Among the most powerful signs of Islam is not only a miracle in the sky or a report from history, but the clarity with which it describes God. The Qur'an calls people to a Lord who is absolute, self-sufficient, incomparable and never in need of the world He created.
Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, the 14th-century Sunni scholar, developed a set of questions in Hidayat al-Hayara that press the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. The aim here is not mockery. It is to examine the argument fairly, steelman the Christian reply, and then ask whether strict tawhid - the absolute oneness of God - gives the more coherent account of divine perfection.
The Quranic standard for God
Islam begins with a definition of God that is simple, uncompromising and metaphysically weighty:
Say: He is Allah, One. Allah, the Self-Sufficient. He neither begets nor is born. And there is none comparable to Him.
This short chapter is not merely a devotional formula. It is a theological criterion. Ahad conveys Allah's unique oneness, while al-Samad is explained by classical tafsir in related ways, including the One to whom creation turns and who has no need of creation, and the One perfect in lordship. He does not beget, is not begotten, and has no equal or created counterpart. Saying that Allah is not one member of a class is a theological implication of this language, not a claim that it is the only lexical gloss of Ahad.
The Qur'an applies this standard directly to claims about Jesus, the Messiah:
The Messiah, son of Mary, was not but a messenger; messengers had passed on before him. And his mother was a truthful woman. They both used to eat food.
The point is not to belittle Jesus or Mary - Islam honors them both. Rather, the verse points to a sign of creatureliness: eating, bodily dependence, maternal birth and human limitation. In Islamic theology, these are not defects in a human prophet; they are noble features of servanthood. But they cannot be attributes of the Creator in His divine reality.
Ibn al-Qayyim's interrogative case
In Hidayat al-Hayara, Ibn al-Qayyim argues against Christian claims concerning the incarnation, crucifixion and worship of Christ, often by posing questions about divine perfection and creaturely dependence. His method does not merely assert that the doctrine is false; it asks whether the doctrine can preserve what believers already affirm about God: omnipotence, self-sufficiency, transcendence and worship-worthiness. The questions below are thematic paraphrases of lines of argument in his polemic, not a verbatim list or a claim that he used these exact English formulations.
The questions may be summarized as follows.
- If Christians say that God died on the cross, what exactly died, and who sustained creation? The universe depends at every moment on God's will and power. Christian theology answers that the Son's human nature underwent death while the divine nature did not. Ibn al-Qayyim's deeper challenge is whether saying that the divine person died according to humanity is a coherent account of the one worshipped as God, not whether Christians believe that the divine nature was annihilated.
- If the crucifixion happened by God's willing submission, are the executioners blameworthy? If the event was exactly what God intended and the victim was willingly submitting to it, why condemn those who carried it out?
- If God was overpowered, is He still omnipotent? If the crucifixion occurred because opponents overcame him, then the one overcome appears not to be the all-powerful Lord.
- If a being needs birth, nourishment and maternal care, can that being be self-sufficient? A child in the womb, an infant needing milk, and a man experiencing hunger and fatigue are plainly dependent. How can dependence be predicated of the One who is absolutely independent?
- If the cross was the instrument of the alleged divine death, why venerate it? If one believes God was killed on a cross, what makes the instrument of that event an object of reverence rather than horror?
These questions are sharp, but they are not random. They target a central tension: Christianity wishes to affirm both the full divinity of Christ and the full reality of his human suffering, death and dependence. Ibn al-Qayyim asks whether those affirmations can be held together without compromising the very meaning of divinity.
The strongest Christian reply
A fair discussion must not attack a crude version of Christian belief. Classical Trinitarian Christianity does not usually say that the divine nature ceased to exist, or that the universe was left without a sustainer for three days. In the Chalcedonian tradition, articulated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, Christ is one person in two natures, fully divine and fully human, without confusion, change, division or separation. This framework is received by Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and many Protestant theologians, although Christian traditions differ in their formulations and not every Christian tradition accepts Chalcedon. The doctrine therefore distinguishes the divine nature from the human nature while insisting that both belong to the one person of Christ.
On this view, the Christian theologian may answer Ibn al-Qayyim as follows.
First, when Christians say "God died," they do not mean that the divine nature stopped existing. They mean that the divine Son, who remains one person, truly underwent human death: his human soul was separated from his body, while his divine nature did not die. The triune God continued to sustain creation. Christian theology therefore treats "God died" as a qualified statement about the person according to humanity, not as a claim that deity was annihilated.
Second, Christian theology distinguishes God's purpose and permission from human agency and intention. It argues that the crucifixion can be foreknown and providentially incorporated into salvation while the agents remain blameworthy for acting through injustice and abuse of authority. Voluntary submission by the victim does not by itself make the perpetrators righteous. Whether this account of providence and responsibility is satisfactory is a separate question, but it is the Christian answer to Ibn al-Qayyim's challenge.
Third, the crucifixion is not presented as God being overpowered in His divinity. It is interpreted as a voluntary redemptive act: Christ allows suffering rather than being defeated by superior force. Power, in this account, includes the power to humble oneself.
Fourth, the needs of infancy, hunger and sleep belong to Christ's human nature, not to the divine nature as such. The Christian theologian will argue that dependence can be truly predicated of the incarnate person according to humanity, while self-sufficiency remains true according to divinity.
Fifth, the cross is venerated not, in classical Christian thought, because wood has intrinsic divinity, nor because killing God is praised, but because it is seen as the instrument through which salvation was accomplished. The reverence is symbolic and devotional, not usually an assertion that the object itself is God.
This is the strongest form of the reply, and it deserves to be stated honestly.
Where the Islamic critique still presses
The Christian reply answers the objections at the level of orthodox doctrine: it denies that the divine nature dies or becomes needy. The Muslim critique therefore shifts to whether the person-and-nature distinction makes the union intelligible and consistent. Calling this merely a relocation into "technical language" would be too quick, since the distinction is central to Christian metaphysics. Ibn al-Qayyim's challenge is that it may preserve verbal distinctions while leaving the worshipped subject associated with genuinely creaturely states.
The core issue is predication. In Chalcedonian Christology, statements proper to one nature can be attributed to the one person; this is commonly called the communication of idioms. Thus Christians may say, with qualification, "God suffered" or "God died," while denying that the divine nature as such suffered or ceased to live. This is not a formal contradiction if "according to his humanity" and "according to his divinity" do real logical work: the same person is being described in different respects.
From the Islamic standpoint, however, this distinction does not resolve the theological problem. Worship is directed to the person, not to a nature considered in abstraction; and a divine person, Islam holds, cannot truly enter states of birth, dependence, passibility and death. The Muslim argument is therefore not that Christians have failed to state their doctrine accurately, but that the doctrine's account of predication remains incompatible with the Quranic conception of divine perfection. This is a substantive metaphysical disagreement, not a simple exposure of a contradiction that both sides define in the same way.
The Qur'an's argument in 5:75 is strikingly restrained: "They both used to eat food." It does not require a long metaphysical system. It asks the reader to recognize the obvious sign of dependence. The one who eats is sustained. The One worthy of ultimate worship sustains all and is sustained by none.
What the argument establishes - and what it does not
Plainly stated, Ibn al-Qayyim's argument presents, from Islamic premises, a serious challenge to the incarnation. If God is absolutely self-sufficient, uncreated, omnipotent and unlike creation, then saying that the divine Son is born, nourished, suffers and dies appears to conflict with those attributes. Chalcedonian theology answers that these predicates apply to the one person according to his human nature, not to the divine nature; whether that distinction is metaphysically adequate is the central dispute. Islamic tawhid offers a simpler alternative: it reserves creaturely predicates for creatures and divine perfection for the uncreated Creator.
It does not, by itself, prove every doctrine of Islam in isolation. Nor does it substitute for historical arguments about revelation, prophethood, the Quran or the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). A committed Christian philosopher may argue that the doctrine is not contradictory because each predicate is qualified by nature, or that the incarnation is unique and cannot be assessed solely through ordinary creature-Creator categories. The Muslim response is that a mystery may exceed full comprehension, but it cannot make contradictory predicates true in the same respect; the real dispute is whether the person-and-nature distinction successfully prevents such a contradiction. This argument is therefore a theological critique within a wider case for Islam, not a standalone proof of revelation, prophethood or every Islamic doctrine.
Nor should Muslims overstate the case by pretending that every Christian believes in a crude physical deity trapped on a cross. That would be unfair and unpersuasive. The precise claim is that the one person Christians worship as the Son is said to be independent according to divinity and dependent according to humanity, immortal according to divinity and dead according to humanity, Creator according to divinity and a created man according to humanity. Christians regard these different respects as sufficient to avoid contradiction; Muslims argue that one object of worship cannot coherently bear such mutually opposed divine and creaturely states, and therefore regard the doctrine as theologically incoherent. Stating the disagreement this way is stronger than pretending that orthodox Christians believe the divine nature itself was extinguished.
Tawhid as the clearer alternative
Islam's alternative is not a diminished Jesus. It is a purified understanding of both Jesus and God. Jesus, son of Mary, is the Messiah, a mighty messenger, born miraculously, honored in this world and the next. But he is not Allah, nor a part of Allah, nor a divine person incarnate. His greatness lies in perfect servanthood to the One God.
Tawhid gives every perfection its proper place. God creates but is not created. He sustains but is not sustained. He gives life and death but does not die. He commands worship but never needs care, food, protection or rescue. Prophets are honored because they guide creation to the Creator, not because the Creator becomes His creation.
This is why Ibn al-Qayyim's questions still matter. They do not merely criticize another faith; they commend the coherence of the Qur'anic vision. The God of Islam is near in knowledge, mercy and response, yet utterly exalted above incarnation, need and death. For the thoughtful seeker, that clarity is itself a sign.
The conclusion is simple: if God is truly al-Samad, the Self-Sufficient One, then strict tawhid offers the most coherent description of Him. The Creator does not become dependent so that we may know Him. He reveals Himself through His signs, His books and His messengers - while remaining the One incomparable Lord.