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.