I apologize for basically bumping this old thread, but the issues raised here have come up again in a couple of different threads and it seemed easiest to just resurrect this thread where my basic point was made very succinctly. I will respond to the numerous objections that were raised at the end, though most of those objections were one and the same: namely, that it is Islam (and in effect Judaism) that is putting a limit on God by saying that God cannot become incarnate.
This is simply false. As I pointed out above, the Christian idea of Incarnation involves a contradiction in the very idea of what we mean when we say ‘God’ and as such is non-sense. It is like talking about round squares.
God is the One, or Being. All beings, in and of themselves nothing, only have their existence from God who is Being. God is not a thing and to make God into a thing is obviously idolatrous. To say that God can also become a thing (and remain God at the same time) is to simply misunderstand what is meant when one says the word ‘God’. God already embraces all that is in the fullness of intimacy; the finite is not some foreign space that God needs to enter or could enter in some manner that is new (in effect Christianity says that God is somehow absent from the world, there is some power in God that has yet to be fulfilled in the absence of an Incarnation). Effectively, this reduces God to a thing, over against the world, transforming God into something finite twice over (God is not fully, completely and perfectly present to the world precisely as God, and then God becomes something finite). This is why Islam will always find the doctrine of the Incarnation…pagan.
To put it another way, the Incarnation suggests that there is a way that God could be more intimate with creation. This is simply false. All of creation, always, already, is only what it is because it’s reality is God, the fullness of Being, Wahdat al-Wujud.
Furthermore, the defence that God is so beyond human understanding that contradictory and meaningless statements can be said about God without holding the speaker responsible is a conversation ender. It is to justify irrationality of the most crass sort. Obviously if one endorses irrationality, then there is little to talk about.
I wanted to address this last post, as well…
God is not weak in the sense that He is omnipotent. This is what Islam believes too.
However God is love, which Islam does not believe. Islam does not believe that God is love. Therefore Islam puts a limitation on God since it cannot believe that God is capable of loving human beings. God become human does not violate His infinity. While being human He is still God, if this is what you want to know. You are violating God’s infinity if you say he cannot be human at the same time being God.
…God’s love is infinite. You do not understand this aspect of God since Islam does not subscribe to the fact that God is love. It is because of his love that he becomes human. It is his choice and not because he is being forced to.
As a Muslim, one frequently runs into this claim: that Islam does not believe that God is Love. I am not sure what the origin of this objection is. Nonetheless, Love is, in fact, one of the divine names, in Islam and Muslims all around the world recite Love (al-Wadud) as one of the 99 Beautiful Names of God every day: e.g., when they go through their prayer beads. I have used Love as a divine name on several occasions in other posts.
