Non-Muslim Residents of an Islamic State
Posted: February 23, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam 2 Comments »
People who live under the protection of an Islamic government enjoy special privileges. They are referred to as “the Protested People” (ahl al-dhimmah or dhimmis), meaning that Allah, His Messenger (pbuh), and the community of Muslims have made a covenant with them that they may live in safety and security under the Islamic government.
In modern terminology, dhimmis are “citizens” of the Islamic state. From the earliest period of Islam to the present day, Muslims are in unanimous agreement that they enjoy the same rights and carry the same responsibilities as Muslims themselves, while being free to practise their own faiths.
The Prophet (pbuh) emphasised the duties of Muslims towards dhimmis, threatening anyone who violates them with the wrath and punishment of Allah. He said:
He who hurts a dhimmi hurts me, and he who hurts me annoys Allah.
Whoever hurts a dhimmi, I am his adversary, and I shall be an adversary to him on the Day of Resurrection.
On the Day of Resurrection I shall dispute with anyone who oppresses a person from among the People of the Covenant, or infringes on his right, or puts a responsibility on him which is beyond his strength, or takes something from him against his will.
The successors of the Prophet, the caliphs, safeguarded these rights and sanctities of non-Muslim citizens, and the jurists of Islam, in spite of the variation of their opinions regarding many other matters, are unanimous in emphasising these rights and sanctities.
Says the Maliki jurist, Shihab al-Din al-Qarrafi:
The covenant of protection imposes upon us certain obligations towards the ahl al-dhimmah. They are our neighbours, under our shelter and protection upon the guarantee of Allah, His Messenger (pbuh), and the religion of Islam. Whoever violates these obligations against any one of them by so much as an abusive word, by slandering his reputation, or by doing him some injury or assisting in it, has breached the guarantee of Allah, His Messenger (pbuh), and the religion of Islam.
And the Zahiri jurist, Ibn Hazm, says:
If one is a dhimmi, and the enemy comes with his forces to take him, it is our obligation to fight the enemy with soldiers and weapons and to give our lives for him, thus honouring the guarantee of Allah and His Messenger. To hand him over to the enemy would mean to dishonour this guarantee.
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Excerpt from The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi pp 312-314.
Dr Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has published more than 120 books, including The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam and Islam: The Future Civilization. He has also received eight international prizes for his contributions to Islamic scholarship, and is considered one of the most influential Muslim scholars living today.
In Praise of Christians (at least some of them)
Posted: February 21, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Islam 10 Comments »
Fr Michael Fuller
In my working life I have occasion to work with the local Christian Anglican clergy. One of them, the Rev Michael Fuller of St George’s Church in Kensington, London, has just got back from a pastoral visit to Cornwall. Michael knows I am a Muslim and we occasionally speak about our respective faiths. Last Friday in Cornwall he met some Muslims who have to travel many miles to pray Jummah on Fridays (all the way to Bristol I think). Michael had the bright idea of contacting the local Church of England priest and asking if these Muslims could have their prayers in the local church – thus saving them many miles of travel each Friday. The priest agreed asking only that the Muslims recognise that it was a Christian place of worship – which they gladly did.
Fr Michael has shown other acts of consideration and kindness to Muslims which I need not go into here. His good works go unreported in the media. As Muslims we hear so often from the bigots and aggressive missionaries who plague our communities and MDI is right to respond to these attacks with robust arguments concerning the truth about Islam. But let us remember that there are Christian priests out there who quietly and lovingly communicate something of the original gospel message of Jesus.
This is not entirely unexpected as the Quran speaks of such people:
Thou wilt surely find that, of all people, the most hostile to those who believe [in this divine writ] are the Jews as well as those who are bent on ascribing divinity to aught beside God; and thou wilt surely find that, of all people, they who say, “Behold, we are Christians,” come closest to feeling affection for those who believe [in this divine writ]: this is so because there are priests and monks among them, and because these are not given to arrogance.
(5:82) Muhammad Asad translation
Farhan Qureshi and the Muslim Debate Initiative
Posted: February 11, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Debates, MDI Leave a comment »Recently MDI invited Farhan Qureshi to two public debates. Both are viewable on this blog. Here are his reflections on his stay with us in London.
From: Farhan Qureshi
To: Abdullah MDI
Sent: Saturday, 11 February 2012, 5:28
Subject: Statement for MDI
Here is my statement:
In January 2012 I had the opportunity to engage the entire Muslim Debate Initiative team which was by far a spectacular and spiritual experience for me. MDI showed me nothing but kindness and hospitality and represented their faith and tradition completely in a positive and respectful manner. Being a former Muslim I was absolutely humbled by their character and professionalism throughout my stay in London. I thank them again for their invitation and willingness to engage in debate on controversial issues. This speaks volumes in terms of their genuine faith and dedication.
Farhan Qureshi
Islam, Gay Rights and The Death Penalty, A Muslim View
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Islam, Militant Secularism, The Bible, The News 5 Comments »
The offending leaflet with content censored by the media
Today’s Guardian newspaper reports:
Three men have been jailed after becoming the first to be convicted of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation for handing out a leaflet calling for gay people to be executed.
Ihjaz Ali, Kabir Ahmed and Razwan Javed gave out the pamphlet, entitled The Death Penalty? which showed an image of a mannequin hanging from a noose and quoted Islamic texts that said capital punishment was the only way to rid society of homosexuality.
So what is one to make of this news? I have conflicting emotions. On the one hand I dislike any attempt to stir up hatred against any section of the community. Islam is a religion par excellence of community cohesion and social tranquility. But Islam does not recognize the concept of ‘gay people’ as if they were a separate race of humans to the rest of us. Shariah is concerned with our behaviour, our public actions, not with what it done in private away from the public gaze. However, any public manifestation of fornication, homosexuality or adultery, if observed by four reliable witnesses, can in certain circumstances, merit very harsh punishments including the death penalty. According to the Quran, God may choose to forgive all aberrations except for the association of other ‘deities’, other powers and other agents, with Him.
By advocating these harsh punishments Islam is in agreement with Christianity and Judaism, at least as originally conceived. God’s law given to Moses on Mount Sinai required the death penalty for those who committed such acts:
‘If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them’ (Leviticus 20:13 KJV)
Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, absolutely agreed with this requirement:
‘Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.’(Matthew 23:1-3 NIV)
A similar attitude to the Law is found later in the same chapter:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:23-24 NIV)
This is not to say that I agree with the crude way these leaflets were written. Perhaps it was inevitably going to rouse the gay lobby and the law to suppress these views. And the three Muslims have been sent to prison and have had their freedom of speech crushed. I think the sentence handed down by the court was unfair. I have no doubt that the churches, if they say anything at all, will mutter platitudes about the Almighty loving ‘gay people‘, as if this quasi ‘classification’ of humans presented a different set of moral issues than ‘adulterous people’ or ‘fornicating people’.
University of Sussex Isoc: 4 MDI Lectures
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, MDI 9 Comments »Monday 13th February
Talk: “Islam and terrorism- is there a relationship?”
Speaker: Adam Deen
Venue: Fulton A
Time: 6-8pm
♦
Tuesday 14th of February
Talk: “Jesus Christ: Prophet or God”
Speaker: Paul Williams
Venue: Arts A2
Time: 7:00pm-8:30pm
♦
Wednesday 15th of February
Talk: “Shariah Law:Barbaric or Misunderstood”
Speaker: Abdullah Al Andalusi
Venue: Arts A1
Time: 6-8pm
♦
Monday 20th of February
Talk: “Islam or Secularism: Which one makes more sense”
Abdullah Al-Andalusi
Room:TBC
Beautiful Character of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) – Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
Posted: February 8, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam Leave a comment »He had a soft and gentle character, he was not harsh…”It’s by a Mercy of your Lord you were gentle…and if you were harsh and hard hearted, they would have fled from around you.” The Quran
Hamza Yusuf Hanson is an Islamic scholar, teacher, and co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkley, California, United States. He is an American convert to Islam, and is one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by Islamic scholars to Christian leaders, calling for peace and understanding.
Gay Marriage and Islam: A Muslim Response
Posted: February 4, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Islam, Militant Secularism, The Bible, The News 7 Comments »
- The Bishop of London, Rt Revd & Rt Hon Richard Chartres
Today’s London Times proclaims:
Bishop of London backs gay marriage rebellion among clergy
“The Bishop of London has welcomed a rebellion by nearly a quarter of his clergy calling for churches to be permitted to register for civil partnerships.”
This is reported fully today in The Times but that article is behind a paywall.
The Mail Online has a free version:
“Nearly 100 clergy have joined a rebellion over a Church of England ban on civil partnership ceremonies.”
“The clergy have signed a letter demanding that the General Synod, the Church’s parliament, allow priests to hold ceremonies for same-sex couples in their churches.”
So how does Islam view the prospect of ‘Gay marriage’?
I think some preliminary remarks are in order:
People who complain that Muslims refuse to fit in with what are called “civilised values” are unaware of just what is being demanded of Muslims. These values are part of the air we breath whether our politics are of the left or right, conservative or liberal. They are the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age.
I think they can be summarised in four ways:
Firstly, man is now the measure of all things and nothing is to be judged in relation to an absolute or to a transcendent reality.
Secondly, man is both judge and criterion of judgement. There is no higher court of appeal or source of pardon.
Thirdly, whatever happens occurs within earthly time, for human existence stretches only from birth to death. Mans earthly life is therefore unconditionally important; to live is the supreme value, at death the game is over and lost.
Finally, there is the conviction that man is basically good; the evil which surrounds him is never his fault. It can only be blamed on institutions, on society, the economic system or defective education.
These beliefs, so readily taken for granted, cannot be reconciled with Islam (or traditional Christianity). What we do in this life echoes in eternity and we will be held to account for all our actions and thoughts by a God who is both completely just and the most merciful of all those who show mercy. Mankind is called to submit to Gods will, not to do our own will. As Jesus is reported to have said to his Lord, ‘May thy will be done, not mine’. This spiritual disposition is vanishing fast from Britain’s Christian churches, which have made some astonishing compromises with the spirit of the age. But Muslims see religion as a citadel resistant to decadence and changing tides of opinion, not as one strand in the pattern of modern life – the western way of life – but as an alternative to it. Those who have gone astray are invited to return and that is that. For Muslims there is one fixed mark, set down in the midst of times flow and that is the Faith as it came from God through the Prophet.
So back to our question: ‘How does Islam view the prospect of ‘Gay marriage?’
Muslims, and the dwindling band of traditional Christians, find this campaign to legitimise so-called ‘gay marriage’ astonishing (and abhorrent) for two reasons:
The very idea that men and women can alter God’s clearly expressed will seems like presumption and blasphemy. The Christian churches, it seems, are trying desperately to keep up with the times and are in dereliction of their duty to be faithful to the revelation they received.
Secondly, God has expressly given us his commands in the Torah, the Gospel and the Quran. They cannot be changed. We, as Muslims, stand should to shoulder with those few remaining traditionalist clergy who resist these compromises with modernism and secularism.
Traditionally Christianity has taught unambiguously that a priest or a Bishop is somebody who ought to live by the Bible and accept that the Bible’s teaching is quite clear in this matter – that heterosexual marriage is the right and only context for sexual relationships. And Muslims of course agree.
To the surprise of many, we have the ironic situation where Islam is not a threat to traditional British values, which historically are based on Christian values, but their ally. Islam complements and reinforces them. I could duplicate many times over the same point: whether it be the sanctity of life, opposition to abortion on demand, the rejection of euthanasia and assisted suicide, or the respect and courtesy due to women, Muslims find a natural affinity with the few remaining traditional Christians in our churches, and hence with the best of British values and culture which were formed by the Bible and the teachings of Jesus.
But of course Islam is a challenge to the forces of atheist materialism that reduce the individual to a mere consumer of goods; it is a challenge to those hedonist philosophies that deny God and worship the man-made idols of short-term pleasure and greed.
In conclusion, we must ask why have the churches at the beginning of the 21st century abandoned the teaching of the Torah, Jesus of Nazareth, the Catholic Church, and the Protestant Reformers?
Perhaps a consideration of the larger social context will suggest a possible solution.
Muslim philosopher Shabbir Akhtar in his excellent book The Quran and the Secular Mind (2008) comments provocatively (p.7):
‘We must note that there are now few authentically religious Jews and Christians in the West even among the clergy and the rabbinate. All intellectually sophisticated Jews and Christians are secularised and, in their attitudes towards domestic issues, as opposed to foreign policy, are typically humane capitalists whose religious beliefs serve as a decorative veneer on their underlying secularised religious humanism. All charges are variations on the stock Muslim accusation, rooted in the Qur’an, that Jews and Christians have achieved a cosy accommodation with the world – or with modern secularism, in our day – at the cost of being unfaithful to their dogmatic traditions. Modern versions of Christianity and Judaism appear to be carefully disguised variants of secular humanism. Predictably, therefore, many Jews and Christians, unlike virtually all Muslims, live conscientiously and comfortably within the arrangements of the liberal secular humanist state. Islam is now unique in its existential decision, though not intellectual capacity, to confront rather than accommodate the secularist world-view. It is a faith whose adherents are sounding a lone note of courageous defiance in the battle against secularism while other trumpets are blowing retreat.
5 things the Khilafah gave the world
Posted: February 4, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam Leave a comment »
The Christology of the Synoptic Gospels: some introductory comments
Posted: January 29, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, The Bible Leave a comment »Today, however, such a reading of the gospels is no longer possible. To start with the most obvious observation: there are four gospels, and each has a different picture of Jesus and his teaching. The fourth gospel, that of St John, presents the reader with a substantially different account of the teaching of Jesus, a conflicting chronology of his life (for example the date of Jesus’ crucifixion) and perhaps most significantly, presents a christology that is radically different from the synoptics. Thus NT scholars have long concluded that the gospels tell us as much about the views of their authors as they do about the events they allegedly describe.
As Christopher Tuckett (Professor of New Testament Studies in the University of Oxford) in his critically acclaimed work Christology and the New Testament: Jesus and His Earliest Followers Edinburgh University Press 2001) comments:
‘The picture of Jesus in John is in many respects very different from the picture in the other three, so-called ‘synoptic’, Gospels. Furthermore, most would agree that, in general terms, the synoptic picture is more likely to reflect the realities of Jesus‘ own time, and the Johannine account represents an (at times) extensive rewriting of the Jesus tradition by a later Christian profoundly influenced by his own ideas and circumstances. However, it is now recognised that what applies to the Fourth Gospel applies equally to all the Gospel: the synoptic Gospels, quite as much as John, have been influenced by the ideas and the circumstances of their authors. Thus in reading all the Gospels, we have to be aware of the fact that we reading accounts of Jesus‘ life as mediated by later Christians and hence we may learn much, if not more, about the latter as about Jesus himself in studying the Gospel texts.’
pp. 105-106 (emphasis in original)
‘Jesus is Lord’
Posted: January 29, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, The Bible Leave a comment »by JDG Dunn
The history of this confession of Jesus as Lord in earliest Christianity largely revolves round the question, How significant is the application of this title to Jesus? What role or status does this confession attribute to Jesus or recognise as belonging to Jesus?…The problem is that ‘lord’ can denote a whole range of dignity – from a respectful form of address as to a teacher or judge to a full title for God. Where do the early Christian references to the lordship of Jesus come within this spectrum? The answer seems to be that over the first few decades of Christianity the confession of Jesus as ‘Lord’ moved in overt significance from the lower end of the ‘spectrum of dignity’ towards the upper end steadily gathering to itself increasing overtones of deity.
We need not doubt that the Aramaic mari underlies the Greek kyrie (vocative)…Mar was used of the first century BC holy man Abba Hilkiah, presumably in recognition of the charismatic powers attributed to him. Moreover, ‘lord’ was largely synonymous with ‘teacher’ at the time of Jesus, and Jesus was certainly recognised to have the authority of a rabbi or teacher (Mark 9:5 etc). We can therefore say that the confession of Jesus as Lord was rooted within the ministry of Jesus to the extent that he was widely acknowledged to exercise the authority of a (charismatic) teacher and healer (cf. Mark 1:22,27).
Whether ‘Lord’ already had a higher significance for Jesus himself during his ministry depends on how we evaluate Mark 12:35-37:
‘While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked, ‘Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared:
‘ “The Lord said to my Lord:
‘Sit at my right hand
Until I put your enemies
Under your feet.”‘David himself calls him “Lord”. How then can he be his son?’
Even if it contains an authentic word of the historical Jesus (as is quite possible) it need only mean that he understood Messiah to be a figure superior to David in significance and specially favoured by Yahweh. It does not necessarily imply that he thought the Messiah was a divine figure (Psalm 110 after all probably referred to the king).
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From: Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity (emphasis in the original) pp.53-54.
So Dunn recognises that the title ‘lord’ originally denoted a human being. As the term began to be used in pagan contexts as the Gentile mission spread, where it was well established as a title for the cult deity in the mystery religions (especially Isis and Serapis), and also in Emperor worship – ‘Caesar is Lord’- a radical alteration of the meaning of the term occurred. Above all, St Paul advanced this change in meaning quite deliberately. He uses Old Testament texts that speak of Yahweh and applies them to Jesus (e.g. Romans 10:13). For Paul, ‘Lord Jesus’ had become a title of divinity.
In a profound sense, Paul founded the religion of Christianity we know today.
Why the Christian Understanding of Salvation is ‘Morally Grotesque’
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Islam, The Bible 26 Comments »
Here is an extract from my opening presentation at London Central mosque in December 2011:
Islam places great stress on God as a God of mercy and forgiveness whom the individual can approach directly without the need of any mediator or priest. God says in the Quran:
‘O My servants, who have transgressed against their souls. Do not despair of the mercy of God, for He forgives all sins, He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.’
(39:53). From this understanding, which was shared by Jesus, flow certain critical observations regarding the later Christian view of the necessity of Jesus’ alleged vicarious atonement.
The Christian idea that guilt can be removed from a wrongdoer by someone else being punished instead is morally grotesque. Or if we say that God in the person of God the Son punished himself in order to be able to justly forgive sinners, we still have the absurdity of a moral law which God must satisfy by punishing the innocent in place of the guilty. As the medieval theologian St Anselm wrote in his work Why God Became Man (Cur Deus Homo), ‘it is a strange thing if God so delights in, or requires, the blood of the innocent, that he neither chooses, nor is able, to spare the guilty without the sacrifice of the innocent’.
I believe the basic fault of the Christian understanding of salvation is that it has no room for divine forgiveness. For a forgiveness that has to be bought by the bearing of a just punishment, or the offering of a sacrifice, is not forgiveness, but merely an acknowledgement that a debt has been paid in full. The Cross is not a symbol of forgiveness at all: on the orthodox Christian view, it denotes the repayment of a debt, as the infinity of Original Sin is atoned for by the infinite sacrifice of God’s own temporary death. But what humanity really needs, as we look back over our long record of disobedience, is a model of true forgiveness by a God who does not calculate, who imposes no mean-spirited ‘economy of salvation’ worthy only of accountants and bookkeepers. As the Bible teaches: The letter killeth – the spirit giveth life.
But in the authentic teaching of Jesus to be found in the synoptic gospels (that is the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke) there is, in contrast, genuine divine forgiveness for those who truly repent. In the Lord’s Prayer we are taught to address God directly and to ask for forgiveness for our sins, expecting to receive this, the only condition being that we in turn forgive one another. There is no suggestion of the need for a mediator between ourselves and God or for an atoning death to enable God to forgive.
One of the most famous of all Jesus’ parables is found in Luke’s gospel: the so-called parable of the prodigal son. It is a story about how God treats repentant sinners. 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 does not need a sacrifice in order to forgive anyone. As the English convert from Christianity to Islam Ruqaiyyah Maqsood wrote: ‘the split-second of turning from Christianity to Islam is the realisation of the truth of the parable of the Prodigal Son. In the parables, 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’s story of the tax collector and the Pharisee, the tax collector standing far off 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. Jesus insisted that he came to bring sinners to a penitent acceptance of God’s mercy: ‘Go and learn what this means, he said, quoting God: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Matt 9.13)
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 Matthew 18 we read Jesus’ teaching:
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.”
So God freely forgives our sins and expects us to forgive our neighbour too. The Lord’s Prayer, of course, has the same commandment.
So how is a human being to attain eternal life, that is, how are we to be saved? Interestingly, Jesus was asked this very question and you can read his answer in the gospel according to Mark chapter 10. Here 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.”
Note 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. No. 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. Note carefully the sequence.
That this passage caused embarrassment to later gospel writers (who used Mark’s gospel when compiling their own gospels) 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.
Jesus’ teaching was fully in accord with contemporary Jewish understanding. Leading Jesus scholar EP Sanders, in his authoritative work on Jesus’ Jewish background says, and I quote, ‘The forgiveness of repentant sinners is a major motif in virtually all the Jewish material which is still available from the period (p 18, Sanders Jesus and Judaism). For Judaism sees human nature as basically good and yet also with an evil inclination that has to be continually resisted. However, God being aware of our finitude and weakness is always ready to forgive the truly repentant. In Islam there is a very similar view.
God is frequently described in the Quran as ar Rahman ir Rahim (The Merciful and the Compassionate).
Jesus, mirroring the teaching of the Quran, teaches that God knows our weakness and forgives those who, in the self-surrender of faith, bow before the compassionate Lord of the universe. Once, the Prophet Muhammad reported that the Devil said: ‘By my honour, O Lord, I shall never stop misguiding your servants so long as life remains in their bodies! The Almighty, the Glorious Lord, said: By My honour, I shall never cease forgiving them, so long as they ask forgiveness of Me!‘ (Ahmad).
Another wonderful saying is: ‘O son of Adam – so long as you call upon Me and ask of me, I shall forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind. O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you. O son of Adam, were you to come to Me with sins as great as the earth itself, and were you then to face Me ascribing no partner to Me, I would bring you forgiveness in equal measure.’ (Tirmidhi, Ahman).
However, it needs to be pointed out that just as some people refuse to stop on the crazy path to their own destruction, despite the intercession of their loved ones, so the future lives of some people will be extremely unpleasant because of their absolute refusal to accept the love and mercy of God and to live in a way that is acceptable to him.
God tells us in the Quran: ‘If God were to punish people according to their wrongdoing, he would not leave on earth a single living creature; but He gives them respite for a stated term; and when their term expires, they will not be able to delay their fate for a single hour, just as they cannot bring it forward by a single hour.‘ (16:61)
Our salvation lies in our own hands and in the supreme compassion of Allah, who loves each individual He has created.
***
I would like to share with you some teaching about God’s mercy and forgiveness that is to be found in authentic Hadith. The way they speak of God may surprise you if you think that Muslims believe in a remote and distant deity.
The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said, Indeed, God is more happy with the repentance of His servant than a man who stops in a barren, desolate land; with him he has his riding animal. He then goes to sleep. When he wakes up he realizes that his mount is gone. He searches for it until he is on the verge of dying (for the mount was carrying his supplies and provisions). He then says, “I will return to the place wherein I lost it, and I will die there.” He went to that place, and he was then overcome by sleep. When he woke up, his mount was standing right beside his head: on it was his food, his drink, his provisions, and the things he needed. God is more happy with the repentance of his believing servant than the aforementioned man when he finds his mount and his provisions. (Bukhari & Muslim)
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A man heard chirping in a thicket, found some young birds, and took them. Their mother came and flew around his head, so he uncovered them and, when she alighted on them, wrapped them up together in his garment and brought them to the Prophet. He commanded the man to put them down and he did so. The mother would not leave them. The prophet said, “Do you wonder at the mercy of the chick’s mother for her young? By Him who sent me with the truth, God shows more mercy to His servants than this mother shows to her young. Take them back and put them where you found them, and their mother with them.” (Abu Daud).
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The Quran says:
“Say, if you love Allah, obey me (Muhammad), Allah will love you and forgive you your sins, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful” Quran 3:31
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For them will be a Home Of Peace in the presence Of their Lord: He will be Their Friend, because they practiced righteousness. (Quran 6:127)
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“To those who believe and do deeds of righteousness hath Allah promised forgiveness and a great reward” Quran 5:9
*
The messenger of God said, ‘When God completed the creation He wrote the following, which is with Him above His throne: ’My mercy takes precedence over My wrath’
*
The Prophet said, “Among those who came before you there was a man who had murdered ninety-nine people. Then he set out asking whether his repentance could be accepted or not. He came upon a monk and asked him if his repentance could be accepted. The monk replied in the negative and so the man killed him. He kept on asking till a man advised him to go to such and such village. So he left for it but death overtook him on the way. While dying, he turned his chest towards that village where he had hoped his repentance would be accepted, and so the angels of mercy and the angels of punishment quarreled amongst themselves regarding him. Allah ordered the village towards which he was going to come closer to him, and ordered the village whence he had come to go far away, and then He ordered the angels to measure the distances between his body and the two villages. So he was found to be one span closer to the village he was going to. So he was forgiven.”
The messenger of God pbuh said: ’No one will be saved from the hell-fire and admitted into Paradise by his deeds alone. When asked, ‘Not even you O messenger of God? he said, ‘Yes, not even me, unless God covers me with His mercy.
*
And finally,
A man came to the Prophet (peace be upon him) and asked,’ When will the day of judgment come?’ The Prophet replied, ‘What have you prepared for the judgment day that you are so concerned for it? He replied, ‘I do not have any good deeds in my account, but I do have one thing: I love Allah and His Messenger.’ The Prophet then said, ‘In that case, do not worry; you will be with those whom you love.’”
(Bukhari)
*
This is Islam’s great secret, unknown to most in the West: the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). This man’s life and teaching came to me as a complete surprise. What an amazing man! A real prophet of God.
But above even this - dare I say it - is the outrageous and astonishing grace and mercy of God!
Compel belief? The Quran Says No!
Posted: January 18, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam 3 Comments »باسم الله الرحمان الرحيم
If it had been the Lord’s Will they would all have believed all who are on earth! Wilt thou then compel mankind against their will to believe!
No soul can believe except by the Will of Allah and He will place doubt (or obscurity) on those who will not understand.
Surah 10 verses 99-100. Abdullah Yusuf Ali comments:
If it had been God’s Plan or Will not to grant the limited Free Will that He has granted to man, His omnipotence could have made all mankind alike: all would then have had Faith, but that Faith would have reflected no merit on them. In the actual world as it is, man has been endowed with various faculties and capacities, so that he should strive and explore, and bring himself into harmony with God’s Will. Hence Faith becomes a moral achievement, and to resist Faith becomes a sin. As a complementary proposition, men of Faith must not be impatient or angry if they have to contend against Unfaith, and most important of all, they must guard against the temptation of forcing Faith, i.e., imposing it on others by physical compulsion, or any other forms of compulsion such as social pressure, or inducements held out by wealth or position, or other adventitious advantages. Forced faith is no faith. They should strive spiritually and let God’s Plan work as He wills.
To creatures endued with Will, Faith comes out of an active use of that Will. But we must not be so arrogant as to suppose that that is enough. At best, man is weak and in need of God’s grace and help. If we sincerely wish to understand, He will help our Faith; but if not, our doubts and difficulties will only be increased. This follows as a necessary consequence, and in Qur’ānic language all consequences are ascribed to God, the Cause of Causes.
Islam and Homosexuality – by Hamza Yusuf
Posted: January 7, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam Leave a comment »A Very Early Easter Sermon
Posted: January 6, 2012 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity | Tags: blood sacrifice, evangelical christians, giles fraser Leave a comment »Thinking about the celebration of Holy Week in my new adopted cathedral brings home to me quite how important it is for Christians to insist upon a non-sacrificial reading of the death of Christ. For too long, Christians have put up with a theory of salvation that has at its core the idea that God requires the sacrifice of his own son so that human sin can be cancelled. “There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin,” we will all sing. The fact this is a disgusting idea, and morally degenerate, is obvious to all but those indoctrinated into a very narrow reading of the cross.
No, Jesus is not a blood sacrifice to appease a vicious God. The story is not an endorsement of the idea that sacrifice brings peace with God but an attack on it. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” Jesus insists, going on to side with the scapegoats themselves. The Gospel is clear. I am with the hunchback. I am with the one cast out. He became one with the rejected and the cast out. And thus he suffered the same fate. This is not to endorse sacrificial theology but to condemn it.
Yet despite this clear identification with the victim, much official Christianity holds on to the sacrificial reading of Christ’s death. The present pope has insisted that the Eucharist must be seen as a sacrifice rather than as a meal among friends, and evangelical Christians remain committed to their theory of Christ being sacrificed to offset human sin.
Lord have mercy.
————————-
The above text is an extract from an article originally in the Guardian newspaper 2009
It was entitled: The merciful crucifixion: What vicious God would demand Jesus sacrificed for our sins? We should ditch this view of Easter
The Strange Silence of Christian Apologist Sam Shamoun
Posted: December 27, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Debates 54 Comments »
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.
——————————————
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…
How Good Logic Leads to Good Theology
Posted: December 22, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, The Bible 14 Comments »“God the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see”
(1 Timothy 6 vv. 15-16).
Paul says that God alone is immortal. Immortal means he does not die. Check the dictionary. Therefore, anyone who believes that Jesus died cannot believe that Jesus is God. Such a belief would contradict what Paul said here. Furthermore, to say that God died is a blasphemy against God. Who would run the world if God died? Paul believed that God does not die.
Paul also said in that passage that God dwells in unapproachable light — that no one has seen God or can see him. Paul knew that many thousands of people had seen Jesus. Yet Paul can say that no one has seen God because Paul was sure that Jesus is not God.
For unto us a Child is born
Posted: December 20, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Dawah 1 Comment »-
Who is this really describing?
It’s Christmas time and Trinitarian Christians are proclaiming the birth of God as the baby Jesus 2000 years ago. Their favorite Biblical prophecy concerning this event is Isaiah 9:5-6. How amazing that Isaiah speaks so clearly about Jesus! – and how baffling that Jews and Muslims remain so stubborn in their rejection of a divine Messiah!
But wait a minute – let us revisit this famous passage which will be read out in churches all over the world this week.
The Jewish Study Bible translates the passage thus:
For a child has been born to us,
A son has been given us.
And authority has settled on his shoulders.
He has been named
“The Mighty God is planing grace;
The Eternal Father, a peaceable ruler” -
In token of abundant authority
And of peace without limit
Upon David’s throne and kingdom,
That it may be firmly established
In justice and in equity
Now and evermore. The zeal of the LORD of Hosts
Shall bring this to pass.
(Isaiah 9:5-6)
The scholarly commentary informs us:
“The Mighty God…ruler”:
‘This long sentence is the throne name of the royal child. Semitic names often consist of sentences that describe God; thus the name Isaiah in Hebrew means ”The LORD saves; Hezekiah, “The LORD strengthens”; in Akkadian, the name of the Babylonian king Merodach-baladan (Isa.39.1) means “the god Marduk has provided an heir.” These names do not describe that person who holds them but the god whom the parents worship.
Similarly, the name given to the child in this verse does not describe that child or attribute divinity to him, contrary to classical Christian readings of this messianic verse.’
So it seems that this passage is not a prediction about God becoming a man after all. In its historical context the verses probably refer to Ahaz’s son Hezekiah. This seems to be the consensus of modern scholars.
The Jewish Study Bible is published by Oxford University Press. This magisterial text is a must for those involved in Dawah.
Happy holidays!
Ineffectual Grace: A Reply to John Samson
Posted: December 19, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christian extremism, Christianity | Tags: christianity 24 Comments »Ineffectual Grace
John Samson is a Christian minister in Arizona, USA.
After MDI’s recent successful debate at the London Central Mosque between Rev Dr Steve Latham and myself on the subject of Salvation in Islam and Christianity I was interested to read how Christians felt about the arguments I used. Did they have any responses to my challenge? So naturally I was pleased to discover that a certain John Samson had put up parts 1 & 2 of my debate on his website called Effectual Grace. He wrote, ‘This very useful debate on the subject of “salvation” took place at the prestigious Regents Park Central Mosque in London, England on December 4th, 2011′.
By way of introducing myself to him I posted this comment on his website:
Hi John, I’m glad you liked the debate. Can I ask how you thought it went and do you have any observations about the Islamic position on salvation I defended?
regards
Paul Williams
He replied:
Hi Paul,
I am always amazed to watch these interactions, knowing that such a debate could never take place in a Muslim ruled country. It is only the freedom of the west that would allow such a debate. I thought the debate allowed the two sides to articulate their positions very well.
My observations? I listened intently to all you had to say. I thought you spoke very well to present the Muslim side but in all honesty was disappointed that you suggested Paul and Jesus were at odds regarding salvation, stemming from the implicit notion that because Paul never met Jesus, he had a different gospel. Yet there is very little in Paul that is not also in Peter and John and so on… Peter wrote “we are not redeemed by silver and gold but by the precious blood of Christ..” etc. That sounds very Pauline to me… and it also sounds very Christlike too Matthew 26: 26-28 “Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you,for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
This would summarize my own position: “Every verse of all four Gospels is meant by the authors to be read in the shadow of the cross. When we start reading one of the Gospels, we already know how it ends—the death and resurrection of Jesus as a substitute for our sins (Mark 10:45; Matthew 26:28)—and we should have that ending in mind with every verse that we read. And this is exactly what each of the Gospels intends. For example, Luke begins his story with the great word from the angel to the shepherds, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10). And Luke does not leave us wondering how Jesus would be a Savior. He connects the suffering and death of Jesus to the New Covenant of forgiveness—“This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). And the New Covenant promises forgiveness for sins: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). So, according to Luke’s portrait of Jesus the blood of Jesus is being shed for the forgiveness of sins.”
May I ask you to take a look at this Paul? It is a teaching by Dr. John Piper at a Pastor’s Conference entitled “Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?” http://vimeo.com/10951333
Regards,
John
I was greatly encouraged to find a Christian who had taken the trouble to watch my debate and offer his observations, however critical. So in reply I posted this comment on his website:
John, I want to thank you for your comprehensive feedback. All your points can be effectively countered, but at this point to keep this simple and manageable I want to focus on the key point as I see it. You outline your argument thus:
‘This would summarize my own position: “Every verse of all four Gospels is meant by the authors to be read in the shadow of the cross. When we start reading one of the Gospels, we already know how it ends—the death and resurrection of Jesus as a substitute for our sins (Mark 10:45; Matthew 26:28)—and we should have that ending in mind with every verse that we read. And this is exactly what each of the Gospels intends.’
And I think scholars of redaction criticism would agree with you whole heartedly. But, they would also point out that the evangelists crafting of the material at their disposal and their incorporating myths and legends into the gospels precludes us from simply reading off the the surface of the text and drawing uncritical conclusions.
As Evangelical Professor Michael Licona states: “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 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.
But turning from the evangelists own telling of the story to the historical Jesus and his teaching which is probably better preserved in the gospel of Mark and Q (than in the highly interpreted gospel of John), what do we read?
How is a human being to attain eternal life, that is, how are we to be saved? Interestingly, Jesus was asked this very question and you can read his answer in the gospel according to Mark chapter 10. Here 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.”
Note 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. No. 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. Note carefully the sequence.
That this passage caused embarrassment to later gospel writers (who used Mark’s gospel when compiling their own gospels) 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.
One last point – I want to invite you to an imaginative reconstruction of the Mark 10 story. In my version the story continues…. at this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. But later that evening he had a change of heart and said to himself ‘Jesus’ offer of eternal life and is just so amazing that I will give all my wealth to the poor after all. Jesus said if I did this I would have treasure in heaven.’ So the next day he was true to his word and sold his possessions and gave all his money to the poor. That night the man died quietly in his sleep.
Did he go to heaven?
About 10 minutes after I posted this comment on his site I discovered that Samson had deleted the 2 videos of the debate, and deleted all my comments and his reply. Shortly after that I received the following email from Samson:
Paul,
I dont appreciate your rhetoric at all. Quoting a scholar is not proof of anything.
Secondly, if he does not believe the Bible is God’s word, or believes parts of the Gospels are myths and legends, how can he in any way be an Evangelical? You say he is, I sure dont.
I could quote many scholars who would be more than happy to defend the inspiration and reliability of the Bible, both of its text and of its message, my friend, Dr. James White being one of them.
As I have reflected more on the debate, I feel Steve let the Christian side down badly by over stepping the boundaries of orthodoxy. Therefore after some thought, I no longer feel the debate is useful for people so have removed the debate from my blog. There are other debates I would recommend folk to watch which at least gives the orthodox Christian view. With all due respect to Steve, he did not provide that (in my opinion).
You also miss the entire point of Mark 10 - see here: http://www.fpcjackson.org/resources/sermons/Derek’s_SERMONS/Mark/17b%20mark_10.17to31.htm
I do not think further discussion would be profitable.
John
This is most peculiar behavior. The Muslim Debate Initiative has a track record of debating Christians in a fair, courteous and intellectually rigorous manner. Samson was happy to post the “very useful” MDI video on his site having watched it first. He replied to my request for comments, but then apparently threw a tantrum when I had the temerity to counter his arguments in what I hope was a scholarly manner. Why is he not willing to defend his version of ‘orthodox Christianity’ against Muslim critique?
Furthermore he speaks most unfairly and inaccurately about the Rev Dr Steve Latham’s supposed theological ‘unorthodoxy’. Steve, who has a PhD in Christian theology from the prestigious Kings College here in London, holds to the central doctrines of Evangelicalism as understood by evangelical Baptists in the UK and the US. Could it be that Samson, an erstwhile Englishman, has not only taken up residence in America but inculcated the worse accesses of Christian fundamentalism which so plague that otherwise beautiful country? I hope not.
It is a shame that his only response to a reasoned Muslim challenge to his strict Calvinist Christian theology is censorship and apparently a fit of pique.
The Inhabitants of Hell meet the Mercy of God
Posted: December 17, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Islam 1 Comment »-
The Choice
Abu Hurayrah related that the Messenger of God (pbuh) said, “On the Day of Resurrection, a caller will cry out, ‘Let every people follow what they worshiped!’ They will be asked, ‘Is there a sign between you and Him that will let you know Him?’ They will say, ‘Yes!’ So their legs will be uncovered and Allah will give permission to all those who used to prostrate to Him by their own free will to prostrate. And Allah will make those who used to prostrate only to be seen by others or to ward off criticism unable to prostrate. Their backs will be made as a stiff single part, so whenever they try to prostrate, they topple on their backsides.
Then they will come upon the bridge over Hell and intercession will begin. They will murmur, “O Allah, bring them to safety! Bring them safety!’ And the faithful ones will pass over the bridge in a wink of an eye. Others will pass like lightening, others like the wind, others like birds, others like strong horses. Some will cross over whole and safe, others will be sent across bruised, while others will be flung into the fire of Gehenna. By the One who holds my soul in His hand, none of you will be more vehement in pleading for justice than the faithful ones will at that time for their brothers who are in the fire. They will say, ‘Our Lord, they fasted with us! They prayed with us! They made pilgrimage with us!’ He will say to them, ‘Bring out of it all the ones that you know.’ So their forms will be forbidden to the fire as they enter it and they will bring out many people, until they say, ‘Our Sustainer none are left of those You have commanded us to extract.’ Then He will say to them, “Go back and bring out whoever you find that has a dinar’s worth of goodness in them.’ And they will bring out many people. And He will say to them, ‘Go back and bring out whoever you find that has half a dinar’s worth of goodness in them.’ And they will bring out many people. Then He will say o them, ‘Go back again and bring out whoever you find who has an atom’s weight of goodness in them.’ And they will bring out many people. And this will go on till they say to Him, ‘Our Lord, we have left no one in it who has any trace of goodness in them.’
Allah will then declare, ‘The angels have interceded, and the prophets have interceded, and the faithful have interceded. Only the Most Merciful of those who show mercy (Arhamur-Rahimin) is left to intercede!’ And He will bring out with His grasp the people who have never done any good and He will throw them into a river at the mouth of Paradise called the River of Life and they will emerge from it like pearls. When the people of Paradise see them, they will know them, ‘These are Emancipated of God. He has made them enter Paradise without any of their own actions, and without any goodness that they offered!’ And God will say to them, ‘Enter Paradise! What you have seen is yours.’ They will say, ‘Our Sustainer, You have given us what You have not given anyone of the worlds!’ He will say ‘I have for you what is even better then this.’ They will ask, ‘O Our Sustainer, what could be better than this?’ He will say, ‘My contentment with you, for I shall not be displeased with you after this ever again.’”
(Bukhari & Muslim)
(I wish I had had the time to read out this wonderful hadith during my recent debate!)
Part 2 of our MDI debate at London Central Mosque: Salvation in Christianity and Islam
Posted: December 14, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Debates, Islam, The Bible, Videos 3 Comments »Part 2 is now out. It records the rebuttals and the Q & A session.
It took place at the prestigious London Central Mosque on 4th December 2011.
Speakers:
Rev Dr Steve Latham, Director for Continuing Ministerial Development at Spurgeons College, London (a Christian Seminary)
Paul Williams, Director of Muslim Debate Initiative
In my view this was an excellent debate and showcased how MDI hosts, moderates and conducts its debates in a respectful and intellectually rigorous manner.
Recent MDI debate at London Central Mosque: Salvation in Christianity and Islam
Posted: December 13, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Islam, MDI, Videos 6 Comments »Part 1 has just come out of production, so here is the film of my debate with the pastor of the Church where I became a born-again Evangelical Christian.
It took place at the prestigious London Central Mosque on 4th December 2011. We discussed the following questions (and a lot more!)
How are we saved? How does God save mankind from the consequences of their evils acts? Can we ever be forgiven? How do we obtain this forgiveness from God? Do we need the sacrifice of Jesus, or is striving in good actions with repentance enough? What faith do we need? Did Jesus teach atonement of our sins through his blood, or by faith and good actions alone?
Speakers:
Rev Dr Steve Latham, Director for Continuing Ministerial Development at Spurgeons College, London (a Christian Seminary)
Paul Williams, Director of Muslim Debate Initiative
In my view this was an excellent debate and showcased how MDI hosts, moderates and conducts its debates in a respectful and intellectually rigorous manner.
My Review of last nights debate at SOAS
Posted: December 10, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams 4 Comments »MDI speaker Sami Zaatari made a joint presentation with Christian politician Alan Craig on what members of the Muslim/Christian communities should know about the other’s beliefs at the University of London, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) yesterday evening.
In my review I want to focus on three arguments put forward by Alan Craig last night.
In the context of an impassioned presentation which was really his own story about how he became a Christian and how central Jesus is in his life, he argued the following:
1) That “only through Jesus sacrificial death on the cross can humanity find forgiveness for all its sins”. This is the standard Christian position. But, oddly, this is not the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
During the Q&A I read Mark 1 to Craig:
‘And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.’
I pointed out that this ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ took place before Jesus’ ministry had even begun and there is the clear implication that those who confessed their sins did receive forgiveness by God.
Craig’s answer to me was that God was outside time, so Jesus’ death on the cross had a timeless effect on the past, present and future forgiveness of sins, so even those who came before Jesus received forgiveness through the cross. But this somewhat extravagant metaphysical claim has some unacceptable consequences.
John the baptist in his ministry and Jesus in his ministry never taught that forgiveness of sins was conditional on the latter dying on the cross for them. Why this curious omission? Consider the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples:
‘This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but rescue us from the evil one.
If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.’
Matthew 5: 9-14
So according to Craig, this prayer is quite misleading, for this simple (and typically Jewish) petition to God for forgiveness is not going to be answered in those terms, but will be rerouted via Jesus’ sacrificial death to become effective! But why was Jesus so coy about the real mechanism for the forgiveness of sins? Is Craig’s hypothesis at all plausible? Craig will need to ponder this question further.
2) He asserted that the whole Bible is inspired by God and is “perfect”. During the Q & A he seemed to brush off as a minor irrelevance criticism from an audience member that as Christians in the early church and even today are still disunited about which books constitute the Bible, how can he speak of a perfect and inspired book? To add to this significant point I added my own: The Bible in places explicitly denies that it is the Word of God. I cited Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (7:12)
‘To the rest I say this I, not the Lord: If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.’
Craig’s response to this was to claim that for Christians Jesus himself was the ‘Word of God’. Craig thereby implicitly conceded my point that not all of the Bible can be claimed to be the Word of God. There are other passages I could have cited to make the same point, and contrary to Christian apologetics, the Bible as such nowhere claims to be the Word of God or even inspired (compare the Qur’anic claim concerning its own origin).
3) Craig asserted at the beginning of his presentation that in Jesus of Nazareth,
“all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell”
(citing the deutero-Pauline Letter to the Colossians, 1:19).
Yet during Q & A when Craig was reminded that Jesus was ignorant of certain facts such as the date of his return (information known only to God – see Mark 13:32) Craig asserted that Jesus as the incarnate deity had “imperfect knowledge” of future events. So which is it to be? Is Craig going to simultaneously assert that Jesus was God in his fullness and yet was God with reduced powers and attributes, such that God was ignorant of certain facts and could even die (despite the clear scriptural teaching that God is immortal, eternal)? Clearly there is much muddled thinking here.
Craig told us that as a businessman he was extremely successful, traveling the world on Concorde and employing an army of factory workers. This was all very impressive. But, I am sad to say, his grasp of the Bible and Christian theology struck this reviewer at least as superficial and muddled. Sami Zaatari, in contrast, had a good grasp of the Bible and the Quran and left the impression that Islam is far more credible as a way of salvation and a sure path to God.
—————————————————————————————————
Yesterday, a Muslim friend emailed me about the Christian claim he so often hears that the Bible is ‘the word of God’. I replied:
the usual Christian argument is to quote 2 Timothy 3:16 as a defence of the Bible’s own claim to be the Word of God. But there are 3 problems with this:
i) if you read this verse in its context the author is clearly referring to the Old Testament not the New Testament
ii) then as now there are different canons of scripture (the list of books that make up the Bible). The diaspora Jews at the time of Paul used a longer Greek translation but the Palestinian Jews used a shorter version which omitted key books. Which is the real Bible?
iii) nearly all NT scholars believe that 2 Timothy is a forgery, ie the letter claims to be by Paul but is really by someone else pretending to be by him. If this is correct, then Christians are putting their trust in the testimony of a forged book to support their truth claims about the Bible!
hope this helps…
Judging by the Injil
Posted: November 27, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, Christianity, Islam 5 Comments »© Paul Williams June 2011
The U.S.A today has seen a sharp rise in incidents of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim feeling. Expressions of such feeling have been noticeable in Mosque bombings, arson, violence towards Muslims, discrimination at work, and even murder. The sources of such negative feelings come from a number of traditionally intolerant sources; the right-wing neo-conservatives, radicals, white supremacists, and fundamentalist Christians.
In their expressions of hate towards Muslims, these groups invoke alarmist, paranoid conspiracy-theory narratives of ‘Islamisation of the USA’ or ‘stealth Jihad’ by what amounts to only 2% of the population.
Militant fundamentalist Christians, have added a further layer to this narrative, and combined an aggressive concept of Christian proselytisation , to wage ‘Spiritual warfare’ on non-believers (which is a cross between the Crusades and Psy-Ops worthy of a Cold war regime). This usually involves a number of methods, ranging from publishing aggressive and skewed articles online, to video propaganda, and disturbing non-Christian community events with loud speakers, large insulting signs and scattering leaflets amongst crowds of ‘heathens’.
Although we have come to hear of the more infamous groups of militant Christians, such as Westboro Baptist Church, others, of a more obscure variety exist, such as Acts 17 Ministries – infamous for yearly disrupting the Arab cultural festival in Dearborn Michigan. This year, they intent to mass distributed a number of anti-Islamic propaganda, focusing on a number of Islamic theological beliefs; in an attempt to ‘counter the spread of Sharia law’.
One such article they intend to distribute, concerns attacking the Islamic belief that Jesus (a.s) is not divine. In order to achieve this, they resort to straw manning the interpretation of Quranic quotes which tell Christians to study their own Bible to see the truth of Islam. The militant Christians claim that it is the Bible itself which ‘clearly’ and ‘uncontrovertibly ‘proves’ the divinity of Jesus, and therefore Islam is wrong in it’s claims, and Muhammed (saw) is a false prophet.
David Wood of Acts 17 Ministries wrote and produced this little pamphlet. You can read it here. Let’s scratch the surface, and put this argument to the test…
God in his Word, the Holy Quran ( 5:46-47), tells us that:
‘And We caused Jesus, the son of Mary, to follow in the footsteps of those earlier prophets, confirming the truth of whatever there still remained of the Torah; and We vouchsafed unto him the Gospel, wherein there was guidance and light, confirming the truth of whatever there still remained of the Torah, and as a guidance and admonition unto the God-conscious.’
‘Let, then, the followers of the Gospel judge in accordance with what God has revealed therein: for they who do not judge in the light of what God has bestowed from on high – it is they, they who are truly iniquitous!’
Furthermore we read in Quran 3:3-4:
Step by step has He bestowed upon thee from on high this divine writ, setting forth the truth which confirms whatever there still remains of earlier revelations: for it is He who has bestowed from on high the Torah and the Gospel aforetime, as a guidance unto mankind, and it is He who has bestowed upon man the standard by which to discern the true from the false.
Behold, as for those who are bent on denying God’s messages – grievous suffering awaits them: for God is almighty, an avenger of evil.
It is important to bear in mind that the Gospel frequently mentioned in the Qur’an is not identical with what is known today as the Four Gospels, but refers to an original, since lost, revelation bestowed upon Jesus and known to his contemporaries under its Greek name of Evangelion (“Glad Tidings”), on which the Arabicized form Injil is based. It was probably the source from which the Synoptic Gospels derived much of their material and some of the teachings attributed to Jesus. The fact of its having been lost and forgotten is alluded to in the Qur’an in 5:14
Quran 5:14:
And likewise, from those who say, “Behold, we are Christians.” We have accepted a solemn pledge: and they, too, have forgotten much of what they had been told to bear in mind – wherefore We have given rise among them to enmity and hatred, to last until Resurrection Day and in time God will cause them to understand what they have contrived.
Thus the Qur’an elliptically rejects the Christian’s claim of being true followers of Jesus: for, by wrongfully elevating him to the status of divinity they have denied the very essence of his message.
Furthermore, by their going astray from the genuine teachings of Jesus – and thus from true faith in God – is the innermost cause of the enmity and hatred which has so often set the so-called Christian nations against one another and led to unceasing wars and mutual persecution.
So in light of this Quranic teaching Muslims are entirely justified in asking Christians ‘What did Jesus say about himself?’ ‘Where did Jesus claim to be God?’
Our Early Sources of Information about Jesus
Most Christians who are not familiar with biblical scholarship probably think that knowing about the historical Jesus is a relatively straightforward matter. We have four gospels in the New Testament, so to know what Jesus said and did we should read the gospels. So what is the problem?
The problem in part is that the gospels are full of discrepancies and were written decades after Jesus’ ministry by authors who had not themselves witnessed any of the events of Jesus’ life.
But it gets worse. For honest readers notice not just the occasional contradiction or error in the New Testament; there are the existence of forgeries claiming apostolic authorship and containing fake eye-witness testimony (such as the notorious Second Letter of ‘Peter’); the troubling absence of the doctrine of the Trinity; the worrying interpolations/corruptions that have been discovered at crucial points in the NT: the so-called ‘Johannine Comma’ of 1 John 5:7 is clearly Trinitarian in teaching but is known to be a much later insertion by a Christian scribe; the absence of any resurrection appearances in the earliest gospel of Mark (check it out!); the fabrication of stories about Jesus (the famous story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 was not part of the gospel but added much later by an unknown scribe). All these facts are understandably deeply worrying for Christians, for how do we really know what is authentic and what is the inauthentic material in the NT? And to make matters worse – what about the unknown interpolations and corruptions that probably exist but still lie undetected?
But surely the most troubling phenomenon in the New Testament must be the difference between the Synoptic gospels and John. Most Christians are serenely unaware of the problem because they are not taught to notice what is evident to all serious students of the Bible.
Jesus in the Fourth Gospel
In John, Jesus speaks with an unclouded consciousness of a divine existence with God from before his time on earth (5.19ff and 8.12ff make this clear). But the question cannot be ducked whether the Jesus of the fourth gospel was intended as a historical portrayal, whether Jesus of Nazareth actually spoke in the terms used by John. Were the Christological claims of John’s gospel already in place from the beginning of Christianity? It is hardly likely.
Consider the following
James D. G. Dunn, one of the leading moderate New Testament scholars around and no “anti-supernatural liberal,” writes:
Few scholars would regard John as a source for information regarding Jesus’ life and ministry in any degree comparable to the Synoptics. It is worth noting briefly the factors which have been considered of enduring significance on this point. One is the very different picture of Jesus’ ministry, both in the order and the significance of events and the location of Jesus’ ministry. Another is the striking difference in Jesus’ style of speaking (much more discursive and theological, in contrast to the aphoristic and parabolic style of the Synoptics). As Strauss had already pointed out, this style is consistent, whether Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, or to the woman at the well, or to his disciples, and very similar to the style of the Baptist, as indeed of 1 John. The inference is inescapable that the style is that of the Evangelist rather than that of Jesus. Probably most important of all, in the Synoptics Jesus’ principal theme is the Kingdom of God and he rarely speaks of himself, whereas in John the Kingdom hardly features and the discourses are largely vehicles for expressing Jesus’ self-consciousness and self-proclamation. Had the striking ‘I am’ self-assertions of John been remembered as spoken by Jesus, how could any Evangelist have ignored them so completely as the Synoptics do? On the whole, then, the position is unchanged: John’s Gospel cannot be regarded as a source for the life and teaching of Jesus of the same order as the Synoptics.
(James D. G. Dunn, Christianity In The Making Vol. 1, Jesus Remembered, 2003, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 165-166.)
Other conservative Christian scholars who have similar types of verdicts to offer regarding the historicity of the gospel of John include: Bruce Stein, Craig A Evans and Martin Hengel, to name a few.
So when we consider the synoptic gospels on the one hand and John’s gospel on the other, it is impossible to think that Jesus spent his short ministry teaching in two such completely different ways, conveying such different contents, and there were simply two traditions, each going back to Jesus, one transmitting 50 per cent of what he said and another one the other 50 per cent, with almost no overlaps. Consequently, for the last 150 or so years scholars have had to choose. They have almost unanimously, and I think entirely correctly, concluded that the teaching of the historical Jesus is to be sought in the synoptic gospels and that John represents an advanced theological development, in which meditations on the person and work of Christ are presented in the first person, as if Jesus said them.
So what did Jesus reportedly say of himself and the important question of eternal life in our earliest gospel?
Jesus in the Earliest Gospel
Mark chapter 10 reads:
As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honour your father and mother.” ’ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money* to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
I invite you to consider the following
1) Jesus, as a humble Jew, denies that goodness comes from himself: only God is good. Ergo, Jesus is making clear that he is not God.
2) According to Jesus we are saved by obeying the commandments of God (note the striking contrast to Paul’s gospel about Jesus)
3) But in this particular encounter the man lacked one thing (only) that blocked him from eternal life: his riches. Jesus advises him to ’go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven’ so the man will receive his heavenly reward as a result of selling his possessions. After that, he is invited to follow Jesus. Note carefully the sequence.
4) This passage caused embarrassment to later gospel writers (who used Mark’s gospel when compiling their own gospels) who changed Jesus words to remove Jesus’ denial that he is good/God:
Here is Matthew’s altered version in 19:17 (compare this with Marks original)
And he 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.’
Now let us turn to Paul’s answer to the same question 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. Jesus’ answer to the question about salvation focuses on obedience to the Torah. As a Prophet to the Jewish people, Jesus sees his faithfulness to God expressed in adherence to the Creator’s commands and precepts in the Torah.
Mark 2:5-7 and the forgiveness of sins
The point can be easily missed. At first the issue seems to be Christological – ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?; ‘…that you might know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…‘ (2.7,10). But that is a dubious interpretation. What Jesus actually says is, ‘Your sins are forgiven‘ – something the priest could say in the Temple to everyone who had brought a sin offering. Note too that the phrase ‘the Son of Man‘ evokes no comment, it was clearly not seen as a claim to exulted or divine status by the crowd (indeed in Aramaic idiom the phrase means ‘man’). In the parallel story in Matt 9.8 the crowd ‘glorified God who had given such authority to men’.
Furthermore, John the Baptist presumably pronounced sins forgiven (see Mark 1.4/Luke 3.3) without apparently provoking any accusation of breaching the divine prerogative. Also in the Prayer of Nabonidus from Qumran, Nabonidus says ‘an exorcist pardoned my sins’, where human mediation of divine forgiveness is clearly implied (4QprNab4).
The gospels also narrate that the disciples were given authority to forgive the sins of others – see Matthew 16.19; 18.18 and John 20.23 (‘if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’)
The Light
My comments re the historical problems surrounding the gospel of John apply to all David Wood’s quotes from that gospel. I will not repeat them here. But let us not forget that according to Matthew 5 Jesus taught his disciples,
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
So the true followers of Jesus are light to the world - just as Jesus was.
The Final Judge
David Wood is correct to say that only God will be the Judge on the Day of Judgment but is wrong to draw the conclusion that Jesus was therefore God. That is not how the apostles understood Jesus’ role and status. If we survey the apostles teaching in Acts (assuming for the sake of argument its’ authenticity) we read in Peter’s very first sermon the following:
“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, was a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know” Acts 2:22
‘Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah’ Acts 2:36
And every day in the temple and at home they did not cease to teach and proclaim Jesus as the Messiah. Acts 4:22
He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. Acts 10:42
Now admittedly this is not Islamic teaching but it suggests that Jesus was a man who:
i) did miracles by the power of God
ii) was made lord and messiah by God
iii) was believed to be the messiah by his first followers
iv) as a man was appointed to be judge of the living and the dead by God.
Nothing of Peter’s teaching in Acts suggests that Jesus was believed to be Yahweh or God Incarnate or the Second Person of the Trinity. Jesus was a man, a servant like David and the Messiah.
So, in conclusion, we read the Word that God speaks to the Christians of the world, with a clear warning:
People of the book, do not go to excess in your religion, and do not say anything about God except the truth: the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was nothing more than a messenger of God, His word, directed to Mary, a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers and do not speak of a ‘Trinity’ – stop this, that is better for you – God is only one God, He is far above having a son, everything in the heavens and earth belongs to Him and He is the best one to trust. (Qur’an, 4:171)
The Concept of God in Islam
Posted: November 14, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams Leave a comment »I will be reading from Gai Eaton’s beautifully written work The Concept of God in Islam at London Central Mosque’s Islamic Circle at 3pm next Saturday, 19th November 2011.
Location
The Islamic Cultural Centre and The London Central Mosque
146 Park Road,
London, United Kingdom, NW8 7RG
Room:
Regents Park Mosque Library, 1st floor
Review of the debate: a personal view
Posted: November 11, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams 8 Comments »Yesterdays debate (Sami verses Michael Dantzie, see article below) was part debate – part shambles. The moderator, ahem, did not moderate effectively, if at all; the Christian refused to answer questions put to him during the Q & A, and the whole thing descended into chaos. Definitely the funniest and worse debate I’ve ever attended.
But on the plus side:
Abdullah saved the day. He not only successfully persuaded the Christian to come along (when he got cold feet and wanted pulled out), he stepped in to moderate the proceedings when all order had collapsed, and ensured some decency to the event.
To say that Sami out-classed his opponent would be a massive understatement. All Michael could do was preach to the audience for 25 minutes and later he got increasingly annoyed with the audience when we had the temerity to question him on the coherence of his views.
Sami just sat there calmly watching the chaos unfold before him, occasionally refuting questions from the audience.
so:
Christian side 0/10
Muslim side 10/10
Decency and good order 0/10
Important news: The Muslim Debate Initiative
Posted: October 28, 2011 Filed under: articles by Paul Williams, MDI Leave a comment »Salam
you may have noticed that this site now has a new button: Donate to Support MDI’s Work. PayPal is a safer, easier way to pay on-line without revealing one’s credit card number.
The Muslim Debate Initiative has started to raise funds on-line to grow and improve our work; purchase much needed new equipment; fund bigger – much bigger – events for Dawah; produce cutting edge research; and encourage and stage open debates between communities. Please consider donating generously to help our activities.
Could I invite you to set up a standing order/direct debit for as little as £5.00 (or the equivalent) a month? Every little helps.
Thank you
Paul Williams
Director
MDI
