2009 Issue 2 - What's Wrong With Islam? - Part 1 - Counsel of Chalcedon

8/12/2019 2009 Issue 2 - What's Wrong With Islam? - Part 1 - Counsel of Chalcedon

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WhatsWrongWith Islam?

Robert Reymond

(Te reader should read Jesus par-able of the wicked farmers in Matthew21:33-45, Mark 12:1-12, and Luke 20:9-19 before he reads this article.)

[W]e [Christians] know that the

Son of God has come and hasgiven us understanding, so thatwe may know him who is true;and we are in him who is true;in his Son Jesus Christ. He is thetrue God and eternal life. Littlechildren, keep yourselves fromidols (1 John 5:20-21).

Should any Muslims read this essayI would first express my appre-ciation to them for doing so, and

I want them to know that I love them.I assure them that I have no personalanimosity toward them as individuals.Rather, it is because I care very deeplyfor the Muslim world that I wrote this

article. Second, I would respectfullyurge them to examine the Quran andChristian theology and history to see ifwhat I write here is true. And I wouldrespectfully plead with them to readcarefully, thoughtfully, and attentively.And to all professing Christians who

read this article I would say that just be-cause theyprofess to be Christians is noguarantee in itself that they are genuineChristians whose sins are forgiven andwho are on their way to Heaven. So theyas well should read carefully, thought-fully, and attentively what I write here.

Because of the destruction of theWorld rade Center on September 11,

2001, by militant Muslims acting in thename of Allah, Christians in the UnitedStates of America should learn all theycan about Islam and its spread in thiscountry. A study titled Te Mosque in

America: A National Portrait, releasedon April 26, 2001, by the Council onAmerican-Islamic Relations headquar-

tered in Washington, D.C., reports thatover 2,000,000 Muslims were attending1,209 mosques in the United States atthe time of the studys release. Whatconcerns me about these numbers isnot so much these numbers per se butthe fact that they represent a threehundred percent increase over the last

Reprinted with permission from The Trinity Review, Oct.-Nov., 2002, Post OfceBox 68, Unicoi, Tennessee 37692

Website: http://www.trinityfoundation.org/ * Telephone: 423.743.0199

(Part 1)

WhatsWrongWith Islam?


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5Councel of Chalcedon Issue 2 2009

six years, showing clearly that Islamis blossoming and flourishing in theUnited States.1

aking my own advice, for sometime now, and particularly since Sep-tember 11, 2001, I have been studyingthe Quran, Islams holy book, whichis composed of 114 suras (chapters).Muslims regard the Quran as the infal-lible Word of Allah. Now while I am nota recognized authority on the religionof Islam I believe I can, in spite of theQurans content and style,2read it withsufficient comprehension to understand

it in the main.

I also I also think I know some-thing about what Holy Scripture teach-es regarding Christian doctrine, and it

is apparent to me from my reading ofthe Quran that it is laced with distor-tions concerning Christianitys doc-trinal teachings. Admittedly, there aremany ambiguities in Quranic teaching,about the meaning of which even Is-lamic scholars dispute, and these ambi-guities may account for some of thesedistortions. But, in my opinion, anyinformed observer must conclude thatMuhammad, the Qurans author, wasat best ill-informed about Christianityscore teachings and thus did not writeinfallibly when he wrote (actually hespoke his revelations since he could

neither read nor write) what he didabout Christianitys belief system.

In this essay I do not intend to treatthe many historical inaccuracies in theQuran.3 Nor will I address Muham-mads teaching that the husband maybeat his disobedient wife (Sura 4,Women, verse 34), or his belief thathe was to make war on the unbeliev-ers, and deal sternly with them (Sura66, Prohibition, verse 9; see also Sura8, Spoils of War, verses 13-17; Sura 9[virtually a declaration of war againstunbelievers], Repentance, verse 14),4

or his fixation on the eternal fire await-

ing the Jew and the Christian, and thesensual paradise of gardens, feasting,and sexual pleasure that awaits the

Muslim (Sura 36).5

Rather, I will re-strict my remarks only to Muhammadsmisrepresentation to his followers con-cerning what Christians believe aboutGod as rinity; his misrepresentationof Christs place in revelational historyas penultimate, with his own allegedprophetic role being ultimate; his deni-als of Christs deity, his crucifixion andresurrection; and his denial that Godrequires for forgiveness Jesus atoningsacrifice for sin. Lets look in some de-tail at each of these Quranic teachings.

Whats Wrong With Islam?


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Councel of Chalcedon Issue 2 20096

The Qurans Teachingon God as Trinity

I want to begin by noting that Chris-tians had already enjoyed a six-hundred-

year-long theological history and hadalready developed a carefully-thought-through theology of God by the timeMuhammad (born about A.D. 570), the

author of the Quran, began to write hisalleged revelations from Allah aroundA.D. 610. Trough the efforts of thefirst four ecumenical councils (Nicaea,Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalce-don) early church theologians, listeningcarefully to the Bible, had worked outthe churchs doctrine of God as rinity

and its doctrine of the two-natured in-carnate Christ. Tese doctrines, some-times expressed in philosophico-theo-logical language, were understandablysometimes quite difficult for an averageperson to comprehend. In the course ofdeveloping its theology over these cen-turies the church also found it neces-sary to distance itself from the unscrip-tural views of the second-century Lo-gos-Christologies, third-century formsof modalism, fourth-century Arianismand Apollinarianism, and fifth-centuryNestorianism and Eutychianismall

views that basically had in common thedenial in one way or another of the in-

carnation of God the Son as true man.Tese unscriptural heresies, however,did not die when they were rejected butrather continued to spread throughoutsome regions of the Middle East, and itwas these heresies, especially Arianism,that spread into Arabia and to Meccawhere Muhammad was born.6

Now a careful reading of the Quranwill disclose that Muhammad did nothave a clear grasp of what Scripture andorthodox Christianity were teachingabout the rinity in the seventh centuryA.D. He was hearing views that had been

rejected by the leading theologians of thechurch such as Athanasius, Cyril of Alex-andria, and Augustine. Accordingly, hisconsistent misrepresentation of the rin-ity suggests that he conceived of the rin-ity along the lines of a crude tritheism, aheresy that Christianity had consistentlyrepudiated. In Sura 4, Women, verse

171, the Koran declares:

Te Messiah, Jesus the son of

Mary, was no more than Gods[Allahs] apostle. So believein God [Allah] and his apostlesand do not say: Tree. Forbear,and it shall be better for you.God is but one God. God forbidthat he should have a son!



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In Sura 5, Te able, verse 73, Mu-hammad teaches:

Unbelievers are those who say:God [Allah] is one of three.Tere is but one God.

Apparently Muhammad believed thatin order for God to have a son he wouldhave had to have a consort (Sura 6,Cattle, verse 101), but since God hastaken no consort he has not begottenany children (Sura 72, Te Jinn, verse3). Ten in Sura 5, verse 116, he teaches

that Christians believe that Gods three-ness is composed of Allah, Jesus (whomhe believed ill-informed Christians hadwrongly deified), and his mother Mary.7

Now whatever sub-scriptural oddi-ties and errors some orthodox theolo-gians may have espoused in the earlycenturies of the church about God asrinity, not one of them ever taughtthat Gods threeness included themother of Jesus, and no ecumenicalcouncil ever endorsed such a notion.Tis is an error on Muhammads partand shows his ignorance of Christianteaching. It may be that he knew aboutthe small sect called the Collyridians,made up mainly of women, that had ex-

isted in fourth century Arabia and thathad rendered divine worship to Maryby offering her cakes.8 It may be, if hehad even heard of the teaching, thatMuhammad thought that the churchsconfessional description of Mary as the-otokos (God-bearer) implied that shewas deity. Tis term, of course, was not

intended to say that there was some-thing divine about Mary; it was intend-ed only to safeguard Jesus full deity.Most likely, Muhammad had simplyconcluded that if Christians believedJesus was the Son of God then they hadto believe also that God had to have adivine consort and that his mother was

this divine consort. But whatever thereasoning was behind his assertion, hewas in error to conclude that Christiansgenerally regarded Mary as a memberof the rinity.

What the church taught then andstill teaches is this: that within the un-divided unity of the one living and true

God eternally exist three persons, Godthe Father, God the Son, and God theHoly Spirit; and these three are one God,the same in substance, equal in powerand glory (see the church creeds here).Perhaps this definition will not satisfyMuslims, but at least it takes seriouslythe infallible teaching of Holy Scripture,and it does not misrepresent to the worldwhat Christianity has taught about theChristian God, which cannot be said forthe Qurans misrepresentation of thedoctrine of the rinity.



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The Qurans Teachingon Jesus Secondary

Place

Islamic orthodoxy teaches that Jesus,while he was Israels Messiah, was onlyone of many national prophets to Israeland that God never intended the Chris-tianity of Jesus to become a universalreligion. Islamic orthodoxy teaches thatMuhammad was the only prophet sentby God to the entire world, and thatit is Islam alone that God intended tobecome a universal religion. However,

if one studies the Quran carefully, hewill discover that it seems to say the

very opposite. It represents itself as abook written in Arabic for those whospoke Arabic (Sura 41, RevelationsWell Expounded, verse 3,and Sura 42, Coun-sel, verse 7), and

that it was intendedprimarily for Meccaand its environs (Sura6, Cattle, verse 93, andSura 42, Counsel, verse7). Arthur J. Arberry surelyappears to be right when heobserves that the Islam of the

Quran is fundamentally an Ara-bic religion, reflecting and intendedfor the seventh-century culture of Ara-bia.9 On the other hand, the Quranemphatically states in Sura 3:3 and Sura6:92 that God revealed the Mosaic o-rah and the Christian Gospel for thelight and guidance of all mankind.

But what did Muhammad teachabout his relation to Jesus? Did he notsee himself as superior to Jesus? Well,it is true that, according to Sura 61,Battle Array or Ranks, verse 6, Mu-hammad does state that Jesus taughtthat an apostle...will come after mewhose name is Ahmad [a variation of

Muhammad]. Of course, Jesus taughtno such thing. He taught that God the

Holy Spirit whom he called the Com-forter (parakletos, John 14:16-17, 26;15:26; 16:7-8, 13-14), whom he wouldsend from the Father, would come af-ter him. And he taught that the Spirit/Comforter when he came would glo-rify him, Jesus the Christ. Apparently,Muhammad, or perhaps the compil-ers of the Koran after his death, con-fused the Greek word parakletos withthe Greek word periklytos, meaningfamed, praised, for which the Arabic

would be ahmad (Muhammad), andaccordingly he taught that Jesus taughtthat he, Muhammad, was to be the lastand seal of Gods prophets.

Te Gospels, however, make itclear that Jesus taught that rev-

elational history reached itsculmination in him and

that his chosen apostlescompleted Gods re-velatory activity (2imothy 3:16-17).For instance, in his

parable of the wickedfarmers, found inMat-

thew 21:33-45, Mark 12:1-12,

andLuke 20:9-19, Jesus tells the sto-ry of a landowner who leased his vine-yard to some farmers and then wentinto another country. When the timearrived for him to receive his rental feein the form of the fruit of the vineyard,he sent servant after servant to his ten-ants, only to have each one of thembeaten or stoned or killed. Last of allhe sent his sonLuke says his belovedson; Mark says yet one [other], a be-loved son saying: Tey will respectmy son. But when the tenants saw thelandowners son, they said: Tis is theheir; come, lets kill him and take hisinheritance. Tis they did, throwing



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his body out of the vineyard. When thelandowner came, he destroyed the ten-ants and leased his vineyard to others.Te interpretative intentions of the par-able, as Don Carson notes,10 are obvi-ous on the face of it: Te landowner isGod the Father, the vineyard the nationof Israel (Isaiah 5:7); the farmers the na-tions leaders, the servants the prophetsof the theocracy (Matthew 23:37a); andthe son is Jesus himself.

Te central teaching of the parableis obviousas indeed it was to its origi-nal audience (Matthew 21:45): after

having sent his servants the prophetsrepeatedly in Old estament times tothe nation of Israel and its leaders tocall the nation back to him from its sinof unbelief, only to have them rebuffed,persecuted, and often killed, God, theOwner of Israel, had, in sending Jesus,moved beyond merely sending another

servant. Listen once again to the perti-nent verses in this connection:

Matthew 21:37: Ten last ofall he sent his son.

Mark 12:6: still having oneson, his beloved, he also senthim to them last.

In Jesus, God hadfinally (Matthew 21:37:hysteron; Mark 12:6: eschaton) sent hisown beloved Son, that is, his one andonly Son, who was to be similarlyrejected. Te finality of hisministry Jesus makes clearfrom his teaching that

the farmers rejec-

tion of him, unlike the rejections of thosebefore him, was to entail neither a contin-uance of dealing with the recalcitrant na-tion on Gods part nor a mere change ofpolitico-religious administration. Rather,to reject him, he taught, would eventuatein the complete overthrow of the theoc-racy, and the rearing from the foundationup of a new structure in which the Sonwould receive full vindication and su-preme honor11(Matthew 21:42-43;Mark12:9;Luke 20:16). Te Sons exalted statusin the revelational economy of God is ap-parent from thefinality of the messianic

investiture that he owns. From MatthewsfinallyMark says he had yet oneother and also finallyit is clear thatJesus represents himself as the last, the

final ambassador, after whose sendingnone higher can come and nothing morecan be done. Te Lord of the vineyard hasno further resources; as Gods Son, the

Son of God is the highest messenger ofGod conceivable. Te author ofHebrewsechoes exactly this sentiment when hedeclares:

God who spoke at many timesand in many ways in times pastto the fathers by the prophetshas in these last days spoken

to us by his Son whom he hasappointed heir of all things,through whom also he madethe worlds

[and] if the word spoken [then]proved steadfast, and everytransgression and disobediencereceived a just recompense, how

shall we escape if we neglect sogreat a salvation, which

[was] spoken by the Lord,and was confirmed to usby those [apostles] whoheard him? [Hebrews 1:1-2; 2:2-3].



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Clearly, the author of Hebrews teaches,with Jesus, the finality of Gods work inJesus Christ. Both Jesus teaching andthe uniform teaching of the entire Newestament clearly fly in the face of Mu-hammads claim that Jesus taught thatan apostle named Ahmad would comeafter him. Jesus teaching here also plac-es Muhammad in hopeless conflict withhimself, for when Muhammad declares,as he does several places, that Jesus wasa true prophet, it means by implicationthat when Jesus taught what he did inthis parable about his own finality, Mu-

hammads claim to being the last andgreatest prophet is negated by the teach-ing of this very one whom Mohammaddeclares was a true prophet.

So in making himself the Seal of theProphets, that is, the last and the great-est of the prophets, as he does in Sura33, Confederate ribes, verse 40, Mu-

hammad misrepresented Christs teach-ing about his unique and final place inGods revelational program and therebyshowed himself to be afalse prophet.

The Qurans Teachingabout Jesus Deity

Te Quran, it is true, affirms that Je-sus was the Jewish Messiah and a trueprophet of God, that he was virgin-born

and performed many miracles. Tere-fore, Muslims believe today, because theQuran teaches these true and properthings about Jesus, that Christiansshould be lauding them and regardingthem accordingly as friendly to Christi-anity. But the Quran also teaches in Sura5, Te able, verses 17 and 72, that it

is unbelievers who say that Jesus is God.And in verse 116 the Quran teaches thatJesus denied that he was deity:

Ten God says: Jesus, son ofMary, did you ever say to man-kind: Worship me...as god be-

side God? Glory be to you,

he answers, I could never haveclaimed what I have no right to.If I had ever said so, you wouldhave surely known it. [See alsoSura 5:75.]

Now think with me for a moment here.Suppose one nations ambassador goesto another nation, presents his creden-

tials to its leaders, and these leaders sayin response to him: We like you verymuch; you are a very nice person, youare kind, and your speeches are veryedifying. But we simply do not be-lieve you are who you say you are, andtherefore we cannot accept you in therole in which you claim to have come.

Would anyone say that those leadershad really received that ambassador?Similarly, unless one accepts Jesus forwhom he claims to be, and in the rolein which he claims to have come, he hasnot really accepted Jesus at all, regard-less of the other nice things he may say

Continued on pg. 21


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about him! o be quite frank about it,Jesus is not flattered by all the kissesthat unregenerate men may throw athim, if at the same time they deny asfalse his claims to deity and his claimto sole saviorhood. Tis is the state inwhich our Muslim friends actually findthemselves with their incomplete list ofaccolades about Jesus. Tey have reallynot accepted him regardless of the truethings they say about him.

Now Jesus self-awareness is a sub-ject that I have spent a considerableamount of my professional life assess-

ing. I have even written a book spe-cifically about it (see my Jesus, Divine

Messiah: Te Biblical Witness). And Iwill state categorically that, based uponthe teaching of the four Gospels, Jesusdid in fact believe that he was God theSon incarnate, the second person of theGodhead, and that he taught others to

believe so as well.For example, look again with me

at the parable of the tenant farmers Iread earlier. Its high Christologyre-flecting Jesus own self-understandingof his deity finds expression in two de-tails in his story:12 By virtue of his son-ship, Jesus claims to possess a higher

dignity and a closer relation to Godthan the highest and closest officialstatus that all the prophets of the Oldestament theocracy possessed. Tisis underscored not only by his titleSon, but also by the highly sug-gestive word beloved that he attachesto the title Son, applying both wordsto himself over against the unqualifiedword servants that he uses to de-scribe all those who went before him.

Tis pointthat Jesus representshimself as Gods beloved Son and heirover against all who went before himwho were only servantscannot bemade to answer merely to a messianic

or functional sonship, as some criticalscholars would like to believe. Tis isapparent from two facts:

First, Jesus represents himselfin the parable as Gods beloved

Son even before his mission.

Second, he represents himselfas Gods beloved Son whether

sent or not!

Tat is to say, his being sent reflects hisinvestiture of messiahship, but his in-

vested messiahship was brought aboutprecisely by the necessity for God tosend one who was the highest and dear-est that the lord of the vineyard coulddelegate. Jesus Sonship, therefore, ex-isted prior to his messianic mission andwas not the result of his mission. Andbecause he represents himself, the land-owners beloved Son, as also the heir in

all three synoptic accounts of the par-able, this means that his Sonship is theunderlying ground of his messiahship.13

It is impossible, then, to avoid thestrong suggestion on Jesus part in thisparable of his eternal pre-existence withthe Father as the latters beloved Son.Here his eternal and divine station in

association with his Father prior to hismessianic mission in history is con-firmed. Tus the beloved Son in Jesusparablea self-portrait one may say withample justificationis clearly divine.

o say the very least, then, Muham-mad once again misrepresented Jesusteaching and once again misrepresent-

ed historic Christian teaching when hedenied Jesus deity, apparently havingcome unwittingly under the influenceof the heretical Arian teaching that hadspread into Arabia. He was apparentlyunaware that the church had officiallycondemned Arianism at the first ecu-menical council at Nicaea in A.D. 325.

Continued from pg. 10 Whats Wrong With Islam?


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TO BE CONTINUED

Dr. Robert L. Reymond was

Professor Emeritus of System-

atic Teology at Knox Semi-

nary, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Endnotes

1. Some Christians will doubtless say,

So what? Tey have as much right to

immigrate to these shores as anyone

else, dont they? rue enough, but let

me spell out why Christians should be

concerned. If Islam were to become thedominant religion in the United States,

since Muslims worship on Friday, the

Muslim citizenry would doubtless de-

mand and legislate that Friday be made a

day of worship. America would then ei-

ther move to a four-day workweek, with

Muslims worshiping on Friday, Jews

worshiping on Saturday, and Christiansworshiping on Sunday, or Friday would

become the only worship day and Jews

and Christians would have to fend for

themselves as far as having a day set

apart for their respective times of wor-

ship, which is the pattern followed in

every Muslim country in the MiddleEast. Furthermore, in spite of presentConstitutional protection, Christiansmight eventually find it more difficultto build churches, openly to buy and toread the Bible, and to spread Christian-ity within the U. S., especially amongMuslims; that is, First Amendmentfreedoms would disappear.

2. Tomas Carlyles studied judgmentwas that the reading of the Quran inEnglish is a toilsome task, for it is awearisome, confused jumble, crude, in-

condite; endless iterations, long-wind-edness, entanglement; insupportablestupidity, in short, nothing but a sense ofduty could carry any European throughthe Koran. For Carlyles full quotationsee Philip SchaffsHistory of the Chris-tian Church(Eerdmans, [1910] n.d.), IV,180, who also opines that the Qurans

passages of poetic beauty are mixedwith absurdities, bombast, unmean-ing images, low sensuality. It aboundsin repetitions and contradictions. Italternately attracts and repels, and isa most wearisome book to read (179).He concludes: of all books, the Koranis the most powerful rival of the Bible,but falls infinitely below it in contentsand form. Whatever is true in the Ko-ran is borrowed from the Bible; what isoriginal, is false or frivolous. Te Bibleis historical and embodies the noblestaspirations of the human race in allages to the final consummation; theKoran begins and stops with Moham-med. Te Bible combines endless vari-

ety with unity, universal applicabilitywith local adaptation; the Koran is uni-form and monotonous, confined to onecountry, one state of society, and oneclass of minds. Te Bible is the book ofthe world, and is constantly traveling tothe ends of the Earth, carrying spiritualfood to all races and to all classes of so-


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ciety; the Koran stays in the Orient, andis insipid to all who have once tasted thetrue word of the living God [181-182].

3. For some of the Qurans historicalinaccuracies see Gleason L. Archer, Jr.,

A Survey of Old estament Introduc-tion (Moody, 1994), 549-552; St. Clairisdall, Te Source of Islam, translatedand abridged by William Muir ( &. Clark, n.d.) and Abdal Fadi, Is theQuran Infallible? (Villach, Austria:Light of Hope, n.d.).

4. Al Bukhari (a collection of the say-ings of Muhammad), volume I:25, asks:What is the best deed for the Muslimnext to believing in Allah and his Apos-tle? Answer: o participate in Jihad inAllahs cause. Te reader should com-pare this second Muslim concern withJesus declaration that the second com-mandment, after the first that requiresloving God with all ones heart, is to loveones neighbor as one loves himself.

5. Islam teaches that in Paradise even thelowliest Muslim man will enjoy seventy-two black-eyed youthful girls (houris)

especially created for his sexual enjoy-ment, with the moment of his sexualpleasure prolonged to a thousand yearsand his faculty of sensual enjoyment in-creased a hundredfold.

6. Schaff, in his History, IV, 159, notesthat the nominal Christians who inhab-ited Arabia at the time of Muhammad

belonged mostly to the various hereti-cal sects that were expelled from theRoman Empire during the doctrinalcontroversies of the fourth and fifthcenturies. We find there traces of Ari-ans, Sabellians, Ebionites, Nestorians,Eutychians, Monophysites, Marianites,and Collyridians or worshippers ofMaryit was a very superficial andcorrupt Christianity which had founda home in those desert regions. Tesinful use of force by the relatively or-thodox theologians to exile the hereticsfrom the Empire resulted in the cre-

ation of a large and fertile field for Islamto take root and grow.

7. Muhammad seems to confuse Maryin Sura 3, Te Family of Imran, verses35-45, and in Sura 66, Prohibition,

verse 12, with Miriam, the sister ofMoses and Aaron. All efforts by Islamic

apologists to explain this confusion areunsatisfactory.

8. See Epiphanius, Adversus Haeresis,79. Of course, the veneration of Mary asthe Mother of God, which began early,has continued to the present in RomanCatholic and Orthodox theology.

9. Arthur J. Arberry, Religion in theMiddle East (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1970), 7.

10. D. A. Carson, Matthew in Te Ex-positors Bible Commentary (Zonder-

van, 1984), 451.

11. Geerhardus Vos, Te Self-Disclosure

of Jesus (Presbyterian and Reformed[1926] 1978), 162.

12. See Geerhardus Vos, Te Self-Dis-closure of Jesus, 161-163

13. Vos, Te Self-Disclosure of Jesus,162-163.

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2009 Issue 2 - What's Wrong With Islam? - Part 1 - Counsel of Chalcedon