If there is ONE God, aren't Christians committing blasphemy for believing Jesus Himself is God?

Today, a Christian friend of mine, who was formerly a Muslim, shared an illustrated diagram to describe how Jesus is both God and man. He wanted to know what I thought about the diagram. Such illustrations can indeed be helpful, but I told him that I thought all analogies fall short As we are talking about God and His Eternal nature.

Instead, I told him that I explain it like this. 

The Scriptures teach there is ONE God. And He has revealed Himself as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

We believe Jesus is God, fully God, because He revealed Himself to be so.

 

The best description I have heard is about the difference between UNITY and SINGULARITY.

 

Islam and Judaism (at least the Judaism that formed AFTER Christ as earlier Judaism had a doctrine called "Two Powers in Heaven") believe God is a mathematical singularity.

 

It can be called it UNITARIANISM. The oneness of God for them is a mathematical singularity, a mathematical 'unit'. Muslims and Jews (since AD100) are unitarians.

 

For us the ONENESS of God is a UNITY. And as it came to be called a TRI-UNITY (Trinity). Note: The term Trinity is not found in the Bible but was coined by an early Christian theologian named Tertullian in around AD200. The term accurately describes however what the Bible clearly teaches - namely that there is but ONE God who exists eternally in three persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. 

 

Of course, Islam has its problems - as many Muslims believe the Qur'an is eternal. Which makes 2 eternals - Allah and the Qur'an. And which is why some early Muslims rejected the concept of the eternality of the Qur'an - maintaining that it was created.

 

So we Christians believe what we believe BECAUSE IT WAS/IS HOW GOD HAS REVEALED HIMSELF TO MANKIND.

 

Judaism had a partial revelation with the TWO POWERS IN HEAVEN doctrine and when Christ came and through His Apostles, the FULL revelation came - God exists ETERNALLY as THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. One God who exists in THREE PERSONS.

 

And we see this - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit relate to one another - i.e. we see God the Father speaking to God the Son.

 

And not only is this what we believe because God has revealed Himself as such.

 

BUT...

 

we ALSO believe it because ONLY if there is a PLURALITY in God's Eternal Nature (instead of a SINGULARITY as Islam and Judaism since AD100 teach) can God be Eternally Love.

 

Islam and Judaism can only say that "God became loving".

 

Christianity is the ONLY faith that can say...GOD IS LOVE (ETERNALLY)

 

Love requires by definition and necessity an object.

 

And if God is LOVE there must have been something/someone to love. In the Trinity, we don't have this problem.

 

God the Father eternally loves God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Similarly, the Son loves the Father and the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit loves the Father and the Son.

 

In Islam, Allah BY HIMSELF before He created anything would have had nothing to love and therefore could not have been eternally loving BY NATURE. Yes, once He created angels and/or humans, then He could have become loving as there was now something/someone to love.

 

So PHILOSOPHICALLY, God MUST HAVE HAD a plurality in His Eternal being if we want to believe/confess Him to be LOVE.

And that plurality is a TRI-UNITY, the Holy Trinity - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. One God eternally existing in three persons. Not a oneness of mathematical singularity as Islam and Rabbinic Judaism (since AD100) teach, but rather a unified oneness that is revealed in the Old and New Testaments.

So when Christians speak about the ONENESS of God, we are NOT agreeing with the Muslim and Jewish (since AD100) concept of the SINGULARITY of God. God has revealed to us a more complex unity, a TRi-UNITY than what Unitarians believe.

If we had elevated over time a mere creation of God, Jesus, and made Him into God, that would in fact be blasphemy. But if God has revealed that Jesus is uncreated and eternally God, then no such charge can be leveled against those of us to worship the Lord Jesus Christ as God Himself. 

Actually, to refuse to believe what God has clearly revealed about Jesus is what constitutes blasphemy today which is why those who refuse to acknowledge who Jesus was/is and what He did, dying for the sins of the world, cannot be saved and receive eternal life with God.