One God, Three Scriptures: Reading tawḥīd Beside John 1:1

Every tradition that calls itself monotheist must say what it means by one. For Muslims the answer is the doctrine of God’s oneness, the first thing a child learns and the last thing a believer says. The Prophet ﷺ taught it before he taught any law.Side noteClassical scholars often divide tawḥīd into lordship, worship, and names and attributes. The division is a teaching aid, not a scriptural formula.

This essay reads one short verse beside one famous Christian text, and asks what each is trying to protect.¹1For a translation that reads the Qur’an as a single argument, see (Asad, 1980).

The Qur’an’s statement

The shortest complete statement of the doctrine is the opening of Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ:

The word for one here is aḥad (أحد), not the ordinary numeral wāḥid. Commentators note that aḥad excludes not only a second god but any division within God (Nasr, 2015).

Intention and worship

Belief in one God is meant to shape every act. The first report in al-Bukhārī’s collection makes the point about intention:

Ḥadīth scholarship weighs the chain of narrators, the isnād, before it weighs the words (Brown, 2009).

The prologue of John

Christian theology reaches its doctrine of God through a different door. The Gospel of John opens:

Both texts affirm one God. They differ on whether distinction can exist within that one.²2The creed of Nicaea (325) is the classic statement of the Christian position.

Side by side

The question, then, is the one the Qur’an itself puts to the People of the Book: what does it mean to worship God alone?

Bibliography