Islamic position
The Qur’an gives ʿĪsā more titles than it gives any other prophet, and it is as careful about what it denies him as about what it grants. He is a servant, a prophet and a messenger; the Messiah; a word from God and a spirit from Him; a sign and a mercy; one of those brought near. He is not God, not the son of God, and not one of three. This page sets out the titles, the denials, and the scene in which the Qur’an has him speak for himself on the Day of Judgement.
What he is
- A servant of God (ʿabd Allāh). His own first words: “I am the servant of God” (19:30). “The Messiah would never disdain to be a servant of God, nor would the angels brought near” (4:172). “He was no more than a servant on whom We bestowed favour, and We made him an example for the Children of Israel” (43:59).
- A prophet and a messenger. “He has made me a prophet” (19:30). “A messenger to the Children of Israel” (3:49). “The Messiah, son of Maryam, was no more than a messenger; messengers had passed away before him. His mother was a woman of truth. They both ate food” (5:75). “ʿĪsā son of Maryam said, ‘O Children of Israel, I am the messenger of God to you’” (61:6).
- The Messiah (al-Masīḥ), eleven times, always with “son of Maryam” or in a denial that the Messiah is God. The Qur’an uses the title without explaining it, as a name his people knew.
- A word from God and a spirit from Him. “The Messiah, ʿĪsā son of Maryam, was a messenger of God, and His word which He cast to Maryam, and a spirit from Him” (4:171; compare 3:45). The classical commentators read “word” of the creative command “Be” by which he was conceived without a father (3:47, 3:59), and “spirit from Him” of the breath by which God gives life, as He breathed into Ādam (15:29; 32:9). Neither title is used of him alone: the whole of creation is by God’s word, and every living soul by His spirit.
- A sign and a mercy (19:21; 21:91; 23:50), held in honour in this world and the next, and one of those brought near (3:45), blessed wherever he is (19:31), strengthened with the holy spirit (2:87; 2:253; 5:110), taught the Book and wisdom, the Torah and the Injīl (3:48; 5:110).
What he is not
“They have disbelieved who say, ‘God is the Messiah, son of Maryam.’ Say: who could prevent God, if He willed, from destroying the Messiah son of Maryam and his mother and everyone on earth?” (5:17). “They have disbelieved who say, ‘God is the Messiah, son of Maryam,’ when the Messiah himself said, ‘O Children of Israel, worship God, my Lord and your Lord.’ Whoever associates partners with God, God has forbidden him Paradise” (5:72). “They have disbelieved who say, ‘God is the third of three,’ when there is no god but one God” (5:73). “O People of the Book, do not go to excess in your religion, and say nothing of God but the truth. The Messiah, ʿĪsā son of Maryam, was a messenger of God… so believe in God and His messengers, and do not say ‘Three.’ Stop; it is better for you. God is only one God; glory be to Him, that He should have a son” (4:171). “It is not for God to take a son” (19:35). “They say, ‘The Most Merciful has taken a son.’ You have put forward something monstrous” (19:88-89). “He begets not, nor is He begotten” (112:3).
The denials are precise. The Qur’an does not say that Christians worship three gods; it says that calling God “three” is excess, and that making the Messiah God, or God’s son, is to associate a partner with Him. The argument it gives is from his humanity: he and his mother ate food (5:75); God could destroy him (5:17); he was created as Ādam was, from dust, by the word “Be” (3:59). A being who eats, who can die, and who was made, is a creature, and the Qur’an says so.
Why the denials are absolute
The Qur’an’s refusals are not a quarrel over a title but a consequence of what God is. “Nothing is like unto Him” (42:11); “if there were gods besides God in the heavens and the earth, both would have fallen into ruin” (21:22); God is one, the ultimate, and whatever is not God is creation. Al-Fārūqī puts the point as a rule of thought: only one God can be ultimate, and if He is, He must be transcendent, beyond every creature, so that no creature can “represent, personify or in any way express the divine being”. A being who eats, who can be killed, who was made from dust by the word “Be”, is on the creature’s side of that line, and no excellence in him can move him across it. That is why the Qur’an can honour ʿĪsā with more titles than any other prophet and still say, in the same breath, that it is not for God to take a son. The honour is a creature’s; the oneness is God’s alone (al-Fārūqī, pp. 21-24).
The final scene
In 5:116-118 the Qur’an sets the question in the mouth of God and the answer in the mouth of ʿĪsā, on the Day of Judgement: “And when God says, ‘O ʿĪsā son of Maryam, did you say to people, “Take me and my mother as two gods besides God”?’ he will say, ‘Glory be to You! It is not for me to say what I have no right to say. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is in my soul, and I do not know what is in Yours. You alone know all that is hidden. I said to them only what You commanded me: “Worship God, my Lord and your Lord.” I was a witness over them as long as I was among them, and when You took me, You were the watcher over them, and You are witness over all things. If You punish them, they are Your servants; if You forgive them, You are the Mighty, the Wise.’” The passage is the Qur’an’s own summary of his teaching: worship God, my Lord and your Lord. Everything said of him in his name after he was taken, he disowns.
Compare
The gospels record the same teaching in his mouth. “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Mark 12:29). “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God” (John 17:3). They also record, in the latest of them, the titles the Qur’an denies (see John). The Qur’an keeps the first voice and sets aside the second, and this website does the same on the measure.
Sources
- Ṭabarī and Ibn Kathīr, commentary on 4:171-172, 5:72-75 and 5:116-118.
- Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’ān, chapters on the titles.
- Mahmoud Ayoub, “Towards an Islamic Christology: An Image of Jesus in Early Shiʿi Muslim Literature”, The Muslim World 66 (1976).
- Neal Robinson, Christ in Islam and Christianity.
- Ismāʿīl Rājī al-Fārūqī, Divine Transcendence and Its Expression (Kuala Lumpur: Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, 1983), pp. 21-24, on transcendence as the ground of the Qur’anic denials.