One God
Deuteronomy 6:4; Jesus cites the Shema as the first commandment (Mark 12:29).
Mark 12:29 (NIV)CORE CHRISTIAN CLAIMS
CHRISTIAN DILEMMA
Trinity, incarnation, and vicarious atonement cannot all hold together without contradicting the Bible Christianity uses to prove them.
Christianity asks you to hold commitments that pull in opposite directions: strict biblical monotheism, Jesus as fully divine, and vicarious blood atonement — while the New Testament itself shows Jesus praying to God, limiting his knowledge, and teaching obedience to the Law. This page maps the tension — with primary texts and mainstream critical notes, not caricature.
Weak polemic pages
Meme apologetics: “Just have faith — 3 = 1.”
No sources, no logic, easy to dismiss.
This page
Sourced dilemma: Mark 12:29, John 17:3, Nicene Creed, Ezekiel 18 — linked.
Same visual clarity as noislamicdilemma.com, aimed at Christian dogma.
01 · BUILD THE CLAIM
First, state what must all be true.
A real dilemma needs incompatible commitments, each defended from authority. Mainstream Nicene Christianity requires all of the steps below. Muslim critique (and many unitarian Christian readers) argues they cannot cohere with Jesus’s own words and with justice language in the Hebrew Bible.
The Christian synthesis — running
P1
God is one — the Shema and Jesus affirm one Lord.
Biblical P2
Jesus is fully God and fully man — coeternal with the Father (Nicene faith).
Creedal P3
Humanity is redeemed only through Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection (Pauline gospel).
Pauline HIDDEN
These three can all be literally true without redefining “one,” “God,” or “justice.”
Unproven ∴
Therefore belief is rational without mystery-only escape hatches.
BlockedThe precise point: Defenders often retreat to “mystery” at the exact step where logic bites. A dilemma does not deny reverence — it asks whether the package is internally consistent with the same book used to prove it.
God is numerically one (Shema)Father alone is the only true GodJesus has full divine omniscienceGuilt cannot rest on another soulRighteousness apart from Law-works
DEUT 6:4JOHN 17:3NICENEGAL 2:16
✓ ✓ ~ ✓
✓ ✓ ✗ ~
— ✗ ✓ ✓
✓ — — ✗
✗ ~ — ✓
How to read the matrix: Rows are ordinary-language claims Nicene faith needs. Columns are fixed witnesses — Torah ( Deut 6:4), Jesus in prayer ( John 17:3), conciliar definition ( Nicea), and Paul’s law-faith swap ( Gal 2:16). A full green row is rare; the red cells are where seekers get told to stop asking. InfoIslam hub ↗
02 · THE MODEL
Three doors — one must give.
You can soften language, but the classical package is sharp. Pick which door you are willing to open: redefine monotheism, split Jesus’s consciousness from God’s, or transfer guilt by blood.
Three persons
Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed: one essence, Father, Son, Holy Spirit — coequal, coeternal.
Nicene CreedBlood atonement
“Christ died for our sins” — faith in the cross, not law-works (1 Corinthians 15:3; Romans 3:24–25).
1 Cor 15:3–4James already warns that bare monotheism is not enough for salvation — “even the demons believe that — and shudder” ( James 2:19). The dilemma is not denying one God; it is whether the Trinity and cross follow from the God Jesus worshipped. InfoIslam: Trinity guide ↗
03 · MONOTHEISM
Jesus worships one God — not himself.
In John’s Gospel — the most “high Christology” canon book — Jesus still distinguishes himself from the only true God and ranks the Father above himself. That pattern matches Islamic tawḥīd and challenges literal “Jesus is the Father” reading.
Jesus on the Father
“This is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
“The Father is greater than I.”
Later creed
One God in three hypostases, Son “begotten not made,” consubstantial with the Father — equality in essence, not mere mission.
Prophetic oneness
“Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.”
Christ as savior
Classical faith assigns Jesus the unique title “Savior” and co-regent with the Father — yet John still ranks the Father as the only true God distinct from the sent Messiah.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” — cited by Jesus as the chief command.
04 · INCARNATION
If he is God, who prayed — and who did not know?
Classical theism: God is omniscient, self-sufficient, not tempted. The Gospels show Jesus in Gethsemane submitting his will, calling the Father “my God,” and admitting ignorance of the Hour — traits the same texts later attribute to deity only through theology, not through Jesus’s own speech.
Dependence & prayer
“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Limited knowledge
“About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
Qur’anic parallel (for readers open to it): on the Day, Jesus says he does not know what is in God’s self — Quran 5:116.
Classical divinity vs narrative Jesus: Even the Epistle to the Hebrews — fully in the Christian canon — says the Son learned obedience through what he suffered, which is hard to square with eternal omniscience ( Heb 5:7–8). InfoIslam: Trinity guide ↗
لَن يَسْتَنكِفَ الْمَسِيحُ أَن يَكُونَ عَبْدًا لِلَّهِ
“The Messiah would never disdain to be a servant of Allah.” — dignity as servant, not shared throne.
05 · ATONEMENT
Can guilt transfer by blood?
Paul centres salvation on Christ’s death “for our sins.” The Hebrew prophetic tradition often rejects punishing one soul for another’s crime. Islam aligns with that moral logic and denies the crucifixion as historical fact (Quran 4:157).
Individual moral account
“The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child.”
Ezekiel 18:20 ↗ · Deut 24:16 ↗
“Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children for their parents; each will die for their own sin.”
Pauline exchange
“He was delivered over to death for our sins … raised on the third day.”
“Justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Dilemma: Paul’s Adam–Christ parallel ( Rom 5:12–19) imports corporate guilt the Torah explicitly rejects. Either inherited sin is real, or the cross is symbolic — not both at full literal strength. InfoIslam hub ↗ · Quran 6:164
06 · PAUL VS JESUS
Whose gospel is the church’s?
Jesus (in Synoptic teaching) upholds the Law until heaven and earth pass; Paul announces righteousness apart from law-works and received his message by revelation — not from the earthly Jesus (Galatians 1:11–12). Critical scholarship debates continuity; the textual tension is visible without strawmen.
Jesus on the Law
“Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets … until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter will disappear.”
Paul on the Law
“A person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.”
“I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any human source, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.”
Line of authority: Synoptic Jesus anchors righteousness in Torah obedience until the cosmos ends ( Matt 5:17–18). Paul’s kerygma arrives decades later, by his own account through vision — the split the timeline marks is not anti-Christian paranoia; it is in the Pauline corpus itself.
07 · 30-SECOND ANSWER
What the dilemma shows.
It does not mock believers. It shows that Nicene Christianity loads three heavy claims — then asks the same Bible to prove each one while Jesus speaks as a monotheist prophet who prays, obeys, and defers to the Father. Something in the set has to move: grammar of “one,” nature of Jesus, or mechanism of forgiveness.
Keep strict monotheism
Jesus fits the messenger model Muslims affirm — honored, not divine (Quran 4:171).
Keep full deity
Explain how an omniscient God can say “only the Father knows” and “my God, why have you forsaken me?” without two wills.
Keep penal substitution
Answer Ezekiel 18 and why inherited Adam-guilt requires a blood price in the first place.
08 · VERDICT
Honest inquiry
beats forced mystery.
Islam invites the same Jesus the Gospels describe — birth, miracles, second coming — inside uncompromising tawḥīd. The question is which portrait matches the words on the page.
Read the full Christianity hub ↗English (en) live · Additional locales (13) scaffolded for parity with InfoIslam — translations pending.
09 · REFERENCES
Primary & scholarly anchors
- InfoIslam — Islam vs Christianity (hub)
- InfoIslam — Trinity & Tawḥīd debate guide
- InfoIslam — Paul and the gospel tradition
- InfoIslam — Textual history & taḥrīf
- Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (English)
- BibleGateway — NIV citations throughout
- Qur’an — cross-readings (4:171, 4:157, 5:116, 4:172)
- No Islamic Dilemma — islamicdilemma.com debunked.
- Isaiah 43:10–11 — no savior besides YHWH
- Deuteronomy 24:16 — each dies for own sin
- Romans 5:12–19 — Adam–Christ parallel
- Quran 6:164 — no bearer of another’s burden