Aquinas read Muslims’ theological objections as proof of their carnality

Evidence

The Muslim objections to Christian doctrine (as reported by the Cantor) are the standard ones: God can have no son because he has no wife; it is “insane” to profess three persons in one God; Christ was not crucified in order to save mankind; it is ridiculous to believe Christians eat God on the altar or to believe that man’s fate is not predetermined by divinely ordained destiny. To each of these Muslim objections, Thomas gives a long reply to show how Christian doctrine is consistent with (though not provable by) reason. These Muslim objections, for Thomas, far from reflecting any irrationality (or nonrationality) of Christian doctrine, reflect the irrational, “carnal” nature of the Muslims. In response to the objection that God can have no son because he has no wife, Thomas comments: “Since [the Muslims] are carnal, they can think only of what is flesh and blood,” and they thus cannot understand the Christian doctrine of spiritual generation of the Son by the Father. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1228

Categorization

• XREF: Directly grounds the reader’s existing trope-genealogy claims: rational-sounding objections get reclassified as symptoms of the opponent’s ‘carnal nature’ — an inversion pattern the vault’s modern sources will echo.
• ADDENDUM: Overlaps conceptually with the sacrifice/complaints articles’ shared logic: the perceiver’s frame converts the subject’s own self-justification into evidence of depravity.