The Bible is Corrupted!

You  might hear this from your Muslim friend.

Don't believe it.

However, it is a different story for the Quran. Not 'corrupted' per se, how can a made-up story book be 'corrupted'? but neither a book that tells about Yahweh, the creator and his incarnated Son (that is of the same substance) Yeshua. In fact the Quran is to a large degree a vehemently Arian diatribe against Christian faith.

But, oddly, the Quran tells us the Bible is NOT corrupted, or even corruptible!. 

See 99.8% of Muslims Don't Know Allah Says THIS about the Bible!

 Surah 29:46 -- the Quran endorses the Bible.

 

Surah 3:3-4 -- The Torah and 'Gospel' revealed before.

 

Surah 18:27 -- the Bible is inviolate.

 

The horns of the dilemma

Horn 1: The prophetic stories are reliable. If that’s true then the Quran is false because it directly contradicts them.

Horn 2: The prophetic stories are unreliable. But in that case, Surah 10:94 is incoherent.

Surah 10:94

The typical Muslim counter to this information is that it is talking about the texts (particularly identified as 'Torah' and 'Gospel') available at Mohammad's time, but they've been corrupted since then.

Spot the problem?

Of course: the Quran, an 'eternal' book doesn't qualify its statements: they are absolute: always, inevitably and inescapably preserved. Or, Allah has no clue about the future of the texts, or no ability to preserve them through time.

So, my Muslim friend, either the Quran is wrong, or...it is wrong. If the text is corrupted, it is wrong because it says that its preserved; if its preserved, it is wrong, because the Quran contradicts both the Torah and the Gospel,  and all the other prophets and all the commentaries (Letters) on the Gospel.

Which is it?

Now we know we have a very secure biblical text, and a very insecure quranic text!

Indeed, all the above aside, we have extant texts from the time of alleged Mohammad that tell us the Bible has not been corrupted post this time.

Early New Testament Manuscripts

Papyrus 52 (P52) (c. 125–150 CE): A small fragment from the Gospel of John, widely considered the oldest surviving New Testament text.

Papyrus 46 (P46) (c. 175–225 CE): An early collection of Pauline epistles.Papyrus 66 (P66) (c. 200 CE): A substantial portion of the Gospel of John

Early Complete Bibles (Codices)

Codex Vaticanus (c. 4th century CE): Housed in the Vatican Library, one of the oldest and most complete Greek Bibles

Codex Sinaiticus (c. 4th century CE): Discovered at St. Catherine's Monastery, containing the oldest substantially complete Christian Bible.

The Syriac Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible used by churches in the Syriac tradition. Most scholars date the Old Testament portion to the 1st or 2nd century AD and the New Testament to the 2nd to 5th centuries AD. The word "Peshitta" means "simple" or "common" in Syriac, which is a dialect of Aramaic 

Your turn, Islam! 

see https://youtu.be/VC9BUwofQ_E for further background 

Church is not business...but

I saw this in a comment on YouTube recently. It's worth repeating.

Now we have a quantified aim! Another one! Oh dear me...[this church had a 'target' of 5% pa growth]

Remember Connect09? That was an aim with a slogan. Even worse!! [This was a campaign in 2009 in the Sydney Anglican Diocese of Sydney under Archbishop Jensen: the bright idea guy, I guess]

Remember 'Evangelism Explosion"; the 4 points of salvation; the 2 ways to live? More of the same! All busy work and no true transformation.

The way out of this cycle of ineffectiveness?

Edwards Deming is known in business circles as the great balloon popper of business hubris. He works here to.

Many of his 14 points of management apply to church life:

[My comments are preceded with ">>"]

+ Create constancy of purpose: Focus long-term on improving products and services rather than short-term profits.

>> Always look long term: no instant fixes, no immediate paybacks. Patience and biblical precepts, not cultural accretions. By biblical I mean Paul, James, Peter; by cultural I mean business, reformation,  priestly castes.

+ Improve constantly and forever: Continually upgrade the system for planning, production, and service.

>> Patience must be informed by continual checking and developing practices in community. Church is not a one man or board led operation. The elders have a job to do, but it is not to 'lead'.

+ Institute training on the job: Provide modern, thorough skills training for all employees.

>> Exactly!!

+ Adopt and institute leadership [alas we have an obsession with 'leadership' and ignore 'discipleship' and 'serving'] : Shift management from mere supervision to coaching people to do a better job.

>> Not leadership as we conceive it today, he means as a mentor. Discipleship I think we say.

+ Drive out fear: Encourage open communication, innovation, and trust so everyone works effectively.

+ Eliminate slogans and targets: Stop giving the workforce empty exhortations or zero-defect quotas without providing methods to achieve them,

+ Eliminate numerical quotas: Remove factory floor quotas and numerical goals for management that compromise true quality.

+ Remove barriers to pride of workmanship: Abolish annual merit ratings and systems that rob workers, engineers, and managers of pride in their work.

+ Institute education and self-improvement: Encourage lifelong learning and personal development for every employee.

>> We need to be always training, studying and learning. Christianity was once an intellectually fueled faith, now it is merely 'feelings' fueled.

+ Put everyone to work on the transformation: Make the company-wide shift to quality the job of every single person.

>> Every saint counts.

He could almost have been 'channeling" Paul.

Hamlet on life (via Shakespeare)

...without Christ

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.
 

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

Get access

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. 

The Christian Vision

 A little while ago, during a talk in our congregation, the speaker made the comment:

"The Christian vision is not anti joy; it is not anti material; it is anti idolatry".

I thought this was a great way of setting out not 'Christianity', not 'Christian faith/teaching/belief, etc' but a phrase with more contemporary accessibility: the 'Christian vision".

This makes it accessible, IMO and a less alien invitation to discussion.

The Christian vision in its grand scheme is the resolution of mankind's/humanities existential dislocation; our alienation from self, each other and the final platform of basic reality: the Creator who is and who speaks.

Lack of this resolution has significant indication in the grasping for 'identity' that seems to obsesses the less connected in society; but the internally referenced 'identity' is the most fragile means of address there is.

After all if the locus of the real, the true, is merely oneself, how fragile! 

Overflowing Faith

I attended a session of this seminar series (of three episodes) at a friend's church facility (the congregations ekklesiarium!).

It presents and coaches in an approach to everyday gospelling. Not conversations about "Jesus saves, so repent" which we hope is the end game; but starting from where your friend or acquaintance is and steering a conversation in a gospel direction.

Excellent series.

My friend's church is about 200-300 people. 6 people turned up!

Now admittedly, those who were there were retired or self-employed and could spare the time mid week (or in my case, self-employed, 'make' the time).

Is the church really committed to evangelism? And this is an evangelical church!!

So, let's talk about single elderly, elderly in distress (e.g. spouse/partner terminally ill), single parents, overwhelmed unemployed.

Outreach/support to such people perfect for the retired folk to get involved with: Christians who care.

But zilch!

What is it, then, to be evangelical, when no one seems interested in the evangel! 

Macbeth on life (via Shakespeare)

...without Christ:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
 

When a sceptic challenges a biblical account.

One such decided to challenge the flood account.

My thoughts on the matter.

When a skeptic challenges the flood in terms of 'cruelty', the first question to them has to be: "who's worldview are you using here? Yours or mine?"

The answer is always interesting.

If theirs, then inquire what theirs is: most likely some version of materialism/naturalism, or, rarely, some form of pagan 'impersonal god' In either case, what's wrong with the flood? The usual critique of value agnostic worldviews arises.

How do they establish any value judgement that is not merely their personal preference with no relevance to anyone else, and no meaningful grounding.

If 'yours'; that is they think they have spotted a flaw in the Christian/biblical worldview, then ask them to get it right; to fully acknowledge the world view; of particular importance here is that death by flood would be speedy, and babies, before they had done right or wrong would be guarded against perdition (you have to leave Calvin outside the house for this).

Most detractors fail to understand how seriously we take the futurity of all mankind: either reconciled and in God's family, or purposely estranged from God, rejecting him.

Apart from that the narrator of the video sets out some helpful observations. 

And remember for any challenge of biblical accounts; check their underlying framework or worldview, then ask for their defence of that before getting on to their supposed critique

"Why is it an issue for you?" is an easy starting point for the probe. 

I'm re-reading again! Keyes: Beyond Identity.

The book this time is Dick Keyes' Beyond Identity, from 1984!

It has both aged and remains current. The specifics have moved on, the underlying structures of society and people's impulses remain constant.

He writes:

Before the fall, man saw himself as under God, bearing God's image and deriving his sense of identity and coherence from God. But now he identifies himself with creation instead of its Creator. His whole orientation is downward towards what is less than himself, rather than upward toward what is greater. This change of orientation has many psychological results.

In general we have moved from a Covenental 'religion' or understanding of the world, of what is independently real (Clauser) to a mimetic framing (Westphal) which seeks to merge man into the creation.

Many people follow this paganization of humanity in general and the self in particular wherein one has to conjure one's own 'identity' bereft of an external reference. Futile, of course, as personhood is absorbed into the creation rather than expanded into the 'imageness' of the Creator.

Thus, where we are culturally. 

Islamic challenge the third

How can Yeshua bear the sins of another...a verse in the Quran says no one can bear the sins of another!

First you need to expose the duplicity of this claim.

It partly quotes the Quran but misses an important point: it applies only to the 'burdened soul'. Yeshua was sinless: Surah 19:19.

Compare this to Mohammad, of whom the Quran writes: "...ask for forgiveness for your sins" at Surah 40:55, 47:19 

Surah Fatir (35:18): States that no burdened soul can carry the load of another, even if a close relative asks for help.

 

On the face of it, Yeshua as an 'unburdened' one can carry the sins of another.

 

But the claim also misunderstands the work of the cross, and what is the atoning element: the element that 'covers' sin.

 

It also ignores two patterns given by the prophets:

 

Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Genesis 22:9-13), the child of promise. In this case God provided the sacrifice in a lamb. This foreshadowed the sacrificial lamb in the law given to Moses.

 

Much later, David; Yahweh's chosen king, after great sin saw the child born of that sin: an innocent child, die: as punishment (2 Samuel 12). This foreshadowed the great son of David: Yeshua, the sinless one, dying as a result of the sin of others. The child, on what we can derive from the NT, would likely have been taken to paradise.

 

Just as in the Levitical law, the life is in the blood and that life spilt takes those who believe into the presence of God. The sin is 'covered' by Yeshua's unburdenedness. Or in NT terms, his sinlessness.

 

Thus the crucifixion did two things: by it Messiah suffered the death that is the wages of sin: other people's and the groaning creation A&E brought down, and in his resurrection he showed his triumph over death announcing the way to life everlasting for those who would join him. 

 

But it  needs to be borne in mind that one needs to be 'in Christ' to enjoy his grace: to be 'born from above' in repentance of sin and faith in Yeshua. It is entry into a family, no mere assent to a proposition to gain a trip to some celestial party where Yahweh is absent...which is what the Quran seems to hold out for its version of 'paradise' as some sort of cosmic bordello. 

Who are you and who am I?

Christians, even today, often attempt to present the gospel on the basis of 'you are a sinner' or 'God own you but you are disobedient to him' and similar lines, perhaps stimulated by a misreading of Galatians 3:24, where the law as the guardian in anticipation of Christ is misread/translated as the teacher/tutor/guardian to 'lead us to' Christ.

No. With Christ, the law as any route to salvation, even contra-positively, plays no role. 

So talking to our contemporaries:

Lets not start with the word 'sin' and 'sinner' because these are either meaningless terms to our contemporaries, or conjures up an obdurate legalism that has nothing to do with the proclamation of the gospel.

Still, we do need to drive a point, but, in language that makes sense to our peers.

So, let's expand 'sin' in terms of the biblical words: the Bible Project has a helpful piece on this.

Missing the mark! Much more descriptive.

I like the phrase "failure to be who we really are". Something that might make sense to people outside the
Christian community. A phrase more likely to open a conversation than close it down.

Your interlocutor might then ask: so who are we really? How could you/we know?
Whence 'failure' and how do you define or understand it? 

A few conversational gambits might be up your sleeve.

In response to someone's horror at some horror: social, natural, criminal, etc

"Sadly part of the horror show of a dislocated humanity"  

Far better than the conversation stopper of 'that's sin for you'

The follow on concept snippets that might be ready for use could be:

'Sin' is the word Christians use for our dislocation from who we really are and the resulting loss of value coherence. 

Reprieve has to come from outside humanity, and even outside this world, because we can only keep doing what we keep doing! And it has in the self-existent creator joining us in Jesus of Nazareth/Yeshua the Nazarene.

If they dismiss this as being 'religious' you might point out that a religious belief is a belief about what is independently real. So everyone lives in terms of a 'religious' belief, articulated, examined, or not. (Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality) 

What other 'disrupting' but positive comments might you make to open the way to a 'gospel' conversation (even if a mere snippet)?

In many cases this opening might be appropriate (or not inappropriate):

In a world conceived in (purely) materialist terms there is neither diagnosis nor treatment for the  human (dilemma/condition) -- only must wide-eyed despair at humanities history of failure, terror and cruelty in spite of its inexplicable (nobility/dignity/potential); yet in that conception the only real onclusion is the futility of death.

Back to the 'failure to be who we really are'

"Which is?" the interlocutor might ask.

People in harmony with their creator.

This idea jars against a materialistic conception of both who we are and life having any real purpose.

That itself is a symptom of the disconnect that we live in: denial that personhood is the most basic structure of reality.

And we are made to be connected to that basic structure, which, of course, is personal and relational. 

This can then go many ways...

 

Creator...personal, but not merely personal, 'love' expressed within the personal triple being...Genesis
creation description...we made for community with the creator (Gen 3:8a) then severed from creator by rejection of the way he is ...love ...repaired by him entering our humanity to rebuild the connection by renewal of us.

The idea of reality being basically delineated in terms of life in person strikes the materialist, particularly
the modern Western one, as strange if not alien.

Time for reorientation, and the implication is that our personalness is derivative of and compatible
with what absolutely is; it is not derivative of incompatible random material events by which no value is real. 

 A book: Beyond Identity by Dick Keyes of the L'Abri Fellowship. 

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.

The sameness of all religions?

A not uncommon remark today is that all religions are basically the same.

Frank Turek speaks to this claim. 

For Christians the first impulse might be to say "no they are not".

Better, IMO (and Greg Koukl's in his books "Tactics" and "Street Smarts") is to find out more.

Here's a paradigmatic pattern that might help.

Let's start with your first clarifying question:

> Really, sounds interesting, can you tell me more?

OR

> What do you mean by [that/'religion' and 'same'?]

This might bring some summary remarks about being kind and loving, or similar superficial existential affect. But what you are after is their basis for their claim. Their "why" they think that.

You might be able to respond: 

>Your view seems to be focused on a basic Christian structure, but that's not surprising because Christianity has influenced the Western worldview with varying success for many centuries. How would that apply to other transcendental world views?

The discussion could go in many ways from here.

A couple of points to keep in mind:

What 'religion' is.

The best general definition of religion is given by Clouser in his "The Myth of Religious Neutrality" page 18 in the edition I use. It is:

"the non-dependent reality on which all else depends"

In other words: the world-view that structures one's view/concept/understanding of man and his relation to the world/reality/what basically is, etc.

So you might ask the person to stand back from the word "religion" and suggest that it is:

1 - the basic conception one has of the nature of man/mankind/humanity, that either differentiates from the rest of the biota or merges into it, and

2 - the basic conception of 'reality' and man's/mankind's/humanities' relation to it.

and in so doing how it accounts for Schaeffer's "dilemma": that man (or the alternative locutions) is noble yet cruel. One could alternatively say: Magnificent, yet flawed. Loves yet hates! Is generous yet selfish.

It is in these basic conceptions that Westphal's tripartite taxonomy works: 

1. Exilic Religion

Core View: Takes life in the material world to be an exile from the soul's true home.

Salvation: The process of returning to that spiritual home.

Key Focus: The divide between the transcendent/spiritual and the physical world, often viewing the latter as fallen or a place of alienation.

 

2. Mimetic Religion

Core View: Views life as normatively controlled by a right, harmonious relationship with nature.

Salvation: Achieved by rehearsing or participating in the origins and depths of nature, often guided by myth and ritual.

Key Focus: Cosmic order, cyclical time, and living in accordance with the rhythms of the natural universe.

 

3. Covenantal Religion

Core View: Adds a historical dimension to the cosmological focus of mimetic religion.

Salvation: Finds ultimate meaning in historical interactions between the divine and humanity, giving specific historical context to human guilt, death, and redemption.

Key Focus: Time as linear, historical responsibility, and moral obligations to a personal, active deity.

(AI summary)

 

Now we can have a conversation about 'religion' and its connection with the world as it is. 

 

[BTW, I don't agree with all Greg's theology, but his apologetics approach is second to none, IMO.]