Glory to You Who has Shown Us the Light!

I am in Charleston, South Carolina this week as I was asked to be Godfather for the son of some friends and former parishioners who several years ago moved out of Dayton.

I walked down to the beach before the dawn.   Before the dawn is the time in which the women disciples of the Lord discovered the emtpy tomb of Christ and the good news of His resurrection from the dead was announced to them according to the Gospel accounts.   A new light had dawned to the world – and like the light of Genesis 1:3, it was not sunlight which shone, enlightening the universe.

The sunrise over the Atlantic ocean was beautiful.

It was a blessing to to behold.  The words that came to my mind are from Matins: “Glory to You Who has shown us the light!”

Later in the morning was the baptism of my new Godson Sebastian Theodore.

The baptism was at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Charleston.

In the photo Fr. John, the parish priest, is handing me Sebastian after having just baptized him.  The awesome beauty of a child adopted and renewed by his Creator through baptism.   He is a beautiful child who now belongs to the new creation in Christ Jesus.

Fr. John explained that the parish iconography was almost entirely done by the famed Greek Iconographer Photios Kontoglou.  Many unique and inspired icons.

In the evening we were at the Waterfront Park overlooking Charleston Harbor.

We were treated to a stunningly gorgeous sunset.

When we encounter beauty in a child, in sunrise, or in the world, we experience God the Creator of all things beautiful.

There’s No Place Like Heaven

 

 

The Fathers tell us repeatedly that

the goal of this life

is to be in union with God.

If this is the case, then heaven is not a place:

heaven is God—

union with God’s very life.

God does not want to put us in a place;

God wants to be in communion with us.  

(Aristotle Papanikolaou, Thinking Through Faith)

 

Obedience as a Form of Godliness

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews wrote to the 1st Century Christians, “Obey those who rule over you…”   (Hebrews 13:17).    These words were written by a believer at a time when he apparently could not imagine Christian leadership misleading or abusing  fellow Christians.   Almost 2000 years later Christians have learned through painful experience that leadership sometimes fails, sometimes sins, sometimes abuses its power.  In an age when leadership of every kind is looked at with far less trust, the unflinching and unapologetic attitude of the Letter to the Hebrews stands as a challenge to those who are jaded by skepticism toward leadership.  (In the 2008 Gallup Honesty and Integrity Poll only 56% of Americans ranked church leaders as being of high integrity).

Obedience in America is often coupled with the adjective “blind” and is most often considered the lot of enslaved people.  Think about the Star Wars movies – the federation has a presidency with some implication of free elections while the evil empire is ruled by a despotic emperor who crushes dissent with storm troopers.

On the other side of this, we Christians can see that one of the traits of the Messiah is that though He was God, He learned obedience to His Father.  

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God … emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name…”    (Philippians 2:5-9 RSV)

 In this, He showed us that obedience can be part of love and of salvation.  We don’t have to be blindly obedient to authority, but in love we can freely submit ourselves to authority in order to accomplish salvation for the world and to build up the household of God.  The  practices of asceticism – fasting and self-denial – is connected to our freely choosing to deny ourselves in order to take up our crosses and follow Christ.

Admittedly, St. Paul wrote those words in a culture which valued obedience a lot more than American culture does.  Nevertheless, if we are to be Christian, Christ-like, disciples of Christ, there is a need for us to learn some form of obedience.  Fasting is one way that we can learn this.  Submitting ourselves to a discipline is a way to become a disciple. 

“Obey!” for many Americans is a command for a dog, perhaps a child, but not for an adult.  Theologian Olivier Clement defined Christian obedience in this way:  “Obedience sets freedom free by crucifying the love of self”.     Obedience has to do with discerning God’s will, something we cannot do if we are pre-occupied with asserting our own. 

Jack Sparks in his adaptation of the spiritual classic, VICTORY IN THE UNSEEN WARFARE, writes this about the will of God: 

 “For whatever affliction comes upon them, they refuse to bend their necks to the yoke of God’s will and to trust in His secret and righteous judgments. They do not want to follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, who humbled Himself and   suffered for our sakes…We must renounce all will of our own and learn perfect obedience to the will of God…You must sacrifice everything to God and do only His will. You will meet within yourself a multitude of desires, all clamoring for satisfaction, whether or not it agrees with the will of God…Therefore, to reach our chosen aim, we must first curb our own desires, submitting them to the will of God.”

Fasting, self-denial, abstinence all have to do with learning how to freely submit our desires to the will of God.

In Hebrews we are told to “obey those who rule over you,” referring to allegiance to legitimate Church authority.  In Romans 6:16, we are reminded of another side of obedience:

Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Here St. Paul asks us to think about whom we obey for whomever that is, we become enslaved to them.   We can become enslaved to sin or to righteousness, to God or to the ego, to evil or to the self, to peer pressure or to our passions, to wealth and pleasure or to goodness and love.   Obedience in and of itself is not always a virtue: we must discern to whom we choose to become servants and whom we are to obey.

Touching Jesus

And a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years and could not be healed by any one, came up behind him, and touched the fringe of his garment; and immediately her flow of blood ceased. And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the multitudes surround you and press upon you!” But Jesus said, “Some one touched me; for I perceive that power has gone forth from me.” And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and  falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”    (Luke 8:43-48)

 Must we see Jesus? More than that: we must touch Him. “Which we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handled, of the word of life…,” writes the apostle John. The woman afflicted with an issue of blood declared that if only she could touch Jesus’ garments, she would be healed. She touched timorously, from behind, Jesus’ tunic; and she was cured of her illness. I ask that no day pass without my being able to touch at least the fringe of Jesus’ garment without a power going out from the Savior which will be unto me a pledge of salvation.  We must touch Jesus in secret conversation with Him, in contact with the human members of the Body of Christ which is the Church, in the mystery of Lord’s Last Supper. We must not suppose that we have touched Jesus because we have drawn near to Him. But there are privileged moments when a kind of ineffable shudder, a sort of irresistible evidence (which, if authentic, cast us into the depths of humility) make us cry out: “I have touched Jesus,” or better, “Jesus has just touched me.”  Lord, I am not worthy to lift my eyes towards You. Be merciful to me, a sinner.”  (A Monk of the Eastern Church, Jesus: a Dialogue with the Savior)

The Beautiful Mercy of Christ

St. Ephrem the Syrian  (4^th Century) writes a wonderful poem in which among many other things he meditates on Luke 8:26-39, the Gerasene demoniac named Legion.  Ephrem is encouraged by the fact that Christ grants Legion’s request to be allowed to go into the swine.  First, Christ grants the prayer of a demon, so surely He will listen to the prayers of Christians.  Second, the demon asked to go into the herd of swine, surely Jesus will much more joyfully grant the request of those seeking with their whole hearts entrance into heaven.   

            Look too at Legion:

                                    when in anguish he begged,

                        our Lord permitted and allowed him

                                    to enter into the herd;

                        respite did he ask for, without deception,

                                    in his anguish,

                        and our Lord in His kindness

                                    granted this request.

                        His compassion for demons

                                    is a rebuke to that People,

                        showing how much anguish His love suffers

                                   in desiring that men and women should live.

 

                        Encouraged by the words

                                    I had heard,

                        I knelt down and wept there,

                                    and spoke before our Lord:

                        “Legion received his request from You

                                    without any tears;

                        permit me, with my tears,

                                    to make my request,

                        grant me to enter, instead of that herd,

                                    the Garden,

                        so that in Paradise I may sing

                                    of its Planter’s compassion.”

For God So Loved the World….

We frequently see at televised sports events someone carrying a sign which reads John 3:16.  Some consider this the most famous verse of the Christian Bible. 

Technology enables us to see the earth from beyond the human point of view

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,

that whoever believes in him

should not perish but have eternal life.”

Fr. Lev Gillet commenting on the unconstrained love which God has for His creation said: 

“… Limitless Love forces open doors.  Perhaps I had not achieved some sort of peaceful coexistence with God.  Perhaps I had succeeded in believing that, as far as my soul was concerned, I was more or less “in good  order,” and so had come to feel more or less at rest. … And now all those presuppositions have been turned upside down by a divine intrusion.  God asks something from me that I am quite unprepared for. It is like the news of an unwanted child. … To listen to this demand, to take the costly decision, ah, but why?    Everything seemed to be going so well!  Must I have new uncertainties and anxieties? … And now limitless Love wants to erupt into my life.  It comes to upset everything in it.  It comes to break up what seemed stable and to open new horizons to which I have never given thought.”    (quoted in Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church)

God’s love for the world, when experienced by us does indeed open up new horizons – a deep and rich experience of creation, an experience of self capable of being in a significant relationshiop to the vast universe, an experience of one’s fellow human beings as one’s brothers and sisters, and a relationship to the divine which reveals what it is to be human.

The Mission of the Church

 They forgot the mission of the Church is to engage the world directly as the Lord himself engaged it through His incarnation and said to the disciples: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20:21). In the end, the option of a “Holy Byzantium” distorts the universal, dynamic character of Orthodoxy, surrendering it to sectarianism, legalism, authoritarianism and obscurantism. It tends to foster an unloving, cultic and fanatical religiosity that once stood in mortal opposition to Christ Himself. We find a different vision in the thought of Father Thomas Hopko, of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. In an article on Orthodoxy and culture, Father Hopko is forthright, almost to the point of pessimism, about the grave dangers of Orthodoxy in the post-modern world. Nevertheless, he insists that to deny engagement with contemporary society by escaping to a world of our own making is to live “for illusions and delusions.” His vision of the task of Orthodoxy today is a clarion call to action. In his own language, which he describes at one point as “violent but true,” Father Thomas advocates numerous urgent priorities. Chief among them are to: 1) put Christ and His Gospel at the center our concerns; 2) think and act in truly conciliar spirit apart from narrow agendas, whether as individuals or parishes or entire Churches and patriarchates; 3) abandon the lie that the universal truth of Orthodoxy can equally be served while fully retaining our ethnic cultures and even the set forms of ecclesiastical institutions; 4) resist the temptation of viewing Orthodoxy as an ideology, a sort of hypostatized entity, unconnected with how we actually think and live, and 5) be wisely open and vulnerable to the world, both witnessing to the truth and accepting criticism because “wherever truth is, Christ is there.”         (Theodore G. Stylianopoulos, The Way of Christ)

Christ the New Adam, Not the new Moses or Abraham

As I was driving to the Orthodox Mission and Evangelism Conference, I was listening to Luke Timothy Johnson’s lectures on St. Paul put out by the Teaching Company. 

One point Johnson made which really captured my attention is that St. Paul describes Jesus as the new Adam,  not as a new Moses or new Abraham, not a new Jew or the new Israelite, but a new human being. 

“Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.  But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual.  The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.  As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.  Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven”  (1 Corinthians 15:45-49 NRSV).

This is crucial because St. Paul sees Christ as creating something new for the entire human race not just for Jews or even for believers.  St. Paul takes the lesson all the way back to the beginning of creation and to the “first Adam.”   Now Christ has come as the new Adam.    Even the flood wiping out humanity except for Noah and family on the ark could not bring about something so totally new.  Humanity remained sinful even after the flood.  But in Christ God has created the first new Adam, the new human being for His world. 

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”   (2 Corinthians 5:17)

St. Paul begins interpreting the Torah in the light of the new Adam, the new human being, the new creation.  The Torah as understood by the Jews was really only for and about the Jews.  St. Paul realizes God’s plan is for the salvation of the world.   The new Adam is not interpreted in the light of the Torah.  Rather, with God beginning a new creation and a new humanity even the Torah must be newly understood.   Basically its role has been fulfilled in Christ.  Now we do not need to simply follow the Torah keeping laws which are external to us, now we are transfigured and transformed in Christ – the Torah is no longer needed.

St. Paul understands this “last Adam” or the new Adam, Jesus Christ, connecting all of humanity to God.  Thus St. Paul

Christ both creates Adam and recreates a new Adam

focuses his apostolic work on the Gentiles because he sees the Gospel message as coming for the entire world – for all of humanity.  So he goes to the Gentiles because he understands the Jews are part of the people/nations of the world and Christ has come to create a new creation in which the new people of God are not just part of humanity (a remnant), namely, the Jews, but rather include all of humanity.   The people/nations of the world were not part of the Jews, but in Christ God is recreating the world so as to make all humans to be His people.    St. Paul comprehends the new creation in Christ is for all human beings – the Jewish role to be light to the world (Isaiah 42:6) has been realized in Christ.    And in Christ all peoples of the world are now included in God’s plan of salvation.

“He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it”   (Ephesians 2:15-16).

In Christ there is a true fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that all of the nations of the world would be blessed through him.

Christ, Not Hell, Has the Final Say About Sinners

This blog is the 2nd in a two part post script to the series on hell; this blog is the conclusion to  Hell, It’s No Place to Go.    This post script followed the blog  Orthodox Hymns on Hell.     If you want to read the entire series, it all began with the blog “Hell, no?“   

We may very much want certain people to be consigned to hell for all eternity for the harm and damage they have done to people in this world.   It is comforting to many to think that in the end God is going to clean up all of the evil messes humans have caused by holding all evil doers completely accountable for their deeds.    That idea of retributive justice gives us a sense that what we do In the world truly matters to God and it can give us some sense that suffering in this world will be shown to have meaning in the world to come where the wicked get their comeuppance and the meek inherit the earth.  It helps us balance the evil we see all around us knowing that though evil people may escape judgment in this world, they do in the world to come have to answer for what they did.   This helps many to find meaning in a fallen and even tortured world knowing that evil does not triumph in the end.

However in Christianity we also see God at work giving meaning to a fallen and tortured world by resurrecting Christ from the dead.   Evil does not triumph nor have the final say.  On the cross, Christ forgives his tormentors, and then is raised from the dead trampling down death, the means used by a wicked world to try to destroy Him.   Torture and execution do not bring an end to Christ’s mission or message – the Church is the witness to this fact.

Many non-believers point out that if the threat of hell is the only thing that deters believers from doing evil, that does not speak well of those who believe in God.   For they would say many who never believed in God or hell have done good things and have avoided doing evil to others.    Is it really the case that believers have so little love for God and His goodness that unless God threatens us with hell we would be purely evil?  If preachers did not threaten believers with hell would they never wish to follow the Gospel command of Jesus to love God and love neighbor?    At least in

Orthodox Exorcism in Kenya

Orthodoxy, Satan is not recognized as being more powerful than the Church.  In the baptismal exorcism, the Orthodox believers command Satan to leave the baptismal candidate and never meet or influence him/her again.  Satan is said not even to have power over swine (referring to the Gospel lesson in  Matthew 8:28-32 in which the demons have to ask Christ for permission to depart as they have no power to do so on their own in the presence of Christ).  The believers  even spit on Satan to show their fearless contempt of him.    If the baptismal prayers mean what they say, and if we believe what they proclaim, we have power over Satan, not he over us.   We are quite capable of commanding him to do our and God’s will, and he must obey the godly command as he is not so powerful as to resist God.

 Nowhere in the Scriptures is evil or hell said to have such power over us that we can’t resist them no matter how much they may terrify us.   As the Patriarch Abraham tells the rich man in the Parable of Lazarus – if they don’t believe Gods promises found in the Scriptures, the threat of hell is not going to have any impact over their behavior and choices (Luke 16:19-31).   [And, note, this Gospel Lesson is a Parable of Jesus used for didactic purposes, not virtual tour of hell.]

If in the end, everyone is predestined by God’s choice to heaven or hell, or if in the end everyone is simply forgiven, then what difference does our behavior make in this world since all is simply fore-ordained by God and He will judge or forgive by His predetermined will not according to what we have done?  In the Q’uran God creates hell from the beginning and promises to sentence sinners to hell for eternal physical torture – God will keep them alive just to torture them.  But this is an Islamic idea, not the Gospel’s.    The Christian Scriptures present hell as having been created for Satan (Matthew 25:41), not for humans and God is presented as finding no pleasure even in bringing about the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23, 33:11), let alone condemning them to their eternal punishment.  God sends His Son into the world to save the world, not to justify sending unbelievers to hell even though their unbelief condemns them.

The Christian idea of “hell” is surely better represented in that tradition which says hell is our personal choice to be excluded from the presence of God – hell is our own refusal to love God and/or to love neighbor.  God will be everywhere present when His Kingdom comes – even in hell.  Christ according to Tradition has already filled hell with Himself.     But for those who hate God, the very presence of God will be torture.   It will be God’s love, not His hatred which they will find so horrible.

The Scriptures do offer to us that God is merciful, faithful, wise and just.  The Scriptures do tell us that our behavior and choice – virtue or vice as well as repentance and forgiveness – matter in how we will be judged by God on Judgment Day.   But the Tradition suggests God will simply allow us to have our own way.  Either we will chose to be in God’s presence and realize this as heaven or we will be so repulsed by God’s love as to live in total and tormented isolation from all else in the universe.

 We Orthodox do believe with the New Testament that death is the final enemy of God to be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26).  Hell – eternal damnation – is not the final victory over sin and sinners.  The final victory belongs to Jesus Christ the Conqueror triumphantly trampling down both death and Satan while shattering the gates of hell which had held death’s captives.    Hell itself is emptied by Christ – He liberates all of those bound in hell and thus empties hell of its prisoners and its power and thus takes away the sting of death and shows hell does not have the final word on anyone including sinners.  Christianity celebrates the victory of Christ over sin, death, Satan and hell; it doesn’t proclaim hell’s eternal power, rather it celebrates the final destruction of all that hell represents and proclaims that Christ is risen leaving not even one dead in hell.  There is no place in God’s universe where God does not reign supreme.   Take a look at Revelations 20:11-15, below.   The sea, death and Hades all give up the dead they are holding, and these dead are judged by God.   But then note – it is Death and Hades which are then thrown into the lake of fire to be destroyed – no mention is made of Death or Hades being kept as permanent states of existence.  [Here too I would note the language and imagery being used is very symbolic and figurative - Death and Hades themselves are anthropomorphized.   This is not intended to be a photographic image of the end, but it is a descriptive one.]  

Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books.  And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Christianity and Islam: The Apostle Paul

This is the 8th and final blogin my series which began with  One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity; next was the two part  Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet; then the two part  Christianity and Islam:  Conflict over True Christianity; followed by the two part Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord.   This blog follows Christianity and Islam:  Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord (2).

Christians and Muslims agree that Jesus is a messenger of God and that He is properly called the Messiah.  They agree that Jesus’ birth was miraculous, and that Jesus was a miracle worker.   The Qur’an like the Gospel of John even refers to Jesus as the Word of God.   Where Christianity and Islam part company in their understanding of Jesus is that for Christians all the evidence of the birth and life of Jesus (which the Qur’an also accepts) proves Him to be Son of God.  The Christians say the evidence of the miracles of Christ mean Jesus is Lord, God incarnate, and one of the Holy Trinity.   Islam denies these points not believing that the evidence of Christ’s miraculous life justifies such an interpretation of Jesus.   Additionally, for Christians there is the fact of the death and resurrection of Christ which is the ultimate proof of the Christian understanding of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished.  The Qur’an does not accept the story of Christ’s crucifixion and thus denies to the death and resurrection of Christ any sacrificial importance let alone saving or redeeming power.   For Christians Christ ultimately triumphs even over death, the final enemy of God, which is the lesson Christians derive from the story of the resurrection.   In Islam Christ is merely a prophet who brings the same message as all prophets – submit to God.  Islam sees Christ as ultimately having no victory in his life except perhaps a moral victory.  They see true victory coming only with Muhammad who leads an army to victory and thus see God’s victory as a victory in this world.  In the world to come there will be no help from God as all that awaits each human is judgment.   On the other hand for Christians the victory of Christ extends beyond the grave into eternal life as Christ is victorious over sin and death.

For Muslims it is essential that Jesus himself points the way to Muhammad as it is Muhammad not Jesus who is the final prophet.   The Quran  “quotes” Jesus predicting the coming of  a messenger whose name is “Ahmad.”    The quote is not found anywhere in the canonical Gospels.   Islam uses Jesus predictions of the coming of the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth in  John 14-16 as Jesus predicting the coming of Muhammad rather than the coming of God’s Holy Spirit on Pentecost.    I am not aware if there is any non-canonical Gospel text which has Christ predicting a future prophet to follow Him, but indeed some of the stories of Jesus in the Qur’an which are not found in the canonical Gospels can be found in 3rd-4th Century apocryphal texts – texts the early Christians regarded as spurious or heretical.  (It would be interesting to know if Islam considers these texts as legitimate scriptures since they have in them stories that the later dated Qur’an contains).    For example the Qur’an has Jesus miraculously turning clay birds which he had formed into live ones, a story reported also in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior.   

For Muslims, the Christian reverence for Jesus as Lord and one of the Holy Trinity is both wrong and forbidden by the Qur’an.   Islam blames to a large extent the Apostle Paul for distorting the true story of Jesus and the Gospel.  The Muslim missionary materials claim St. Paul was only interested in his own vision of the mystic Christ, but not interested in the historic person of Christ.    Yet, St. Paul places a clear emphasis on the Cross and on the last supper, events he reports and claims to have the received  and is passing along as tradition.    The Islamic criticism of Paul lacking an interest in history is because Islam itself does not accept the historicity of the events of Holy Week – the last supper, the crucifixion and the resurrection.   Christianity is based in historical events which St. Paul makes the heart of his Gospel.   St. Paul does not preach a different history, but proclaims the very history found in the Gospels.  He also comments on the implication of the historical events of the death and resurrection of Christ for all those who believe in God and who believe that keeping Torah is the only way to earn God’s favor.

 Islam claims its own view of Christ is historical, formed while he still lived on earth (not after his departure from the world), is the view Jesus had of Himself, teaches monotheism, is in line  with what Muhammad taught.  Muslims claim the Christian view on the other hand progressively evolved after Jesus departure from the world, is mythical and an interpretation, contradicts Jesus’ own teachings, is influenced by Greco-Roman polytheistic mythology and philosophy, was not taught by ANY of God’s prophets, was developed by St. Paul a self-appointed disciple.   Islam claims all prophets were Muslims, and so was Jesus.   It claims Christianity is an aberration created by Paul which rejects monotheism.   One booklet asked, “Is it not strange that Paul portrays the law of the mystic Christ as differing from God’s law?!”

The answer, I think is no.     Christians understand the Law of God as serving a purpose in preparing God’s people until the Messiah came.   The Law in Christian thinking is not the teleological goal of God’s plan.   Rather the Law was to help God’s people until the Christ came.   The Messiah is the goal of history and in Him the very purpose of the Law is fulfilled.     For Islam the goal in life is to obey and submit to God’s Law.   In this sense Islam is another form of literalistic and legalistic thinking that sees God mostly as a law giver whose task in life is to police His creatures, punishing or rewarding them for their behavior at the end of their lives.  Christianity however understands God’s deep abiding love for His creation and His desire to share His divine life with His creatures.   Thus the goal is not mere obedience but to freely choose love – for God and for one another.

The Muslim materials accuse Paul  of deception and of saying the law was binding on Jesus but not on Paul.   They claim such passages as Matthew 5:18-19 refute Paul.   But Jesus Himself is accused of violating the law by the Jews who rejected Him.   Jesus declared himself the Lord of the Sabbath and more important than the temple or the Torah because He fulfilled the purpose of both.    

St. Paul considers what Jesus said and did and then looks at what the purpose of the law was – it belongs to this world, not to the kingdom of God. The law was given because of sin but was not given originally by God in paradise.    The Muslim missionary material accuses St. Paul of pushing Jesus aside, yet Paul declared Jesus as Lord and Christ, which Islam will not do.    Islam really accuses Paul of both pushing Jesus aside and of untruthfully exalting Him.

St. Paul is not the founder of Christianity but is an Apostle of Christ.   His teachings are particularly troublesome to Islam because Muhammad did not understand or accept his teachings.   Paul is one of the Apostles and prophets upon whom God built His Church, Jesus Christ being the cornerstone.  Christianity does not have to deny or change any of the Scriptures of the Jews to come to their faith in Jesus as Messiah.   Christians accept St. Paul as being fully in line with the witness of the entire scriptures of Christians and Jews, of accepting and teaching all of the revelation of God which is found in the Bible of Jews and Christians.