An Islamic challenge

There are are few questions or challenges of Christian faith that are popular with Muslims.

One that many Christians, alas (and as a great indictment of church discipling) is the question, prompted by Zakir Naik, I believe is:

Show me in the Bible where Jesus says "I am god, worship me", in those words.

Of course there is nowhere in the NT that answers this silly questions. Silly because it seeks to impose the questioner's demand on God when the demand suffers a number of failings; it commits the informal fallacy of 'precise language'. It applies a post-enlightenment conceptualization on an ancient Jew and so is anachronistic as well as anatopic. The demand would be simply laughable to a rabbi or pharisee. It implicitly challenges the Biblical data that points to God in trinity; It ignores God's name, Yahweh, seeking Yeshua to identify as some generic 'god'. Perhaps like the Islamic 'allah' (Ive seen discussion that claims this is a generic word for 'god' or a name, but if a name its provenance seems to be pagan)

So here's how a conversation might go, with various answers:

Note, always start with a clarifying question:

1 - "What do you mean by 'god'?"

You might expand this by illustration: do you mean 'allah', or some pagan 'god', or do you mean 'Yahweh' or do you mean some other uncreated entity? 

They might default to 'Allah' but here the reply is:

"Allah' is not a god it is a concoction of Muhammad and is a limited god dependent on the creatures to be god." 

[Allah's three important eternal names are "compassionate, merciful and loving" But all require eternal objects of those characteristics to be actualized. Allah's only external object is a creature: man, so he is dependent upon a creature to be eternally god.]

OR

The 'Christian god', might be defined.

"For a start no Jew would use the word "God" they would use the word Adonai. But Yeshua would never claim to be Adonai, because that would localize the almighty and be completely nonsensical in Jewish terms. Now that might work for Allah, because he's already localized in material reality: the material eternal Quran must have a physical location as must the material Allah with real body parts.

This demand also makes the mistake of what we call the 'bad author'. A bad author can only tell the reader who a character is, just makes a claim without a basis in action. A good author demonstrates who the character is by action and interactions with other characters. Doesn't even need to explain it.

Now, Yahweh is a good author in Messiah, so he shows us who he is to demonstrate his credentials for his claims.

Take Luke 22 from v 66: He calls himself the Son of Man: this refers to the divine figure in Daniel 7. Daniel is one of the prophets that you say Muslims honour. So honour him now by accepting his word! Here is the anointing of the Son in his incarnation, showing that he is God.

And take Mark 14:62: even better, Yeshua claims to be Son of Man (a divine being who receives service due to God), sitting at the Right Hand of Power (Psalm 110:1). This shows the Son, anointed in his incarnation to bring the Kingdom of God to we who turn to him in repentance!

Another example is in Mark 2:5-10 where Yeshua does 'God thing': he forgives sins, he knows what men are thinking in their minds, and heals the man by a word: all actions that reverse the fall of Genesis 3. 

He doesn't need to answer Naik's peurile question. Naik needs to bow before him in humble repentance.

Perhaps we need to study these passages together!