to Christ’s divinity. Allah’s ‘‘Word’’ is actually part of Him
and His divine nature, a manifestation of His divine essence.
To avoid this conclusion, Muslim scholars are forced to
divide Allah into many parts: His word, His spirit, His will,
and so forth. Yet this entangles Muslim theologians in a
perilous dalliance with notions that veer away from absolute
monotheism, and close to what Muslims themselves would
call blasphemy. Another hint of this comes in the Koran’s
calling Jesus the ‘‘Spirit of God.’’
37. What does it mean that the Koran
refers to Jesus as the ‘‘Spirit of
God’’?
In the Koran, Jesus is the Spirit of Allah: ‘‘O People of
the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of
Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was
(no more than) a messenger of Allah, and His Word, which
He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him:so
believe in Allah and His messengers’’ (Sura 4:171,
emphasis added).
Muslims have never faced the implications of this title.
Why they have not is obvious: how can God’s Spirit be
anyone or anything other than God Himself? The spirit is
the life of a being. What being exists without its life or
separate from its life? Logically and philosophically,
anything that emanates (that is, proceeds) from God must be
God Himself — He cannot emanate anything that is less