Dr. Gary Miller Language: English | Format: PDF | Pages: 20 | Size: 1 MB
Christians and Muslims who learn
something of one another’s religion find that a crucial issue is the
nature of Jesus. The majority of Christians deify Jesus while Muslims
say that he was no more than a prophet of God, a faultless human being.
The doctrine of the Trinity avows that three distinct co-equals are God.
In particular, Jesus is said to be God the Son or the Son of God. As
the Muslim questions details of this theology the Christian
characteristically forms a common explanation for our differences: He
complains that Muslims do not understand the Trinity: that we are
actually accusing Christians of Tritheism and other heresies.
So the Muslim seeks clarification of the
teaching and asks at every step: “How could that be so?” For example, we
insist that the term “Son of God” cannot have a literal interpretation.
Sonship and divine nature would be necessary attributes of such an
actuality, but these are incompatible. The first describes a recipient
of life while the second describes One who received life from no one.
These are mutually exclusive requirements then. To be a son is to be
less than divine, and to be divine is to be no one’s son.
As a discussion proceeds, it is the
Christian who will eventually take refuge in the response: “These are
things that we cannot understand.” His assessment of the Muslim’s
problem becomes his own confession. The Christian explanation becomes
self-defeating so there is a change of tactic.
He complains that the Muslim refuses to
accept what cannot be understood. But the modified approach is a
diversion. Now the concepts of verification and understanding are
confused. To illustrate: Chemical reactions may be verified but the atom
is not thereby understood. Facts are catalogued but not always
explained. This distinction is the key to our concise reply. It is the
Muslim who must redirect the discussion. Our primary issue is more basic
than resolving the incongruities of Trinitarian doctrine. Rather than
ask how the Trinity can be so, we should ask why it must be so. “We ask,
“Why must Jesus be divine? Can we verify the necessity of this belief?”
The Muslim Position
A few centuries ago, European
philosophers commonly felt that a conjecture was proven if it could be
shown to be equivalent to an assertion made by Aristotle. Unfortunately,
such an approach stopped short of challenging Aristotle and discovering
truth. Similarly, resting the Trinitarian case on what people have said
about Jesus stops short of establishing the integrity of the
authorities and the truth of the matter.
Our purpose here is no more than the
illustration that belief in the Trinity can only be based on Church
authority. Many Christians admit that this is the case while others
insist that the teaching was elaborated by Jesus himself. “Let them
produce their proof,” is the repeated admonition of the Qur’an, that is,
‘provide the documentation that Jesus himself claimed unqualified
deity,’ (Qur’an 21:24). Unless this evidence can be produced,
authorities are subject to challenge. Then the Christian may not evade
the Muslim’s questions concerning understanding. The Christian will have
no justification for maintaining an illogical position, unless he is
content to rely on the opinions of men. If he will probe no deeper than
this, the Christian-Muslim dialogue is finished.
For Christians, the only documents
accepted as reporting the words of Jesus are the accounts given in the
Bible. We leave the Muslim attitude toward the Bible for part II of this
essay and find our motivation now in the Qur’anic verse, “Say: ‘0
People of the Book! You have no ground to stand upon unless you stand
fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you
from your Lord.'” (Qur’an 5:71). Christians are advised to support
their claims by citing their books. Thus Muslims believe that no saying
of Jesus can be produced which shows him grasping at equality with God.
The primary issue is not whether Jesus is God. The first question is
whether he said that he was equal to God.
Methodology
The Bible record of sayings credited to
Jesus is quite meager. After allowance for duplication in the four
gospel accounts, these sayings could be printed in two columns of a
newspaper. None of this handful of texts is an explicit claim of deity.
All quotations are implicit, that is, they require interpretation. We
are told what Jesus said and then told what he meant. So our methodology
takes an obvious form.
It is not our intention or obligation to
reinterpret the Bible. We are satisfied to merely verify that Christian
interpretations are insufficient, ambiguous, or impossible. We mean to
argue: 1) that where the meaning of a quotation is clear, it is still
insufficient to prove that Jesus claimed equality with God; 2) that
other quotations cited are open to various interpretation, ambiguous; 3)
and that still other quotations have been given interpretations that
are impossible. This means the evidence is either inadequate,
inconclusive, or unacceptable, respectively.
Insufficient Evidence
The virgin birth of Jesus and the
miracles he demonstrated are cited by some as proof of his divinity. The
insufficiency of the premise is obvious. We need only read the Biblical
account of Adam’s creation, without father or mother, and the accounts
of miracles associated with the prophet Elisha (Genesis and 2 Kings
chapters 4, 5, 6). In the case of these two men, no Christian asserts
their divinity, yet each has a qualification in common with Jesus.
Some maintain that Jesus was God because
the Hebrew Scriptures predicted his coming. The inadequacy here is only
slightly less apparent. The ancient Hebrew Scriptures are also cited as
predicting the role of John the Baptist (Malachi chapter 4). These three
arguments are mentioned to show that the ready claims of Christians
betray a selective or forgetful recall of scripture. They know the fact
of virgin birth as well as they know the account of Adam’s origins, yet
they interpret the first and overlook the second.
Now to pursue our case indirectly. Does
the Bible quote Jesus as claiming equality with God? Bible texts are
produced to show that Jesus used the terms “son of man”, “son of God”,
“Messiah”, and “saviour”. But each of these terms is applied to other
individuals in the Bible. Ezekiel was addressed as “son of man” (Ezekiel
chapter 3). Jesus himself speaks of the peacemakers as “sons of God”
(Matthew 5:9). Cyrus the Persian is called “Messiah” at Isaiah 45: 1.
The duplicity of translators is manifested here, for they inevitably
render only the meaning of the word “Messiah” which is “annointed”.
Where other Bible verses seem to refer to Jesus, they prefer to
transliterate “Messiah” or the Greek equivalent “Christ”. In this way
they hope to give the impression that there is only one Messiah. As for
“saviour”, the word is applied to other than Jesus (2 Kings 13:5).
Christians choose to cite the forty-third chapter of Isaiah as proof
that there is only one saviour. Again, translators have tried to obscure
the fact that God is the only saviour in the same ultimate sense that
He is our only nourisher and protector, though men also have these
assigned tasks. By over specifying this pronouncement in Isaiah they
hope to have us believe that God equals saviour and Jesus equals saviour
therefore Jesus equals God. The conspiracy of modern translation is
easily demonstrated. The King James Bible of 1611 is everywhere
available. Compare it to a more recent translation, say the New American
Bible of this century. In the earlier version we find 2 Kings 13:5
contains the word “saviour”, but in the newer version the synonomous
word “deliverer” has been substituted. In fact,”saviours”, the plural,
will be found at Obadiah 21 and Nehemiah 9:27. Here again, by
substituting a different word, the connotation of divinity tied to the
word “saviour” has been guarded in modern versions by less than honest
translation.
Once more we have exhibited the
insufficient warrant of arguments offered: Those terms said to connote
divinity are used of individuals other than Jesus.
There is a quotation that should be
mentioned here also. At John 8:58 it is reported that Jesus said,
‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ Even if Jesus meant to claim by these words
that he was alive before Abraham was, is this sufficient ground to say
that he was divine? If Jesus lived in heaven then came to earth it might
mean something remarkable, but it would not be enough to establish him
as God incarnate.
Additionally, it should be noted that
these words are open to other interpretation. Christians do not imagine
that the prophet Jeremiah had a pre-human existence and so they find a
suitable way of interpreting the words of Jeremiah 1:5 which portray
such a situation, if taken literally. Why not apply a similar
understanding in the case of John 8:58?
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