By: S. Ghaffan
In the name of Allah, the beneficent the merciful
I was born of staunch Catholic Christian parents. My father was a preacher who knew the Bible almost by heart my mother, an orthodox Catholic, would only give us the morning coffee after her return from Church.
Even from my youngest days, I was made to memorize certain verses from the Bible.
By the time I had completed the study of all the four Gospels and knew many important verses, in those four books, by heart.
My father sometimes took me along with him when he went to preach, and from the special attention he paid to my knowing certain controversial points, and his teaching me the methods of explaining to the others those intricacies, it was quite obvious that he wanted me to succeed him in his profession. The strong desire of the paternal love to make me a priest was implemented by educating me with a detailed knowledge of the Bible and the science of ministering it to others. By the time I reached the Form IV in school I could preach the gospels in my own way, supervised by my father. Many senior missionaries admired my knowledge of the important doctrines of the faith. I passed the Form VI and joined College. There I came in contact with several classmates who were Protestants, and some of whom were well versed in the study of the Protestant Bible.
I often met my Protestant classmates and discussed matters regarding differences in our faith and the performance of rituals. There were also some Muslim students, but I met them only in the play ground as I hated meeting Muslims whom I took to be dangerous fanatics. By the time I completed the first year in College, I was sufficiently grounded in the knowledge of the Christian faith as held by the Catholic Church and had also considerable knowledge of the Protestant view point. Appreciating this knowledge of the Catholic faith in my young age I was given a scholarship from the church funds and in return for the help I received, I was required to receive special coaching in the guidance of deeper thoughts about certain parts of the Holy Book, under of the Chief Priest of the Church who loved to teach me very much and was very intimately attached to me. He used the special devotional methods of worshiping Jesus and his Holy Mother. Having appeared in the first group for my intermediate course I used to sit working at his subjects till late at night.
One night when all were asleep and I was absorbed in my studies an idea suddenly struck my mind to examine the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the Basic formula of the Christian faith. The question, how three different things can be one and the same, arose in my mind i.e. how anything singularly absolute in its unity with its indivisible oneness, can ever by itself become divided into three separate beings with three variant native attributes opposed to each other justifying the distribution into the three different entities.
My failure to reconcile my belief in the Trinity with the reasoning of the science of logic, created a mental restlessness in me. Days passed on and many a time I thought of asking my father to help me in solving the problem which was puzzling my mind. But I knew that my father would never appreciate the least doubt in the dogmatic belief of the Catholic School and my venture to discuss anything hated by the Catholic faith, would only create further problems in my domestic life. However, one day when I found my father in a happy mood, I asked him as to how he would defend the Christian faith in the Holy Trinity against the attacks from the members of the other religions of the world. The answer was:
"In matters of faith one has to stop reasoning. One should belief in the doctrine only by one's heart and mind."
This reply from my father upset me further more and disappointed me to a very great extent and all my thinking got centered in the question which had become a definite problem to puzzle my mind further and I wondered saying:
"What! Is this the Foundation upon which is built the huge edifice of the Christian faith? Is the basis of my own faith only a matter of a blind following of some dictated belief which can never stand reasoning or the independent scrutiny by the dispassionate and impartial arguments from the clean conscience?"
I became much worried and made up my mind to find some arguments to somehow make my much disturbed mind at least imagine that one could at one and the same time be three different persons, and the three different persons could at the same time remain one.
One day our Mathematics Professor was sitting alone in his room and I got in with his permission and asked him if he would help me to solve something which to me was an intricate and a perplexing problem. He very kindly asked me what it was. I told him to explain to me in what sense one and the same person could be three different beings, and the same three different beings with their individual differences could at the same time be the indivisible absolute one?
The Professor smiled and said:
"Is it that you do not like my stay in this college?"
I asked him: "Why Sir?"
He said:
"What do you think the college authorities which are staunch Catholics will do with me, if some one informs them that I discuss in my private room things opposed to the Catholic or the Christian faith in general? Will they keep me on the staff of the College any longer? If you want to discuss anything here, you may do so but mind you, you must confine your discussion to the subject of your studies in the College, otherwise you will be doing the worst harm to me for I will be thrown out of my job."
I felt the truth in his statement and made an appointment with him to see him the next Sunday at 3.00 pm in his house.
On Sunday when I met the Professor he first asked me as to what made me enquire into the Doctrine of Trinity. I said that I wanted to know how far the doctrine stood to reasoning?
The Professor smiled and said, "Why don't you ask any one of our priests?"
I said "I have asked them but they say it is a matter of belief or faith and it should not be subjected to any logic or philosophy. This has upset me It his has raised the question in me, if what I believe in, is unreasonable and illogical, why should I subject myself to any blind following? Is God so unjust and cruel to expect man to believe in a doctrine about Himself, which no human brain can ever reasonably conceive? I request you, Sir; to some how give me some method of arguing out the possibility of such an existence as the doctrine of Trinity wants us to believe in!"
The professor smiled and said: "My dear Joseph suppose you want me to prove by some mathematical formula how water can remain water and at the same time be fire, or how a stone can be a stone at the same time be water too, how can I do it? I do not think any sensible man on earth can ever conceive such a possibility. How the Ever living God who being the Ever living Life itself, can also at the same time be a mortal i.e. be a man to suffer death at the hands of the other mortals? And how the same mortal being at the same time could be the Absolute Immortal God? It is a problem which our priests want us to believe and we have to merely believe in it and none has any choice of even questioning the practicability of this inconceivable dogma."
On hearing the answer I asked him: "Then, what about you, Sir? Don't you also believe in it?"
He replied:
"It is a matter of my own personal and individual choice and decision. Even if I or the world, were to believe in such a doctrine the liability still remains for every believer to answer the question if he or she can prove the doctrine as a reasonable or practical phenomena."
He went on saying; "The fact is when God, Whom we believe as One, is Absolutely One Being in His perfect unity, it means that God is singularly one in natural essence of His existence, free from any different or variant factors having anything to do with His pure or Absolute Unity to justify His being The Absolute One, owing an indivisible existence, by Himself. Division suggests that the one is not an Absolute One, but a compound of some variants and that which is a composed being can never be really one in the true meaning of oneness. And certainly the one dependent in its existence upon its different components can never be independent in its action, whereas God is the Absolute One, Independently Omnipotent in His Will and His Action.
"Besides how can any three which are three separate beings, with three variations justify their being three separate entities, remain there separately as they are and at the same time by themselves lose their different individual native properties differentiating them from each other, and become conceivably the absolute indivisible one, without the least variation in the essential oneness.
"An Absolute one must be totally independent in its existence, Mr. Joseph, as it impossible to reason out the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The science of Mathematics or any other science which any human genius can ever conceive, until the end of time, can never solve this inconceivable riddle."
He continued:
"The only thing is that we, Christians, are shut out of the vast sources of knowledge about the truth and of the higher factors in matters of religion which are available outside our own fold, by damning every non-Christian as the devil's work. We Christians, Mr. Joseph, in our madness to swell up our ranks have played such a disgraceful role that a great head like Sir Dennison Ross had to helplessly disclose the truth about this in his foreword to the translation of the Quran by George Sale."
I was amazed to hear the arguments of the Professor who was himself known as a Catholic, and at the same time I was very much encouraged to know that my doubt about the unreasonability of the doctrine of Trinity was something which had made a highly educated and enlightened mind like the Professor of Mathematics also to enquire into it. I was much benefited by the discussion with the Professor as I came to know arguments justifying the doubt created in my mind.
My study of the matter in the Islamic Literature, and the translation of the Quran opened my eyes to many great and very important factors that effect human life on earth. Once I visited the Professor in his house and to my further amazement I found him possessing a great amount of literature on Islam.
I asked him:
"May I know, Sir, if you have embraced the faith of the Muslims?"
He replied:
"It is a question yet to be decided. You do not worry yourself about my personal choice. I, for the time being, want to be known as no other than a Catholic Christian. I will tell you later."
I took the copy of the translation of the Quran by George Sale and read the introduction by Sir E. Dennison Ross. The introduction needs to be read with special attention. Sir Ross says:
"For many centuries the acquaintance which the majority of Europeans possessed of Muhammadanism was based almost entirely on distorted reports of fanatical Christians which led to the discrimination of a multitude of gross calumnies. What was good in Muhammadanism was entirely ignored and what was not good in the eyes of Europe was exaggerated or misinterpreted.
"The unity of God and that the simplicity of his creed was probably a more potent factor in the spread of Islam than the sword of the Ghaziz." (G. Sale's translation of the Koran - Introduction).
This statement of the great Christian scholar of international repute, created in me the thirst to know the original teachings of Islam, especially about the Islamic conception of God.
About four years passed away, and by this time I knew the contents of the Quran. Many things had arrested my special attention. I had discussed many doubtful points with the Professor whom I found to have read the Quran several times with a better and more critical view. I was now longing to meet some Muslim scholar to cross-examine him about certain doubts about the Islamic faith.
Once I thought of Hinduism but what I saw daily with my own eyes, curses of untouchability and the reservations of the caste system prevalent before us, and besides everything else, the idol worship and the observance of innumerable rituals did not prompt me to take up any enquiry into the tenets, the practice of which manifested in the daily life of the millions of Hindus living with us. I could never understand the superiority exclusively and arbitrarily claimed for the members of certain castes, simply because they had accidentally been born in those folds. I had seen with my own eyes how the people belonging to certain castes are imagined as lower in the society and are treated as the untouchables, not allowed even to enter into the Hindu temples. I had seen these poor souls being prohibited even to take drinking water from the wells reserved for the superior classes.
I met several Brahmin Pandits but none of them could answer any one of my objections against the several Hindu theories regarding the authorities of the hundreds of gods and goddesses and the observance of the rituals which did not appeal to me in the least.
The havoc in the social life played by Hinduism dividing humanity into castes and sub-castes and the unreasonable superiority of one caste over the other, is itself so much repulsive that none would like to take any trouble of executing any studies about the doctrines of the faith.
While resenting the caste system and the sectarian segregation in the Hindu folds, I was automatically reminded of the similar restrictions amongst Christians. Caste hatred has been sunk so deep in the minds of the Hindus that even after entering Christianity they are unable to overcome the complex.
I asked myself:
"Why criticize other people and their belief when the religion which I myself belong to, has in it the sectarian segregation of the Brahmin Christian, the Naidu Christian, the Chuckli Christian and similar sectarian differences, having full sway over the social order? Are not churches in Christendom owned exclusively for the members of particular sects? Are there not churches belonging to a particular sect which cannot be used by the people of the other sect? Has not Christianity failed to unite mankind into one human society? Did Jesus preach all these differences and dissensions which we the Christians have innovated? Is it not then that we are far away from the original objects of the Mission of Jesus Christ?"
Against the irreconcilable differences and the innumerable dissensions of the social order in the folds of Hinduism and Christianity, I was very much impressed by the genuine and the real brotherhood practiced day and night among the Muslims. I found that a Muslim mosque is a mosque belonging to every one who calls himself a Muslim and that there is no reservation of seats in the mosque or any sectarian segregation in any of the Muslim places of worship. I saw with my own eyes, Muslims of all ranks, all social and economic status, of different complexions, of various nationalities, all standing in one row, turning towards one direction, praying to one God, in one language, and immediately after the prayer, shaking hands with each other. Brotherhood or social equality claimed more in theory by the other schools of thought in the world, I found it to be an ever experienced, and a living reality in the daily life of the Islamic folds.
In the name of Allah, the beneficent the merciful
I was born of staunch Catholic Christian parents. My father was a preacher who knew the Bible almost by heart my mother, an orthodox Catholic, would only give us the morning coffee after her return from Church.
Even from my youngest days, I was made to memorize certain verses from the Bible.
By the time I had completed the study of all the four Gospels and knew many important verses, in those four books, by heart.
My father sometimes took me along with him when he went to preach, and from the special attention he paid to my knowing certain controversial points, and his teaching me the methods of explaining to the others those intricacies, it was quite obvious that he wanted me to succeed him in his profession. The strong desire of the paternal love to make me a priest was implemented by educating me with a detailed knowledge of the Bible and the science of ministering it to others. By the time I reached the Form IV in school I could preach the gospels in my own way, supervised by my father. Many senior missionaries admired my knowledge of the important doctrines of the faith. I passed the Form VI and joined College. There I came in contact with several classmates who were Protestants, and some of whom were well versed in the study of the Protestant Bible.
I often met my Protestant classmates and discussed matters regarding differences in our faith and the performance of rituals. There were also some Muslim students, but I met them only in the play ground as I hated meeting Muslims whom I took to be dangerous fanatics. By the time I completed the first year in College, I was sufficiently grounded in the knowledge of the Christian faith as held by the Catholic Church and had also considerable knowledge of the Protestant view point. Appreciating this knowledge of the Catholic faith in my young age I was given a scholarship from the church funds and in return for the help I received, I was required to receive special coaching in the guidance of deeper thoughts about certain parts of the Holy Book, under of the Chief Priest of the Church who loved to teach me very much and was very intimately attached to me. He used the special devotional methods of worshiping Jesus and his Holy Mother. Having appeared in the first group for my intermediate course I used to sit working at his subjects till late at night.
One night when all were asleep and I was absorbed in my studies an idea suddenly struck my mind to examine the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the Basic formula of the Christian faith. The question, how three different things can be one and the same, arose in my mind i.e. how anything singularly absolute in its unity with its indivisible oneness, can ever by itself become divided into three separate beings with three variant native attributes opposed to each other justifying the distribution into the three different entities.
My failure to reconcile my belief in the Trinity with the reasoning of the science of logic, created a mental restlessness in me. Days passed on and many a time I thought of asking my father to help me in solving the problem which was puzzling my mind. But I knew that my father would never appreciate the least doubt in the dogmatic belief of the Catholic School and my venture to discuss anything hated by the Catholic faith, would only create further problems in my domestic life. However, one day when I found my father in a happy mood, I asked him as to how he would defend the Christian faith in the Holy Trinity against the attacks from the members of the other religions of the world. The answer was:
"In matters of faith one has to stop reasoning. One should belief in the doctrine only by one's heart and mind."
This reply from my father upset me further more and disappointed me to a very great extent and all my thinking got centered in the question which had become a definite problem to puzzle my mind further and I wondered saying:
"What! Is this the Foundation upon which is built the huge edifice of the Christian faith? Is the basis of my own faith only a matter of a blind following of some dictated belief which can never stand reasoning or the independent scrutiny by the dispassionate and impartial arguments from the clean conscience?"
I became much worried and made up my mind to find some arguments to somehow make my much disturbed mind at least imagine that one could at one and the same time be three different persons, and the three different persons could at the same time remain one.
One day our Mathematics Professor was sitting alone in his room and I got in with his permission and asked him if he would help me to solve something which to me was an intricate and a perplexing problem. He very kindly asked me what it was. I told him to explain to me in what sense one and the same person could be three different beings, and the same three different beings with their individual differences could at the same time be the indivisible absolute one?
The Professor smiled and said:
"Is it that you do not like my stay in this college?"
I asked him: "Why Sir?"
He said:
"What do you think the college authorities which are staunch Catholics will do with me, if some one informs them that I discuss in my private room things opposed to the Catholic or the Christian faith in general? Will they keep me on the staff of the College any longer? If you want to discuss anything here, you may do so but mind you, you must confine your discussion to the subject of your studies in the College, otherwise you will be doing the worst harm to me for I will be thrown out of my job."
I felt the truth in his statement and made an appointment with him to see him the next Sunday at 3.00 pm in his house.
On Sunday when I met the Professor he first asked me as to what made me enquire into the Doctrine of Trinity. I said that I wanted to know how far the doctrine stood to reasoning?
The Professor smiled and said, "Why don't you ask any one of our priests?"
I said "I have asked them but they say it is a matter of belief or faith and it should not be subjected to any logic or philosophy. This has upset me It his has raised the question in me, if what I believe in, is unreasonable and illogical, why should I subject myself to any blind following? Is God so unjust and cruel to expect man to believe in a doctrine about Himself, which no human brain can ever reasonably conceive? I request you, Sir; to some how give me some method of arguing out the possibility of such an existence as the doctrine of Trinity wants us to believe in!"
The professor smiled and said: "My dear Joseph suppose you want me to prove by some mathematical formula how water can remain water and at the same time be fire, or how a stone can be a stone at the same time be water too, how can I do it? I do not think any sensible man on earth can ever conceive such a possibility. How the Ever living God who being the Ever living Life itself, can also at the same time be a mortal i.e. be a man to suffer death at the hands of the other mortals? And how the same mortal being at the same time could be the Absolute Immortal God? It is a problem which our priests want us to believe and we have to merely believe in it and none has any choice of even questioning the practicability of this inconceivable dogma."
On hearing the answer I asked him: "Then, what about you, Sir? Don't you also believe in it?"
He replied:
"It is a matter of my own personal and individual choice and decision. Even if I or the world, were to believe in such a doctrine the liability still remains for every believer to answer the question if he or she can prove the doctrine as a reasonable or practical phenomena."
He went on saying; "The fact is when God, Whom we believe as One, is Absolutely One Being in His perfect unity, it means that God is singularly one in natural essence of His existence, free from any different or variant factors having anything to do with His pure or Absolute Unity to justify His being The Absolute One, owing an indivisible existence, by Himself. Division suggests that the one is not an Absolute One, but a compound of some variants and that which is a composed being can never be really one in the true meaning of oneness. And certainly the one dependent in its existence upon its different components can never be independent in its action, whereas God is the Absolute One, Independently Omnipotent in His Will and His Action.
"Besides how can any three which are three separate beings, with three variations justify their being three separate entities, remain there separately as they are and at the same time by themselves lose their different individual native properties differentiating them from each other, and become conceivably the absolute indivisible one, without the least variation in the essential oneness.
"An Absolute one must be totally independent in its existence, Mr. Joseph, as it impossible to reason out the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The science of Mathematics or any other science which any human genius can ever conceive, until the end of time, can never solve this inconceivable riddle."
He continued:
"The only thing is that we, Christians, are shut out of the vast sources of knowledge about the truth and of the higher factors in matters of religion which are available outside our own fold, by damning every non-Christian as the devil's work. We Christians, Mr. Joseph, in our madness to swell up our ranks have played such a disgraceful role that a great head like Sir Dennison Ross had to helplessly disclose the truth about this in his foreword to the translation of the Quran by George Sale."
I was amazed to hear the arguments of the Professor who was himself known as a Catholic, and at the same time I was very much encouraged to know that my doubt about the unreasonability of the doctrine of Trinity was something which had made a highly educated and enlightened mind like the Professor of Mathematics also to enquire into it. I was much benefited by the discussion with the Professor as I came to know arguments justifying the doubt created in my mind.
My study of the matter in the Islamic Literature, and the translation of the Quran opened my eyes to many great and very important factors that effect human life on earth. Once I visited the Professor in his house and to my further amazement I found him possessing a great amount of literature on Islam.
I asked him:
"May I know, Sir, if you have embraced the faith of the Muslims?"
He replied:
"It is a question yet to be decided. You do not worry yourself about my personal choice. I, for the time being, want to be known as no other than a Catholic Christian. I will tell you later."
I took the copy of the translation of the Quran by George Sale and read the introduction by Sir E. Dennison Ross. The introduction needs to be read with special attention. Sir Ross says:
"For many centuries the acquaintance which the majority of Europeans possessed of Muhammadanism was based almost entirely on distorted reports of fanatical Christians which led to the discrimination of a multitude of gross calumnies. What was good in Muhammadanism was entirely ignored and what was not good in the eyes of Europe was exaggerated or misinterpreted.
"The unity of God and that the simplicity of his creed was probably a more potent factor in the spread of Islam than the sword of the Ghaziz." (G. Sale's translation of the Koran - Introduction).
This statement of the great Christian scholar of international repute, created in me the thirst to know the original teachings of Islam, especially about the Islamic conception of God.
About four years passed away, and by this time I knew the contents of the Quran. Many things had arrested my special attention. I had discussed many doubtful points with the Professor whom I found to have read the Quran several times with a better and more critical view. I was now longing to meet some Muslim scholar to cross-examine him about certain doubts about the Islamic faith.
Once I thought of Hinduism but what I saw daily with my own eyes, curses of untouchability and the reservations of the caste system prevalent before us, and besides everything else, the idol worship and the observance of innumerable rituals did not prompt me to take up any enquiry into the tenets, the practice of which manifested in the daily life of the millions of Hindus living with us. I could never understand the superiority exclusively and arbitrarily claimed for the members of certain castes, simply because they had accidentally been born in those folds. I had seen with my own eyes how the people belonging to certain castes are imagined as lower in the society and are treated as the untouchables, not allowed even to enter into the Hindu temples. I had seen these poor souls being prohibited even to take drinking water from the wells reserved for the superior classes.
I met several Brahmin Pandits but none of them could answer any one of my objections against the several Hindu theories regarding the authorities of the hundreds of gods and goddesses and the observance of the rituals which did not appeal to me in the least.
The havoc in the social life played by Hinduism dividing humanity into castes and sub-castes and the unreasonable superiority of one caste over the other, is itself so much repulsive that none would like to take any trouble of executing any studies about the doctrines of the faith.
While resenting the caste system and the sectarian segregation in the Hindu folds, I was automatically reminded of the similar restrictions amongst Christians. Caste hatred has been sunk so deep in the minds of the Hindus that even after entering Christianity they are unable to overcome the complex.
I asked myself:
"Why criticize other people and their belief when the religion which I myself belong to, has in it the sectarian segregation of the Brahmin Christian, the Naidu Christian, the Chuckli Christian and similar sectarian differences, having full sway over the social order? Are not churches in Christendom owned exclusively for the members of particular sects? Are there not churches belonging to a particular sect which cannot be used by the people of the other sect? Has not Christianity failed to unite mankind into one human society? Did Jesus preach all these differences and dissensions which we the Christians have innovated? Is it not then that we are far away from the original objects of the Mission of Jesus Christ?"
Against the irreconcilable differences and the innumerable dissensions of the social order in the folds of Hinduism and Christianity, I was very much impressed by the genuine and the real brotherhood practiced day and night among the Muslims. I found that a Muslim mosque is a mosque belonging to every one who calls himself a Muslim and that there is no reservation of seats in the mosque or any sectarian segregation in any of the Muslim places of worship. I saw with my own eyes, Muslims of all ranks, all social and economic status, of different complexions, of various nationalities, all standing in one row, turning towards one direction, praying to one God, in one language, and immediately after the prayer, shaking hands with each other. Brotherhood or social equality claimed more in theory by the other schools of thought in the world, I found it to be an ever experienced, and a living reality in the daily life of the Islamic folds.
