My free Quran form the Local Mosque
When a Christian and a Muslim debate, often the holy books are in the crosshairs. The Christian tries to find errors in the Quran, and the Muslim will do the same thing with the Bible. A good tactic? I don’t think so.
This tends to become a tit for tat game and gets nowhere. Jay Smith once said that its better to point out errors rather than contradictions. I think that it’s best to do neither. For one, there’s the issue of how much wiggle room you’ll give them in harmonizing the contradiction. I expect some wiggle room from them when harmonizing supposed Biblical contradictions. It’s really hard to agree on how much you’ll each give when you’re dialoguing, especially since it’s most likely someone you’ve never met before.
Also, this is done almost always in an amateur way. Many people will not do proper research but just use Google for answers. Very sketchy.
There is one exception to this rule and this is of course what I’ve been blogging about recently. I’m talking on the Surah 5 Trinity blunder. For more on that error, see these two recent posts.
Why do I bring this error up and not others? First of all, it is not a nit picky detail. It’s not dealing with a nothing issue. It’s dealing with the Muslim attack on the Christian view of God.
The second reason why it’s good to bring this up is because Muslims like to bring up the Trinity. They think that’s its a slam dunk for them. When this is used, it not only scores a point for us, but takes away their slam dunk. As I mentioned the previous posts, its best to use it as a counter. Don’t think that because it’s a counter that you won’t get to use it. Muslims bring up the Trinity all the time so this counter will get to be used often.
The third reason to bring this up is because it’s a slam dunk. I have field tested this argument in my dialogues and have never received a good answer. I’ve also searched high and low on many Islamic apologetics websites for decent answers and haven’t found any. There are a couple of answers that are always thrown out but they are easily responded to.
I’ve emphasized this before and I will again. Christians, if you read nothing else in the Quran, read Surah 5. The whole chapter deals with the relationship of Muslims with the Jews and Christians. It also helps to understand how Muslims view our Scriptures. Also, like this post has shown, this chapter has the one error that should take center stage in our dialogues.
The portion with the Trinity starts in the 70’s. There are about half a dozen important verses that need to be memorized. The two most important being 73 and 116 since they’re the bookends of this argument. A few others are important as well.
Christians, look into this error in the Quran, study it, commit it to memory and try it out. Let me know how it works. I get nothing but positive results and you should as well.
We must be mindful that Muslims may argue that the identification of God, Jesus and His mother Mary with “three” may pertain to particular Christians who they suppose believed such a thing.
It is also worth noting that it some Muslims may criticise the Trinity on the grounds that it doesn’t make sense. The response to that I suppose is that the doctrine of the Trinity may be difficult for us to quite comprehend but that is what the Gospel appears to teaching us.
I will certainly have another look at Surah 5, which gives a stern command for Christians to follow the Injeel (i.e. Gospel – it can be nothing else), and in doing so reveals Islam to be a falsehood.
Hi Christopher,
“We must be mindful that Muslims may argue that the identification of God, Jesus and His mother Mary with “three” may pertain to particular Christians who they suppose believed such a thing.”
Yes, this is one of the responses that you sometimes get. That this part of the Quran may have been refuting some small fringe sect. However, the context doesn’t fit and here’s why. Verse 116 refers to day of judgment and the Quranic Jesus is going to condemn those who worshipped him and his mother. Why on the day of judgment is Jesus going to condemn some fringe sect? How many people go to hell for the belief of this hypothetical but mythical fringe sect? A few thousand maybe? How many will go to hell for traditional Trinitarian beliefs? Tens of billions. Why would Jesus refute this one and not the other? It makes so sense at all. Therefore the only answer is that the Quran has misunderstood what the Trinity was.
Regarding your second paragraph, you could say that but you could also go with the Surah 5 Trinity blunder.
Yeah, the Surah 5 instructions on the Injeel are interesting. I tend not to use that though. I know people that do and I’m not saying its a bad tactic but I don’t usually employ it in my arsenal of arguments.
God Bless,
Allan
Thank you.
as salaamu alaykum
It would likely work since most Muslims likely do not know the Quran or even Christian theology.
I would say that the Quran never explicitly said that the Trinity included Mary, just as the Bible never explicitly said Jesus or the Holy Spirit was God. And that it likely spoke of the tendency of Christians to overly venerate Mary to the point that she is nearly a deity. (Hume says something about that in Natural History of Religion.) Jesus, sallahu alayhi wa salaam, did not say that he and his mother were deities, but there was a tendency of Christians to regard the latter as a kind of demigod even if it was not explicitly mandated by the Scriptures.
So what if the Quran does not explicitly refer to the formal conception of the Trinity?
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Off topic. Guess who I would give the Cy Young for apologetics/counterapologetics to. That person does not have to be on the Muslim side. That person just has to be good at it.
Hi Latias,
I hope that you’re well. You said:
“It would likely work since most Muslims likely do not know the Quran or even Christian theology.”
Possibly, though if you look at what I’ve written I present this as a counter-response primarily to those giving dawah. Someone giving dawah at a booth probably knows more about Islam than the average Muslim. They’d also know more about Christian theology than the average Muslim.
The word Trinity is not in the Quran so it didn’t say that Mary was part of the Trinity. However, this is what verse 73 reads:
“They disbelieve those who say, “God is the third of three.” But there is no deity except the One God. If they do not refrain from what they say, a painful torment will befall those among them who disbelieve.”
The Quran is attacking those who say God is the third of three and says that they’re wrong because there is only one God. What else has to do with an erroneous view of God that Christians held to involving God being three? Can you think of another option besides the Trinity?
“Jesus, sallahu alayhi wa salaam, did not say that he and his mother were deities, but there was a tendency of Christians to regard the latter as a kind of demigod even if it was not explicitly mandated by the Scriptures. ”
Let’s just assume for the sake of argument that Christians thought she was a demigod. Christians have never considered her to be part of the Trinity or the three that make up God.
James White has always talked about the scenario about Muhammad taking a caravan trip into Syria when he was a child and to imagine him wondering off while his tribesman were trading in the local market. He walks into a Byzantine Church. He would have most likely seen an icon of Mary holding the baby Jesus. He would have known that Christians call Allah the Father and Jesus the son. Who’s the third of the three? The mother perhaps? The father, mother, and the son. The Holy Spirit in Byzantine iconography is pictured as a dove and would be harder to pick up to someone not educated in Christian theology.
Formal conception? I don’t expect the Quran to give extensive detail like the creeds to but I do expect it to get the three persons correct.
Now, regarding the Cy Young apologetics award, I’d have to say that you’d pick Ijaz Ahmad. I know you’re a huge fan of his. Although, the real Cy Young Award is for both NL and AL, maybe the apologetics Cy Young award could be for a Muslim and a non-Muslim? It’s also an annual award so is there one for each year? I hope you know that I’m just joking at this point and being silly. Back to being serious, Ijaz Ahmad. Am I correct?
One more thing. You’ve managed to spark an interest in me regarding David Hume. I will be looking into his works for sure now. It might be a few months down the road since my reading list is a bit long. Joseph de Maistre quotes him quite a bit.
God Bless,
Allan
as salaamu alaykum, Allan
I would concede that the Quran does not give a precise depiction of the doctrine of the Trinity.
From a naturalistic perspective, that can account for the depiction of the Trinity in the Quran. (If one wants to assume the hypothesis that the Quran was naturally generated, then that seems to be a consistent account for the origin of the ideas in Surah al Maidah.) I will only insist that it does not explicitly identify Mary as a part of the Trinity, and did not get anything wrong.
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No, I would give it James White. 🙂
Hi Latias,
Thanks for the response. I actually quite like what you said here. I just want to clarify one thing:
“I will only insist that it does not explicitly identify Mary as a part of the Trinity, and did not get anything wrong.”
I’m curious that you add the word explicitly. Would you at least say that it appears to give that impression on the surface?
Anyways, no need to think too deep. I’m not going to write about Surah 5 again for a while. I’ve given quite enough info on it and I think that my readers are longing for something else. The next post will be a review of a recent Scott Hahn book. Stay tuned.
James White Eh? Interesting…
God Bless,
Allan
1. “I would say that the Quran never explicitly said that the Trinity included Mary, just as the Bible never explicitly said Jesus or the Holy Spirit was God.”- you’re comparing oranges to apples here. First, what does “explicitly” mean to you? This word is often being abused by Muslims, and it’s misuse is so careless that barely anyone takes it seriously anymore. Where does Jesus say in the Quran “I am the Messiah”? Nowhere. I would like to remind you, Latias, that the Quran supposedly “came” to correct the alleged distortions of the true faith, done by Jews and Christians. Don’t you find at least a bit weird that verses that polemicize with Christians are so vague that even Muslims admit that the exact meaning of the said verses is uncertain? Isn’t this way of “correcting falsehood” actually only increasing the falsehood? Isn’t an all-knowing diety supposed to do better than this? Tell me , how are Christians supposed to take such arguments seriously? What if Christians blame Muslims of being worshipers of a moon god by saying “Allah was the name of pre-Islamic moon diety, so you are basically of the same ilk as Arabic pagans”. Would you accept that? No? Why not?
The Bible does call Jesus God explicitly- John 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1, Revelation 1:17, etc.
About the Holy Spirit – 2 Samuel 23:2-3, 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, Hebrews 9:14, Acts 5:-4.
Do I have to remind you that according to orthodox Islamic doctrine ascribing Allah’s names and titles to someone means you’re identifying them with Allah? If you say this is not good enough, you call Allah imperfect.
2. Allan, the Muslims always respond with “The Quran says Injeel was GIVEN to Jesus, the New Testament was not given to Him, it was written decades later, therefore the Injeel is not the New Testament”. This is to be countered with “Yeah, and where does Allah make distinction between the Injeel and the New Testament? If your theory is correct, there should be distinction between the two, otherwise the Quran sets up some serious confusion, which means that this book wasn’t really meant to expose and correct falsehood, but to spread it. The Quran never differentiates the two books (if we assume it talks about two different books), every single time it uses “Injeel”as a generic term about the Scripture Christians adhere to.This a problem, no matter if you acknowledge it or not.”
as salaamu alaykum Orange,
I don’t know where the notion that Islam was derived from the worship of a lunar deity is derived from. Is it from the semiotic association of the crescent and star with Islam, since that came from the Ottoman Empire?
Yes, John 1:1 seems to be a powerful verse that affirms that Jesus (peace be upon him) is eternal since most interpretations would infer that Jesus is being personified as the word. One other twist of that verse comes from Hobbes’ Leviathan (and their are likely other unorthodox sources that say that) where he claims that this means that Jesus was the promised messiah. “Word” in that sense means “the promise of God’s word” to send a messiah. [As an aside, Hobbes does have a highly materialistic eschatology and conception of the afterlife that is not supported by, what I regard as a reasonable interpretation of scripture.]
Revelation 1:17 (it says he is the first and last, not as powerful as John 1:1). Come on, what is the name of James White’s ministry?! Revelation 22:13 is better :)!
Still, regarding explicit statements of Jesus deity (more specifically divine attributes) in the Bible, I don’t know what a Muslim would say about that. I find it hard to gainsay that there are some seemingly unambiguous statements, particularly John 20:28. I looked at what some Muslim apologists would say about that verse (in August 2017). The response that I found focused on the inconsistency between the Gospel narratives, arguing that Thomas really did not say that and implying that it had been inserted in by the writer of John to make some theological point. Also, it is mentioned that in the end that the accounts of the signs were to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of God, but neither said that Jesus was necessarily God nor consubstantial with God (John 20:30-31). It is to suggest that John did have an opportunity to be clearer, which he used to explicitly state his purpose, when concluding the Gospel (although there is another chapter as epilogue). Even “nuking” the Gospel of John does not work. One could claim that it is a proto-gnostic work with Hellenistic influences written many decades after the crucifixion of Jesus to cast doubt on its reliability. Still, the Gospel of John has Thomas apparently claiming that Jesus is God. It is somewhat confusing in light of the closing remarks to conclude John 20, but it is nevertheless still there.
I don’t know what line would da’wah pursue. Is it the claim that Jesus did not claim that he is God, with the Synoptics as evidence? Is confutation (from the Christian scriptures) the objective for an Islamic polemicist? Does one need to confute every perceived claim? A liberal line would show how in the Bible the Christology evolved to be more exalted, with genuine Paul and the Synoptics talking a lower Christology, while the deutero Pauline letters, Hebrews, and Catholic epistles taking a higher Christology. (The hymn in Colossians for example has a higher Christology than the hymn in Philippians. [Philippians does say “form of a God”]. That is one [peripheral] reason that Bart Ehrman cites in Forgery and Counterforgery that Paul did not write Colossians. Of course, they key argument regarding the message of Colossians concerns its realized eschatology in the sense that believers are already raised with Christ, while the undisputed epistles claim that is to be anticipated.)
I would be satisfied to demonstrate the doctrine of the Trinity is underdetermined by Christian scripture, that is that the scripture does not clearly demonstrate the doctrine, and Arianism and some other Trinitarian heresies are equally plausible interpretations. Such interpretations are plausible because the scripture is ambiguous or contradictory, and fail to support the Trinity. (“Underdetermination” is a philosophy of science term to denote cases where the empirical evidence is not decisive to favor a particular scientific theory over others.) In contrast, the Quran al Kareem is quite lucid that Allah, SWT, is ahad (one).
I asked a sheik whether it is okay to call other people some of the names of God. I was particular interested in calling David Hume “al-fatihah” (the opening) since he initiated my interest in philosophy, and in my thoughts made the association of him with that name. He asked other sheik, and he told me that name could be used for other people. Some names are solely reserved for Allah, SWT, such as ar-rahman (the merciful) and al-kaliq (the creator).
I don’t know the Arabic language. “Injeel” could refer to do different things. It just depends on the context to determine what it is referring to. I don’t see how that is problematic.
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As an aside, I shared John 20:17 with a fellow sister whom I would miss and that had been a wonderful inspiration to me. She was quite happy when I took out my Bible and asked her to read it. She thought it confirmed that the resurrected Isa acknowledged that he had a God whom he worshipped. She apparently did not see the other verse. Subhana’allah for that unintended reaction!
I had no intention to elicit that reaction or make any theological or polemical point when sharing that verse. I liked that verse for an entirely different reason. I shared it because I did not want to cling to her even she had been a wonderful influence on my life. We both have to move on our lives.
Hey Latias,
I’ll leave responding to the specific texts up to Orangehunter since he brought them up, but I want to recommend two books to you.
The Forgotten Trinity by Cy Young winning apologist James White
The Case for Jesus by Brant Pitre
I should note that in the second book, the deity of Christ is only one of many topics covered unlike White’s book where it’s the entire book.
God Bless,
Allan
Thanks for you input to this. I am very interested in your perspective and would like to learn more.
You have taken the time to write exhaustively on this matter. Might I take this opportunity to again repeat my earlier question? It is one that interests me greatly but which remains unanswered.
Why do you choose to believe what Mohammed had to say?
Christopher,
I do not have time to give you a complete answer. I actually spent some time writing a dialogue between a Muslim [my character] and convert to Calvin from Islam [who is in the form of a Muslim that know, but she would not say the things that she says].
I will repeat the advice of Jesus, SAWS: be persistent in enjoining me (as he enjoins people to do so in prayer). I really do not have a desire to conceal most of it. It is somewhat complex though.
There was someone who gave me to courage to quit Catholicism. He was not someone that I’ve met, and he drank alcohol.
So after [some metaphorical Midway], defeat was inevitable: when I made the decision to deconvert, I euphemistically said I was “turning away”, but I did not call it apostazing or “deconverting”. During my last campaign to keep my faith, I decided that it was not worth to continue sail on to Leyte Gulf, and subsequently I gave the order to turn around northward back to the San Bernardino Strait not to resume my mission.
I said this before:
I am not ashamed of that. Reason is the slave of the passions!
Thank you for the reply Latias. I think you have explained your position.
Thank you for responding, Latias, and apologies for the late response. You raise some important questions and I’m more than happy to answer. I doubt anyone would follow my ramblings to the end, but here we go:
1. “Allah” is what pre-Islamic Arab pagans were calling the moon god, worshiped in Mecca. How exactly the crescent came to be regarded as symbol of Islam is not exactly clear though, there are different theories.
2. Again, be careful with the terms “explicit” and “ambiguous”. Muslim apologists and dawagandists like to (mis)use them through the fallacy of special pleading, application of double standards and some other blunderous tactics that often backfire on them in various unexpected ways. After all, when Allah declares in the Quran that he is all-powerful, does he mean it literally or not so literally? For example, is he able to destroy the Quran, which (who?) is one of Allah’s attributes? Now, you say “John’s aim is to demonstrate Jesus Is the Messiah and son of God”. This is fully compatible (if not necessary) with demonstration of Jesus’ divinity – being Messiah means being God (http://answeringislam.org/authors/shamoun/rebuttals/zaatari/messiah_as_god1.html), and Jesus Is not just a “son of God”, but God’s only-begotten Son (Luke 20:9-19, John 3:16). As for Muslims gainsaying Biblical passages affirming Christ’s divinity and evidence that the Synoptic Gospels do teach the deity of Christ, I recommend this article:
http://answering-islam.org/authors/thompson/case_for_deity.html
3. Cutting the Bible into pieces (Synoptics vs. John, Pauline vs. “deutero-Pauline”, etc.) is something Muslim apologists are fond of, but it reveals their fear of the Bible as an integral piece of Christian theology- “it must be cut into pieces, and those of them that suit our purposes we’ll use against the Christians, the rest we’ll ignore or say it was not part of the original text/teaching.” Muslims simply cannot stand the Bible being one piece, because it prevents them of presenting convincing case in favor of Islam. Christians are not impressed by this way of arguing, since it’s utterly inconsistent and logically fallacious. One of the things I’ve always wondered is this: If the Gospel of St. John is so late, distorted and unreliable, how on earth are Christians supposed to take seriously the claim that John 14:16 is a prophecy about Muhammad. John is “late and unreliable”, and none of the Synoptics contains that passage. How do you know St. John did not make it up? How do you even know it was part of the “original text” of his Gospel? Another thing is St. Paul’s testimony in his undisputed Epistle to the Romans: “…Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God” (9:5). And here’s something from your favorite Bart Ehrman: “Do Matthew, Mark, Luke consider Jesus to be God? I always thought the answer was a decided no (unlike the Gospel of John). In doing my research for my book “How Jesus Became God”, I ended up realizing I was probably wrong.”
(Source: https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-as-god-in-the-synoptics-for-members-2/ )
As for defense of the traditional view of authorship of NT books, I recommend you the following:
https://www.risenjesus.com/review-of-bart-ehrmans-book-forged-writing-in-the-name-of-god
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2011/04/04/forged-chapter-one-a-world-of-deception-and-forgeries/
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2011/03/30/forged-bart-ehrmans-new-salvo-the-introduction-2/
http://answering-islam.org/authors/thompson/gospel_authorship.html
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trusting-Testament-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/1607917335/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524507108&sr=1-1&keywords=trusting+the+New+Testament&dpID=51bNFKKKFFL&preST=_SX218_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
http://tektonticker.blogspot.bg/2012/12/book-snap-bart-ehrmans-forgery-and.html
4. Alleged inconsistencies in the Bible had already been dealt with- Eusebius’ “Gospel Problems and Solutions”; St. Augustine’s “Harmony of the Gospels”; “Hard Sayings” by Trent Horn; “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties” by Gleason Archer; “Hard Sayings of the Bible” by F.F.Bruce & Co; “When Critics Ask: A Handbook on Bible Difficulties”, “The Big Book of Bible Difficulties” and “Making Sense of Bible Difficulties” by Norman Geisler; “Bible Answer Book” by Hank Hanegraaff; “Keeping Faith in an Age of Reason” by Jason Lisle; “Demolishing Supposed Bible Contradictions” by Ken Ham; “The “Errors” in the King James Bible” by Peter Ruckman; the article “101 Cleared-up Contradictions in the Bible” by Jay Smith &Co and many, many others. I want to be clear, I don’t embrace some of the ideas and the conclusions, expressed in these writings, but they do contain valuable and plausible resolutions to alleged discrepancies in the Bible.
5. “Demonstrating the doctrine of the Trinity is underdetermined by Christian scripture” is quite a hard task, don’t you think? After all, you need to provide some REALLY good reasons that your understanding of the Bible is better than the traditional one in Christianity. Also, I would like to remind you that, unlike most Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Catholics do not subscribe to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. For us it’s not the Bible alone, but the Bible AND the Church (including Church traditions, handed down by the Apostles themselves). It’s the Church that decides which understanding of the Bible is correct. There is no room for “equally plausible interpretations”. And the Quran is anything but clear- Allah is one what? One being? One person? One community? “One” could refer to compound unity. In fact, this is probably the case:
http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/shamoun/conscious_quran.html
6. The main problem with the Injeel is that there are no indications in the Quran that the term “Injeel” itself has several meanings. The Quran never makes distinction between these allegedly differing meanings. This is a problem, because the Quran repeats over and over again how detailed and clear its text is, when in reality it’s exactly the opposite.
7. Christ saying “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” is problematic for Muslims, not Christians- He didn’t say “Our Father and our God”, but instead made a distinction: “Mine and yours”. This has very important theological implications. More on this point here:
http://www.reformedapologeticsministries.com/2016/04/honoring-christ-as-god-addendum-jesus.html
May God help us all.
Sounds like James White’s debates with Muslims:
1) Point out seeming contradictions in the Quran
2) Explain how they can actually be harmonized
3) But wait, Muslim polemicists don’t let the four Gospel accounts be harmonized – equal standards please!
4) Furthermore, the Gospels were written by different humans – but the Quran is supposed to be entirely by one perfect divine author
And also James White: “Sura 5 makes me feel that the author of the Quran did not understand the Trinity or what the New Testament contains.” Note his implicit suggestion, that this lack of knowledge means the author of the Quran cannot be divine.