Christian: "The true nature of God is a Trinity."
Muslim: "How can 1+1+1=1?"
Christian: "With God all things are possible."
Muslim: "Then the Trinity is not His nature, how He must be. It is an option. He could have been 3, 5, 9 or whatever."

THE PATTERN

These are two examples of the difficulties which we promised to expose. In general the pattern is this: A question is asked and an answer is given. But the answer conflicts with another article of faith or practice. So, in fact, the original question is not really answered because the response has not come from Christian belief. Instead it has come from something in conflict with Christian teaching.

EXPLANATION VERSUS PROOF

There is a more basic issue than all that has been discussed so far. If we are only concerned with the analysis of explanations, we have skipped a point. The fact is, explanation is not proof. Ask a man why he believes something and he will usually respond by explaining his belief - not why it must be true. Whatever a missionary explains to a Muslim, our first question is really: "Where did you get your explanations?" On this matter, the missionary almost always holds a minority view among Christians. The majority of Christians believe the same as Muslims regarding the Bible.

THE STATUS OF THE BIBLE

We believe that the Bible contains the words of God and other material besides. The "fundamentalist" Christian insists that: all of the Bible comes from God, without error, at least in the "original manuscripts". So the Muslim does not attack "God's Word". Rather, he rejects attributing the status of "God's Word'' to writings which do not qualify. In recent years the missionary has sometimes tried to fool the Muslim on this point. The Qur'an talks about "the Book" of the Christian and Jews. The missionary has told us that this Book is the Bible.

AN IMPORTANT QUR'ANIC VERSE ON THE SUBJECT

In fact, the Qur'an refers to the authentic scriptures and the forgeries in their possession (See Qur'an 3:77). At least one Qur'anic verse has been misquoted in missionary literature. By quoting the first half of Qur'an 5:48 they hope to convince Muslims that we must accept the total Bible. The verse in its entirety refers to the Qur'an as a confirmation of previous scriptures and a control. The word translated control is used to describe quality control in normal Arabic. This involves rejection of the disqualified. The Qur'an is called the criterion for judging the false in other scriptures (Qur'an 3:3). Another verse which is complimentary to those that charge forgery is, the verse which explains that the Qur'an will make clear much of that which Christians have concealed or passed over (Qur'an 5:15).