Is this your Sunday?

 A comment on an interview with Tom Wadsworth.

The church can, I think, flex with society as it grows. so, learning from Tom, I'd like this for a Sunday gathering:

1. 40m to 1 hour teaching. Real teaching, not a sermon, but Bible/theological study with pre-reading, a short talk and then discussion and working together to learn. People giving short 'papers' on their own study during the week.

2. Morning break for coffee and a snack, maybe 20 minutes.

3. Join prayer groups for the next 20 minutes

4. Large gathering for a short edifying talk, and responses, some singing, and Lord's supper that might be part of lunch that follows.

5. After lunch, informal discussion groups (optional), or skills training (speaking, evangelism, teaching, kid's ministry, conducting small groups, etc.) People could join and leave for any segment.

HYMNALS. They were great; most of my favourite hymns/songs are the deeply theological 'horizontal'. and praising/teaching hymns of my youth. They still stir my soul. Unlike most modern puerility. And thanks for the song clip, Tom...the way it should be, ordinary Christians singing to edify each other. 

BUILDINGS Interesting to note that Coverdale, in his 16th century English translation of the Bible, used the word 'congregation' and not 'church' for the Greek of 'gathering'. He was concerned for the local meeting of saints being recognized, rather than what 'church' had come to connote: the formal hierarchical imperialistic structure.

LITURGY A liturgical church brought me to renewed faith in my young adult-hood. With it I had the experience of all together being at one with each other in the presence of our Lord. It is not for me (and those I know) a mere rote practice that is just form and not content; I tell you it makes my week. Is encouraging, and brings us all into the one place of Christians enjoying our faith together. Much better than modern evangelicalism which turns the gathering into a spectator sport.

Moreover, even the simple rural church can share the liturgy with the words composed by some great saints (Cranmer, for instance), no matter the skill, talent or training of any of the participants.

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 and Yasir Qadhi, an Islam scholar, is on video challenging the 'perfect preservation' trope.

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:

Firstly, Yeshua endorsed the Jewish scriptures by using them without adverse comment, but with direct reference. Therefore we take these as reliable.

Secondly we have the New Testament events noted in secular historical and contemporaneous texts (e.g. Tacitus, Josephus). The texts were composed very soon after Yeshua's resurrection and we have a vast collection of very early copies (over 20,000 from the second century)

[Image from https://youtu.be/NLKh7ADD7bs , edited]

Compared to the Islamic tradition texts, of which we only have late records, much later than the claimed date of compilation of the quran.

[Image from https://youtu.be/2TDKgwXuX5g , edited]

] edited.

3.  This claim is not accepted by some of your scholars. The Jewish and Christian scriptures were extant at the time of the reciting of the Quran and we have those same texts today: no change! See Saeed, 2002 "The Charge of Distortion of Jewish and Christian Scriptures" in The Muslim World v.92.

Moreover, the Quran tells us that Allah 'preserved' the texts and they 'could not be corrupted' See Wood on this.

S. 3:3-4: "He [Allah] has revealed to you the book with truth, verifying that which is before it [that is, present before you] and he revealed the Torah and the Gospel aforetime, a guidance for mankind and he revealed the criterion"

...and its preservation:

S. 6:115-115: "Shall I then seek a judge other than Allah? And he it is who has revealed to you the book made plain; and those to whom we have given the book know that it is revealed by your Lord with truth, therefore you should not be of the disputers. And the word of your lord has been accomplished truly and justly; there is none who can change his words and he is the hearing, the knowing."

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 is 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 in his being. 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 or being, in three centres of consciousness, or of action, and of shared purpose and will. This is similar to our own experience of multiplexed electronic signals, 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 commands 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. Who says that God cannot do whatever he pleases? Now, God doesn't enter with his completeness into the bush or in the Incarnation, but, in the former, manifests himself thusly, and in the Incarnation, in the Son who sets aside his glory to be as a created man.

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.

Q: What happens when a person dies?

1. The body and soul are separated. Remember that we are created to live for ever, either in the Kingdom of God, or cut off from God. We don't cease to exit! See Surah al Baqriah: s. 2 v. 154 where the shaheed are alive: those who were killed are still 'alive'! Even your Quran tells us that there is life after death.

2. The incarnate Son of God left his incarnate body in death. Thus in his resurrection he showed us that he is the Son of God, and he showed us in the resurrection his conquest of death and what awaits all those in him ('in Christ' as Paul often puts it) in the general resurrection at the end of time.

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 David Wood's video on this topic.

No, Yeshua took our punishment, that is he suffered the death that is the wages of sin that we suffer, so that he would show his conquest of sin and death in his resurrection. So, in a way he did take the punishment due to us, but we are united with him in his kingdom not because we are sinless. It is because in our new birth, our regeneration by his Spirit we are made righteousness and our sin is removed from us by God. We are fully pardoned by the work of Christ.

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?

Jesus in his humanity showed us what it is to be truly human. This includes being in prayer to and therefore communion with the father in complete dependence on the father in all things. He shows his relationship to the father and that ours is intended to be similar. In his divine- (god-) nature he is in continuous communion with his father and shares the will of the father and the spirit. Not prayer as we know it, but as it is to turn out to us.

It is important to note that the Spirit of God prays for us (intercedes for us, Romans 8:26). That is, he prays to the father!

Prayer is not rote 'subjugation' to God, which Islamic prayer appears to be, but a true seeking to be in the presence of God and seeking to know him and have him active in one's life and thought.

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.

You might use these questions:

What is the test of a prophet? (refer to Deuteronomy 18:22, also the public life of the prophet and his/her humility, not their war-likeness).

Why do you say 'peace be upon him' when you refer to your prophet? Is he still on earth? If he is in paradise, he has peace, if he is not, it won't happen; either way what is the point?

David Wood as a couple of helpful videos on talking to Muslims, firstly on talking to pleasant Muslims about unpleasant things and 10 questions for Muslims.

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).