In the 8th century there arose in Islam the belief that certain terms which are attributed to God in the Koran stand for real incorporeal; beings which exist in God from eternity. There is nothing in the Koran to warrant such a belief. Nor is there an...
In the 8th century there arose in Islam the belief that certain terms which are attributed to God in the Koran stand for real incorporeal; beings which exist in God from eternity. There is nothing in the Koran to warrant such a belief. Nor is there any warrant that at that early stage in the history of Islam the belief originated by that kind of reasoning by which later Muslim theologians tried to defend it against opposition. The appearance of that belief at that time can be explained only on the ground of son external influence. By a process of elimination it is to be assured that Christianity was that external influence. A suggestion as to the Christian origin of the belief in the reality of divine attributes is to be found in the discussion of that problem in the literature of the tine when the problem was still a vital issue. In this article first I will focus on the analysis of terminological evidence. Next I will t3y to explain the logical situation which could have led to the substitution in Muslim theology of divine attributes for the Christian Trinity.