Tag: Jesus

Book Plunge: The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 6

What about God in the Old Testament? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Iqbal now turns to the Old Testament. The first part worth noting is when he talks about how Mark 1 quotes Isaiah. Iqbal points out that this quotation is actually a combination of a quotation from Isaiah and Malachi. He ignores that there is actually scholarship on composite quotations which occur not just in Jewish and Christian writings, but in writings in greater Greco-Roman antiquity.

He also says Jesus never refers to Himself as the Son of Man. This is a strange argument because it assumes the only way He can is if He comes out and says “I am the Son of Man.” He also rarely says “I am the Messiah.” One example that shows Jesus saw Himself as this figure is in Matthew 19 when He tells the disciples that they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. It’s thought to be authentic since He says the twelve will which would be problematic with what Judas did. The question is, “If the apostles sit on twelve thrones, where does Jesus sit?”

There is some discussion on what the word Echad means. He does say that it can refer to a compound one, but sometimes it doesn’t.

Okay.

But sometimes it does.

Thus, just saying echad isn’t sufficient to show that this is a one that is absolutely solitary in nature. You can point out that there are many cases where this doesn’t happen and yet, that doesn’t matter. Each time it is to be interpreted based on the context of that passage.

He also asks why it refers to three in the case of God if that is the case. Why not three?

Because three persons is the number revealed throughout the Bible….

He says that the plural means the plural of majesty. In some cases, I am open to that entirely. In some cases, it doesn’t apply. Why should I think echad refers to a plural of majesty? Iqbal gives me no reason to think so.

He also says that Paul explicitly says he didn’t get information from the original apostles of Jesus on the gospel. He ignores that in Galatians 1, Paul speaks to them and presents the gospel to make sure that his race had not been run in vain. I can’t help but wonder if Iqbal has ever truly read the New Testament for himself.

So once again, we have a Muslim who tries to argue against the Trinity and really demonstrates he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. When dealing with these arguments, I tend to hit only the highlights….errr…..lowlights? It would be too much to go over every argument and some of them have been done over and over again and I try to trust on newish arguments that I have not dealt with before.

But, there are other books, so we will soon begin going through another such book sometime to see what else Muslims have to say on the topic.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 4

Does Jesus have the attributes of God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Early on, Iqbal brings up two passages of Scripture to show Jesus was not omnipotent.

John 5:30 — By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

And

Mark 6:5 — He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

With the former, what does he expect Jesus to say? “I do everything on my own and I make judgments the way I want to regardless of the Father?” This is a claim of strong unity with the Father. He is saying “When I judge, it is the judgment of God. When I act, it is the act of God.”

As for the latter, it seems strange to think Jesus’s ability to do miracles depend on faith when in the Gospels, His followers weren’t expecting His resurrection and yet, there it was. We can grant Muslims don’t believe in the resurrection, but that doesn’t change that it is in the Gospels and thus they are primary sources for Christian doctrine. What is going on is Jesus is responding to loyalty there. Since the people don’t welcome Him and want Him, He doesn’t do many miracles there.

Iqbal also says God does not pray to anyone, but this assumes that God is unipersonal, which is the statement under question. If there are at least two persons who are God, what is wrong with one of them “praying” to the other one? This is especially the case since Jesus was fully human. Iqbal needs to show why this is a problem and not just assume it is.

He then looks at what Warfield said about how Jesus acted in both His humanity and His deity. This is certainly true, but then Iqbal jumps to full Nestorianism saying that this means Jesus had two persons in Him. That was a position the early church called heretical. (And interestingly, could have been the kind of Christianity that Muhammad was most in contact with.)

He also says one idea also among Christians is that Jesus laid aside His powers based on Philippians 2. No. That’s known as the kenotic heresy nowadays and you will not find it espoused, at least by Christians who know what they’re talking about.

He then has D.A. Carson being quoted arguing against this in The Case for Christ and then treats it as if Carson is saying he doesn’t know how to explain the incarnation. Unfortunately, I do not have my copy of the book with me, but I do remember Carson goes on to explain what he thinks is going on in this passage. Strange that Iqbal doesn’t show that part.

Iqbal also stresses that Jesus never says “I forgive you” but “Your sins are forgiven” and saying that Jesus is saying the forgiveness comes from God. Yes. And? This is something a Trinitarian has no problem with. What is unusual is Jesus pronounces forgiveness even without a person actually repenting (Hard for that paralyzed man to repent) and acting as if He is the temple Himself where the presence of God dwelt.

He goes on to list eleven signs Jesus was a human, which no one is disputing. One is that Jesus died on the cross, but God cannot die. When people present this to me, I ask them what it means to die. If they say it means the person ceases to exist, then yes, God cannot cease to exist. But if that is the case, then what happens to passages like Colossians 1 that say the Son holds all things together? The Son could never cease to exist. If instead it means, the soul of Jesus left the body of Jesus, then we have no problem.

It’s odd to see that he says Jesus is guilty of falsehood. In one case, Jesus says to the thief that the thief will be with Him in Paradise, but Jesus went to hell for three days. I take hell to be best understood as the realm of the dead. I do happen to think Jesus did go to Paradise with the thief. Iqbal also talks about Jesus’s harsh language like calling the Pharisees broods of vipers. Statements like this are allegedly unbecoming of the Son of God. We are not told why this is.

Finally, there’s the idea Jesus got prophecy wrong. Just do a search on this blog for Preterism and what I have said about it. There are far too many to link to.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 3

What kind of Son of God was Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re returning to this book so let’s see what a Muslim has to say about this topic.

Iqbal starts quoting the Qur’an on how Jesus was a messenger like those before Him.

Here it is clearly stated that Jesus, the Messiah, was only a messenger of God like other messengers of God who had come before him. He was a human like them and this is simply based on the fact that it is the way of God to send messengers to his people, not His literal “divine sons”. Had that been the case, sons of God in the literal sense would have always appeared before and even after Jesus.

Iqbal, Farhan. The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ (Kindle Locations 882-887). Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama`at Canada. Kindle Edition.

I honestly can’t make heads or tails of what he is saying here. The best I can gather is that Iqbal thinks that Jesus is one divine son of many and God would send many more. This is nothing that Christians believe in that sense. Angels can be called sons of God, but certainly not in the same way that Jesus is the Son of God. John 1:18 kind of clinches for us that Jesus is the one and only.

Iqbal later in this chapter talks about the I AM statements and says “People say I am” all the time in the Bible. This is true. If we had an apostle saying “I am hungry”, no one would take that as a claim of divinity. The question is how are the phrases used by Jesus and what do they mean? John 8 has a clear usage in the end of Jesus taking the divine name upon Himself. Other usages have them speaking of Him in glorious terms.

Going back to John 8:58, Iqbal says that Christians have to go to Jesus’s enemies. We don’t say Jesus’s enemies explain what Jesus meant. We say that they understood what Jesus meant. The meaning was clear.

He later goes on to give out the same claim of Gospels being written decades after Jesus’s death and Paul never meeting Jesus. Of course, the book that was written about 600 years after the time of the ministry of Jesus by someone who never met Jesus either is completely reliable with what it says about Him. No. There is no interaction with something like Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

He does say that many prophets claim to be doing the works of God, which is true. Why is it that Jesus’s should be different? The difference in Jesus is the emphasis was on Himself. Jesus saw Himself as greater than the Sabbath, greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon, and as a walking temple. Jesus said He did miracles by the finger of God meaning the Kingdom was among the people.

So that’s it for this entry. There is some other stuff in here, including claims of dreams and visions from their “Messiah”, but nothing relevant to the topic. We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 2

Why didn’t He just say it? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

News flash! Jesus never came out and explicitly said, “I am God!”

This is something cultists and Muslims and others expect, to which I say “Why should you?” Think about this. What would it have meant for Jesus to say that? Would they hear Him saying He is the Father? As soon as He says “I am not” then they ask “Well if you’re God, but not the Father, who are you?” (Assuming they hadn’t already stoned Him.) With each answer, more and more questions come out.

No. Jesus handled this the same way as He did His being the Messiah, which He also very rarely came out and claimed for Himself. Others were claiming it of Him before He was claiming it of Himself. Could it be because like the God question, people had an idea of who the Messiah was to be as in what kind of person he was to be? Could it be He didn’t want to be tied to that image?

It’s not a shock that John 10 is pointed to as Jesus denying that He is God. (You know, that place where He said “I and the Father are one.”) I have already covered this one here. Not only did Jesus not deny it, He really upped the ante on His claim.

Iqbal goes on from there to make a number of other nonsense arguments, such as Moses being called a god. Yes. That was an analogical sense. No one understood Jesus as ever speaking in that way. This is also an argument Jehovah’s Witnesses make and it’s just as awful when they do it.

Israel is the firstborn. Yes. And?

Israel is referred to as the children of God. Yes. They are. Context determines meaning. In an analogical sense, we can say Jesus is the one who is the true Israel of God seeing as He is the true Son of God.

David is begotten. Yes. All kings of Israel were declared to be begotten, but again, this is not in the same way. David is a type of the greater one who was to come. The greater one of Jesus is begotten in the most unique way of all, eternally begotten from the Father and declared to be the king forevermore.

The righteous are called children of God. Yes. Our righteousness is not found in ourselves. It is found in the one who is the most righteous of all, the spotless lamb Christ. He is the righteousness and if we are in Him, then we are declared to be righteous. The sad reality is that if Iqbal had bothered to really understand these passages, he would have seen that they really argue against his position more.

I really wish I had more to give you all, but really this is it. The bulk of the argument that Iqbal had was based on John 10 which is a pathetically weak argument. I know I have often gone after internet atheists on here, but in a way, Muslim argumentation is often sadly worse.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Book Plunge: The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ Part 1

What do I think of Farhan Iqbal’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So at the start, Iqbal is an Ahmadiyya Muslim. I understand this is not a sect that many Muslims consider orthodox, but the arguments are still incredibly similar. Also, they do have a promised Messiah figure already from their own number. Finally, many quotes will have names that have an “as” right after them, which is a way of wishing peace upon the person.

So the first chapter is about the Bible. Right off, we’re told that the scholars generally agree that the Gospels are written around 40 years after the crucifixion and are not eyewitnesses. Unfortunately, none of these scholars are named. No arguments against the authorship of Matthew and John are given. No interaction is done with Richard Bauckham’s work. We are not told why we should trust the Qur’an which is around 600 years later. If the Muslim wants to say Allah is behind the Qur’an, a Christian could just as easily say the Holy Spirit is behind the Gospels.

He then lists some requirements for writing history and they are:

It is necessary for a historian to avoid exaggeration; secondly, there should be no weakness in his memory; thirdly, he should have sound judgment and not be a person confined to superficial thinking; fourthly, he should be a researcher and not confine himself to shallow matters; fifthly, whatever he writes should be eyewitness testimony, not a compilation of good and bad material.[

Iqbal, Farhan. The Myth of the Divinity of Jesus Christ (Kindle Locations 349-352). Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama`at Canada. Kindle Edition.

I don’t know of any historian who uses these criteria and Iqbal doesn’t tell me who they are. I don’t know of any ancient historian who did this. Exaggeration would even be seen as adding color I suspect to an account. Readers recognize exaggeration.

So what examples does he give that show the accounts aren’t historical? In John 21:25, we are told that Jesus did so much that I suppose the whole world couldn’t contain the books that would be written if all He did was told. I have spent many years debating atheists. I have not met one who would say this is a problem text. All of them would know that whoever wrote this is using exaggeration to say something and credibility doesn’t rely on it.

The second is Luke 9:58 saying the Son of Man has no place to lay His head, when Jesus had a money bag and several patrons. Again, not a problem. Jesus is comparing Himself to Wisdom and saying He has no full habitation on Earth.

The next is in Matthew 2:23 where the prophets said Jesus would be called a Nazarene. Now this is a real one that has been raised. My look at this is the only place where Matthew says that this was done to fulfill the prophetS with a Scriptural citation. The idea then is that Jesus would be seen as a rejected figure in His time, a Nazarene.

Next he goes to Matthew 5:43 where Jesus says it was said to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Iqbal is right in saying this is not found in the Torah, but the thought is that this is how Jesus’s contemporaries understood the text. If you love your neighbor, then the corollary to that would be to hate your enemy. Jesus tells us to love even him.

He later tells us that if someone goes to a tomb expecting to find a dead person and he’s not there, there are two possibilities. They went to the wrong tomb or the person wasn’t dead in the first place. There are more possibilities I can think of easily and even skeptical scholars have thought of them. It’s worth pointing out that the Ahmadiyya think that Jesus went to Kashmir, India after recovering from the crucifixion, but more on that later.

Next, Iqbal goes to 1 John 5:7-8 to go after the Trinity and cites Bart Ehrman in his defense. Most every evangelical scholar if not all of them knows that’s not something in the original text. It’s not a problem to go to multiple texts to show a doctrine like Iqbal thinks it is.

Iqbal also asks how we can trust Paul when he says that to the Jews he became like a Jew and to the Greeks, a Greek. Such a person doesn’t understand Paul is really talking about cultural sensibilities and not doing anything to needlessly offend a group. If you want to reach Jews, you don’t go in eating a pork sandwich. If you want to reach Hindus, you don’t invite them over and share a hamburger. You might even love those foods, but you don’t do it in front of them. I love my tea, but I avoid it in front of Mormons.

On the crucifixion, he says that such an event would bring doubt about the message of Jesus since He would be under a curse. Exactly! That was the point! His enemies wanted Him to be seen as under the curse of God and thus everything He said is called into question. However, a divine resurrection reverses all of that and seals the deal that everything He said is absolutely certain.

Iqbal says the Sign of Jonah can’t apply to Jesus since Jonah went into the fish and came out of it alive. Jesus however has said that one greater than Jonah was there. Jesus would go into the Earth dead and come out alive. The point is made stronger.

So thus far, I’m not impressed a bit, but next time we’ll see what Iqbal says Jesus said about Himself. Maybe it will be better.

But probably not.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Is Jesus A Friend With Benefits?

Do we treat Jesus as someone who is just there for us? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t remember what it was I had been thinking about, but the thought that came next was so startling that that was what stuck. I think it was something I have been thinking about lately where people like to say what God is doing in their lives, when I want people to tell me what they are doing in the life of God. After all, when we say “This is what God is doing in my life”, many times that’s our opinion of what’s going on. We could be wrong. However, we do know what it is that we are doing and we have to ask if we are serving or not.

We often talk about what it means to love someone and if you love them, you want to know them more and more. If you aren’t really invested in the relationship, then you don’t care about learning more about the other person. You’re just in the relationship for what the other person can do for you.

Many marriages are falling apart because people go into the marriage not thinking “What can I do to build up this relationship with this person?” but rather “What can this person do for me?” To some extent, we all seek our own good and it’s unavoidable and not always wrong, but when we do it at the expense of others, we have a problem. When we treat people as objects while denying their personhood, there is an issue.

Yet this is often how we treat Jesus. Do people really want to learn more about Jesus? It’s easy to figure that out. Think fast. When was the last time you heard about a church service offering a course on the doctrine of the Trinity? If you’re like me, your answer will be, “I can’t remember such a thing.”

Now think about this. When was the last time you heard a church offer a course on improving your marriage, getting your finances straight, being a better parent, etc. I am not saying those are wrong. The church should be offering those things. We should not be ignoring the weightier matters of knowing who Jesus is.

Dare I say it, but if we knew more about who Jesus is, maybe we would actually need less of the other seminars.

I remember as a child who didn’t go on overnight trips seeing kids in the Methodist Church come back from a big youth event and they were on fire for Jesus! They were super-excited! They wanted to go out and spread the gospel!

For about two weeks.

Here’s another question to ask. What did your pastor preach on yesterday? (If you are not reading this on Monday, just think to the last Sunday you were in church.) Honestly, many of you might have forgotten by the time you got home on Sunday what your pastor preached on. Could it be because it wasn’t anything new? Have you heard it before? Now think about that TV show you’re watching you really enjoy. What happened in the last episode? I’m sure you can tell me that.

We live in a culture where the church doesn’t really know who Jesus is. We just speak about what Jesus does. Sadly, the person no longer matters. This is one reason groups that come with anti-Trinitarian ideas can easily demolish Christians. Christians tend to only know Jesus by what He does instead of who He is.

Going back to the title, this is where it comes in. What do you call a relationship where you go to the other person just for what they can do for you and you don’t invest in them? You claim to love them, but your commitment is based on what they do for you. In modern terms, we think of this as friends with benefits.

Dealing with depression and anxiety? Come to Jesus. Want to get some extra money coming in? Come to Jesus. About to have a painful operation? Come to Jesus. Need to learn to crucify yourself and die to the world? Let’s not be hasty.

The Jesus we have that is rooted in being all about us will not change the world. The good news we will share is the good news that will feed narcissism rather than crucify it. We can talk about a relationship with Jesus, but too often, it is a one-sided relationship. If your walk with Jesus is all about what He has done for you, then when the so-called benefits stop, so will you. If your walk with Jesus is built on who He is and His death and resurrection, then you will have a much easier time. You will have a true covenant relationship, a marriage if you will.

Bottom line is either Jesus is your king and you serve Him, or it’s the other way around.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Jesus the Muslim Prophet Part 10

Did the Christians make Jesus into God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Fatoohi starts with a chapter on how Jesus was a spiritual Messiah and not a militaristic one. Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell us what it means to be a spiritual Messiah or even what it means to be a Messiah. He says only a minority of the population became Christian and so it was easy for Paul to turn Jesus into a God.

Then he says this:

As the Jews did to their Messiah before Jesus, Christians changed the nature of their Messiah, Jesus, after him. But the Jews always believed that the Messiah was a human being, so Christianity’s claim that the Messiah was divine is unhistorical.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The Christians also always believed Jesus was a human being and that the Messiah was a human being. If anything, the first heresies did not deny the divinity of Jesus. They denied His humanity.

Jesus taught the oneness of God. He realized that he was going to be turned into a god, so he used the expression “son of man” as one way of emphasizing his human nature. Yet ironically, and as irrationally as it may be, this very term was hijacked by those who promoted his divinity and turned it into another way of saying “son of God” in the Christian sense, i.e. as another confirmation of Jesus’ divinity.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Fatoohi seems to go back and forth. At first, he argues no one would have turned Jesus into a God since that goes against Judaism. Then He regularly has throughout the book that during Jesus’s ministry, He had to show that He wasn’t God regularly. So which was it? Were the Jews wanting to turn Him into God or not?

Besides that, who was disputing His human nature? Fatoohi still has this assumption that one can’t be both God and man. He doesn’t back this.

The Trinity was developed centuries after Jesus, yet it also became a fundamental doctrine of Christianity. Anyone who has any doubts about the fact that Christian theologians have substantially changed Jesus’ image after him need only learn about how this alien doctrine was developed and incorporated into Christian theology.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Unfortunately, he gives us no resources on how to do this. Most any good book on church history would help you with this. He had earlier referenced Larry Hurtado. A shame he doesn’t mention him here. Richard Bauckham is another great mind to read on this topic.

Anyway, I have done this research. I find it consistent with what I read in the New Testament. It’s definitely much more so than the Qur’an which can’t even get the definition of the Trinity right.

And with that, we’re done with this one as the only other section is an appendix of Qur’an verses on this and well, that’s fine if you’re a Muslim, but I see no reason to take it seriously.

So on to another book!

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Jesus the Muslim Prophet Part 9

What does Fatoohi say about the Trinity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The opening paragraph of the chapter on the Trinity sets the scene:

The New Testament, as well as other early Christian writings, contains passages that promote monotheism and others that ascribe to Jesus divine attributes, and passages that stress the distinctness of the Father and the Son and others that fuse the two. These contradictory writings served as a fertile environment for the development of a number of conflicting and ambiguous doctrines. This confused theological language reflects more influence by the Roman understanding of divinity than by Jewish monotheism. Even if only the Gospel of John is considered and all other canonical and apocryphal Christian books are ignored, this single book would still provide too many discrepant, confusing, and vague statements to allow a harmonious, coherent, and clear picture of Jesus.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Well that’s a fine little mess you’ve gotten us into!

To begin with, what contradictory writings? We’re not told? These writings show the distinction between the Father and the Son. Yes. They are distinct persons. That’s not a problem. The language has more influence from Roman polytheism than Jewish monotheism? How? We are not told.

And yet not long after this, he says in his words:

Tertullian of Carthage (ca. 155- after 220), who introduced the term “Trinity” from the Latin “trinitas” (three or triad), taught the concept of one God in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are distinct, but not separate. Because these three persons are not separate or divided, God is one, not three. Tertullian’s Trinity is, therefore, a form of monotheism not tritheism.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Wait. What was that?

This doctrine of the Trinity is a form of monotheism?

Could that be….Jewish monotheism?

We can all thank Mr. Fatoohi for establishing that a Muslim can agree that the Trinity is monotheistic.

Unfortunately, he messes up in the next sentence.

Another form of the Trinity, which Tertullian considered heresy is known as “Sabellianism,” after the 3rd century theologian Sabellius.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Except this isn’t the Trinity. This is modalism as we would call it today. It is one God but putting on three different costumes as it were. Today it is found in movements like Oneness Pentecostalism.

It’s not a shock that after this, we get to Nicea and who is the villain? Constantine!

The spread of this controversy prompted Emperor Constantine to arrange and oversee the first Ecumenical Council, which was held in Nicea in 325 CE. The convening bishops, whose number has been put by different sources between 250 and 318, released the first decree that addressed the status of the Father and the Son and their relationship, but it only affirmed the belief in the Holy Spirit. This decree was not the result of as much consensus as Constantine’s influence and pressure.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

All Constantine did was call the council. After that, he did not oversee the events and have influence on them. He was even baptized by an Arian as he was dying. Also, the council was not about the Trinity, but about the nature of the person of Jesus. That is an aspect of the doctrine of the Trinity, but not the Trinity itself.

In speaking about the dual natures of Jesus, Fatoohi says:

The Qur’an’s argument rejects this duality as an impossibility. Verse 4.171 also clearly considers the Trinity as a form of tritheism not monotheism.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

So this is interesting.

Earlier, he told us the Trinity is a form of monotheism.

Now he says the Qur’an says it is tritheism. Does Fatoohi disagree with the Qur’an?

We are also not told how Jesus having two natures is an impossibility. We are not told how one person who fully has the nature of God serves another person who fully has the nature of God. These kinds of assertions from anti-Trinitarianism never really hold for people who really study the doctrine.

This next section is long but worth quoting in full:

Some scholars have suggested that the Qur’an mistakenly takes the Trinity to be the Father, the Mother, and the Son, i.e. the divine family. This conclusion is probably influenced by the fact that in verses 5.72-75 the denouncement of deification of Mary, as well as that of Jesus, occurs after the rejection of the Trinity. I agree with Parrinder (1995: 135) that there is actually nothing in the Qur’an to suggest this interpretation. The weakness of the conclusion above becomes clear when we observe that the rejection of the Trinity in verses 4.171 is followed in verses 4.172 by the confirmation that the Messiah and the nearest angels would not scorn to be servants to God. The Qur’an could not have defined the Trinity in one verse as being God, the Messiah, and the nearest angels, and in another as God, Jesus, and Mary. The names mentioned after the Trinity are not meant to be its members. In verse 5.116, God asks Jesus: “Did you say to people: ‘Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah?’” This may be taken by some to mean that the Trinity is presented as consisting of God, Jesus, and Mary. But, unlike verses 4.171 and 5.73, this verse does not mention the concept of three. The Qur’an contains a large number of verses criticizingthose who “take gods besides Allah,” and most of these verses have nothing to do with Jesus or the concept of the Trinity (e.g. 19.81, 36.74).

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Okay. So the Qur’an never mentions the concept of three. All it says is “Did you say to people: ‘Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah?’ ”

Folks. We’re going to get into complex math here. Get prepared. We have Allah + Jesus + Mary. Now here comes the hard part. How many persons do you see there?

Now I have ran this through numerous computers and got out my white board and ran the numbers several times, but I keep getting that the number is three.

Face it. The Qur’an got the definition of the Trinity wrong. Hard to believe that a being like Allah wouldn’t even know the doctrine His book was arguing against. It’s almost as if the book is just a book by someone who wasn’t in communication with the deity….

Verse 5.75 makes the interesting observation that both Jesus and his mother ate food, which is a sign of being human. Having to eat food in order to live is used elsewhere in the Qur’an as a sign that the messengers were ordinary human beings:

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Breaking news everyone! Jesus was human! Amazing isn’t it?! Not only that, this is a test the New Testament itself has in Luke to show that Jesus is not a ghost!

There’s a reason Muslim apologetics is just so incredibly bad.

Next time, we’ll return to looking more at the doctrine of Jesus.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Book Plunge: Jesus the Muslim Prophet Part 7

What does Son of Man mean?

Fatoohi is going to try to take on this one now. To his credit, he does at least interact with material like 1 Enoch. Fortunately, he comes to Daniel and the all-important passage in there on this topic, Daniel 7:13-14. One of his arguments for this not being the Messiah is the text says one like a Son of Man, not the Son of Man.

Which is really weak.

Daniel watched in awe as one “like a son of man [kĕbar ʾĕnāš]” descended into the throne room surrounded by the clouds of heaven (v. 13). “One like a son of man” means that this person was in human form. As Baldwin points out, however, he is more than a man.

Stephen R. Miller, Daniel (vol. 18; The New American Commentary; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 207.

Or

While still gazing at the destruction of the beast Daniel’s attention was arrested by a most amazing event. In his vision of the night another figure emerged. This was no beast. It had no animal features. There were no deep, dark, recesses here, but only light. It came as one like a son of man, a human figure. At the same time it was a heavenly figure, not an earthly one. Boldly this one approached the courtroom and was led into the presence of the Ancient of Days. Once there he was handed a kingdom, given authority and sovereign power. All peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him, for his dominion was an everlasting dominion that would not pass away. His kingdom was one that would not be destroyed.
It is important not to miss the contrast here. Here was a human being, one in the image of God, who was at the same time a heavenly figure who ruled like man was meant to rule, that is, under the rule of God. The contrast occurs at a number of levels: chaos versus order, beastly versus human, temporary versus eternal, seized versus given, condemned versus endorsed. Here was something Daniel and many others had longed and waited for since Adam’s failure: one who lived out the divine rule of God.

Andrew Reid, Daniel: Kingdoms in Conflict (ed. Paul Barnett; Reading the Bible Today Series; Sydney, South NSW: Aquila Press, 2004), 123.

With this last one, in a Jewish monotheistic context you have a human figure who is worshipped. This doesn’t fit with what Fatoohi says, but it is just fine within Judaism.

But then something totally unexpected occurs. Into the presence of the Ancient of Days steps “one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven” (7:13). Who is this figure? While the language and imagery of this verse would have been familiar to the ancient reader (though strange to us), the implications would have shocked them.
First, we should realize that “son of man” is a phrase that occurs a number of times in the Old Testament, particularly in the book of Ezekiel (2:1, 3, 6, and throughout the book), and always means “human being.” But notice this is one “like a human being,” not a human being per se. And his association, though not identification, with humanity is clear from the fact that this human-like figure is accompanied by the clouds of heaven. In other words, this person is a cloud rider, a sure indication of divinity.
In the first place, in the broader ancient Near East, cloud riding was the function of storm gods like Baal, who was often called “cloud rider” in the Ugaritic myths that describe his exploits. By the time of Daniel, many Old Testament texts had appropriated this description and applied it to God (Ps 18:1–9; 68:4; 103:3; Is 19:1; Nah 1:3). Thus, to ancient readers this human-like figure was God himself riding into the presence of the Ancient of Days, also God himself, after achieving victory over the beasts. No wonder this passage is cited so often in the New Testament in reference to Jesus, God’s Son and God himself (more on this in chapter 16).
But for now, restricting ourselves to an Old Testament reader’s perspective, we should notice that the vision ends with the Ancient of Days conferring great honor on the one like the son of man. Indeed, “he was given (presumably by the Ancient of Days) authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed”

Tremper Longman III, How to Read Daniel (How to Read Series; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2020), 101–102.

Now Fatoohi does appreciate giving what scholars say since he quotes some of them. I have done the same. I wonder who I should trust.

Fatoohi will go on later to say there is no evidence that Son of Man was used in reference to the Messiah before Jesus. Let’s leave out Daniel for the time being. To that, let it be said, “So what?” Even if that is the case, we could just as well the same could apply to the virgin birth, which I do affirm. Jesus shattered a lot of ideas on what the Messiah would be.

He does say that Jesus did use the Son of Man saying to avoid His deification. After all, everyone would just think to that Daniel passage upon hearing it and think “Yep. No shades of deity there.” This also assumes that Jesus’s deity was being taught in His lifetime, but Fatoohi keeps saying that these were monotheistic  Jews who would not do this, so who were these Jews risking turning Jesus into deity?

So color me still puzzled by Fatoohi’s arguments.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Jesus the Muslim Prophet Part 6

What does the Qur’an say about the sonship of Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It rejects it.

Oh. You want more.

Well, alright. Just because I like you all so much and appreciate your reading.

Anyway, Fatoohi says that in the beginning, God was alone. There was no one else. I suppose this could explain why Allah is not all-loving. After all, who was there for Him to love before creation? This is a problem you have solved in a Trinity of persons.

One important difference between the presentations of God in the Qur’an and the New Testament, at least according to the most popular understanding of the latter, is that the God of the Qur’an is one whereas the God of the New Testament is a unity. Allah is not a number of persons in one, one person in multiple manifestations, one being in different aspects, one in more than one mode, or any such designations that Christianity developed.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

This might sound like a shock, but a unity is one. That’s why it starts with “Uni.” It refers to something that is one. In this case, there is one divine nature. Unfortunately, none of these descriptions Fatoohi gives us are actually anything like orthodox Christianity.

Under pressure to reconcile contradictory statements in the New Testament, Christian theologians work hard to stress that the concepts of divine oneness and unity are one and the same. The Qur’an rejects this equation, as logic does. The God of the Qur’an is one, not united.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

We are not told what these contradictory statements are. Depending on the meaning, unity and oneness could mean the same. I fully agree the Qur’an rejects this, but if Fatoohi wants to say logic rejects this, he needs to show how. Many brilliant Christians throughout history have known logic quite well and yet somehow overlooked something right at the center of what they believe?

Jesus’ sonship of God in Christianity is no different from the concept of offspring of God of the polytheists of Arabia.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Unless the polytheists were holding on to some concept of Trinity, yes it was. Also, the polytheists would believe that a child was born in real time as a result of action on the part of the deity. In Christianity, Jesus is eternally begotten by the Father and is not an event that happened in time. The Son always was.

And when Allah said: “O Jesus son of Mary! Did you say to people: ‘Take me (ittakhithūnī) and my mother for two gods besides Allah?’” He said: “Glory be to You! I could never say what I have no right to say. If I have said it, then You know it. You know what is in my mind, but I do not know what is in Your mind. You know all unseen things. (5.116) I never said to them anything other than what You commanded me: ‘worship Allah, my and your Lord.’ I was a witness over them while I was among them, and when You took me You were the watcher over them. You are a witness over all things. (5.117) If You punish them, they are Your servants; and if You forgive them, You are the Invincible, the Wise.” (5.118) This dialog happened after God took Jesus to live in a heavenly place and rescued him from the attempt to get him crucified (Fatoohi, 2007: 445-452). Jesus lived until his middle age.

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Where this took place, we do not know. How Jesus died, we do not know. This would all be news to New Testament scholars. Fatoohi uses them when it suits his goal, but when he wants to go with the assertions from the Qur’an that have no scholarly support in the subject area, he just ignores the scholarship entirely.

Most scholars also think that the deification of Jesus happened after he was gone. Larry Hurtado (2003: 131) stresses that “the Gospels confirm that the worship of Jesus in ‘post-Easter’ Christian circles represents a significant development beyond the sorts of homage given to Jesus during his ministry.”

Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.

I was unable to track down the article, but I did notice that Fatoohi just cited the first page, which tells me he read enough to get what he wanted and then moved on. The reply to this is “Of course they did!” The resurrection was the confirmation of Jesus and His terms. The resurrection changed everything!

Using Hurtado still, to avoid a long quote, I will just say Fatoohi concludes saying that modern scholarship concludes with what the Qur’an said a long time ago. Jesus was a man and pagan beliefs changed him into a god. This would be news to Larry Hurtado who argues that Jesus’s devotion started early on and sprang from the soil of Judaism at the time. Either Fatoohi has never read Hurtado’s work seriously, in which case he is ignorant, or he knows it and is misrepresenting it, in which case he is a liar.

Either way, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)