The 6 biggies (in progress)

 David Wood gives an overview of the 6 questions or challenges he suggests are the most common posed by Muslims to Christians. David then added another in a different video.

They are:

• The Bible has been corrupted
• The Trinity makes no sense
• Where did Jesus say, "I am God, worship me"?
• How can God die?
• How can God punish one person for the sins of another person?
• If Jesus died for your sins, can't you sin all you want?
• Why did Jesus pray to God if he is God? 
  

 Let's look at them.

But first,  a question. As in any contentious discussion, you need information (see Koukl's 'Tactics' and 'Street Smarts') start with a question.

So when claims such as these are made, ask for more information with questions such as 'Why do you think that is the case?' or 'What do you understand or what do you mean by...?

Then I'll set out some notes that may be relevant to your response to the claim.

1. The Bible has been corrupted

Q: 'What do you mean 'corrupted'? OR 'Why do you think it has been corrupted, and by whom?'

Behind this is that Muslims claim the Bible foretold Mohammad as the last prophet, but no information can be found relating to this so the Bible must have been corrupted.

1. You mean like the Quran has been corrupted?

This will light a fuse because Islamic rhetoric is that the Quran has been preserved intact to the dot from all eternity. Of course it has not been with textual evidence of erasures and over-writing in early texts, there being no texts from before { }. The text was said to have been finalized by Uthman in {} who also burned the versions he didn't approve of. Uthman was not a prophet, so what gives? Pieces of the Quran have been eaten by a sheep, and lost. Many who had memorized sections of it were killed in battle. Jay Smith presented in London (Speakers' Corner) 27 different Qurans.

2. How can you say that, the Quran tells us that God protects the integrity of the Torah and the Gospel; how could it be corrupted. He's the same one who tells us that he protects the integrity of the Quran.

Refer to this video by David Wood. and this more recent one.

2. Let's look at what we know of the text of the Bible:

[textual history]

Compared to the text of the Quran.

2. The Trinity makes no sense

Q: What to you understand by 'the Trinity'?

The typical Muslim view is that the 'trinity' is God, Mary and Jesus. This appears to be a collocation of misunderstandings, perhaps from a garbled report on the RC adoration of Mary from early or aberrant Christian sources or confused oral reports.

1. The Trinity makes the best sense of the information in the Bible. The Bible shows the Father, Son and Spirit equally as God in conduct, knowledge, power, and will. The NT shows Yeshua as creator.

2. The Trinity shows God eternally personal and in eternal fellowship of love. God has no need of mankind to be either personal or love or to complete him. He made mankind rather than to serve him, to enjoy fellowship with him for ever.

3. The Trinity is not 'three gods'. But one God in substance in three centres of consciousness of shared purpose and will. This is similar to our own experience of multiplexed signals, or of how a business partnership works at law, or indeed in a pale way as to how a family is: husband and wife of one flesh and the child proceeding from them together as one family of one nature (human) in three persons.

4. The Quran shows a multiplicity in Allah: it speaks of his....{}

3. Where did Jesus say, "I am God, worship me"?

Islam holds out Jesus to be a  great prophet, but not divine in any way. Yet the Quran claims that he was sinless. It also claims that Jesus did not die on the cross but that Yahweh made someone else take his place and to look like him. Jesus was 'taken up' to heaven.

Q: Why does Jesus have to use your words to tell ancient Hebrews and 1st century Jews that he is the Creator?

Alternatively, this is an example of the informal fallacy of the 'false dilemma'. That is Jesus is only God if he uses the formula above, or if he doesn't use this formula (a formulation that would be foreign to the ancient Hebrews and the 1st century Jews) he is not 'god'.

But God is not constrained to use your made-up formula to say that he is God. He spoke and acted in first century AD Judaism, so he spoke in terms and lived a pattern that was signally meaningful to them. Islam wasn't even invented then, so how could it understand the Creator God?

Here's how Yeshua showed and said that he was God:

[walk on water/still the storm

I AM

He forgives sin

He instructs demons

I lay down my life, I take it up again. He is in sovereign over life and death, even his own.]

4. How can God die?

Islam's basic problem is that it can't accommodate the Triune nature of God and that if Jesus is God, then there is no other person who is god.

 

Q: When did God die? or 'What do you mean 'god died'? God cannot cease to exist!

They will say that we claimed God died when Jesus died on the cross. Here is an opportunity to reflect back on their misunderstanding of the Trinity, the nature of God and the nature of the Incarnation.

A related claim by Muslims is that 'anything that is in the creation cannot be God because it would be 'dependent' and that God doesn't enter into specific things within the creation'. However this amounts to 'made up' special pleading.

Yet the Quran contradicts this: S. 27:7-9 had Allah entering the burning bush before Moses. And the hadith Jami at-Tirmidhi 446 "Blessed and exalted is he descending to the earth's heaven every night" has Allah descending to the creation to hear prayers.

Refer to this video by David Wood.

And this one by Sam Shamoun.

1. The only begotten son of God entered human life, the life of his creature, to defeat death in his resurrection and rescue us from it and for his kingdom. Because he was begotten from all eternity, he is of the same nature as God: like your child is of the same nature as you. Only the relationship of Yeshua (Jesus) and God the father is eternal, because God is love.

Refer to John 1:1-5, 14; Philippians 2:6-11;

5. How can God punish one person for the sins of another person?

Because Muslims think that Jesus is 'just' a prophet, they think that we claim somehow his death pays for our sin, and that our sin was 'placed' on him, a mere mortal.

[see Wood on the Sura about this]

6. If Jesus died for your sins, can't you sin all you want?

Islam has a very behavioural and legalistic view of sin, and much of what the Bible calls sin is avoided by Islam's escape clauses (e.g. sexual brutality being 'temporary marriage'). Allah, the fake god of Islam, will overlook your sin if you have done certain things in life: the 7 pillars and/or kissed the black stone or died as a martyr.

There is no concept of new life from the Spirit or repentance as part of our union with Christ.

Q: What do you think it means that Jesus died for our sins and what is the consequence of this for we his followers?

1. In a way yes! Once a person is re-born by the Spirit he or she can sin all they like. But we no longer like to sin, we like to follow our Lord whose Spirit has given us new life. We do sin, but live in the humility of repentance and seek to grow out of the habits of  pride, selfishness and greed.

2. We not only have been forgiven our sins, but we are freed from them and from the death that is their wages. So we look forward to the second resurrection and life forever in the Kingdom of God in his New Creation. Sin is not just actions and thoughts, it is life that is turned away from and rejecting Yahweh our creator.

3. Paul in Romans 6 deals with this very question:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Far from it! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be ^[c]in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; ⁷ for the one who has died is freed from sin...

 7. Why did Jesus pray to God if he is God?

This is an attempt to show the incoherence of the trinity, it fails to understand what prayer is and that the trinity is inter-communicative, sharing one will. To adopt the language of partnership law: the members of the trinity are jointly and severally divine.

Q: What do you understand prayer is, and why is Yeshua praying to Yahweh an issue?

And, if you meet a Muslim?

If you meet a Muslim, ask why one should be a Muslim. You might then ask why they would not be Christian and repent and follow Yahweh. They might use the questions above, or that Jesus was a Muslim, a great prophet, and submitted to God, but not the final prophet, who is Mohammad, the greatest man. You can then contrast Jesus and Mo, for instance.

Is Slam a mimetic religion?

In his book God, Guilt and Death, Westphal (also see the blog here) sets out a taxonomy of religions in three divisions:

Exilic - typically Eastern impersonal/depersonalizing systems that regard people here as exiles from some other, better place (typically a monist no-where place)

Mimetic - 'earthly religions that seek some level of control over life and destiny by actions in this world.

Covenental - typically Judaism and Christianity.

In the book, he doesn't make it clear where Islam sits, as a claimed 'Abrahamic' religion.

I dispute that it has anything to do with Abraham and Yahweh's covenant with him.

The covenants with Israel and the wider people of God marked by repentance and new life are characterized by love and forgiveness (love seeking fellowship by repentance of his people resulting in forgiveness). This is not performance on our part, but a gift of God; all we do is turn towards him by repentance.

Islam sees its function as performance (of the Pillars), and, if you are lucky, or a martyr, you will get to 'paradise'. You will never have fellowship with Allah. It is about actions in the world to earn a good outcome. Not a loving action by Yahweh out of love.

We seek to follow Christ because we 'belong in heaven', to quote a recent sermon by our Rector. That is, we are citizens of the New Creation, in his kingdom.

Thus, Islam is a mimetic religion.

Talking to a 'New-ager'

 In the late 1990s I and a few friends conducted an outreach to New Agers. Unlike most church outreach, it was not 'in-drag'. We went to where New Agers were and sought conversations on their territory. Over five years we ran a stand at an annual New Age festival in our city. The stand was staffed continuously for the four or five days of the event and we had sufficient team members to have from 3 to about 6 people at all times. They ranged from 'ordinary' folk to theologians and scientists. During this time we had hundreds of conversations with New Agers ranging from those who dabbled to those who went 'full bore'.

Our approach to the guests to our stand was based on this:

Firstly, normal conversational approaches are applicable here as anywhere else. First find out a little about the person's interest then get going with 'why' (as Simon Sinek does in business coaching): "Why do you have that belief?" and "Sounds like you've thought this out, what does it really do for you?"

Most answers are dead ends, but one can hint at the content of Eastern 'exilic' religions or ancient 'mimetic' religions (to use Westphal's taxonomy: https://www.amazon.com.au/God-Guilt-Death-Existential-Phenomenology/dp/0253204178) to move the conversation along.

Most New Agers' adopt a couple of baseline beliefs: that truth is relative, and the individual is the centre of the beliefs held.

The relativity of truth can be confronted with the shared nature of reality: we all walk through doorways, not walls; as a Catholic priest remarked in a conversation with me.

We all get hungry and thirsty, we all need sleep. We all sweat, bleed, weep, wash and toilet...we all seek medical help from time to time. The train leaves at the same time for us all. We all breathe. There is clearly a shared inescapable baseline of reality that denominates our material experience.

We all fear death and we are confronted by dependence at every moment. If any deny they are afraid of death, I ask if they have ever gone to the doctor. So far everyone has. I ask why. The want to 'get better'. Thus, they are afraid of death! (Pannenberg says 'all fear is fear of death') We are all enmeshed in a common objective reality!

When they do articulate their beliefs, I find a point to ask "And then what?" to explore the consequence of a belief. I seek to move the conversation to the universal apprehension of the 'human dilemma': there is something 'wrong' that they are attempting to correct by reaching for the transcendental, to something beyond, or 'better' than their life-experience and something that will allow them to integrate their experience of life and its discontents that is beyond their basic being and experience. Something is clearly absent from their 'life-world'! They are seeking it.

Does their NA belief do this?

Some will say yes, but then one can circle back to the question of the congruence of their belief with the world as it is, both at the base material level and in the human quest for the transcendent, for a 'home' in reality.

The aim here is to 'put stones in the shoe' in terms of the disjunct between their relativistic framing of reality and the convenience of a belief that fails to accommodate it fully.

Then, one can explore their basic Buddhist or Hindu framing of reality: if reality is illusory, why seek anything? If it is so bad, why are we asked to ignore it...both in a way absolutes that seek to resolve the dilemma, but they do so by a pretense that a mere program of personal convenience is adequate to deal with a truly confronting existential phenomenon. And why do such programs, invented by people who either think its is OK to abandon family (Buddha) or that there is no real evil or good (Hindu) have any substance?

Of course, as you mentioned on air, Jesus is a part of this conversation, but particularly if one can steer to the summative content of his work that he didn't avoid the real problems of humanity, but confronted, defeated and resolved them; without denying their reality, their effect or their significance, resolving them in the terms of the reality in which they occur.

The other issue to have ready is that personhood (personality) for them is not a core part of reality. If this is so, they are still actually living as though it is! And Jesus, he being the creator, shows that personhood is foundational to all reality; moreover, that he is of the godhead of father, son and spirit, love in community is basically real. Thus our impulse to share, to love and to be in community is itself consistent and based in what is really real and inescapably so.

Just as an addendum. Dr Peter Jones of truthxchange has some great content on YouTube, in books, and a course on Ligonier that deals with modern paganism. These are worth a look.

Why didn't God just destroy Adam and Eve, and start again.

This was a question posed to Greg Koukl on his "STRask" podcast, and the 'start again' was posed on the basis of God knowing that he'd be wiping out all except Noah in a few centuries.

His answer was a little like the curate's egg: good in parts. The not good parts arose from his Calvinism and his view as to 'long ages' defining the history of revelation and thus the cosmos.

As a result he missed the obvious point, which I discuss.

Initially, the question seems to presume a couple of things that, to my mind, run against the Bible's data on creation (with respect to mankind's place and role, and God's action in creation) and on biblical anthropology.

Firstly, it seems to consider a cosmos that is disconnected from the creatures in God's image and that their fall affected only themselves. Subsidiary to this, it seems to presuppose that there was death before the fall, contrary to the God who found everything very good in a world not yet marked by corruption. Even animal death would be very much a mark of corruption. Upsetting, as it often is even today, rather than a matter of joy!

Secondly, it seems to trivialize the scope of sin and God's true relation to his creation and its creatures in his image: that we are made for fellowship and the first couple are the only ones by whom that unique status is unveiled. It would hardly be significant if there was a 'start again' option! God made them for fellowship, and now he goes about restoring the breach.

The notion that God could 'start again' with a new couple fails to recognize the effect of the fall on the cosmos. Paul tells us that the entire creation is groaning (Romans 8:19-23). So post fall, any new couple would no longer be in the pristine creation, but in the marred creation, subjected to futility and corruption: death now the unwelcome feature.

There would be other depredations of sin affecting the entire cosmos by virtue of Adam and Eve being God's image bearers and vicegerents. A new couple would be aliens at best, in a world not fitted for them and be either immediately frustrated, not knowing the world for which they were made as it has been damaged, or quickly become part of it. At worst they would conceivably be completely incompatible with it!

The original couple who fell being God's image-bearers are not just disposable and replaceable. Because sin has entered there could be no starting again. Yet they are rescuable, and God shows both his love and his power in that he is not outdone by sin, but rather overcomes it, as he promises them. A benefit of this is our further encouragement that God is truly the King of Creation and not a Zoroastrian bit player. God is not equally opposed by the 'not-God' of sin, but overcomes it. He does not tolerate death, but in Christ defeats it.

Following on, then, the gross condition of Noah's time was cleared for the line of the Messiah to be established in the. God let conditions play out until they needed to be wiped away for his plan to unfold.

Your Muslim friend

 Two questions for your Muslim friend (and I mean friend: this is to be a fruitful and friendly conversation):

1. How do you know who is a prophet?

2. How can you tell if a document is from God?

The discussion:

1. Mohammad is claimed to be a prophet, because he said so. The biblical prophets claim to speak for God in the public sphere, not hidden in a cave; they make predictions; the predictions come about.

Mohammad was an acquitistive war lord; the prophets of God in the Bible were far from the 'great', but humble and despised; yet they spoke against the powers of the day to their own detriment and had a massive effect in history.

2. The document records the events of people, words of God, and unfolding of history in public. For all to see, for others to debate and comment on. The Q by contrast was compiled from 'narrators' 200 years after it was claimed to be dictated (no one else was there), and Uthman destroyed the written parts he didn't like.

I'm not really religious, but I'm spiritual!

How many times have you heard this on a news clip or 'vox-pop' video?

What does it mean?

How do you deal with it?

Mostly, I'd say, it is an evasion to avoid you talking to me about your religion.

But, it might be right.

However, if you are 'spiritual', then you are 'religious'. All religions represent an approach to the spiritual in terms of seeking a resolution to life's contradictions.

The base contradiction is this: how can there be discontents when this is the world we are in; perhaps evolved within: so where does the transcendent notion of a 'discontent' of experience come in. Surely what is, simply is?

But it is not; and no one has ever been satisfied with this. Even materialist atheists would rely on the dead hand of evolution to make things better (but again, whence such transcendence as a view of the future, and a comparison against what actually is?); but we are all worm dung in the end; so it doesn't matter...but no one lives this way! 

According to Westphal (God, Guilt and Death: An existential phenomenology of religion) there are three types of 'religion'. That is, three types of quest for a resolution of existential contradictions in the quest for a satisfying life.

1. Exilic - religions that conceive resolution as absorption into a great anonymity, monism. Often 'the universe' impersonalized. Salvation by absorption into the 'all'.

2. Mimetic - semi-worldly religions that merge the 'creation' and 'salvation' in perhaps time-independent manner. Paganism both ancient and modern (environmentalism, veganism, atheistic materialism, scientism, evolutionism).

3. Covenental - form a type of relationship with the creator/God that is both worldly (takes the real world as real and valid) but needing resolution in relation with the creator in some way. Salvation by external action.

In a way all religions seek the same thing: resolution of the human existential dilemma. The route is: ignore, own effort, external savior.

The first two fail on the face of it: ignore solves nothing, own effort seeks the solution in the very problem (while perhaps pretending to deny the problem).

To the pub

The church study group that I attend is planned to meet in the local pub (bar/hotel/alcohol joint) to 'be in the community' and maybe have some conversations with the denizens.

Firstly, I doubt that we would have any useful conversations with the denizens, but perhaps.

Secondly, if we want to visit the pub for a social evening, all well and good. Just don't drink too much and don't get into any fights (more a problem in some places than others).

Thirdly,  "whaaat?!" As the 'medium is the message', as Marshall McLuhan has written, we submerge our message into a contradictory medium and align it with a dissonant message. The message of the pub is not the message of study. I wouldn't have gone to the pub to study my finance textbook so why would I go there to study the Bible?

This would be a 'show-off' stunt. Most patrons would see it as seeking to show them up as lesser people, even with a jar of ale on our table.

Moreover, if we prayed, we would be praying on the street corner for all to see, against the word of our Lord in Matthew 5:5-6:

When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

 In fact, the whole thing would be a street corner event. Not good.

In none of the pagan cults I've encountered was this ever a recruitment approach. Sure some members might have gone to pubs for quiet conversations as individuals; but generally their intake was via free talks about self-serving quasi spiritual techniques and success stories, or 'club' type events, entertainment evenings (music, film) and supper afterwards with no pressure, some promotions for innocuous weekend courses or 're-calibration' meditation, etc. but no pressure.

What might work is a parson in the pub event monthly from, say, between Easter and Advent, as long as the parson brought a few pals to order beers and was a great raconteur.