Islam and prayer -- Yeshua's prayer?

If 'Yeshua is God who is he praying to when he prays?

Another misunderstanding based on Islam's monistic beliefs. This leads to inability to understand both the Trinity (yes, a word not in the Bible, but neither is the Muslim word 'Tawhid' or 'tawheed' or the one-ness of allah in the Quran!).

But put that aside; how can God pray to God?

The incarnation of Yeshua as the 'God-man' was the incarnate creator entered into his creation. Yet he maintained the communing intimacy of the God-head (the Trinity) by continuing to speak to the Father.

Part of the confusion may be that for Muslims prayer is a formulaic ritual of 'worship'. Not the means of our communion with the Father. Yeshua was also reflecting the life of the un-fallen sinless man: to be in constant communion with the Father.

The foundation of un-fallen communion is given in Genesis 2:8a, where God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve: in perfect communion until they rejected life with God. Yeshua demonstrates the united-with-God life which we can have through him and in him.  

The irony of this challenge is that Muslims are encouraged to pray to the not-allah Muhammad. See this article by Shamoun.

But it gets worse.

Allah also prays; to whom we are not told; a 'greater' god perhaps? This idea is perhaps a remnant of the paganism that underlies Islam (also suggested in the so-called Satanic Verses). Shamoun also deals with this absurdity. 

See

They are those on whom are the prayers (salawatun) from their Lord and mercy (rahmatun), and it is they who are the guided-ones. S. 2:157

He it is who prays (yusallee) for you and His angels too, to bring you forth out of the darkness into the light, for He is merciful to the believers. S. 33:43 Palmer

Verily, God and His angels pray (yusalloona) for the prophet. O ye who believe! pray for him (salloo) and salute him with a salutation! S. 33:56 Palmer

From Answering Islam.

Surah 33:56 

God and His Angels Send blessings on the Prophet : O ye that believe ! Send ye blessings on him, And salute him With all respect. -- Yusuf Ali

surely Allah and his angels pray over the prophet O ye who believed pray over
him and submit submissively ﴾56) -- Murad's Literal Translation 

This chapter examines the problem of the God and the angels' ṣallāt for Muhammad described in Sūrah 33:56 of the Qurān. Specifically, it addresses the question of whether God, whose transcendence Islam describes as inconceivable, and who cannot be limited, really “prays for” the Prophet, one of his own creatures. It argues that two elements support and ratify, rather than undermine, a literal interpretation of Sūrah 33:56—“God prays for the Prophet”— which is the phrase's most obvious and at the same time its deepest meaning. The first is one of the most essential metaphysical qualities of God (ṣifāt Allāh) as defined by Islam—his self-sufficiency, embodied in the names of al-qayyūm (the self-subsisting) and al-ghanī (the self-sufficing). Second is his reciprocal relationship to the cultic life of Islam, both directly and as mediated by the Prophet.

From 

“God and His Angels Pray for the Prophet”: A Qurʾānic Paradigm

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Kimberley Christine Patton

 

So, you (Christians) can sin all you like

This is the last in this series of Muslim misunderstanding (feigned or genuine?) of Christian teaching.

It is supposed that forgiveness of sin we have through Yeshua's death and resurrection now gives us liberty to sin with complete abandon.

A fundamental confusion in applying Islamic categories and thinking to Christian faith without understanding Christian faith.

Islam is a practice of 'doing'. Do the 5 pillars (6 in some versions) of Shahada (faith), Salah (prayer), and Zakat (almsgiving), along with Sawm (fasting) and Hajj (pilgrimage to the black stone); some add Jihad 

The confusion seems to imagine Christian faith as a game of 'works'.

It fails to understand that in Christ we have new life and as those seeking transformation of our thoughts and lives (Romans 12:1-2) and who seek to show the fruit of the Spirit by his indwelling of our new life (Galatians 5:22-23) and in following Yeshua (Philippians 2:1-4).

It also fails to understand sin. Sin is what is anti-God, that which repudiates our relationship with god and reflects proud selfish disregard -- hate -- of others. We know we are not perfect and do this, but we constantly repent and seek the (willing and loving) forgiveness of our Lord as we continue to grow in our transformed lives.

Ponder on Romans 6; invite your Muslim friend to read it with you. 

What's your job?

A clergy person I met confided that he had trouble telling the members of his cricket club what his job was: as a 'minister' of religion.

I suggested he not give them the title but the function.

For example:

I do a lot of community counseling. I work with groups usually to think through their future, their past; dealing with both loss and opportunities to crystalize their real selves.

You might get a lot of reactions from disbelief to curiosity...but if its too long skip the first 'title' sounding sentence and describe the work in general terms.

Who does what?

It seems that the main effort of training of full time Christian workers and in their work on the front-line in local parishes is all about that peak exhibition event "the sermon".

A speech that is neither training nor discussion and certainly rarely educational, or if it is, is mostly promptly forgotten as people walk through the 'sermon erasure portal' at the door out of the auditorium. 

But how wrong!

The main effort of the trained staff (full time or part time, employed or members) should be in mentoring, skill building and equipping to live a full span Christian life (Romans 12:1-2).

The Sunday gathering could then revert to the pattern Paul establishes in 1 Corinthians 11-14 where it is a 'joining-in' event, for mutually edification, encouragement, exhortation, prayer and singing (but not a concert...we can have those at other times).

Discussing this with an ex-missionary, ex-FT minister and current field-worker for a mission society; he mentioned that in the churches he worked in in Kenya, the first role to be employed after the parish rector (senior minister) was 'evangelist'.

I think he missed the point.

The first role should be to equip the saints through equipping for ministry themselves, training in Bible, theology, apologetics and 'incidental conversational evangelism'. This by mentoring, in small groups with plenty of discussion and conversation. Not an 'expert' wheeled in from elsewhere to do faith life for them.

Muslim's main question

In the fourth of this series, we look at what Muslims regard as the great 'gotcha' against Christians, in the claim that "the Trinity is irrational'.

Often the glib comparison: 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 ? is offered (opening the way to the 1 * 1 * 1 = 1 reply).

This is of course nonsense and misunderstands the distinction between 'class' and 'member of the class', or 'set' and 'member of the set' if you want to play maths games. Or between the general philosophical problem of 'the one as against the many' and a unified ontology. That is, how can one unified reality exhibit a diversity of elements, 'things' or members.

Exilic religions overcome it by absorbing all diversity into an impersonal amorphous finality, while mimetic religions handle it by making the many utterly subservient to and interoperable components of the one with no finally differentiated being: we are all 'part' of the one in terms of an absorbed individuality. 

Islam has no answer to this because its 'god' is a monad and not amenable to encompassing the 'many' of its alleged creation. It is also an nonrelating monad: which it must be because it can have no diversity, and therefore no foundational relational capacity.

Very simply, the scriptures tell us that God is a 'complex' but unified being of three (many). He is represented throughout scripture as Father, Son and Spirit all equal in their God-ness but differentiated in their who-ness.

As I mentioned previously, this article discusses the issue.

However, the concept of 'trinity' is not 'irrational', as Muslims often claim. We have many examples of the concept of a 'class' or 'set' and its members in ordinary life.

Humanity is the class, the 8 billion individuals are its members. All equally human, and all inter-communicatively human. 

Family is the class, the (2-n) members are...its members. All equally members of the particular family, and all inter-communicatively within the family.

If you are an engineer, you will appreciate the trinity as a divine multiplex: one channel transmitting many signals; except the trinity transmits a fully inter-communicatively coherent 'signal'. 

BUT!

The Quran also has a 'trinity'; but Muslims, because they misunderstand the Biblical trinity, fail to see it in the Quran.

The Muslim misunderstanding derives from the early Quranic writers own misunderstanding:

Surah 5:116 Saheeh International

And [beware the Day] when Allāh will say, "O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, 'Take me and my mother as deities besides Allāh?'" He will say, "Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen.

Surah 5:73–75 Saheeh International

They have certainly disbelieved who say, "Allāh is the third of three."¹ And there is no god except one God. And if they do not desist from what they are saying, there will surely afflict the disbelievers among them a painful punishment.

So will they not repent to Allāh and seek His forgiveness? And Allāh is Forgiving and Merciful.

The Messiah, son of Mary, was not but a messenger; [other] messengers have passed on before him. And his mother was a supporter of truth. They both used to eat food.¹ Look how We make clear to them the signs; then look how they are deluded.

 But the Quran in its misunderstanding of the Trinity, creates one of its own: 

Surah 4: 171 Saheeh International

O People of the Scripture, do not commit excess in your religion  or say about Allāh except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allāh and His word which He directed to Mary and a soul [created at a command]* from Him. So believe in Allāh and His messengers. And do not say, "Three"; desist - it is better for you. Indeed, Allāh is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And sufficient is Allāh as Disposer of affairs. 

Here there is Allah  (God), and Yeshua (whom the Quran insults by reversing his name to "Issa") who is Allah's word, and a spirit proceeding from Allah. 

Now we see Allah's word is eternal (the Quran is said to be an eternal book on tablets in 'heaven'), and his spirit is eternal. So here we have three eternals: all must be equally eternal, but are identified in three specifics: Allah, Allah's word, and Allah's spirit.

*The comment in brackets is added by the translator and not 'revealed'. 

 

Messiah?

I'm guessing that most people do not know what it means that Yeshua is the Messiah: the chosen one of God. In the line of David, descendant of Judah, priest after the order of Melchizedek: Hebrews 7. 

Muslims certainly don't know, even though their book makes this reference.

In brief, the Messiah is the messenger of God to man as God in man (Daniel 7 -- one like a 'son of man'). One come to resolve the severance of man from God and the resulting dilemma of man otherwise unresolved.

He reunifies man and God. 

ICE training?

A friend and recently discussed the woeful track record of the (evangelical) church in equipping members with any capability for personal evangelism.

I suggested that one issue here is that the bar is set to high both by the church generally and in people's minds.

But the bar can be quite low. Greg Koukl regards it as 'putting a stone' in someone's shoe. Just get them thinking.

At least if people have answers to the 7 Basic Questions of Christians we would have a start, but also, the 'evangelism' task can be simplified.

On the back of the 7BQ, training/mentoring in what I'd call Incidental Conversational Evangelism would be simpler: encouraging participation would be the biggest challenge, but modelling by a church's elders and stewards of specific ministry efforts would be a start-up strategy.

I'm auditing a course called Overflowing Faith which seems to offer well thought out approaches to spring a 'gospel-pointing' conversation from any conversation that is 'within range' of being so pointed. 

It is presented in three two-hour sessions, so easily delivered.

 It could also be done in a day including simulated conversations, but I think the one session a week format is educationally better.