The Strange Silence of Christian Apologist Sam Shamoun

Mr Sam Shamoun

Part 1

Mr Sam Shamoun has kindly reviewed my recent debate with Rev Dr Steve Latham on the subject of ‘Salvation in Islam and Christianity’.

Mr S Shamoun has compiled 14 separate responses which can be viewed here. I do not propose on this occasion to go through each and every point raised, but do I intend to focus on several key arguments in my presentation about which Mr S Shamoun is strangely silent.

I paraphrase here some key points that I made in my debate:

In Luke 15 Jesus’ teaches his disciples how God treats repentant sinners. (I am sure Mr S Shamoun is familiar with the passage so I will not reproduce it here.) Note that the Father when he sees his repentant son returning home does not say ‘Because I am a just as well as a loving father, I cannot forgive him until someone has been duly punished for his sins’, but rather he had compassion, and ran and embraced him and welcomed him home. So God in this story does not need a sacrifice in order to forgive anyone. God is loving enough to forgive directly. That was the whole glory of the Judaism which Jesus upheld.

Another example is to be found in Luke 18, the story of the tax collector and the Pharisee. The tax collector stood far off and would not lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner’. Jesus declared that this man went home justified before God.  This verdict is worth repeating: Jesus declared that this man went home justified before God.  Note Jesus does not mention the necessity of God dying for the man’s sins first. ‘For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.’ So this is how we are justified before God!

In my experience Christians often use the analogy of a ‘debt’ to explain how God needs someone to pay off our sin debt to him, and, because of his justice, he must take the payment from someone. Jesus however had very different ideas about God, namely that God is quite able to just cancel our debt of sin and forgive the sinner.

In my debate I made repeated reference to Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God in Matthew 18. This key text teaches how God deals with our sins. I had hoped Mr S Shamoun would respond to this teaching of Jesus. So just in case he missed it, here it is again:

The Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of pounds. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt.

“But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.

“But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand pounds. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.

“His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

“When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

I invite Mr S Shamoun to notice that according to Jesus, God freely forgives our sins. There is no mention of God dying for our sins or for the alleged necessity of God punishing sinners. The Lord’s Prayer, of course, has the same soteriology.

So how is a human being to attain eternal life, that is, how are we to be saved? I would have liked Mr S Shamoun to respond to Jesus’ teaching on this point in Mark 10. Perhaps Mr S Shamoun did not hear that part of my debate either. So here again is the story:

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”

“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Did Mr S Shamoun notice that Jesus does not tell the man that he must put his faith in Jesus, or that salvation is solely dependent on Jesus dying to atone for his sins? As a humble Jew Jesus recognizes that the attribute of goodness is found perfectly in God alone, not in himself; that to sincerely obey the commands of the Torah is the main road to salvation, but in this individual’s case he lacked just one thing – he needed to give away his wealth to the poor and this would result in his gaining treasure in heaven. Did Mr S Shamoun note carefully the sequence?

I had hoped Mr S Shamoun would take cognizance of how this passage caused embarrassment to later gospel writers (who used Mark’s gospel when compiling their own gospels), as is evident from the changes they made to Jesus’ words by removing his denial that he is good.

Here is Matthew’s altered version in 19:17 (compare this with Marks original)

And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ (Instead of Mark’s original ‘why do you call me good?’)

By way of contrast let us turn to Paul’s answer to the same question about salvation in Romans 10:9:

If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved

The differences are startling. As we have seen, Jesus’ answer to the question about salvation focuses on obedience to the Torah and giving to the poor.  As a Prophet to the Jewish people, Jesus taught that faithfulness to God is to be expressed in adherence to the Creator’s commands and precepts in the Torah. Paul’s religion focused on Jesus and he claimed that the Torah had been abolished. Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 taught precisely the opposite.

‘Today salvation has come to this house’ 

Here is an incident I did not mention but which is highly relevant to the question of salvation in Islam and Christianity: the story of Zacchaeus the Tax Collector,

Luke 19 tells us:

‘Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

That very day salvation came to Zacchaeus’ house. Jesus didn’t tell the man that the only way salvation could come to his house was when Jesus died for his sins; Jesus did not mention ‘justification by faith alone’; made no mention of God pouring his wrath upon Jesus in the place of sinners to gain Zacchaeus’ salvation. No. Zacchaeus simply repents to God (not Jesus!), does restitution, and is reconciled to both God and man. Full stop. How wonderfully Jewish and how wonderfully Islamic!

All this teaching demonstrates beyond doubt that salvation was available before Jesus’ alleged vicarious atonement even happened. Not only did it happen without a human sacrifice, the ‘mechanism’ of salvation is explained by Jesus as repentance to God (note, not to himself!) and in certain cases restitution to the poor.  Despite this being at the very heart of my presentation, Mr S Shamoun was strangely silent about this in his reply.

It appears to me that the evidence from authentic teaching of Jesus in the earlier gospels (and even they are demonstrably embellished and partially fictionalized) creates a fundamental problem for Mr S Shamoun.  What problem is this? The irreconcilable contradiction in the NT itself between Jesus’ repeated teaching on sin, salvation and God on the one hand (as illustrated above and passim) and the teaching of a man who never met Jesus (Paul) who created a religion about Jesus which Mr S Shamoun now follows.

But I hear Mr S Shamoun’s objection, ‘What do you make of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper?’ I have three comments to make:

1) Let us look at the earliest account we have in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (chapter 11)

‘For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’

A close examination of Paul’s phrase ‘For I received from the Lord...’ suggests to me that he meant to say something original and not just to reproduce an often repeated story. When handing down church tradition transmitted to him by unknown people, such as Jesus’ alleged death, burial and later apparitions (1Cor 15:3-5), he prefaces his statement with ‘I deliver to you…. what I also received’. In the case of the eucharist, however, his source is said to be Jesus, which suggests that it was directly revealed to him. ‘I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you’.  If I am correct in interpreting this passage, an account that is many years prior to the synoptic gospels, it may be the case that Paul’s wording may be the primary source for the NT formulation of the establishment of the Eucharist.

Put another way, there is a good chance that the eucharistic interpretation of the communal meal of the church was due to Paul, and that the authors of Mark, Matthew and especially Luke (who follows Paul most closely), introduced it into their respective accounts in the synoptic gospels.

2) Significant further evidence concerning the ‘Lords Supper’ is to be found in ‘The Didache’.

I invite you to watch this video first. I do not agree with all the assertions by the presenter but his discussion of the Didache is valuable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pRbuKDJhzU4

The Didache is a brief early Christian treatise dated by most scholars from the mid to late first century (see Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church article Didache). Thus this text is either contemporary with or even predates much of the New Testament itself!

Interestingly the work was considered by some of the Church Fathers to be part of the New Testament. In chapters 9 & 10 the Didache basically describes the same ritual as the one that took place in Corinth. But with some significant differences. There is no reference to the redemptive death of Christ, or remembrance, as formulated by Paul in 1 Cor 11! Clearly there were 1st century Christians who had a quite different understanding of the Lord’s Supper than Paul.

3) A third piece of evidence is to be found in Acts 3:1,

‘One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer – at three in the afternoon.’

So according to Acts, the first disciples seem to have attended the Temple and to have participated in the Temple cult: the clear implication of Acts 3:1 is that the first followers of Jesus observed the traditional hours of prayer. The hour of prayer was also the hour of Sacrifice: Psalm 141: 2 and Luke 1:10 indicate that the offering of incense was seen as occasion for prayer, and the offering of incense was itself part of the morning and evening sacrificial ritual.  Also Acts 21:24 tells us that the Jerusalem believers expected Paul to demonstrate his loyalty to the Temple by observing the prescribed purificatory rituals. The implication is clear: that the Jerusalem followers did not regard Jesus’ alleged death as an atoning sacrifice, let alone as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

Regarding the teaching of the other NT epistles I must confess to finding myself with a further problem. There are many good reasons for entertaining serious doubts about the authenticity of many letters attributed to Paul, John and Peter. Moderate mainstream biblical scholarship has serious reservations about the authenticity and apostolicity of 1&2 Timothy, Titus, Jude, 1,2, & 3 John, and 1&2 Peter. Many in the early church did not accept the authenticity of these books either (see Eusebius’ 4th century work Ecclesiastical History).

So, no one can say with any certainty what Peter and John and really thought on any given subject. Sadly we cannot rule out the possibly we are reading the words of a forgery. And forgeries (then as now) are deliberate intentions to deceive the readership. And who would wish to base their faith on carefully crafted deceptions?

Even the most respected conservative Evangelical NT scholars such as Michael Licona recently (and bravely) wrote

“It can forthrightly be admitted that the data surrounding what happened to Jesus is fragmentary and could possibly be mixed with legend”

Licona continued,

“there is somewhat of a consensus among contemporary scholars that the Gospels belong to the genre of Greco-Roman biography (bios).”

Then he goes on to say that

“Bioi offered the ancient biographers great flexibility for rearranging material and inventing speeches,…and they often included legend. Because bios was a flexible genre, it is often difficult to determine where history ends and legend begins”

Licona’s assessment of the gospel’s genre is clearly based on a thorough acquaintance with the subject. For further scholarly analysis I recommend to Mr S Shamoun the standard critical introduction to the gospel’s genre:

What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography 

by Rev Richard A. Burridge, Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Kings College, London. Burridge would certainly agree with Licona’s conclusions.

In mentioning these serious problems, well known to mainstream scholars for over a century now, I do not intend to destroy the faith of Mr S Shamoun. No. I simply invite him to become acquainted with responsible (and mostly Christian!) New Testament scholarship. If he wishes to enter into the fascinating world of historical and literary scholarship he is welcome to view the Recommended Reading List on my blog for examples of standard undergraduate texts.

I am sure that if he chooses to take this step he will find the adventure liberating and disturbing but above all spiritually advantageous.

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A few words regarding Mr S Shamoun’s article:

Islam’s Morally Grotesque Doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement.

A verse of Quran says: ‘And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another.  And if a heavily laden soul calls [another] to [carry some of] its load, nothing of it will be carried, even if he should be a close relative.  You can only warn those who fear their Lord unseen and have established prayer.  And whoever purifies himself only purifies himself for [the benefit of] his soul.  And to God is the [final] destination’ (Surah Fatir 35:18)

The hadiths mentioned from Sahih Muslim basically mean: for every Muslim that is saved from hell BY ALLAH’s FORGIVENESS, there is a truth-rejecting Christian or Jew that will go to hell. There is no mention of atonement or substitution, merely a statement of proportionality. Consider: were these particular Kafir Jews and Christians going to heaven before sin-laden Muslims were saved from hell? The answer is No. As we all know, the heaven bound Jews and Christians are mentioned in the Quran, ‘Surely those who believe and those who are Jews and the Sabians and the Christians whoever believes in Allah and the last day and does good – they shall have no fear nor shall they grieve [on the day of judgement]‘. [5.69]

The only possible explanation for the hadith using the phrase ‘rescue’, would be in the figurative sense, in that when two people have been given the same job, and one person who did better than the other is saved, and the other is punished, it is as if one has ‘rescued’ the other from that punishment, even though each was judged on their own merits.

Finally, even if there exists any Sahih hadith (a narration whose narrators appear reliable) and whose interpretation is clear, but is not reconcilable with the Quran, the Islamic Scholars have agreed that it is thrown out of consideration. This is because the Islamic scholars of knowledge have consistently taught “Khabr ul Ahad la yufid ul ilm” – single chain narrations do not benefit [certain] knowledge. This is because the human transmission of them passes through too few narration chains to render them free from error. Hadith scholars automatically classify such hadith narrations as ‘Shadh’ (odd), and cannot be used for any creedal formulations in Islam (for more information, please refer to Imam Shafi’is book ‘Al-Risala’, chapter on ‘Khabr ul Wahid’ [Single chain narrations]).

Part 2 follows inshallah…