” of His Origin, His Person, and thus His Mission.

At the end of a short life of opposition and constant attacks by the intransigent and the spiritually-blind Jewish “intellectuals” of His day; as He hung broken and bleeding in excruciating pain on that “dark cross of death”, He clarified forever the position of Mary as His earthly mother only. By that Declaration, He separated Himself from an undeserving humanity and “returned to the Father”; thus “becoming One with the Father”. Only crass Christian religiosity would dare to state otherwise, but from what kind of authority? NONE! From Fenton’s Bible --- the greatest of them all; from John 25:27, Sub-chapter: Jesus, His Mother and John.

With that direct entreaty to John, His beloved Disciple, we would think that the whole notion of “Mary-worship” would never have developed to become a doctrine that sees her on the one hand as divine, and on the other as one of the Trinity. How strange, how dangerous, how stupid! This very Discourse is about The Three Who are that Trinity. Mary does not even “get a look in”. Reader: Remember the words of IMANUEL: “Stupidity is already conceit.”

(***) To state that Mary is “endowed with all power in heaven and earth” is to appoint her to the level of some kind of “creative being”. It has to be said, where are these people’s heads, for it is one more extremely foolish idea.

(****) To further believe that “Mary was raised to the throne of Divinity” is absolutely negated by the Proclamation by Jesus of His separation from her in one of His last acts before He died. In other words, Jesus made it known that no cult should arise from any notion that an earthly woman could become any more than that.

(*****) The proclamation of the Pope regarding the bodily assumption of Mary leading to “a new question for the Christian world whether Trinity really consists of God, Jesus and Mary”, is so religiously-inane that it is almost unworthy of any kind of comment, and we won’t. Instead, we will let this Discourse Proclaiming Imanuel as The Son of Man be the “cleansing fire” that will sweep such unbelievable “stuff” out of existence forever. Surely, the religions of monotheism are the real “Anti-Christ”, for they inexcusably malign the very WORD OF GOD!

From a more or less constant surfeit of “absolute rightness” of Islamic thought from M.M. Ali, let’s introduce a very different view of Islam. This again comes from Mensuah Mansoor who has a very different and refreshing analysis of the Koranic verse of the moment.

Mensuah Mansoor’s much more benign view of the usual Muslim rhetoric towards the “People of the Book” is replicated by a Mr. Mansour who expresses similar kinds of views.

Ahmed Subhy Mansour, an Egyptian American activist, an Islamic scholar with expertise in Islamic history, culture, theology and politics. He founded the small Egyptian Quranists sect that is neither Sunni nor Shia. Sheikh Mansour was fired from Al-Azhar University after expressing his hadith rejector views, was exiled from Egypt, and lives in the United States as a political refugee. Mansour is also a board member (since September 2004) of the Free Muslims Coalition, a non-profit organization of American Muslims and Arabs who feel that religious violence and terrorism have not been rejected by the Muslim community. The coalition seeks to eliminate broad base support of Islamic extremism and terrorism, to strengthen secular democratic institutions in the Muslim world by supporting Islamic reformation efforts, and to promote a modern secular interpretation of Islam which is peace-loving, democracy-loving, and compatible with other faiths and beliefs. On current Jihadist-extremists, Mansour lamented:

Returning to, by comparison, hard-liner M.M. Ali; his content of Sura 4:171 gives much room for his expansive commentary. Since the major part of this Discourse will be sourced from the Bible, whatever we can take from the Koran at the beginning is important for the overall content of the Discourse. Reader: It is important for all Muslims to know that for fair representation, we have included as much as is relevant from the Islamic side for this “Battle of Ownership” equation.

Reader, note M.M. Ali’s incorrect usage of English grammar in the sentence, ‘Allah is only one God’, implying that He is one of many, thus a belittling of ‘ONE only’. What he obviously meant to say was. ‘Allah is the only God’, or the only “One God”. For Muslims, particularly, that is surely a striking example of the danger of not using language correctly. The inclusion of brief but important points from “THE POWER OF LANGUAGE” by IMANUEL into this Discourse underpins certain aspects of “language-Truth” that we human beings rarely even think about.

Notwithstanding Ali’s grammatical glitch there, he now gives us much more Koranic thought on why the concept of The Trinity cannot possibly be right according to the Muslim world.

(*) The bloody history of the Crusades is wholly understandable: With so much implacable and vociferous opposition to Christianity and all that it stands for by the religion of Islam; how could there ever be any kind of accommodation between the two, then and now?

(**) Ali has repeated his grammatical error here, and once more determinedly declared that the Godhead cannot possibly consist of three as a Divine Trinity, for Islam proclaims It to be just One. Yet IMANUEL has been, and we quote directly from His Hand!

(***) The Koran is absolutely correct in this case. The Divine Trinity could never ever include an ordinary earth-woman, and certainly not because another monotheistic religion that also believes itself to be infallible yet distorts so much of Divine Truth says it must be so.

We have one more M.M. Ali verse to quote, (5:73), --- his only other “Indexed” one --- and a little more anti-Trinity commentary from him to look at before we get into the heart of Imanuel and The Trinity!

Even though much of what Ali ‘explains’ is more or less repeated in some respects in all “Trinity verses”, we deem it valuable to quote from each one at least most of what he writes. So, let’s hear more on this subject from Ali’s verse of 5:73.

We cannot let M.M. Ali’s commentary go by without noting a couple of points in it, and also from the verse. Firstly, from 5:73:

(*) In the admonition to “desist” from declaring belief in a Trinity, Islam and the Koran have passed judgement on Christians --- who obviously place that belief as an immovable cornerstone of their very religion --- and that a painful chastisement will be the outcome for them. Well, the opposite is equally true. Those who deny what is the actual Trinity face the same, if the Trinity is a Divine reality.

(Reader, the word, if, is just for the purpose of a “religious-battle” exercise between the two protagonists. The very fact that IMANUEL is a DIVINE PERSONAGE along with JESUS, seals that “Trinitarian-reality” for all time! That means FOREVER!)

(**) The Islamic assertion of Jesus being an ordinary mortal, ventures into the same territory we have just outlined. Being wrong here will bring much more than just a “painful chastisement” for the “disbeliever”. As with so much in everyday life, this “two-edged sword” quandary represents and is a final “two- choice” scenario. With only one of the choices being correct, that means that each choice has a 50% potential in being correct --- or incorrect. However, the singular choice one might finally make equates to a 100% outcome. Somewhere along the way, the billions of human souls that subscribe to “monotheism” must all make that choice. So, to be wrong is to be 100% wrong, and thus the “painful chastisement”, as stated by the Koran.

(***) With regard to Christianity and the spread of the Bible into much of the world, but certainly specific countries with what might be called “native” cultures, there is a singularly powerful and beneficial aspect of that process that did not at all mean subjugation -- as Ali puts it. In truth, so-called “colonisation” of New Worlds by the Maritime Nations of Old-World Europe --- even though resulting in exploitation and often disastrous spreading of new diseases that decimated whole cultures --- the key point and end result was the introduction of elevated levels of knowledge, not the least of which was from out of the Bible. Of course, the horrendous practices of particularly Catholicism in their version of spreading such knowledge, were simply uncalled for. The record of the Catholic Church stands as a terrible indictment on supposedly “correctly doing for others”.

Nonetheless, the entry of the Bible into such societies changed the cultures by introducing a spiritual code of knowledge and behaviour spelling the end of what were mostly aspiritual cultural paradigms that had been the norm --- pre-Bible entry.

What should be seriously understood --- and this is the reality of the moment with this very Work --- is that the Bible is an especial and crucially- irreplaceable link in the long chain of Truth-Bringers who brought a specific level of Truth to the peoples into which they were incarnated, commensurate, of course, with the spiritual maturity of the culture at the time. (Reader, we will give you much more about them and the Divinely-guided process in a later Discourse.)

The final link from the Bible onwards is that which was prophesied by the key figure in it --- Jesus. You know: “Howbeit when the Spirit of Truth comes, He will lead you into All Truth.” Well, that is our ordained “Mission”, which we are currently fulfilling: To Proclaim Him and His All-Truth.

Thus, The All-Truth for us --- Imanuel’s “IN THE LIGHT OF TRUTH” --- is the last step in knowledge for all of global humanity!

To shed a little more light on the subject; whilst the Koran is adamant that there cannot be, never was, and never will be, a Trinity; Jewish scholars point out that such is the case. From an Online website: