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.