Thus the Jacobites and the Nestorians maintained that the Essence is not something other than the hypostases, while insisting that one must not say that the Essence is identical with them. The Melkites, however, stated explicitly that the Essence is distinct from the hypostases, and yet others declared that the Essence is the very hypostases themselves.

They also report that the Christians divided yet again on another issue. The Byzantines openly affirmed the existence of three gods, whereas the Jacobites and the Nestorians rejected that formulation in one respect but accepted it in another. For they say: the Word is a god, the Spirit is a god, and the Father is a god; and the three hypostases, each of which is a god, are nevertheless one God.

They add that a small faction of Christians held Jesus to be the Son of God only as a mark of honor: just as God took Abraham as an intimate friend, so He took Jesus as a son. These are called the Arians.

Such, then, is the account transmitted by a group of Muslim theologians, and it represents the position of whatever Christians have adopted it. Yet it contains matters that clearly contradict their explicit Creed and the doctrine of the majority of them—for example, the claim that they do not call the knowledge, before it assumed the person of the Messiah, “Son,” but that the Messiah together with what he assumed is the Son. This runs counter to what the Christian sects—the Melkites, Jacobites, and Nestorians—affirm, and to what their Creed states, for it declares plainly that the Word is an eternal, pre-eternal Son, begotten before all ages, which for them is a property of the Godhead. Their Creed also includes statements espoused by some Christians but not by all. Likewise, these theologians report that by “the Word” the Christians do not mean speech—for speech, in their system, is an attribute of action. This is the view of one faction among them and of