Is Christianity a religion full of contradictions? This Muslim fellow on TikTok thinks so. He thinks that, in professing Jesus to be God, we thereby affirm and deny at the same time certain attributes of God.
For example, he argues, “If you say God became man, you would put God in the nature of ‘not-knowingness,’” since “it is in the nature of man not to know everything.” Therefore, so it seems, to say that God became man is to say that God is all-knowing and not all-knowing at the same time.
He also thinks affirming the Incarnation robs God of his immutability. If God became man, he argues, then God would be subject to changing his mind, since that’s a quality of human beings. But insofar as He is God, He cannot change his mind. Therefore, our gent concludes, we Christians affirm and deny the immutability of God at the same time.
Here’s his other example related to Jesus’ divinity: “The Bible says in Mark 12:29 that God is one. So, if you say God is one and three at the same time, [that’s] a contradiction. One is one.”
Does the belief that God became man entail the contradictions that this Muslim thinks it does?
Well, for there to be a contradiction something must be affirmed and denied at the same time and in the same respect. For example, if I were to affirm that the tree in my yard exists outside and deny that it exists outside at the same time, then I’d be affirming a contradiction.
But if I were to affirm that the tree exists outside and, at the same time, deny its existence in my mother’s mind back in Louisiana (she doesn’t even know about the tree), then I wouldn’t be affirming a contradiction, since I’d be denying the tree’s existence in one sense and affirming its existence in another. Given the different senses, there is no contradiction.
The Muslim in the video fails to consider the different senses in which Christians say God is all-knowing and not all-knowing, immutable and mutable, and one and three.
Consider the all-knowing part. Jesus, who is God become man, is all-knowing in his divine intellect in virtue of the divine nature that he is identical to (along with the Father and the Holy Spirit). Yet, he is not-all-knowing in his human intellect in virtue of the human nature that he assumed to himself, since, as our Muslim friend rightly recognizes, human nature excludes the all-knowing nature of divinity. The sense in which he is all-knowing is not the same as the sense in which he is not-all-knowing. Therefore, there is no contradiction.
On to the alleged immutable and mutable contradiction. Christians profess that Jesus is subject to change insofar as he has a human nature, which allows him, a subject of action, to experience change. But he does not experience change in his divine nature. So, we don’t affirm and deny Jesus’ immutability in the same sense. Affirming X of one nature and denying X of another doesn’t entail a contradiction, because the affirmation and the denial are not in the same sense.
Finally, Christians don’t believe that God is one and three in the same sense. Oneness is attributed to divinity concerning being. There can be only one being that is subsistent being itself. “Threeness,” however, is attributed to divinity concerning the persons, or relations, that are identical to the one divine being. Being and relations are distinct concepts. Therefore, to affirm “threeness” in persons, or relations, is not to deny “oneness” in being. Thus, there is no contradiction.
Of course, these responses don’t come close the depths of what great thinkers, like Aquinas and the early Church fathers, have probed concerning these issues. It’s always frustrating that objections like those in the above video only take seconds to make, yet a full answer requires a semester’s worth of theology and philosophy on the graduate level. It suffices to say, however, that since the above arguments from our Muslim gent fail, we can conclude that the Christian faith doesn’t entail a contradiction on these counts.
***This article was originally published as a Catholic Answers Indulgence, September 15, 2023.