Another Islamic challenge

The previous challenge dealt with the divinity of our Lord.

This is related.

A not uncommon question from Muslims, and often thrown down as a weighty gauntlet is "how can God die?"

This common question both presumes that our Lord and our Father in heaven are the same identity; and so our Lord's death on the cross can appear problematic to a Muslim, confusing the member of a set with the set itself.

The Bible shows that God is three individual beings in one 'set' which is the collective state of being of all three together.

Somewhat similarly all individual humans being in one 'set' which we call humanity. This simple illustration appears to have escaped Muslims. Except that the set of God-identities consists in a unified will, unified eternity and aseity with commutative love and communion with each other and unified but separated power of action. This represents a meta-identity which humans in a working marriage have but a faint echo of.

To deal with the typical question we have to ensure a common understanding of Yeshua as the incarnate God who created.

Ask what the Muslim understands about the ontology of Yeshua (who he is and what his being constitutes), and the nature of death as the wages of sin.

Yeshua does not exhaust the constitution of God: God is three identities in one continuity of identity (see the post on Trinity - TBA). Yeshua is also the 'Son' who has adopted an humanity to be one of us. This enables his full communion with us. See Philippians 2:5-11. He has relinquished aspects of his divinity for the purpose of his mission as Messiah, fulfilling prophesy and achieving victory over sin to take them up again while remaining 'in a 'spiritual body' as the Lord of the New Creation: his inheritance as Messiah.

A rough example of this is a mouse (the word 'mouse' in Hebrew is very like the word for greatest in Arabic). If you wanted to make a relationship with a mouse to show it a better way of being a mouse, the best way would you to be, not a miniature human, because that would maintain the barrier of human over mouse. You would need to be a mouse. You would need to put aside your non-mouse attributes, or at least suppress them, and adopt mouse attributes: then you could talk 'mouse-to-mouse' with them.

So the Messiah being God incarnate.

Then we need to clarify death.

Ask how the Islam deals with death. In the very end, everyone goes to paradise but by various routes. So death is not the end, it is the way to a new beginning, even for those who remain in the grave for a long time.

So, with Christians: death is a 'destination' not annihilation.

Yeshua was in the grave, but for a short time. He died: his 'soul' left this life and his (human) body ceased to metabolize. He was dead. But on the day of his death he told one of the thieves also on the cross that 'today you will be in paradise with me', Luke 23:43.

In his resurrection body he was changed into the 'spiritual body'. All who have been "born from above" that is "in Christ", will also be so transformed at the return of Messiah. They will all then share in his kingdom and be adopted by the Father..world (now) without end.

Islam holds no similar re-uniting of mankind with God who is love, and everlasting joy of fellowship with him. 

 

 

An Islamic challenge

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

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

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 question. 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 disregards 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' not a name, but if a name its provenance seems to be pagan).

Finally, it presumes an Islamic conception of God (allah), as alluded to above, in complete denial of the Bible picture of Yahweh. 

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. Mohammad's horse to the stars story also seems to be predicated on a material location.

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 being able to demonstrate the characters character in its actions. 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 things': he forgives sins, he knows what men are thinking in their minds, and in reversing the effect of the fall in Genesis 3:8 heals the man by a word. 

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! 

You might also view these videos:

Living Waters answering the challenge. 

Nabeel Qureshi Jesus saying who he is in Mark's gospel and

Anul on the challenge. 

 

Phil Connors on Life

"What would you do if you were struck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered?"

This is the world of the atheist, the pagan and the one of an exilic religion, at it's core. The only rebuttal can be by the mere superficial transient trivialities of life.

It lines up precisely with Nagel's gloomy and apposite work.

The quote from the 1993 picture-play "Groundhog Day" 

How long is an age long, and why?

Part of the age issue is theological, which I don't think has attracted much attention.

Some thoughts:

Ancient (pagan -- or 'mimetic' and idealistic -- or exilic, such as Hinduism -- using Westphal's taxonomy) views of the age of the cosmos were of long ages ( far longer than modern), eternal existence or unquantified into myth. They all tended to dehistoricize the origin stories or myths (often accompanied by ludicrous and irrational causality and calling upon fantastical creatures -- perhaps related to pre-flood denizens?). That is, outside the flow of time we are in and thus unreachable by and uncontactable by us.

It is the 'uncontactable' that is important: they all thus tend to or actually de-personalize the creation event(s) and place the creating force at inaccessible remove from our life-world and historical flow. The 'gods' are incommunicado,  remote, and uninterested in the creature, except as fodder or slaves, it would seem

All of this serves to strand humanity in an impersonal cosmos with the only possible 'integration point' being, at best, fickle exploitative forces indifferent to man's good and often inimical to it. At worst enabling man's depravity, cruelty and assertion of determinative moral opinions 

Modern materialist 'long ages' touted as accommodating Evolutionary processes, but in fact far too short for NDE to produce the current biota, are in this league. As against the Genesis account (which extends across Genesis 1-3, IMO)  which places man for fellowship with God in the same time-space and historical flow that the stage of fellowship was created.

In this account God is communicatively with us and ontologically and actually present and active directly and personally in our time-space world, which he spoke (speaking the first gesture of fellowship) into existence. The creation is thus both historicized and personalized. It echos the love with which the Creator worked.

Furthermore, it grounds in what is truly real our epistemology, our ontology and our axiology, all in the God who is and who speaks, finally in his Messiah where the '2nd person of the godhead' takes on human form as the inheritor of the creation. The grounding is in our time-space shown in God's action in the days that we exist in without denigrating but rather exulting in them .They define the domain of his creatures who would reflect his image in his creation for them, in a resonant responsive relational congress.

So, modern 'long ages' push God's creative acts out of our sphere of action and history to de-couple the creation from our 'life-world' and intruding an existential barrier of an incomprehensible past unreflective of the warmth and care of the creation events. They make any interaction with God of dubious historical weight. This possibly invites back the Platonism which has dogged theology for too long and makes God personally differently from his revelation of self in Genesis 1-3. It detaches Messiah from the continuity of care (love) demonstrated in that account and fantasizes the New Creation, when the NT has it the palpable consummation of the Kingdom of Christ.

 

More cogitating on my previous note:

Long age views of creation displace God as he identifies himself in G 1-3 as the sole author of creation. They replace him with the creation itself in some way, To the extent that in TE he is merged into and becomes indistinguishable from the creation. However, long-age creationists similarly displace him more subtly because the bulwark against displacement is removed.

The work in days delineate God's self proclaimed relationship with the creation, and convey his identity as the one distinct from creation while able to, preserving that distinction, be its sole author.

This diminished identity then diminishes what it is to be in God's image and in communion with God...imperiling the communion we look forward to in the New Creation, which may now also be destabilized as the creation no longer bears the exclusive mark of God's love.

Other views challenge his sole authorship by deferring to views that were old when Epicureanism was current and use that story, which served to eliminate God as creator. These invented views then supplant the Biblical account, taking us somewhere else. At once God's identity and our relationship with both the creator and the creation as the creation is  changed. The priority that God reserves for himself in G 1-3.is now shared with or given to the creation.

The locus of 'creation' moves from the propositional and relation-building word of God, to the mute creation itself.

Christ's lordship is, as a result, diminished as the creation has  'done its own thing' absorbing God's work and anonymizing it, at best. In these terms the question as to what God did in the long age views remains unanswered or reduced to speculation adrift from revelation.

The various long age views fail to stand up to Nagel's forlorn description of life as a (meaningless) episode between two oblivions...despite that no sane person really lives this way.

Provisional thoughts, but may be of interest.

 

Engaging with Islam

Islam is a vigorous and ambitions religion about which most Western Christians know next to nothing.

A useful set of training seminars is available from Samuel Green at Engaging with Islam.

Other sources are Dr Jay Smith at Pfander Centre. and Dr David Wood at Christian Apologetics and Apologetics Roadshow.

Samuel Green's seminars are able to be used by groups to have parish-based training without the need to engage an external facilitator or trainer; although either could be helpful. 

How does God Work?

One of the theological puzzles we have is how does God work? How does he achieve his will with (currently) 8 billion people doing their own thing?

The two classical answers post Augustine and even more so post the Reformation are "Calvinism" (re-badged Augustinianism) and "Arminianism", which amounts to a reconfigured Calvinism.

So-called "Provisionism" so-branded by its opponents, is the classic Baptist approach to both soteriology and divine sovereignty in terms of creatures in his image ( which God must take seriously as he called it very good), I don't think takes much time, explicitly, over this issue.

In short terms, Calvinism holds that God 'meticulously pre-determines' all things whatsoever, down to the organization of sub-atomic particles (not that he knew about them, but it follows), This extends to who will be 'saved' and who will be 'damned'. Not a good look, in my view, based as it is on pagan philosophy mixed with a misreading of Romans 8-11 and a God who is as limited as is man.

Arminians have a similar end state but by a different route: God knows what will happen as from his timeless existence can see it into the future and chooses those who he knows will turn to him in Ephesians 1:13 style. These he reflexively chooses to save, the others not so.

This makes too many assumptions about time, God's state of being and what human volition truly is or is not.

I think there is a simpler approach.

Firstly, God and time.

Whatever we might think theoretically about time and timelessness, the creation account shows God present and active in the days of our lives (to quite a TV show), or to be more existential, the days in which we have our life-world, in which we live. So God is here, with us, in time, in our history and in fellowship.

How this works out.

Calvinists and Arminians and other determinists seem to have a small God, projected in terms of the nature of limited human decision matrices. But God is far bigger than that.

First off, God created all being we experience. We are in the restricted domain of his creating. A domain he is exhaustively knowledgeable of. Nothing that happens in that domain can catch him out. He will always have an answer to achieve his ends despite anything man can do or imagine.

So, he has no need to 'determine' anything. Given his knowledge of the existential structures and the nature of man he has created, nothing can out-wit him. He neither needs to determine (eviscerating our true freedom as in his image), or see into a yet to exist future.

Even with the vast number of consequential choice options on earth (say 5 to the power of 8 billion at each choice node) and along consequential choice pathways, the options remain a tiny number for God to comprehend and manage. As a participant in history, which he shows he is, he is well able to use focused interventions (those quiet prompts we might feel, for example or circumstantial events) to bring special circumstances to action, in reflection of Romans 8:28.

No matter what puny man with his tiny intellect and dull imagination: just above the level of a gnat's from God's perspective, can do, nothing can derail God's objective which he has for the ultimate good of those in Christ and adopted into his family.

 Soli Deo Gloria!

Pastor or Preacher or both together?

 Mr YouTube landed this podcast on my screen recently, about preaching and pastors.

 Some good points made, but others needed some pondering,

 Obviously he's on about "preaching", "pastors" and touches "teachers", inter alia.

 First thing I noticed was a tendentious mistranslation of kerux (κῆρυξ). Sochor (the presenter) claimed it was "a herald of divine truth; work of proclaiming the word of God", Now it  might have that meaning in Christian usage, but that is NOT the translation, Thayer, for instance, has: "a herald or messenger vested with public authority, who conveyed the official messages of kings, magistrates, princes, military commanders, or who gave a public summons or demand"
 
Simply a proclaimer...of the gospel to non-believers. I guess so many non-believers attended congregations as "cultural Christians" the gospel had to be preached therein.

Paul showed us how this works in Acts 17 talking to the pagans.

I wonder how many congregations have an active community outreach? You know, a booth in the main street, a drop-in coffee and book shop, a stall at community markets, evening courses in the local college on Bible, church history, "True Spirituality", "Inner Peace" the "twisted tale of Christian thought". Titles to be attractive in the marketplace of ideas.

Even a well-structured "in-drag" program of introductory courses could work.

However, Paul tells us what happens in a gathering of the saints in 1 Corinthians 14:26b-33: teaching, revelation, a tongue (foreign language needing interpretation), prophesy.

What we have habituated to call "preaching" is probably more like "prophesy" for exhortation. But note: lots of contributors! No 'main man' and all in love (ch 13) for edification.

Then we go on to "pastor".

This role is derived from the Roman Catholic priest and not from the NT elder, although happily some congregations do have elders. Unfortunately, too often they are seen more as a board of directors than the gentle spiritual guides of 1 Peter 5:5 and Titus 1:5. Note Titus talks also of female elders,

This has rather tendentiously (again) been rendered as "older women" but the word is the feminine  of 'elder'. The qualification of only one wife obviously is to ban polygamists. There were no polyandrous women so no need to mention.

Now, on to the meat of it.

Being derived from the priest, the modern "pastor" is not seen in the NT at all. It's a fabrication of men and has been the greatest dis-empowerer of the church over centuries. It's main function is to train the congregation that its members have nothing to say and to "outsource" its learning and giving an account, proclamation, etc. to that one man, while inhibiting the growth of people to true Christian maturity and for many to be teachers (Hebrews 5:12).

Daryl Erkel  has a good essay on this: "The Urgent Need For Reformation in Pastoral Ministry" at www.semonindex.net website.