I’ve got a tactic for dialogue with Muslims. Muslims don’t think much of St. Paul. He’s the one who screwed up the teachings of Christ supposedly. We can work with that based on a lot of things that I’ve been writing about recently.
We should ask the Muslim, if St. Paul thought Jesus was God in an incarnation way, not an exultation way. For example, we can show them Philippians 2:6-11. We can show them verse ten and show them the connection with Isaiah 45:23.
If they concede that St. Paul thought that Jesus was God, we have them. We know that St. Paul had a lot of interaction with the original apostles. It’s both apparent in his writings and those of Luke in Acts that they had had extensive interaction.
Now if the original disciples had an Islamic view of Jesus Christ and St. Paul was teaching incarnation Christology, then how come this didn’t come out? It does with the Quran. Repeatedly the Quran is criticizing Christians for believing that Christ is divine and the Son of God. If St. Paul is teaching that in Philippians 2 then it would have come out.
I’m anticipating an objection here. They might say, what if the disciples didn’t know about the content in Philippians 2. The content in Philippians 2 was something that St. Paul was not afraid write down and therefore something he was willing to have out in the open. This wasn’t some secret message of St. Paul.
As St. Luke points out in Acts 21, St. James the apostle was more than willing to confront St. Paul on areas where they differed. If St. Paul was preaching the incarnation and St. James was teaching Tawheed, there is no reason that it wouldn’t have been brought up as it is a much more serious matter than the customs of Jewish converts to Christianity.
Of course there is the classic objection that St. Luke is muting this episode to try to salvage St. Paul but if that’s the case, why does he have the episode with St. James in Acts 21? There is no way out of this. If the Muslim concedes that Philippians 2 teaches the deity of Christ then all is well.
It should be noted that in Philippians 2:6 the hymn, creed, or statement here from St. Paul talks about the equality with God. We read:
who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
– Philippians 2:6
It’s especially relevant that St. Paul talked about equality because a lot of Muslims try to say that St. Paul believed in some subordination position in terms of essence. A lot of Muslims are playing on this. They concede that St. Paul thought Jesus Christ was God but in a non-Trinitarian subordinate way. Philippians 2:6 destroys that argument.
It’s easy to show that St. Paul teaches the classic incarnation theology. Once they concede this, get them to admit the greatest sin of Christianity is Shirk. Get them to concede that it’s far worse than not fasting for Ramadan, not praying 5 times a day or not abstaining from pork. Once they do this, pull out Acts 21 and give them the dilemma. St. James is confronting St. Paul on a minor cosmetic issue but on the issue that is supposedly giving Christians damnation according to Islam, St. James(a supposedly Muslim) isn’t challenging him on it. Maybe because he believed the same thing?
Remember, all you need to do is to get them to concede that St. Paul teaches the deity of Christ in Philippians 2. Nothing more.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.