Islam & Christianity, which religion is more logical?

[manualman]

A rather ironic question coming from someone in a religious tradition that considers God to be “inscrutable.”

Christians, on the other hand, consider the human ability to reason and think logically evidence that we are created in God’s image. We believe God to transcend human comprehension, but not to be inscrutable.

An acquaintance of mine who spent time in the army in Kuwait after the first Gulf war later told me how frustrating it was to try to train Kuwaiti military to maintain their equipment properly. He said there was this ingrained cultural sense there that time spent in intensive maintenance was worthless and unimportant. The attitude was that if Allah willed the machine to work it would. If Allah willed it not to, it wouldn’t. So if something broke, (shrug) “Insha Allah.” Oh, well, it’s God’s will. He couldn’t get them to comprehend that maybe things break because they aren’t CARED for properly!

Maybe unrelated to the topic, but on the other hand maybe directly related. Christians believe that God’s character traits of reason, order and purpose are reflected in creation. Islam says that Allah is not comprehensible, so trying is just arrogance.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I don’t think that there is a verse in the Bible where Jesus said clearly “I am god, worship me”, is there?

Yes, of course. You just haven’t had these things explained to you.

1. Jesus claimed the Divine Name (‘I AM’)

Exodus 3:14
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

John 8:58
53 Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you claim to be?” 54 Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is your God. 55 But you have not known him; I know him. If I said, I do not know him, I should be a liar like you; but I do know him and I keep his word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” 57 The Jews then said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59 So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.

Why did the Jews want to stone Jesus if they did not believe that He was claiming to be God?

2. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and equal to God.

John 5:18
16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

3. Jesus claimed to be the First and the Last – a Title Reserved for God Alone

Isaiah 44:6
Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me.”

Revelation 1:17-18
“Do not be afraid; I [Jesus] am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.”

Would a mere prophet claim to be the “First and the Last”?

4. Jesus claimed to be Truth – not just to proclaim the truth.

John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.

5. Jesus claimed to share in Divine Glory

In the Old Testament, we find that Yahweh will not share his glory with anyone.

Isaiah 42:8
“I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another.” (Cf. Isaiah 48:11—“My glory I will not give to another.”)

Yet Jesus claimed, not only that he would be glorified with the Father, but that he had glory with the Father before the world was created!

John 17:5
“Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

How can anyone see this as anything other than a claim to deity?

6. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah and the Son of God Before the Sanhedrin

Daniel 7:13-14
13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Daniel prophesied that the Son of Man would be worshiped as God.

Mark 14:61-65
61 But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” 62 “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” 63 The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. 64 “You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” They all condemned him as worthy of death.

Replying to the High Priest at His trial before the Sanhedrin, Jesus quoted the Daniel and applied this prophecy to Himself.

 

[robwar]

A rather ironic question coming from someone in a religious tradition that considers God to be “inscrutable.”

Christians, on the other hand, consider the human ability to reason and think logically evidence that we are created in God’s image. We believe God to transcend human comprehension, but not to be inscrutable.

An acquaintance of mine who spent time in the army in Kuwait after the first Gulf war later told me how frustrating it was to try to train Kuwaiti military to maintain their equipment properly. He said there was this ingrained cultural sense there that time spent in intensive maintenance was worthless and unimportant. The attitude was that if Allah willed the machine to work it would. If Allah willed it not to, it wouldn’t. So if something broke, (shrug) “Insha Allah.” Oh, well, it’s God’s will. He couldn’t get them to comprehend that maybe things break because they aren’t CARED for properly!

Maybe unrelated to the topic, but on the other hand maybe directly related. Christians believe that God’s character traits of reason, order and purpose are reflected in creation. Islam says that Allah is not comprehensible, so trying is just arrogance.

and that is the logic of Islam. I remember a priest shared his experiences in Egypt where there was a problem with flies and the flies transmitting infections which can cause blindness. He was in some market where the woman had a baby strapped to her back and the baby’s face was covered with these flies. The priest asked why the woman didn’t try to shoo the flies away to protect her baby from possible blindness. She retorted that if the baby became infected from the flies, it was God’s will. These sorts of stories do not reflect “logic” at all. It is the same with the snowman fatwa. Making an image of a person out of snow which will melt away and has nothing to do with worship is called “un-Islamic” or even banning dolls from entering SA yet real alive human beings who are in the image of God can be killed if they disrespect the prophet. It is not logical at all. Makes no sense. If Islam is more “logical” than Christianity, then wouldn’t the followers of that faith have more logically actions and behaviors? Joining some fly to Mars effort was condemned in another fatwa because it was deemed as suicidal and a waste of one’s life yet strapping bombs to oneself which is repeatedly done to blow oneself up as well as others is not condemned.

 

[Seraphim73]

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart.”

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to the Jews (and Muslims for the same reasons*) and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. - 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

 

[Amoon]

Yes, of course. You just haven’t had these things explained to you.

Jesus has stated that his knowledge is not equal to God’s knowledge when he was asked about the Hour.

Matthew 24:36
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only"

If God and Jesus are one, there knowledge should be one too! But the father knows about the Hour and the son doesn’t, how can they still be one?

 

[oldcatholicguy]

Jesus has stated that his knowledge is not equal to God’s knowledge when he was asked about the Hour.

Matthew 24:36
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only"

If God and Jesus are one, there knowledge should be one too! But the father knows about the Hour and the son doesn’t, how can they still be one?

So the Bible isn’t corrupted? You can’t actually prove your argument correct by citing a work your faith views as corrupted as evidence. You must either find a different source, or attest to the validity of the Bible as a source (i.e. its not corrupted).

 

[Randy_Carson]

Arius developed the novel notion that Jesus was a supernatural created being. Christ was, said Arius, vastly superior to us (as an angel is) but still created and not of one being with the Father. Arius argued that various Scriptures (such as “I and the Father are one”) referred to the oneness of Jesus’ will with God, not the oneness His being. And since Jesus was created, according to Arius, the logical consequence was that worshipping Him as we worship God was, in fact, a sin. This “simple” theory, while appearing to be faithful to the Oneness of God, also completely destroyed the preaching of the Church that Jesus was literally “God with us.” If Arius was to be believed, then it meant that Jesus’ death, like the death of any other mere creature, could neither save from sin, nor bestow on us what the apostles had promised: a participation in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). For even Jesus cannot give what he does not have.

How did the Church respond? It assembled in Council first at Nicaea and later at Constantinople. At these Councils, the Church reasserted the traditional understanding of Scripture that God was indeed one (as Arius insisted) but that this oneness was a oneness of union between the Persons of the One Godhead, not a oneness of isolation. The Councils reaffirmed not only that the Word was with God (as Arius taught) but that the Word was God (as John 1:1 taught). In so doing, the Church made a historic step. They delineated, not merely what they did not believe about the Godhead (as was hitherto the case in questions on this matter), but what they did believe. They chose a series of careful statements (God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father) that summarized not only all the Church had rejected in her thinking, but what she positively asserted in the face of the various attempts to suppress portions of the biblical data in favor of false “simplicity.”

In short, nothing was invented by the Church with respect to the Trinity. Rather, the Church sought to prevent a “simplifying” invention by Arius and remain true to all the biblical data, not just pieces of it that Arius liked. Paradoxically, in fighting the invention, the Church discovered a far deeper understanding of what she had always believed and formulated it in Nicene Creed.

Read more: ncregister.com/blog/mark-shea/the-discovery-of-the-trinity#ixzz3Outt7Z6s

 

[Randy_Carson]

Jesus has stated that his knowledge is not equal to God’s knowledge when he was asked about the Hour.

Matthew 24:36
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only"

If God and Jesus are one, there knowledge should be one too! But the father knows about the Hour and the son doesn’t, how can they still be one?

Jesus is fully God and fully Man. He was one person with two natures: one divine and one human. In His divine nature, Jesus is God. In His human nature, Jesus is a man. As a man, Jesus had to grow, mature, learn, etc. just like everyone else. And in his humanity, he did not have infinite knowledge because his finite brain could not hold an infinite amount of data.

So, although we are on the edge of a great mystery, we know two things to be true: Jesus is fully God, and Jesus is fully man. As a result of being human, there were things that his human mind did not know. How can this be?

The answer is simple. Jesus is both God and man (John 1:1, 14; 20:28; Col. 2:9); and during His ministry in Jerusalem, He was cooperating with the limitations of being a man. As a man, Jesus walked and talked. As God, He was worshiped (Matt. 14:33; 28:9; Heb. 1:6), prayed to (Zech. 13:9; 1 Cor. 1:2), etc. This is called the Hypostatic Union.

During His earthly ministry He moved in the power of the Holy Spirit and did His miracles by the Holy Spirit and not by His own divine power. This is because He was made for a little while lower than the angels (Heb. 2:9) and had emptied Himself and taken on the form of a man (Phil. 2:7). This would explain why in Matt. 12:22-32, when the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of the devil, Jesus said that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would never be forgiven? Why? Because Jesus, as a man who was ministering completely as a man under the Law (Gal. 4:4-5), did His miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit. This demonstrates that Christ was completely human and dependent upon God and that He was cooperating with the limitations of being human. That is why He said He didn’t know the day or hour of His return.

However, we see that after the resurrection of Christ it is said of Him that He knows all things (John 21:17) and that He is omnipresent (Matt. 28:20). Therefore, after His resurrection and glorification, the Lord Jesus did know all things.

 

[Matthew_Light]

So the Bible isn’t corrupted? You can’t actually prove your argument correct by citing a work your faith views as corrupted as evidence. You must either find a different source, or attest to the validity of the Bible as a source (i.e. its not corrupted).

The notion of the Bible text being corrupted is (in my view) just bad exegesis of this statement in the Qur’an:

“And because of their breaking their covenant, We have cursed them and made hard their hearts. They change words from their context and forget a part of that whereof they were admonished. Thou wilt not cease to discover treachery from all save a few of them. But bear with them and pardon them. Lo! God loveth the kindly.” 5:13

So, basically the Qur’an is accusing some Jews and Christians of twisting their own scriptures to justify their own inclinations.

Jesus said something related here in John 5:39-47

“Ye search the scriptures, for ye think that in them ye have life eternal, and they it is which bear witness concerning me;…Think not that I will accuse you to the Father: there is [one] who accuses you, Moses, on whom ye trust; for if ye had believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye do not believe his writings, how shall ye believe my words?”

It is similar (IMO) faulty exegesis that leads most Muslims to deny the crucifixion of Christ.

 

[Contarini]

Man is spirit and flesh, the spirit part does not… sleep or die, and need food, only the flesh part of Jesus needed these things, just like you and I, the difference was the spirit part of Jesus was divine.

There are a couple of problems with your statement, the biggest one being that it falls into the Apollinarian heresy. Jesus’ soul or “spirit part” was not just divine. Jesus had a human soul. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been fully human.

How we talk about the relationship of soul and body is a more complex issue, probably not best addressed here.

Edwin

 

[oldcatholicguy]

The notion of the Bible text being corrupted is (in my view) just bad exegesis of this statement in the Qur’an:

“And because of their breaking their covenant, We have cursed them and made hard their hearts. They change words from their context and forget a part of that whereof they were admonished. Thou wilt not cease to discover treachery from all save a few of them. But bear with them and pardon them. Lo! God loveth the kindly.” 5:13

So, basically the Qur’an is accusing some Jews and Christians of twisting their own scriptures to justify their own inclinations.

Jesus said something related here in John 5:39-47

“Ye search the scriptures, for ye think that in them ye have life eternal, and they it is which bear witness concerning me;…Think not that I will accuse you to the Father: there is [one] who accuses you, Moses, on whom ye trust; for if ye had believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye do not believe his writings, how shall ye believe my words?”

It is similar (IMO) faulty exegesis that leads most Muslims to deny the crucifixion of Christ.

If it is supposed to mean “misinterpreted” instead of “corrupted” then I withdraw my comment. I have, however, yet to see it presented as meaning “misinterpreted” instead of “corrupted.”

 

[hiramross]

Jesus is fully God and fully Man. He was one person with two natures: one divine and one human. In His divine nature, Jesus is God. In His human nature, Jesus is a man.

As a man, Jesus had to grow, mature, learn, etc. just like everyone else. And in his humanity, he did not have infinite knowledge because his finite brain could not hold an infinite amount of data.

So, although we are on the edge of a great mystery, we know two things to be true: Jesus is fully God, and Jesus is fully man. As a result of being human, there were things that his human mind did not know.

The answer is simple. Jesus is both God and man (John 1:1, 14; 20:28; Col. 2:9); and during His ministry in Jerusalem, He was cooperating with the limitations of being a man. As a man, Jesus walked and talked. As God, He was worshipped (Matt. 14:33; 28:9; Heb. 1:6), prayed to (Zech. 13:9; 1 Cor. 1:2), etc. This is called the Hypostatic Union.

During His earthly ministry He moved in the power of the Holy Spirit and did His miracles by the Holy Spirit and not by His own divine power. This is because He was made for a little while lower than the angels (Heb. 2:9) and had emptied Himself and taken on the form of a man (Phil. 2:7). This would explain why in Matt. 12:22-32, when the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the power of the devil, Jesus said that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would never be forgiven? Why? Because Jesus, as a man who was ministering completely as a man under the Law (Gal. 4:4-5), did His miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit. This demonstrates that Christ was completely human and dependent upon God and that He was cooperating with the limitations of being human. That is why He said He didn’t know the day or hour of His return.

However, we see that after the resurrection of Christ it is said of Him that He knows all things (John 21:17) and that He is omnipresent (Matt. 28:20). Therefore, after His resurrection and glorification, the Lord Jesus did know all things.

This is true.

for a muslim they question and find it absurd that God would come down to Earth to take on flesh as a human being.

But to deny God any abilities is insulting to God as an all knowning, all powerful, all everyting…

 

[Matthew_Light]

But to deny God any abilities is insulting to God as an all knowning, all powerful, all everyting…

I’m not going to discuss the Divine Nature of the Lord Christ, but I do believe that God cannot make a stone so heavy He cannot lift it, or make 2 = 1. God created the rules of logic and I do not believe that God violates logic.

 

[hiramross]

I’m not going to discuss the Divine Nature of the Lord Christ, but I do believe that God cannot make a stone so heavy He cannot lift it, or make 2 = 1. God created the rules of logic and I do not believe that God violates logic.

of course…based on the knowledge and logic of human understanding…

 

[Matthew_Light]

of course…based on the knowledge and logic of human understanding…

I tend to be a mathematical realist. That is, I see logic, and mathematics, as aspects of the Divine Reality which we can discover within creation.

I’m not sure what the Catholic teaching is on this, but I usually find that Catholic philosophical and scientific teaching seems to me extremely logical, reasonable and laudatory.

 

[Contarini]

Great apologetic!

I have a question for you and other Christians, and hope it doesn’t divert too much from the topic of the OP. I’ve often wondered what exactly the title Son of G-d means in Christianity? I know it doesn’t mean son in the literal, human sense, and I’ve also heard it expresses the relationship of love between G-d the Father and G-d the Son. But why is Jesus called the Son if He is G-d from the beginning together with the Father. Is it perhaps due to His being also fully HUMAN, as well as fully divine, as G-d Incarnate? IOW, why is Jesus never called G-d the Father if each Person of the Trinity is “contained” in the other Person? Why the distinctiveness of the Persons as revealed in the names given to Them?

This is a really good question. The starting point, as with any discussion of who Jesus is for Christians, is always the original believers’ experience of who this weird self-taught rabbi was, and the end-point is a philosophical/theological construct that tries to make sense of that experience (end-point in terms of the intellectual development–of course if the construct doesn’t feed from and lead back into living experience it’s dead and empty). “Son of God” means a lot of different things at different points on that spectrum.

As I’m sure you know, the term “Son of God” is used in the OT for both kings and heavenly beings. As used in the Gospels, it seems to cover at least three different things:

1. Jesus’ own consciousness of an intimate, untroubled relationship with God.
2. The conviction of people who encountered Jesus that he was God’s representative in a way that went beyond that of the prophets, who were servants of God–that Jesus could forgive sins and do other things that only God could do.
3. In Luke it’s linked to the virginal conception–the idea that Jesus was born through a special work of the Holy Spirit and had no human father. This appears to be a relatively late idea and is not (as Muslims sometimes seem to think) the source of Christian belief that Jesus is the son of God. (By saying that it’s a late idea I do not mean that it isn’t true, only that the term “son of God” in Mark and probably also in Paul, our two earliest sources, doesn’t seem to be linked to a notion of virginal conception. Luke and Matthew were still written within 50 years or so of Jesus’ death at a time when eyewitnesses would probably still have been alive, so I do mean “relatively” late.)

As Christians continued to reflect on what all this meant, they came to the conclusion that “Son of God” meant that Jesus was in some way both divine and in a relationship with God–that Jesus was “begotten” by God (i.e. produced in a manner analogous to the way a father begets a son rather than the way a carpenter makes a chair) before the beginning of creation. But a lot of the language used to speak of this was somewhat fuzzy. This led to the Arian controversy at the beginning of the fourth century, which led to the formulation that Jesus was of the same nature/substance as God and was eternally begotten by the Father.

So the developed notion is that Jesus is God’s Son in the same sense that he is God’s Word. Both terms mean that he is eternally dependent on God and yet fully expresses God’s nature. And this concept attempts to explain the original data found in the NT.

Edwin

 

[hiramross]

I tend to be a mathematical realist. That is, I see logic, and mathematics, as aspects of the Divine Reality which we can discover within creation.

I’m not sure what the Catholic teaching is on this, but I usually find that Catholic philosophical and scientific teaching seems to me extremely logical, reasonable and laudatory.

Catholics are not worried about science, math, or reasoning disproving God or the Catholic faith

If anything the discoveries help support both.

One thing the Catholic faith has that islam or others don’t have is an understanding of how limited we are as humans. When we say (as the Bible tells us to do) to humble ourselves many know this as being modest or being without pride, but it is also an acknowledgement that God has TOTAL control.

That means All human reasoning (science, physics, biology, etc. etc…) is in God’s control and only God The Father can alter that. For Humans to state simplistic precise statements/”facts” as certain feature or limitations of God is still confined in a human explanation.

 

[Contarini]

Many of you are trying to explain the trinity, and some of you admit that it is difficult to understand, but the Bible states that “God is not the author of confusion”.

Taken out of context. Paul is talking about worship. This does not mean that God is easy to understand.

The trinity is confusing even for Christians! Do you think God wants us to be confused about his nature!

I think that God is exalted and glorified beyond our possibility to understand. Why do you worship a God who is easy to understand? Is that not, in fact, a kind of idolatry? Isn’t it quite likely that your concept of God has been trimmed down to fit the limits of your human mind?

All the Prophets of God were sent to guide people to the One true God. That what Abraham, Moses, Noah, and Muhammed did.

This is what Jesus did too. I don’t think that there is a verse in the Bible where Jesus said clearly “I am god, worship me”, is there?

No. But there are many passages where it is clear that Jesus claimed to be something more than a prophet, and to be and do for Israel and the world what only God could be and do. Of course, you are free to argue (without evidence) that this is an example of “corruption.” But then you are being a bit hypocritical in relying on the NT in your arguments, without any criteria (other than agreement with your own holy book) for distinguishing between the bits you can trust and the bits you can’t.

I know that Jesus said “God is greater than I”

For Muslims, this is not confusing:
(Quran 112)
[1] Say: He is Allah, the One and Only;
[2] Allah, the Eternal, Absolute;
[3] He begetteth not, nor is He begotten;
[4] And there is none like unto Him.

Right. It looks very much as if Muhammad had trouble with the paradoxes and mysteries of the Christian faith and created a kind of simplistic caricature, which you take to be a deeper truth because it is simpler and less challenging.

Can you see why that is not, in fact, very convincing to me and other Christians?

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Miracles were given to Jesus as well as many other Prophets, that don’t make any of them god!

Agreed. That is not the Christian argument. Straw man.

The fact that Muslims believe that Jesus will come back to fight the anti-christ proves that Muhammed is a real Prophet who recieved his revelations and knowledge from God.

No, it proves that Muhammad had some knowledge (though pretty garbled) of Christian belief.

Jesus being the Word of God doesn’t make him god!

Yes, it does. God’s Word is a perfect expression of God’s nature.

(Quran 3:59) Indeed, the example of Jesus to Allah is like that of Adam. He created Him from dust; then He said to him, “Be,” and he was.

We all know that the Qur’an teaches this. But quoting the Qur’an isn’t going to convince us.
The beginning of the Gospel of John speaks very differently of Jesus. Again, I know that isn’t going to convince you either. But perhaps it will convince you that trying to convince us of Islam based on our own Scriptures is a lost cause

Edwin

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Many of you are trying to explain the trinity, and some of you admit that it is difficult to understand, but the Bible states that “God is not the author of confusion”.

The trinity is confusing even for Christians! Do you think God wants us to be confused about his nature!

All the Prophets of God were sent to guide people to the One true God. That what Abraham, Moses, Noah, and Muhammed did.

This is what Jesus did too. I don’t think that there is a verse in the Bible where Jesus said clearly “I am god, worship me”, is there?

I know that Jesus said “God is greater than I”

For Muslims, this is not confusing:
(Quran 112)
[1] Say: He is Allah, the One and Only;
[2] Allah, the Eternal, Absolute;
[3] He begetteth not, nor is He begotten;
[4] And there is none like unto Him.

God is a Trinity, by self revelation. What’s confusing about that?

It’s a simple statement of fact. We may not understand how God can be one God and three persons, but don’t tell me you know all about God either.

Saying “God is One” tells us nothing about Him, other than a simple statement, which is no different to saying “God is Three Persons in One”.

And we’ll stick to the claim of Christ -

John 14:6 NIV

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.