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.

Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord (2)

This blog is a continuation of Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord (1)

This is the seventh blog in 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.     These blogs are my reaction to the claims of some Muslim missionary literature aimed at converting Christians to Islam. 

Islam says the Jews lost their favored status with God when they rejected Jesus – that is when prophethood left Israel.  The very things which the Jews accused Jesus of, and why they rejected Him according to John 5:18 is because they understood Jesus of making himself equal to God, of claiming that He and the Father are one.  Read John 17  to get a sense of how Jesus Himself understood His relationship with God the Father.   In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.”    So at least in the Christian Scriptures Jesus himself, His disciples and His opponents all seem to agree that Jesus saw Himself as in some manner one with God the Father and sharing the divine life of the Father.   So the Islamic claim that Jesus never declared Himself to be God or divine or co-equal with the Father is true only if one ignores the Gospel tradition and relies solely on the Qur’an for reading the claims of Christ.  The New Testament has a few explicit claims about the divinity of Jesus but many implicit claims.

There also is this in the Qur’an:  “the Messiah, Isa son of Marium is only a messenger of Allah and His Word which He communicated to Marium and a spirit from Him”  (Q 4:171).   The Qur’an identifies Jesus as God’s messenger, Word and spirit.   The notion of Jesus as God’s Word is most clearly spelled out in John 1, a text which also implies the divinity of God’s Word and in the context of John’s Gospel implies the divinity of Jesus. 

Mark’s Gospel begins with the words:  “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”   That is the Gospel’s thesis statement; the Gospel is what Mark offers as proof of his thesis.  The Gospel is the living testimony and proof to Mark’s claim about who Jesus is. And in Mark’s Gospel God Himself speaks about who Jesus is.  John in his Gospel’s conclusion in chapter 20 says that the events he reports to us are offered so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God and that believing we might have eternal life through Him.   This is also the witness of Hebrews 1-2 in which it is clear that Jesus being the Son of God is exactly how the first Christians understood Him and His words.  Notions of Jesus as God’s Son or as God the Son were not invented by later generations of Christians, but certainly can be found already suggested in the Gospel text.   It is when dealing with the entirety of the revelation as contained in the New Testament that the notions of God as Trinity and Jesus as the incarnate Word of God became the obvious (literal!) reading of the Scriptures.

The Islamic literature referred several times to  John 17:3 (“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”).   This text was used to confirm that Jesus expresses an Islamic belief in one God.  Yet the text implies that there is something incredibly unique about Jesus for eternal life is not simply knowing God but also requires knowing Jesus Christ.   It contains no reference to the Qur’an or to Muhammad as being necessary for eternal life.   The Muslim materials said John 17:3 is the equivalent of saying,  “There is no deity except the one true God, and Jesus Christ is the Messenger of God.”     While Christians are willing to say that Jesus is God’s messenger and a prophet, that would certainly be seen to be a weak interpretation of John 17:3.   Christians say Jesus is the message not simply the messenger.   This is a claim in line with Qur’an 4:171 which identifies Jesus as God’s Word.

The Christian experience of Jesus as God’s Word is why Christians do not interpret God’s message as nothing more than obedience to God.  If sheer obedience is all that God wanted from humanity, it would be strange to give humans free will.  God could have made automatons for that purpose.  Christians would say that God wanted us freely to choose to do His will because God created us to love – to love Him and to love one another.  Love is only possible where there is choice – freedom to love, and where good and bad are equally attractive to us so that we must choose between the two.   In creating beings capable of love, God created beings who could also reject, rebel, disobey or choose badly.  It is however His greatest wish for humankind that we would love – and this is exactly what Jesus lists as the greatest and second greatest commandments: love God and love neighbor.  And the commandment to be obeyed is to love  (John 15:12, but see also Mark 12:31, John 13:34, 14:15-21, 15:10-12.   From the Torah see Deuteronomy 5:10, 7:9, 11:1,13).

The Muslim missionary literature says Jesus taught mostly obedience to God  which they say is exemplified in John 14:15, 21, 15:14 where Jesus instructs His followers to obey Him.   But it is these same passages in which Jesus says His command is to love.  Jesus emphasized love, forgiveness of enemies more than obedience to the law.  He says the law is about loving God and neighbor, obedience isn’t more important than love for love is the highest good.  In Christ’s teaching we find that to love Him is to obey His commandments and His commandments are for us to love.  Submission and obedience are not the goal but a means to attain the goal.   Love is in the teachings of Jesus not a noun of emotion, but a verb of action.   Love is how we are to choose to act toward others; it is not a mere reaction to others.

Because submission to God is what Islam teaches the main tenet of God’s Law, Islam emphasizes obedience to God’s commandments as the main message of the Old Testament and of Jesus (Matthew 5:17, 7:21, 19:16-17).     God’s people are to hear God’s word and obey it (Luke 11:28).    And in what was a rare quote from any New Testament material outside the Gospels, the Islamic materials  pointed out that  James 4:7 says to submit yourself to God.   While Christianity does embrace these words of Jesus, it also keeps them in their Gospel context that His commandment is that we love.   Obedience and submission is not what God mostly wants from us – we can keep the law without loving God.   It is the love of God and neighbor which is God’s ultimate plan, hope and desire for us.

And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ”‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

God does not just want us to obey Him under threat of punishment, according to Christianity, He wishes for us to choose to love Him and to love one another.

Next:   Christianity and Islam:  The Apostle Paul

Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah, and Lord (1)

This is the sixth blog in 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.     These blogs are my reaction to the claims of some Muslim missionary literature aimed at converting Christians to Islam.  

According to the literature, Islam accepts Jesus as a major prophet on the authority of the Qur’an alone – not on the authority of the Torah or the Gospel.   This means that the information in the Qur’an cannot be measured by the Scriptures of Christians and Jews.   Therefore, ideas about Jesus or Moses or any of the Biblical prophets found in the Qur’an are said not to be reliant on or influenced by the teachings of Jews and Christians.   Islam claims the Qur’an is “a-historical” meaning it is a divine document without any human explanations added to it, unlike the Bible which Muslims claim contains errors since it shows signs of human intention in it – historical information, recording human events, offering human exegesis and explanations.  Such claims by Muslims free Islam from having to subject their teachings to historical, literary, archeological or scientific examination.   Personally I see this as a weakness.  For any religion which claims it upholds Truth, should have nothing to fear from such external examination.   Truth is truth.    God’s truth is true in this world, and should be able to be examined by human reason and investigation.   Science is not going to overthrow the Truth of God, but it might challenge overly rigid or literally readings of Scripture.  But the believer has nothing to fear from studies in history, linguistics, literature or science, unless some of the claims of religion are not literally true.

One convert to Islam from Christianity accused Christians  of seeing the Bible as an end in itself, whereas  he says it points to something else beyond the text.    He of course claimed it points to Muhammad.   Bibliolotry is not Christian for in Christianity we have God’s Word incarnate – Jesus.    God’s Word is living and personal and not just a book of printed pages and rules and regulations.    God’s Word is not a book but a person.   Christians certainly would agree that the Bible points to something beyond itself.   In the Gospels which the Qur’an does say contains the message of God,  Jesus said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”

I do not know how Muslims understand the Qur’an in heaven.   They see the Qur’an on earth as being an exact replica of that which exists in heaven (and thus they see the Qur’an as having been authored by God and not written by men inspired by God).   My question is:  what form does the Qur’an take in heaven?  Does it have some kind of existence, material or spiritual?  Can it be seen or read?    Did God actually write it down on something?   What does it mean that it exists in heaven?   This seems to me a point to be discussed for Christians certainly understand Jesus to be God’s eternal Word (see John 1).

Islam claims that it offers the correct understanding of Jesus.   “It is Muslims who are best adhering to the teachings of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), and hence they rightly deserve to be called the ‘true followers of Jesus Christ.’”    According to the literature, Muslims believe in Jesus and believe in God’s revelation to Him, the Gospel.   Muslims believe in his supernatural conception without a human father, that he performed miracles like giving life to the dead.  Muslims believe in his 2nd coming.  Mary is greatly respected in Islam.   These are some ways that Islam shares with Christianity ideas about Jesus and why he should be honored by all people in the world.   Both religions claim it is important to know Jesus and to know who Jesus is.   This is the point upon which Christians and Muslims can debate, agree and disagree since they share some common ideas.   The issue of who best follows Jesus and understands Him is where more disagreement will be found, and yet it is something concrete that can be discussed.

The literature says that Jesus never claimed “I am God you must worship me”  or “I am co-equal and co-eternal with God”  or “you will enter heaven if you believe in my blood sacrifice.”   Here Islam follows a line of thinking that one can find in the early years of Christianity in Arianism, which Christianity considered for many years but then rejected as a false idea about Jesus and not consistent with the revelation recorded in the Scriptures.  (Unlike Islam, the Arians did accept the same Scriptures as the rest of Christianity and debated the received text.  Islam simply denies the validity of the received text and offers a different text as Scripture, which makes it acutely difficult for Christians and Muslims to discuss who Jesus is).   But there are a plenty of examples in the Christian Scriptures which uphold the claims of the Christians regarding the relationship of Jesus to God the Father.   A major difference however between Christianity and Islam is that Islam tends to read Scriptures with an absolute literalism, while the Christians have been willing to reflect beyond the literal words in gaining an insight into the meaning of the Bible.  Islam says Jesus never commanded His followers to worship Him, but Christianity would insist if you remain faithful to what the Scriptures witness to about Jesus, it becomes clear that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, imbued with the powers of God, which leads one to the conclusion that Jesus Himself expressed that He shares a unique oneness with God the Father.   In this way Christianity calls humanity to greater reflection on what God wills for humans, while Islam relies much more on simply submitting to God’s commandments.

Next:   Christianity and Islam:  Jesus – Prophet, Messiah, and Lord (2)

Christianity and Islam: Conflict over True Christianity (2)

This is the fifth blog in my series which began with  One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity and is the conclusion to my blog Christianity and Islam:  Conflict over True Christianity (1).  

The Islamic missionary materials portray the Qur’an as being a divine document and therefore “a-historical.”  They claim the very fact that the Bible contains historical stories shows it is a human not divine document, and thus subject to human error.   For my part, I have been convinced by the early Christian claim that “all truth is Christian truth.”  And since Christianity is concerned with the Truth and its proclamation, the claims of Christianity must have some relationship to all known truth, including historical and scientific truth, appeals to me.    I think any religions that claims to be true should be openly willing to have its claims matched against the truths which history, archeology, or the various sciences offer to the world.  Some aspects of religion really are issues of faith, some however can be verified by other kinds of study. 

Clearly major areas of debate between Muslims and Christians are the nature of revelation, scripture and inspiration. While Christians and Muslims will disagree as which Scriptures offers the final revelation to humankind, an even more significant issue is what exactly God has revealed. ” To Muhammad, a book was revealed to lead mankind out of darkness” (Qur’an 14:1). Christianity does not claim that God revealed a book to mankind. Instead Christianity claims that Jesus is the Word of God incarnate – Jesus thus reveals what Scriptures are, what it means to be human, as well as an amazing revelation about God’s nature. Christianity has the testimony of Jesus in the Gospel, acknowledge by the Qur’an: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). For Christians the ultimate revelation of God is not contained in a book – either the Torah or the Qur’an – but in the God become man Jesus who is the Christ. The written text is but a witness to the living Word of God. At issue is whether in fact God’s Word really is something that can be contained in a written text, or whether God’s Word has life in Itself, Himself, and the written Word is not what is found in heaven but is testifying to the truth about God’s Eternal Word. This is the major point of contention between Christian apologists and theologians and Muslim ones.

There are some other points which the Islamic missionary literature points out as being significant for Christians to consider:

1) Islam is superior to Christianity because God in Qur’an 3:19 and 3:85 gives Islam its name. Christians get named by those who opposed their religion in Acts 11:25-26. Islam indeed is one of the few religions in the world in which in their scriptures God gives their religion a name. The literature also says since “Islam” has at its root the meaning of both “peace” and “submission” the name Islam means something, while “Christianity” as a word tells nothing about the religion.

2) The literature points out that “Islam” means peace, and that Jesus taught us to be peacemakers, which it claims shows that Jesus is a Muslim at heart. Since the Old Testament says God gives peace to those who obey His commandments, the literature claims this too is an Islamic idea: submission leads to peace. In this literature one can see that though Christians see Jesus as both fulfilling and giving full meaning to the Old Testament, Islam moves back and forth between using the Old Testament to interpret the New and vice versa as best fits its own understanding of God. In this Islam holds to an idea that Jesus is simply one more prophet in the line of God’s prophets but does not hold to an idea that Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament.

3) The Muslim missionary literature interprets references to the coming of the Holy Spirit (Parakletos) in John’s Gospel as referring to another human comforter, Muhammad, rather than to the coming of the Holy Spirit. This argument was part of what apparently is important to Islamic missionary need – to prove that in fact the New Testament predicted the coming of Muhammad. It also denies Acts 2 event of Pentecost or the role for the Holy Spirit in the life of God’s people. Christians probably would be disappointed to know that the promises of Christ about the coming of the Comforter and Spirit of Truth, refer to Muhammad rather than to God’s Spirit. The literature claimed that no one in all of history could be the promised Comforter of John 14:16 except for Muhammad. Even if one leaves aside the claim that the Comforter refers to another man, how could we know that no one in all of history could be that man except Muhammad, since we haven’t lived all of history yet?

4) What is perhaps a fair critique of many Christians and some of Christianity, the Muslim literature says that since the Bible enjoins fasting, prayer, modest dress (it notes that Nuns dress themselves in a Muslim way), sobriety, sexual control, and circumcision, and prohibits eating pork, Muslims keep the faith better than most Christians. There is a question raised as to what extent Christians believe they are compelled to follow the Torah in keeping ritual. In Acts 15 the apostles themselves come to the conclusion that the Torah served a purpose to prepare God’s chosen people for the coming of the Christ, but that with Christ fulfilling the Torah, converts to the faith no longer have to become practicing Jews in order to be disciples of Christ. And while this does answer the Muslim charge against Christians on a number of issues, their criticism of Christians not being willing to follow any discipline makes it certain that neither can they be disciples of Christ the Master, is a valid one which Christians need to consider. Prayer and fasting are a normative part of the Orthodox Christian way of life.

Next: Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah, and Lord

Christianity and Islam: Conflict over True Christianity (1)

This is the fourth blog in my series which began with  One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity; 2nd was  Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet; then Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet (2).    In this series of blogs I am taking a look at how Islam views Christianity as presented in some Muslim missionary materials which are aimed at converting Christians to Islam.  I am not looking directly at the claims of the Qur’an but only what some Muslims appear to be saying about the Qur’an and about Christians.   Obviously their materials are for proselytizing purposes and are polemical against Christian claims and apologetically for Islamic ones.  Since I thought the booklets I read were respectful to Christ, I am endeavoring to respond respectfully to the claims of the Muslim missionary material.  Obviously there are serious points of disagreement between Islam and Christianity.  There are also points of agreement:  that there is one God the Creator of all things visible and invisible, and that Jesus is in the direct line of those revealing God’s message to the world, that Jesus’ birth was miraculous and that Jesus was a miracle worker.  The Muslim literature also claims that Muslims are true believers in Jesus.   In this claim Islam and Christianity do share a common interest:  the correct and proper understanding of Jesus Christ.   Since both Islam and Christianity are both concerned about the truth concerning Jesus of Nazareth, we share a common bond.  In history Christians have spent a great deal of time debating and discussing “who is Jesus?”  The first several hundred years of church history is full of such discussion and it is the main work of the Ecumenical Councils of the 4th – 8th Centuries.   The Church has had to consider many divergent views on Christ, but has through careful deliberation and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit remained faithful to the Gospel, all the Scriptures, the Apostolic preaching, and the decisions of its Ecumenical Councils.   Unlike the criticism which Islam presents against the Christians, the Christians have not added to or altered their Scriptures.  Modern scholarship in contradistinction to Islam often accuses the Church of being too conservative and of having been too narrow in its acceptance of writings as Scripture.   It can’t be both ways.  The Church has endeavored to remain faithful to the full revelation of God and has a closed scriptural canon which has not allowed accretions or deletions from its sacred writings.

The Muslim missionary literature acknowledges that though the Qur’an is the last Holy Book revealed to mankind, it is not the only holy book revealed by Allah.   The Qur’an in Islamic thinking is the only holy book which has not been mixed with human and philosophical ideas and doctrines.  It is thus the only authoritative and authentic revelation available to mankind.     According to the Islamic missionary booklet THIS MATTER OF FAITH (Discover Islam Series) the “extraneous and unrevealed material” in the Bible includes “statements of historical context, descriptions of events, exegetical comments, philosophical treatises, literary allusions or quotations.”    This booklet also claims that since much of the Bible was orally transmitted before it was written down, the Bible’s ideas “tend to be influenced by cultural categories” and thus include “folk wisdom, folk tales, legends and fabulous tales that generally circulate within any local culture.”

Of course the Qur’an itself first was transmitted only orally.  Muhammad was commanded by God to “recite” (which is a meaning of the word ”Qur’an”) not to write anything.  He also was illiterate, so it was others who wrote down what he said at a time when there was not a standard written Arabic language.   So if orally transmitted materials have a tendency not to be completely accurate, that should apply to all such oral transmissions.  Additionally, despite the negative comments towards local culture, Islam claims the Qur’an is an exact copy of God’s word in heaven, which implies that God Himself speaks and writes in Arabic which the booklet says “is one of the top ten languages living yet today”.    The booklet goes on to claim, “And where the Qur’an refers to local 7th century Arab culture and tales, it does so in a way that sets straight some controversy and that teaches a larger truth thereby.”   

The Qur’an (2:136) says Muslims believe in the revelation given to Moses and to Jesus and they make no distinction between any of them.   In 3:3-4 the Qur’an says that God has “revealed unto you the Scripture with the truth, confirming that which was [revealed] before it, even as He revealed the Torah and the Gospel aforetime, for a guidance to mankind, and has revealed the Criterion [of right and wrong]…”   So though the Qur’an reconfirms the truth found in the Torah and the Gospel, Islam says that all of those parts of these Scriptures which do not agree with the Qur’an are not trustworthy and must be eliminated or only interpreted the way the Qur’an interprets them.   Thus for example, anything that contradicts the Qur’an’s interpretation of Jesus can’t be true even if it is in the Gospel which the Qur’an confirms.  Therefore no logic or external proof of any kind is valid in a discussion about Jesus with Muslims.     In that sense neither proof nor logic  nor any evidence from history, archeology, or science can be applied when considering the claims of the Qur’an regarding Jesus and Christianity.

One other factor is that though Islam in general claims that the Qur’an is straight forward and understandable to any reader, many Arabic speaking people and many scholars acknowledge that certain texts in the Qur’an are virtually incomprehensible.   For many Muslims any questioning of the Qur’an is seen as an insult to God, which makes it very difficult to have any kind of discussion or debate with Muslims.   For a longer discussion on these issues see for example the January, 1991, ATLANTIC MONTHLY article, What is the Koran?    It is therefore interesting to note in THIS MATTER OF FAITH that it says that one needs no further revelation than the Qur’an “supported by a reliable exegesis (body of explanation) with practical application in the well-documented life history of the Prophet.”   So though any exegesis found within the Bible is seen as evidence of tampering with the text, the Muslim missionary literature acknowledges the reader of the Qur’an is going to need materials external to the Qur’an to understand it – both an exegesis and a history of the Prophet.   This re-introduces into  the discussion the need for human made materials to understand the Qur’an which would undermine the claim that the reason the Bible is not reliable is that there is evidence of human influence in it. 

Continued in Christianity and Islam: Conflict over True Christianity (2)

Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet (2)

This is the third blog in my series which began with  One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity.   The 2nd blog in the series is  Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet.

The Qur’an claims to be the “final arbiter and only criterion” for interpreting or correcting previous scriptures – the messages which God gave to His prophets in ancient times.   Muslims do accept and respect these other messages – such as the Scriptures of Jews and Christians but only in the form which the Qur’an determines is original.   Because Islam claims all other Scriptures besides the Qur’an have been tampered with or corrupted, and passages or messages in the Bible with which the Qur’an doesn’t agree are therefore declared to be corrupted.   An issue though is whether the Qur’an must specifically validate or negate each and every passage of the Bible since the Qur’an and not Muslims has the sole authority to interpret and correct these other messages from God.  If the Qur’an does not specifically cite or reference a message, how can one know whether to read and accept them?  And if one is not reading them, how can Islam say that they respect the Bible as God’s message?   These questions I have to put forth to Muslim missionaries.

The Islamic literature gives prominence to the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18:17-18 in which Moses speaks about God raising up “a prophet from among their brethren” like Moses. The literature claims that it is obvious that Jesus is not like Moses for several several reasons (Jesus birth was miraculous, Moses and Muhammad’s were not. Moses and Muhammad both married, Jesus did not. Moses and Muhammad were statesmen not just prophets like Jesus. Moses and Muhammad were concerned with legal teachings, Jesus with spiritual things). However, since the entire Old Testament is also Christian Scripture the Christians do accept the notion from the Jewish scriptures that Joshua (a name quite similar to Jesus) fulfills Moses prophecy. Joshua succeeds Moses according to God’s plan (Deuteronomy 1:38), is called a prophet ( Sirach 46:1), is a judge (1 Maccabees 2:55) and intercedes for God’s people (2 Esdras 7:107). To apply the prophecy to Muhammad (is this passage quoted in the Qur’an?) is to ignore the Scriptures Islam claims to honor.   In the New Testament only in the Acts of the Apostles do we find this Deuteronomic prophecy applied to Christ.    The argument from Islam that it more properly applies to Muhammad does not alter the way in which it does apply to Christ.   And certainly in the New Testament it is very clear that the claims that Jesus is the Messiah rests clearly on fulfillment of Jewish prophecies, whereas Muhammad’s claim to being a prophet of God in the Qur’an does not appear to rest on any prophecies but only on Muhammad’s claim that God called him.   However the Muslim missionary literature is eager to make the claim that the Jewish Scriptures predicted Muhammad’s coming, and that Muhammad is the clear fulfillment of prophecies of the coming of The Prophet.  This seems to be more an effort to compete with Christian claims that the Old Testament prophesied the coming of Christ than it does to be a claim of the Qur’an.

Additionally the Muslims claim that the reference to a prophet from among the “brethren” in Deuteronomy 18 refers to Ishmaelites not to the Jewish tribes and thus refers to Muhammad. This seems to me a pretty strained and unnatural reading of the text as well as removing the text from its context in the Jewish Scriptures. One can do many things with Scripture texts, but the Muslim reading of Deuteronomy 18 seems to be mostly a case of eisegeses (reading a pre-conceived idea into a text) rather than exegeses (drawing the meaning out of the text) – they are reading into the text that which they need to be there rather than getting out of the text that which it naturally says.  The text itself appears to be talking about someone from among the Jewish tribes, not outside the Jewish tribes who will become the prophet like Moses.  Muhammad would not qualify in fulfilling this prophecy.

Islam like Christianity believes that God fulfills all His promises. Muslims find it puzzling therefore that that the Bible contains elaborate details about Israel fulfilling God’s plan but then ignores the promises to and fulfillment of promises to Ishmael. Muslims see Ishmael’s descendents (i.e., Muhammad) as fulfilling the promise to be a “great nation.” They derive this not only from the claims of the Qur’an but point out that the 1st born son in the Torah is entitled to special honors, and for Abraham that would be Ishmael not Isaac/Israel. The Muslims thus accuse the Jews themselves of having wrongfully inserted into the “real” biblical text comments that God would fulfill His promises to Isaac (such as Genesis 17:2, 21:12). Islam claims that is why the Bible is unreliable, but I would again ask does the Qur’an make this specific charge against these passages? For only the Qur’an is the final arbiter about what is valid in the Scriptures of the Jews. So unless there is a specific charge in the Qur’an about these exact passages, I don’t see how the Muslims can uphold their argument. I do not know what the Qur’an lists as the specific promises that God makes to Ishmael.

I think the Islamic literature does ask some fair interpretive questions of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Specifically they question why only one child should be the heir of God’s promises – why only Isaac, why is such a promise limited to one and why can’t it apply to many? They also are troubled by the story of Abraham expelling his son of the slave woman Ishmael and exposing him to great harm. They question the morality of this story and ask what kind of God punishes innocent children just to satisfy Sarah’s ego? The Muslims say even in Genesis 21:13 God promises to make a great nation of Ishmael. They feel this is fulfilled finally in Muhammad.  I would say their questions are valid.  There are numerous passages in the Old Testament in which the morality of the situation is hard to understand.  But the fact that God’s plan is not limited to or by human logic, does not justify eliminating the difficult passages of the Bible.  In this sense, the Jewish and Christian adherence to the received text despite its difficulties speaks to me of a faithfulness to the text, contrary to the Islamic claim that the Jews or Christians altered the text.

The story of Ishmael and Isaac in the Bible comes to us in two stories that intermingled in the Torah. Modern scholars point out that more than one editorial hand is obvious in certain sections of the Torah, and the Ishmael-Isaac saga shows these same signs of having two stories merged together. This causes the Muslims to accuse the Jews of tampering with the stories to better reflect Jewish interests. That is hardly what I see in the text. What seems more clear to me is that in fact the Jews didn’t tamper with the text – they didn’t try to harmonize the two stories of Ishmael and Isaac but rather accepted both stories and laid them side by side in their own text. The Jews were not changing the text but rather accepting the fact that diversity in tradition was part of their own Scriptures. This prevents a narrow reading of the story as both stories must be accounted for. While the Muslims claim the Qur’anic version corrects the story of Ishmael by eliminating inconsistencies, that strikes me as being much more self serving for the Muslims and more like story tampering than anything the Jews did. Christianity resolves the issue in its own way by ignoring the inconsistencies in the literal detail but seeing the story as an allegory about and which is fulfilled in the difference between Christians and Jews (Galatians 4).

For all their insistence on literal and historical accuracy regarding the Ishmael-Isaac saga, the Qur’an goes on to say Abraham was not a Jew but a Muslim. While in the sense that Abraham obeys God the name Muslim might be applied to him, it would be factually inaccurate to say Abraham is not part of the Jewish family. Clearly the Muslims accuse the Jews of narrowly tracing the Biblical story through Abraham’s descendent Isaac, but then to literally deny that Abraham is a Jew is not literally faithful to the text.

Another claim of the Islamic literature is regarding Isaiah 11:1-2 which refers to the “rod out of the stem of Jesse” which Christians have interpreted to be a reference to Jesus who is said to be a descendent of King David, whose father was Jesse. The Muslim booklets say that “Jesse” does not refer to David’s father, but rather is another way of referring to Ishmael. My usual question would be, does the Qur’an itself make that specific interpretation of the Isaiah passage, or again is this a later polemical claim of Islam? If it isn’t specifically stated in the Qur’an, by the Muslim reading of the Qur’an, one would have to admit Isaiah 11:1-2 cannot be claimed to be a prophecy of Muhammad. Whereas for the Christians, it is clear that our reading of the Old Testament is such that the promised Messiah is going to be a descendant of David, and so this prophecy is important to establishing the legitimacy of the claim that Jesus is Christ.

Lastly, according to the Islamic missionary materials, Isaiah 42 (the servant whom God delights in) is a clear prophecy of Muhammad not Jesus. By the Islamic reading of the passage, Muhammad does fulfill the prophecies of what the servant of the Lord is like and what he does. While there is no doubt in my mind that one can extrapolate from the Isaiah chapter ideas that can be appplied to Muhammad, that doesn’t prove that they should be applied to him (and there again is the issue does the Qur’an specifically make the claim that Isaiah 42 applies to Muhammad or is this a later Muslim idea and thus not supported by the Qur’an?).  Additionally the Isaiah prophecies regarding the servant of God include the passages about the suffering servant of God (for example Isaiah 53), something the Christians clearly feel Jesus did fulfill. For the servant of the Lord in Christian thinking is not merely a prophet but the Messiah, and it has often been felt that Isaiah’s long description of the servant of the suffering servant reads like a veritable 5th Gospel which can be put alongside those of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If one takes the Isaiah sections on God’s servant in their entirety as Christians do, then Jesus certainly far better fulfills the prophecy.

Next:  Christianity and Islam:  Conflict over True Christianity

Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet

This is the 2nd blog in a series in a series.  The 1st blog is One Christian looks at Islam looking at Christianity. 

In these blogs I am looking at some Islamic missionary materials aimed at converting Christians to Islam.  My goal is to help prepare my fellow Christians for discussion, dialogue or debate with Muslims about the nature of Christianity and about who Jesus is.   “Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence…” (1 Peter 3:15).    In this blog I will look at some of the claims of the Islamic proselytizing materials regarding prophecy. 

According to their materials, Islam believes in all prophets and messengers sent before Muhammad and “in the holy books revealed to those prophets in the original forms of their revelation.”  (emphasis mine).   Muslims claim that the transmissions of revelations prior to the Qur’an all suffer from inaccuracies and misinterpretations (which doesn’t justify a total rejection of such scriptures but limits their usefulness).    Thus only the Qur’an can determine what exactly the ‘original forms of their revelation’ are.   (They would say Christians and Jews cannot argue from their own Scriptures since only Islam knows what the correct Scriptures are).    This would present for me a certain conundrum.  First, in what manner are all prophets being honored if their messages must always be read with grave reservations?  How does one find out what their original form was?   Second, unless the Qur’an specifically refers to and lists each and every passage it accepts and spells out its original form, how would a believer know which to accept?   What in fact would happen is the prophets and messengers would not be read all that much and so their messages would not be honored.  The fullness of God’s revelation would thus be mitigated and curtailed by doubts about its authenticity.    The burden of proof would be on Islam to show why their version of Scriptural stories should be considered more truthful than the more ancient documents of the Jews and Christians.   This is especially so since the Jews have a tradition of being remarkably fastidious when it comes to every jot and tittle of their Torah.

So though the literature claims that the Qur’an itself is the “final arbiter and only criterion” for interpreting or correcting previous scriptures (Implying no human interpretation is necessary), how this can be is not clear to me.    Does the Qur’an actually address every particular passage of the Bible as to what is accurate and not?  If not then how do you decide – except for human interpretation – as to which are true and how to interpret them.  And if the Qur’an does not address each prophetic passage of the Bible (and it is the only and final arbiter of dealing with previous scriptures), how can Muslims claim they in fact accept and believe all of these prophets and prophecies?   Does the Qur’an instruct give specifically instructions as to which passages of the Bible to read?  If not then it wouldn’t seem that Islam can claim it accepts and believes in all the prophets and messengers before Muhammad.    Muslims would probably say it is only safe to read the Qur’an but then that seems to undermine the claim that they really respect and believe all the previous prophets.

The literature says, “…a Muslim has no reason to reject the essence of any passage of the Bible if such a passage is confirmed by the Qur’an.”   But what if the Qur’an doesn’t mention a specific passage?   Does that not mean that Muslims might in fact be missing and ignoring part of God’s revelation by ignoring God’s previous revelation through His chosen prophets?   The Islamic claims to respect and accept the ancient messengers of God seems to me undermined by their inherit distrust of the messages in the received tradition.

The Islamic literature said, “…if the Bible (or other scriptures) contains apparent prophecies about the advent of Muhammad, and if the Qur’an confirms that fact, then there is nothing unusual or objectionable in referring to such prophecies.”     This would seem to mean that the Qur’an must specifically say that the prophecy is being fulfilled by Muhammad, if the Qur’an is not that specific then claims that Muhammad actually fulfilled a prophecy are invalid.   So in the instances where Muslims claim that Isaiah 42 or Deuteronomy 18:17-18 are actually prophecies of Muhammad.  My question would be does the Qur’an specifically list or quote these verses and label them as prophecies of Muhammad?  If not, then in keeping with the principle spelled out in the Qur’an, one could not claim they are in fact prophecies referring to Muhammad.  The literature did not quote the Qur’an on this issue, so it made no reference to any specific statement in the Qur’an that would indicate the Qur’an specifically thought Muhammad was prophesied by the Jewish scriptures. 

Since according to Islam the Old Testament does not specifically refer to the name “Jesus”, Christians cannot claim He was prophesied clearly.  So they readily take the Old Testament passages which Christians claim apply to Jesus and apply them to Muhammad.    The question for me would be if the Muslims want to be consistent can they show in the Qur’an that in fact the Qur’an itself declared these specific prophecies apply to Muhammad, or do these ideas come from a time much later than Muhammad when the Muslims were dialoguing with the Christians?   If the Qur’an does not specifically point out the prophecies in the Jewish scriptures as pertaining to Muhammad, then it would seem that the Muslims themselves are misapplying the Old Testament prophecies to Muhammad.    How many times does the Qur’an specifically quote an Old Testament prophetic verse and directly apply it to Muhammad?    Did the notion that the Scriptures of the Jews predicts the appearance of Muhammad occur in the Qur’an or is this simply a later addition in Muslim thinking where they try to imitate Christian claims?   If the later then by their own claims of what the Qur’an says regarding prophecy, they cannot apply the prophecies to Muhammad for by their own words it is only the Qur’an which is the arbiter of the meaning and use of the ancient messages of the prophets of God.

Next:  Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet (2)

 

 

 

The God Who Does Not Despise the Sinner

In a previous blog I mentioned Fr. Theodore Pulcini’s A Brief Guide for Christian-Muslim Dialog.    Fr. Pulcini mentions what can be a basis for a discussion between Christians and Muslims but also notes there are significantly different and even contradictory ideas about sin and salvation which cannot be ignored in any real dialog.    For example, he writes:

Because Muslims do not recognize the universal and corruptive power of sin, unleashed as a result of original sin, they see no need for salvation in the Christian sense. What you should do, according to the Islamic view, is simply live a good life, pleasing God in all that you do. Submit to God and follow his directives. Religion, to the Muslim, does not mean salvation from sin; it means following the right path, or the sharii`a, mapped out by Islamic law. … That difference in emphasis is very important. If one recognizes the pervasive power of sin, salvation is not just an option; it is a necessity. Christians lament the fact that an incomplete understanding of original sin led early Islam to “throw out the baby with the bath water” with regard to their understanding of sin. …  they have missed what Christians consider to be the central truth of human existence: that no matter how hard we try to conform to “right practice,” we will fall short of the goal. We cannot live the kind of life that God wants by our own power. And that is why salvation is necessary.

That difference in understanding is reflected in the Christian emphasis on repentance and receiving God’s forgiveness rather than an emphasis on keeping God’s Law (Torah, Quran) and is a major difference between how Christians understand God as versus how Muslims and Jews view God and humanity’s relationship to Him.   For Christians if strictly and perfectly keeping God’s law was possible and all that was needed, then Christ serves no purpose as we do not need God’s forgiveness and salvation, all we need is more strict observance of the Law.  Christians would say the very revelation of God’s love and mercy is that He forgives sinners who repent, and does not base salvation on our perfectly keeping every detail of the Law.  God’s love and mercy trumps His demands for righteousness, or maybe more correctly His righteousness turns out to be forgiveness, mercy and love not judgment as we sometimes incorrectly ascribe to Him (see Job 42:7-8)

The difference in belief, thinking and emphasis seemed very clear to me in the priest’s prayer of the Divine Liturgy before the Trisagion Hymn (Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal…) when he prays:

Holy God… who does not despise the sinner , but instead has appointed repentance unto salvation…

God is not so rigidly righteous as to condemn His human creatures for their sinful failings, rather in that He is love, He loves us while we are still sinners because He desires our salvation not our condemnation.  He takes into account our weaknesses and provides us a way to the Kingdom of heaven even when we fail to follow or obey His commandments – through forgiveness and love.

A Brief Guide for Christian-Muslim Dialogue

For any Orthodox interested in learning more about Islam and possibly a basis for a dialogue with Muslim co-workers or neighbors, I would recommend: Fr. Theodore Pulcini’s  A Brief Guide for Christian-Muslim Dialogue from the Orthodox Peace Fellowship’s magazine and webpage, In Communion.   Fr. Pulcini points out the theological differences that make dialogue difficult -  Christians and Muslims do not have a common understanding of sin or a need for salvation, and so differ greatly on their understanding of God, the role of scripture and of a prophet, and on who Christ is.   Still there are some points where Christians can explain the understanding of God as love to Muslims – the basic message of the Gospel.