Good News For Christian Apologists – We’re Winning!

John 8:58

If one looks at Islamic apologetics today and ten years ago, it’s quite different.  The only Muslim still doing debates is Shabir Ally and he’s become pretty liberal.  I would say that he’s a breath away from becoming a Quran only Muslim.  Sami Zaatari and Osama Abdullah aren’t even debating anymore.  I’ll also give my hats off to Adnan Rashid, Zakir Hussain and Mohammed Hijab for stepping up and taking their place.

At the heart of Christian vs. Islamic polemics lies the deity of Christ.  It’s a topic that Muslims like to debate and I like to debate it as well.  It’s actually my favorite topic to discuss with Muslims because I make them deal with the fact that their god didn’t know what the Trinity was in any capacity.

Anyways, as we start the new year, I want to give my side some positive news.  We’re winning!  We’ve moved up the field and improved our position.  It may not seem this way as we’re not smashing Muslims in debates but there is actually a pretty good reason for that.  It’s because Muslims have conceded much ground.

If one goes back to the days of Deedat or his fanboys, they’re arguing for the Unitarian god from the Bible.  Things are different now.  If you watch Adnan Rashid or Mohammed Hijab, they’ll concede that the Bible argues for the deity of Christ.  The only problem is that they’ll say it’s a subordinationist view.  Hijab and Rashid essentially concede this and now ask where Church fathers before Nicaea said that the Son was co-equal with the Father.

Where did this change take place?  We can’t be certain but if I had to take a stab at it, I’d say it’s with Bart Ehrman’s book How Jesus Became God.  Muslim apologists wedded themselves to Ehrman in those early days and now they’re finding out that maybe it wasn’t the best idea as he actually refutes a lot of Islamic positions.  They wanted him to essentially say that Christ was a man and as the Greek world got involved in Christianity, they imported their man-god ideas into Christology.  That didn’t work.  While a Christian cannot endorse the very esoteric conclusions or Bart Ehrman in his book, it certainly doesn’t do any favours to what the Muslims had been arguing for several decades.

That book not only marked the end of the Muslim love affair with Ehrman but it also told them something.  Arguing for the traditional Unitarian position from the Bible is impossible.  At the same time, they didn’t want to admit that it was a Trinitarian document so now the subordinationist arguments are blooming.  The clearest recent example is Mohammed Hijab in his debate with David Wood.  He fully conceded that Paul believed that Jesus was God but in a subordinationist way.  He dealt with the Church Fathers in a similar fashion.

I suppose that they like this argument because they can also say that the Bible doesn’t support either position so it’s unreliable.  Either way, as someone who defends traditional orthodox Christology against Islam, I’m happy with the progress that we’ve made.  Let’s make 2019 the year that we make more progress.  Happy New Year!