and it is to Him—Exalted be He—that we ask not to let our hearts stray after He has guided us, and to grant us mercy from His own bounty; truly, He alone is the Ever-Bestower.
He said:
When I considered the various doctrines of the Christians, I came upon a group among them known as the Arians. They uphold Allah’s absolute oneness, acknowledge the Messiah’s servitude, peace be upon him, and ascribe to him none of the claims made by other Christians—no divinity, no special sonship, nor anything of that sort. They hold fast to the Gospel of the Messiah and affirm what was conveyed by his disciples and those who transmitted from him. This faction was therefore close to the truth, diverging from part of it only by denying the prophethood of Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and by rejecting the Book and the Sunnah he brought.
He said:
Then I found another faction among them called the Jacobites, who say: “The Messiah is one nature composed of two natures: one the nature of humanity (nāsūt) and the other the nature of divinity (lāhūt). These two natures combined just as the soul is joined to the body, becoming one man, one substance, and one person. This single nature and single person is the Messiah—wholly God and wholly man, one person and one nature made up of two natures.”
They further assert: “Mary gave birth to God”—far exalted is Allah above what they say—“and that God died, suffered, was crucified in embodied form, was buried, rose from the dead, and ascended to….”