The Reason Christians Remember Good Friday (in Farsi)

Look here for a fuller explanation of Jomeyeh Neek (Dark Friday, Good Friday).

Missional Muslims I

I've started a dialogue with a young, dedicated Muslim student at the U of O. He is introducing me to the world of Missional Islam. Here is a sampling of the videos he sends out to friends around him, in his excitement to share his faith:
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American architect accepts ISLAM, non-Muslims MUST SEE!!!



Here is my response to him.
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Hi S.--

God IS one! All Christians agree with their Muslim brothers and sisters that there is only ONE God. We do NOT believe in three Gods, contrary to what Muslims may think we believe. After all, it would be a contradiction to say that God is one God and three Gods! We believe, like them, that God is powerful and high above humans—in fact, God SO high and powerful that His Divine Being is not contained within just one person, but rather he is Three Persons in One Being, which are called “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Here is a crude analogy: the yolk is egg, the white is egg, the shell is egg; but the yolk is not the white, the white is not the shell, and the shell is not the yolk. Yet it would not be an egg without all three: yolk, white and shell.

So the big difference between Islam and Christianity is that in Christianity, the notion of participation is an essential quality of God. This is why relationship is so important to Christians, because God Himself is Three in One.

Further, Christians do not believe that the Three in One is the Father, Mary and Jesus; nor do we believe that Jesus was born by sexual intercourse. Saying those things is as offensive to Christians when Muslims are offended by the following lies: “Islam teaches that Mohammed is God,” or “Muslims worship Mohammed.” Here is what Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb have to say regarding this "gross distortion of biblical teaching:"

The Bible refers to Christ as the "only begotten" Son of God (John 1:18; cf. 3:16). However, Muslim scholars often misconstrue this in a fleshly, carnal sense of someone literally begetting children. For them, to beget implies a physical act. This they believe is absurd, since God is a Spirit with no body. As the noted Muslim apologist Deedat contends, "He [God] does not beget because begetting is an animal act. It belongs to the lower animal act of sex. We do not attribute such an act to God." For the Islamic mind begetting is creating and "God cannot create another God. … He cannot create another uncreated." The foregoing statements reveal the degree to which the biblical concept of Christ’s sonship is misunderstood by Muslim scholars. For no orthodox Christian scholar believes that "begat" is to be equated with "made" or "create." No wonder Dawud concludes that from a "Muslim point of belief the Christian dogma concerning the eternal birth or generation of the Son is blasphemy."

However, this extreme reaction to Christ’s eternal Sonship is both unnecessary and unfounded. The phrase "only begotten" does not refer to physical generation but to a special relationship with the Father. Like the biblical phrase "Firstborn" (Col. 1:15), it means priority in rank, not in time (cf. vs. 16-17). It could be translated, as the New International Version does, God’s "One and Only" Son. It does not imply creation by the Father but unique relation to him. Just as an earthly father and son have a special filial relationship, even so the eternal Father and his eternal Son are uniquely related. It does not refer to any physical generation but to an eternal procession from the Father. Just as for Muslims the Word of God (Qur’an) is not identical to God but eternally proceeds from him, even so for Christians, Christ, as God’s "Word" (4:171) eternally proceeds from him. Words like "generation" and "procession" are used by Christians of Christ in a filial and relational sense, not in a carnal and physical sense.

Misunderstanding of Christ’s sonship reaches an apex when some Muslim scholars confuse it with the virgin Birth. Nazir-Ali notes that "in the Muslim mind the generation of the Son often means his birth of the Virgin Mary." … With such a carnal misrepresentation of a spiritual reality, little wonder Muslims reject the Christian concept of eternal Father and Son.

(Geisler & Saleeb, Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross [Baker Books, Grand Rapids MI; updated and revised, second edition 2002], pp. 263-264)

For more on why the Quran’s reasoning regarding God needing a wife in order to have a son is simply fallacious, please read this.

Islamic Apologetics: "The Truth About Jesus"

Abdur-Raheem Green, an apologist for Islam, is an entertaining, engaging speaker who deserves our attention. We should listen to him carefully and be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within us.



From YouTube:

Born in Dar-es-salaam in Tanzania to British parents, Abdur-Raheem Green's father (born in England), Gavin Green, was a colonial administrator in the then extant British Empire. At an early age he moved back to the UK with his parents. His mother is of original Polish origin.

At the age of 10 he attended a Roman Catholic Monastic boarding school at Gilling Castle and then went onto Ampleforth College and went on to study history in the London University. However, he left his education unfinished in an effort to devote himself to Islamic works.

He became dissatisfied with Christianity at the age of 8, with it not making sense to him.

Green researched and practiced many religions, including Buddhism (for 3 years) before embracing Islam.

Whilst in Britain his father got a job in 1976 working for Barclays Bank International and was subsequently sent to Cairo, Egypt, to set up a branch of the Bank there.

His study of the Noble Qur'an immediately attracted him to Islam and he embraced Islam in 1988. He has been a Daw'ah practitioner in Britain since then.

Green now works in the London Central Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre as the Visits and English Dawa Co-ordinator.

Green is seen akin to lecturers such as Dr. Zakir Naik, Dr. Bilal Philips, Khalid Yasin and Yvonne Ridley, doing many lectures on Islam worldwide and also in London's famous Hyde Park, Speakers Corner.

TOWARDS A RESPONSE TO GREEN:

1) Truth = "something we can reason and establish to be a fact;" which doesn't contradict itself. For Islam, THE word of God cannot have any contradictions. The Bible cannot be THE word of God, and an account inspired by God but written by men. "Truth is a matter of facts; faith may or may not lead you to the truth."

TOWARDS A RESPONSE 1:
Islam (as Green presents it) seems to take language to be univocal, not analogous. Why must this be the case? If language is analogous, there can be such things as paradoxes. Paradoxes are NOT contradictions. They are admissions that there are things which we do not (yet) understand, but which are not nonsense. In a zeal to give a transcendent God all glory, Islam actually vaults human reason above divine reason, by limiting truth exclusively to a quality of propositions, instead of understanding it as a quality of being. (For more about "the truth of all things," read sections 31-35 here, in "The Two Sides of the Coin that is Truth," a section in Josef Pieper: an Anthology.)

Facts are not separable from faith. See the work of Alvin Plantinga and others regarding Reformed Epistemology

2) God doesn't need a son. He doesn't need to kill any son to forgive us: the "atonement" would be the greatest of all crimes.

TOWARDS A REPONSE 2:
Read C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity and the pietists. God's killing his son would certainly would be a cosmic crime if eradicating of sin was simply a matter of avenging His wrath. But what if we need someone to be the perfect "link" between God and us, who willingly offered Himself as "bait" in order to trap Satan? There are many other theories of atonement besides the substitutionary model.

3) Protestants had a noble and correct aim: they were right to reject the paganism and corruption of Catholicism, and seek "the Jesus of History." They rejected the worship of the mythological- theological Jesus, Mary, saints, and sacraments, but they failed to be consistent and follow things to their logical end. The Jesus of history is different from the Jesus of theology. Christianity is a paganism, not a monotheistic religion.

TOWARDS A RESPONSE 3:
Read C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of History .

Liberal Protestantism errs in separating Christ's divinity from his humanity because it holds the modernist skepticism about the supernatural. Liberal Protestantism takes the physical as its exclusive default (witness the historical-critical method and demythologizing.) Islam errs in separating Christ's divinity from his humanity because it takes the transcendent as its exclusive default, and understands God purely in terms of His will. volu. (Voluntarism is fundamentally non-physical.)

Both liberal protestants and Moslems are "either/or" people. Only Christians (Catholics, Orthodox, some Protestants) are able to be "both-and" people, and do justice to the complexity of what is real, and our God-given ability to know it.

4) It is a contradiction to believe that Jesus Christ is both God and man. (45:45) What defines a human being is different from what defines a God.

TOWARDS A RESPONSE 4:
Steve Evans does a thorough job of responding to the charge that the incarnation is logically impossible in chapter 6 of The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith, mentioned above.

See also Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate.

5) The canon grew up alongside the church. This does not establish truth.

TOWARDS A RESONSE 5:
Again, this assumes a very narrow definition of truth, one which gives primacy to ratio and not to intellectus. (Look here ) Furthermore, is this any more problematic than the situation Islam presents: in itself, the Koran may be true and inerrant, but how does a mere mortal sort out what is true? Do the Sunnis or Shi'as have the correct interpretation? Which clergyman is right? Bottom line: we can't avoid appeal to the Holy Spirit, whether it is in overseeing the establishment of the canon, or in assisting our understanding of that canon.

6) God cannot do anything. He can't do something stupid/contradictory. He can't make square circles, yet this is what Christians believe!

TOWARDS A RESPONSE 6:
Yes, there are some muddle headed Christians who do believe God can do contradictory things. But again, C. S. Lewis offers a clarity in The Problem of Pain: "Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God." (One of my most popular entries in this blog concerns this very issue. Read it here).

Meanwhile in Somalia...

These are pictures of women being stoned, in accordance with Islamic law. It is a horrendous way to die. On October 27, 13 year old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was killed in the Somali port city of Kismayo. Here is the story, as reported by the BBC, 16:42 GMT, Tuesday, 4 November 2008:

Stoning victim 'begged for mercy'

A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC.

"Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.

Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.

Initial reports had said she was a 23-year-old woman who had confessed to adultery before a Sharia court.

Numerous eye-witnesses say she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people last week.

Meanwhile, Islamists in the capital, Mogadishu have carried out a public flogging.

Islamists are becoming increasingly open in the capital, Mogadishu
Mogadishu is nominally under the control of government forces and their Ethiopian allies, who face frequent attacks by Islamist and nationalist insurgents.

The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in the city says the flogging was a show of strength.

He says two men accused of helping to kill a man and torture his mother, who they accused of theft, were each given 39 lashes in the north-eastern suburb of Suqa-hola.

The man who actually killed the alleged thief was released, after agreeing to pay his family 100 camels in compensation.

Before the flogging, hundreds of Islamist fighters performed a military parade, our reporter says.

Death threats

Cameras were banned from the stoning in Kismayo, but print and radio journalists who were allowed to attend estimated that the woman, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was 23 years old.

People were saying this was not good for Sharia law, this was not good for human rights, this was not good for anything

However, Amnesty said it had learned she was 13, and that her father had said she was raped by three men.

When the family tried to report the rape, the girl was accused of adultery and detained, Amnesty said.

Convicting a girl of 13 for adultery would be illegal under Islamic law.

A human rights activist in the town told the BBC on condition of anonymity that he had received death threats from the Islamic militia, who accuse him of spreading false information about the incident.

He denies having anything to with Amnesty's report.

'Crying'

Court authorities have said the woman came to them admitting her guilt.

She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply, they said.

But a witness who spoke to the BBC's Today programme said she had been crying and had to be forced into a hole before the stoning, reported to have taken place in a football stadium.

"More than 1,000 people arrived there," he said.

"After two hours, the Islamic administration in Kismayo brought the lady to the place and when she came out she said: 'What do you want from me?'"

"They said: 'We will do what Allah has instructed us'. She said: 'I'm not going, I'm not going. Don't kill me, don't kill me.'

"A few minutes later more than 50 men tried to stone her."

'Checked by nurses'

The witness said people crowding round to see the execution said it was "awful".

"People were saying this was not good for Sharia law, this was not good for human rights, this was not good for anything."

But no-one tried to stop the Islamist officials, who were armed, the witness said. He said one boy was shot in the confusion.

According to Amnesty International, nurses were sent to check during the stoning whether the victim was still alive. They removed her from the ground and declared that she was, before she was replaced so the stoning could continue.

The port of Kismayo was seized in August by a coalition of forces loyal to rebel leader Hassan Turki, and al-Shabab, the country's main radical Islamist insurgent organisation.

Mr Turki is on the US list of "financers of terrorism".

It was the first reported execution by stoning in the southern port city since Islamist insurgents captured it.

The BBC had a reporter in the area, but he was shot dead in Kismayo in June.

Now read John 8:1-11 and meditate on these images:

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri; Italian, ca. 1591-1666), Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, 1621.

Chinese print, no date.



Rembrandt, Christ And The Woman Taken In Adultery 1644, Oil on wood, 83,8 x 65,4 cm, National Gallery, London.


The Woman taken in Adultery by Jobst Harrich, c 1600. CGFA



A sculpture of Jesus and the children, by Mary Southard, C.S.J.

The Trinity, N.T .Wright, and Mohammad

Visiting today with A. and her Muslim "seeker" mother, Mamma D. and her deeply Muslim mother-in law, Mamma B. At one point the conversation turned to things theological. It was held simultaneously in English and Farsi translation. Mamma B. was actively involved; Mamma B. listened, but didn't say much.

A:" So Mamma D. wants to know if God has children.

Me: (seeing where this is headed) Well, Jesus is His Son...and the Bible does call us His children....

A: But then God is not one?

Me: (frantic: how do you explain the Trinity, to Muslims, when you yourself cannot speak Farsi? Lord, thanks for the chance to speak about You. Help me not to mess it up!) No, God is one; he is one substance, but three persons....He is so great, so powerful, so amazing that who He is not be contained in just one person. (hopefully that will connect with the Muslim reverence for God's sovereignty and power.)

It's like an egg. (good old eggs!) There's the yolk and the white and the shell. It's all egg, but the yolk is not the white, and the white is not the shell, and the shell is not the yolk...but the yolk is egg; the white is egg, and the shell is egg.

A: (Smiles broadly as she translates my words, seeing that Mamma D. is understanding them and clearly entertaining the possibility that God could be one, and yet three.) So there are not three gods.

Me: NO! Not three gods! Only one God! Muslims say there is only one God; and Christians agree! But we say He is three persons, not just one person.

A: So Jesus is God. Muslims think he is just a prophet, think He is not God. But Christians believe He is really God.

(conversation continues, Mamma B. eventually leaves)

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A: (still translating, with a doubtful look) Do Christians believe in reincarnation?

Me: No. We believe in resurrection.

A: So do Muslims. We believe after we die we either go to up to heaven or down to hell. [At this point the reader might want to read this.]

Me: Hmm. Well, we both believe in an afterlife, don't we. Christians think that when we die we go to be with God, but that when He is ready He will give us back new, even better bodies than these, and He will come and live with us. (I breathe a prayer of relief: Thank goodness for Bishop Wright's recent interview in Time! )

A: Muslims don't think that; they think we go live with God.

Me: Well, they're on the right track, but they just need to know that God loves his creation so much that someday, when Satan is gone and there are no more tears or pain, He will come "down" and live with us. Just like in the beginning, when He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden. (Remembering the Time article, it is clear to me that the picture of heaven Maria Shriver paints has much more in common with Mamma B's vision than with the Bible!)

A: (quite satisfied, and explaining this to her mother) We don't need to be afraid of God! Jesus is his Son. He makes us friends with God.

Me: Yes! (remembering Luke 10:20-22, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

A: When I was Muslim I always afraid of God. I fear God. Beth, I confess something. I think I love Jesus more than God (she meant the Father). Is that bad?

Me: Well, A., it's understandable, since all your life when you think of God you think of someone scary. But Jesus comes to show us we don't have to be scared of His Father.

A: Mamma D. wants to know: if Jesus protect us from his angry Father we can do bad things and never be punished?

Me: (Aha! This is why I believe grace is infused/imparted, not simply imputed! ) Well, Jesus is not like a blanket that hides us from an angry Father, so God doesn't see us and gets fooled. No. Jesus not only comes to tell us how his father wants us to be, he came and showed us. And he comes and lives in us, when we invite him to. That means that His goodness and truth and beauty start "growing" in us, and we begin to be more and more like Him, not sinning. So when God looks at us, He sees we are not perfect, but he also sees Jesus working inside us to get rid of sin, and that makes Him happy.

A: (suddenly downcast.) Beth. I confess. I jealous. Mamma D. bring back DVD of my family, and they all dancing and happy and beautiful. And I jealous. I want to know why God not let me be healthy, and beautiful. I not beautiful. I am in pain. Very bad pain, all the time. God is greater than Satan! Why he not tell Satan to stop hurting me?

Me: (Oh no, the problem of evil!) Oh A! Someday God will stop Satan. It's just not time yet. (Just this past Sunday the lectionary included Matthew 4:1-11. I try to build on that.) Remember in Matthew when Satan tempts Jesus? Jesus is hungry, and Satan tries to get him to change stones into bread...and He tries to get Jesus to jump...

A: (Brightening) Oh yes! I remember that. I love that story. He try to get Jesus to jump from high building but Jesus say NO!

B: Well, A., if Satan is so bold that he tries to tempt Jesus, and God didn't stop him from tempting His own Son, then who are you and I to demand He stop Satan for us right now? The Bible says someday God will throw Satan into a lake of fire and he will be gone forever, and God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there will finally be no more sin or pain."

We wound up praying together: A in the middle of the sofa, Momma D. on her left, me on her right. We thanked God for bringing A's family to be with her, and asked him to help her endure her pain, and even take it from her, if that were possible. We asked him to forgive us of our sins, and help us to be more like His son. Momma D. couldn't understand our English, but I think--I pray-- she was in agreement with us.