God and the Trinity in Fakhr al-Din al-Razi

This article focuses on some aspects of al-Razi's concept of God and his refutation of the Trinity. The first part examines how al-Razi understands the essence of God in his last work Al-matalib al-'aliya in order to shed light on areas that are particularly problematic for an acceptance of the Christian concept of the Trinity. The second part examines al-Razi's commentary on some key qur'anic verses which deal with the divinity of Jesus and with the qur'anic version of the Trinity in his work Mafatih al-ghayb. The article will offer a brief introduction to the problems around the authorship of this work and focus on some verses that present al-Razi's refutation of the divinity of Jesus and the concept of understanding God as three distinct essences. The article particularly focuses on the relation between the logic of his refutation of the Trinity and his own understanding of the essence of God as in Al-matalib al-'aliya,and argues that al-Razi's refutation is closely connected to his rational conception of tanzih.