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Using Gary Miller's booklet Missionary Christianity* as an introduction to his thought Point/Counterpoint will begin with a discussion of this piece and then go into the remainder of the interview/debate with Mr. Miller, the abridged portion has been considered earlier.
*Gary Miller, Missionary Christianity (Abul Qasim Bookstore, Palestine St., Subaiey Center, P.O. Box 6156 Jeddah 21442, Saudi Arabia)
A Critique of Missionary Christianity.
In his booklet Missionary Christianity, Gary Miller has pointed out several very poor arguments which Christians are sometimes tempted to put forward in defense of their beliefs. He has done Christianity a service in showing us why we should steer clear of such arguments. Of course I don't think that many Christians very often would use such arguments or that everything Gary has objected to is quite as worthless as he thinks. We'll look at a few of these shortly starting with those which have some bearing on the issues covered in our interview. But before we do, it might be interesting to first consider something of Miller's approach to the Bible (when his exegesis is at his best) and to apply that approach to the Qur'an.
The Qur'an does not deny Jesus' crucifixion death and resurrection. Miller has ably shown us that many of the biblical passages used to argue for Jesus' deity or some other Christian doctrines Muslims disagree with are just not strong enough to prove their case. But to consider the other side of the coin, we should see that if examined closely, the Qur'an doesn't really deny Jesus' death on the cross or his resurrection.1 It says that his enemies were mistaken when they thought they could kill him and that they certainly did not kill him (4:157). But isn't this what Jesus said when he claimed that no one could take his life from him? Yes, Isa (Jesus) did go on to say that he would give up his life of his own accord, but the Qur'an does not say that he didn't give up his life. And so when the Qur'an goes on to claim that God raised Jesus up to Himself, shouldn't this be understood to be speaking of his resurrection and ascension?
When the Qur'an records Isa as saying, "Peace on me the day I was born, the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive," (19:33) doesn't this confirm that he died and rose from the dead? When it says, speaking of Isa, that all the prophets have died before him (5:75), Richard Bell's translation points out in a note that the implication is that he too died. Mahmud Shaltut, late Rector of Al Azhar University, argued that when Jesus is quoted as saying that Allah caused him to die, in 5:117, the form and grammar of this verse cannot possibly indicate a future death when he returns to earth from heaven.2
Miller has claimed that the death of Isa is a non-issue, a matter Christians and Muslims need not disagree on because one does not need to believe Jesus died to be a Christian. Then he claimed that the deity of Jesus should not be treated as a non-issue because the matter of truth is what we are concerned about (p. 22). It is difficult to understand why the death of Jesus should not be considered an issue for the same reason. Be that as it may, I'd like to claim that Miller has it backwards: the death of Jesus is the real issue and the deity of Isa, though not a non-issue, is certainly a less significant issue. It's not a matter Christian Scripture claims we must believe in order to be saved, to be accepted by God and free from the judgment we deserve.
With this in mind I wonder if the New Testament view wouldn't be that a person could be saved, accepted by God, who would yet fully accept the Qur'an as being true. If nothing in the Qur'an precludes us from believing in Isa's death and resurrection, is there anything that stops us from believing that his death and resurrection is what makes us accepted in God's sight or stops us from trusting in him, committing ourselves to him and trusting in his death for salvation?
Isaiah 53 speaks of one who would come whose death would atone; it would remove our sin, our separation from God. Daniel 9 tells us that the Messiah will die at a particular point in time within a prophetic time block and it tells us that this time block is decreed for the atonement, the covering of sin. The death of no righteous one is mentioned within this time block other than that of the Messiah. Together these Scriptures show us that it is the Messiah's death that will bring us atonement and reconciliation with God. Passages such as these and others discussed in the interview draw the Muslim to understand that the atonement is not some recent distortion of God's revelation. It's the core of God's revelation. It's the mystery hinted at from antiquity, revealed more and more clearly with time until Jesus would come, in the fullness of time, to fulfill it completely. This is not an alien doctrine for the Muslim who sees, as Mohammed saw, that God spoke through His prophets throughout history.
The mystery God has revealed is the mystery of His unfathomable love for us. God so loved us that Jesus, one so close to God and so loved of God, had to come to die for us. This is the greatest of all mysteries. Jesus wasn't God's whipping boy. Nothing Isa endured God did not fully endure. The most excruciating pain and agony, God knew just as much as did Jesus. It would have been meaningless for John to have claimed that God loved us so much that He gave His only son for us (John 3:16) unless this were true.
Other Christian doctrines provide other ways of seeing how God could endure pain and death: consider for example the doctrine of Jesus' deity or the doctrine of the Trinity which tells of Jesus' unique oneness with God the Father. But what I'd like to point out is that the Muslim who refuses to consider such a belief can still recognize and embrace what the Christian considers the greatest revealed mystery of all ages: how much God loved us as shown by the price He paid to bring us back to Himself. Perhaps those more knowledgeable of the Qur'an will show me if I am wrong on this point. But until then I would claim that according to the Christian Scripture, the Muslim who will not deviate from the Qur'an may still trust in Isa for salvation.
The evidence for Isa's death and resurrection. One issue Gary brings up which has been addressed in Point/Counterpoint is the claimed argument for Jesus' resurrection. He says we have some anonymous writings from the first century which say that Jesus died, namely the Gospels, but we also have first century Christians who denied that Isa was crucified (p. 21). It is true that late in the first century a seminal form of Docetism was beginning to make itself known. Some of these early Gnostics appear to have denied that Jesus came in human flesh. If Isa only seemed to have a real human body then he would have only appeared to have died. Some second century Docetists even believed that someone else was mistaken for Jesus and crucified in his place.
It is interesting that Miller should base his claim for first century disbelief in Jesus' death on a system which argued this in order to deny his humanity. There is no early evidence that Isa didn't die. It was only because some people later on thought that the idea of God dying was so incomprehensible that they came up with the idea that because Jesus was God he must have only appeared to die.
But the earliest records we have indicate that Jesus did die and rise from the dead. Paul had ample opportunity and reason to investigate these claims directly both before and after he embraced Isa as the Messiah. He not only claims that Jesus' death and resurrection occurred but he also cites an early creedal statement, a memorized formulation found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, which goes back to only a few years after the crucifixion. Indeed, the origins of this statement very likely go back to the time directly following the events themselves.3
The facts that bear up under historical examination are not merely that Jesus appeared to be crucified and was seen alive a few days later, but that he was crucified, died and was raised from the dead.
Miller says, "On the one hand we are told that this man healed cripples, lepers, the blind, and raised the dead. On the other hand, beating him, stabbing him and nailing him to a cross is said to be quite sufficient to kill him" (p. 21). In fact the New Testament does not say that these were sufficient to kill him. It records him as saying that no one could take his life from him but that he would give it of his own choice (John 10:17-18). Yes, he did have the power to keep from being killed, but he also had the power to give his life.
Miller sees the crucifixion as a "small gathering in a garden where his followers were forced to stand at a distance" (p. 22). But the sources he cites do not indicate anything other than that some of his followers stood at a distance or that they stood at a distance at least some of the time (Matthew 27:55). The most obvious reason they stood at a distance is that it was a capital offense to weep for a crucified victim. Even women and children could be crucified if they were caught showing such sympathy.4 When or if any of his followers felt sufficiently composed to control their emotions, they would venture nearer to the cross.
The same sources indicate that a number of people passed by the cross and some people remained until Jesus was clearly dead. One indicates that it was a large number of people who witnessed his death (Luke 23:48). Many of Jesus' opponents as well as uncommitted individuals would later be his followers (Acts 21:20, John 7:5, 1 Corinthians 15:7). They might have later provided information or verification of information on these events if any were lacking.
At one point at least four of Isa's female followers and relatives and one male disciple stood at the cross and received instruction (John 19:25-27). This appears to be a personal recollection by this disciple who spoke of himself simply as "the disciple Jesus loved." He even claims he witnessed Isa being stabbed with a spear (John 19:33-35). John's Gospel does not include all the information cited in the other Gospels but this is in keeping with at least part of its apparent purpose: to provide information missed in the earlier accounts.
Whether from Jesus' followers or opponents or anyone else, we have a very detailed account of his death. One Gospel gives the detailed conversation of Isa and the other two crucified with him. The Synoptics, the first three Gospels, even record some of Jesus' words in his native language, Aramaic (e.g., Mark 15:33-36). The Gospels are written in Greek with these Aramaic portions transliterated into Greek. It is not often that we are given the very words Isa used untranslated. The situation warranted this record in Aramaic because the terms he used were mistaken by some of his hearers (he said "Eloi," the word for God, when they thought he said "Eli," that is, the prophet Elijah).
These events, these very words, were recalled in precise detail. These are the recollections of the most significant and traumatic events of the disciples' lives. And they were hardly events Isa's opponents or any uncommitted parties would have looked upon as insignificant. These were not obscure statements heard at a distance.
Any American who was alive and not too young at the time will tell you even now, thirty years later, where they were and what they did on the day John Kennedy was assassinated. The more important the figure is to your mind, the more precisely you will remember such a traumatic event regarding that person. But unlike Kennedy's death, Jesus' death and the events surrounding it would be constantly recalled to mind, constantly repeated to new followers and to other inquirers, constantly discussed among those who remembered as well as with those who did not witness the events. These are the events that would not only be repeated but written down, saved, and passed on to others. Within thirty years these written and oral recollections would form the substance of the written narratives of Jesus' death in the Gospels.
Certainly Miller has not given us good reason to deny Isa's death and resurrection and we think that our previous study has given us good reason to believe it. If the reader has not done so already, at this point he or she might also be interested in considering an argument that the Qur'an does not deny that Jesus died and was resurrected.
The Qur'an affirms the New Testament. Miller discusses the essence of Wright's claim that the Qur'an affirms the New Testament and Hebrew Scripture as God's revelation. He notes that Christians have sometimes tried to "fool" Muslims with this argument.
Before getting into his argument we should note the following verses from the Qur'an (Shakir's translation) which are cited in the discussion that follows. (Note that some verse numbers differ slightly in some translations.)
"3.3": He has revealed to you the Book with truth, verifying that which is before it, and He revealed the Tavrat and the Injeel aforetime, a guidance for the people, and He sent the Furqan.
"3.4": Surely they who disbelieve in the communications of Allah they shall have a severe chastisement; and Allah is Mighty, the Lord of retribution.
"3.78": Most surely there is a party amongst those who distort the Book with their tongue that you may consider it to be (a part) of the Book, and they say, It is from Allah, while it is not from Allah, and they tell a lie against Allah whilst they know.
"3.84": Say: We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us, and what was revealed to Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq and Yaqoub and the tribes, and what was given to Musa and Isa and to the prophets from their Lord; we do not make any distinction between any of them, and to Him do we submit.
"5.13": But on account of their breaking their covenant We cursed them and made their hearts hard; they altered the words from their places and they neglected a portion of what they were reminded of; and you shall always discover treachery in them excepting a few of them; so pardon them and turn away; surely Allah loves those who do good (to others).
"5.14": And with those who say, We are Christians, We made a covenant, but they neglected a portion of what they were reminded of, therefore We excited among them enmity and hatred to the day of resurrection; and Allah will inform them of what they did.
"5.15": O followers of the Book! indeed Our Apostle has come to you making clear to you much of what you concealed of the Book and passing over much; indeed, there has come to you light and a clear Book from Allah;
"5.47": And the followers of the Injeel should have judged by what Allah revealed in it; and whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are they that are the transgressors.
"5.48": And We have revealed to you the Book with the truth, verifying what is before it of the Book and a guardian over it, therefore judge between them by what Allah has revealed, and do not follow their low desires (to turn away) from the truth that has come to you; for every one of you did We appoint a law and a way, and if Allah had pleased He would have made you (all) a single people, but that He might try you in what He gave you, therefore strive with one another to hasten to virtuous deeds; to Allah is your return, of all (of you), so He will let you know that in which you differed;
"5.68": Say: O followers of the Book! you follow no good till you keep up the Taurat and the Injeel and that which is revealed to you from your Lord; and surely that which has been revealed to you from your Lord shall make many of them increase in inordinacy and unbelief; grieve not therefore for the unbelieving people.
"7.169": Then there came after them an evil posterity who inherited the Book, taking only the frail good of this low life and saying: It will be forgiven us. And if the like good came to them, they would take it (too). Was not a promise taken from them in the Book that they would not speak anything about Allah but the truth, and they have read what is in it; and the abode of the hereafter is better for those who guard (against evil). Do you not then understand?
"10.94 (95)": But if you are in doubt as to what We have revealed to you, ask those who read the Book before you; certainly the truth has come to you from your Lord, therefore you should not be of the disputers.
Surah 5:48 says that Allah has revealed the Scripture to Mohammed, "confirming whatever Scripture was before it and being a control over it." Miller points out that the word for control indicates that this means that it is the criterion for determining the true from the false (p. 7). However, Yusuf Ali indicates that muhaimin means one who "safeguards, watches over, stands witness, preserves and upholds."5 As such this would indicate that the Qur'an protects earlier Scriptures, not that it judges them.
For the sake of the argument let's concede Miller's definition and say that muhaimin means one who judges the true from the false. Does this mean that it's a control, a standard, for determining God's revelation in the Christian Scripture or is it the control for rejecting the misinformation people give about what the Christian Scriptures really say? Certainly the idea of a "watcher" (Pickthall) or a "guard" (Ali) better fits the idea of protecting it from outside distortions and lies than the idea of judging, discerning, picking out the truth from within an already complete document. Indeed, both the idea of quality control and protection would be present if the verse is speaking of Mohammed's distrust of what the Christians had told him about their Scriptures. The Qur'an claims to guards the Injil, the Gospel, from their purported lies and it discerns the truth from lies in their claims. This fits with Mohammed's statements elsewhere that Christians or Jews were not telling him the truth about the content of their Scripture.
If Miller's definition is correct, verse 47 indicates that the Qur'an is not the judge of the Christian's Scripture but only of the Christian's claims. "Let the people of the Injil [the Christians] judge by that which Allah has revealed therein," it says. Christians are to judge by the revelation found in the Injil.
Even if the Injil consists of nothing more than Jesus' teachings (which Christians and Muslims agree came from or were "sent down from" God) this verse does not speak of any source outside of the Injil for determining the truth. Now if part of their gospel is true and part false, nothing is offered in this verse other than this Injil itself for determining this truth. Some other "control" would have been mentioned here by which one could discern revelation.
So the verse means that we are to judge, determine God's revelation, by the Injil, the writings the Christians then considered to be Jesus' teachings.
Miller cites Surah 3:3, 4 to argue further that the Qur'an is the standard for determining the truth in any other claimed revelation. This says, "He has revealed to you (Mohammed) the Scripture with truth, confirming that which was (revealed) before it, even as He previously revealed the Taurat and the Injil, to be a guidance to mankind; and He has revealed the Criterion (of right and wrong)." Ali argues that the word for "criterion" is more likely referring to the signs God provided to attest to a revelation but, he admits, it could be referring to a written revelation itself.6 But even if it is the latter, there is nothing in this passage to indicate that the Qur'an is the criterion for determining the truth of the Injil or any other Scripture. It would simply mean Scripture itself, as Scripture other than the Qur'an has also been called the Criterion. Scripture is the criterion for determining truth. It determines right from wrong.
Miller cites Surah 5:15 to further support his case. But this passage, like 3:78, merely confirms the interpretation we have suggested for 5:47, 48. Mohammed thought the Christians and Jews lied about what was in their Scripture, that they changed words (5:13) or hid or ignored or conveniently forgot what they didn't want to believe (14, 15). If Mohammed spoke of the Qur'an as being a control or standard for determining truth, he spoke of it only in regard to the statements Christians made about what their Scripture said, he didn't apply it to their Scripture itself.
Surah 5:68 says that the people of the Scripture, the Jews and Christians, need to observe the Taurat (the Jewish Scripture or the law) and the Injil which were revealed by Allah. Again we have a passage that indicates that the Christians had God's revelation which was directly accessible to them. Mohammed is not told that the revelation he is given is to be used to find the revelation tucked away in the Injil. He is simply told that Christians have it and need to observe what they have. The sense is that it is all there right in front of them. They can find it for themselves by simply looking at Jesus' teachings. Isa's teachings as possessed by Christians in Mohammed's time happen to be the same teachings we have in the Gospels today. On this point history is quite clear.
In Surah 10:95 Mohammed is told that if he doubts these revelations he is receiving, he should ask those who read the Scripture that was given before his time. They should know God's revelation merely by understanding the Old and New Testament because those were the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians. Again, the verse is obviously speaking of the Christians and Jews because they were the ones elsewhere named as the people of the Scripture. Mr. Wright has shown that since long before Mohammed's time the Christian Scripture has not changed (see below). If the Qur'an is God's word, why won't Muslims allow the same test now? Can we not follow the very test the Qur'an admonished Mohammed to follow?
Would Miller now try to tell us that the truth in the Old and New Testament must be sorted from the false only through the control, the filter of the Qur'an? This verse tells us that it is just the opposite. The Bible is the control determining the truth of the Qur'an. In the light of verses like this, it is clear that it is not Miller's interpretation of 5:48, but ours, that must be correct.
If the reader finds unconvincing the above argument that the Qur'an is not the judge of truth of the Bible, we hope the it is understood that Wright's argument would still be completely unaffected. If the Qur'an claims to be, as it were, a filter that can pick out the truth in any previous claimed revelation, it also claims (quite inconsistently) that the Bible possessed by the Christians of Mohammed's time was God's fully trustworthy revelation. We have already discussed 10:95, 5:47, and 5:68 which make this claim. Since we know that the Bible they possessed is no different from that which we possess today, the Muslim is obligated to accept it as God's revelation to all people.
Having covered three of the most important issues--the resurrection, the evidence that the Qur'an affirms the New Testament, and the evidence that the Qur'an does not deny Jesus' death on the cross or his resurrection--we may now go on to some of the other issues Miller brings up.
Faith. Miller is right to attack contradictory views of faith (pp. 26-27). The biblical view is that one should not believe something without sufficient evidence. The Kierkegaardian blind leap of faith is simply not biblical. Furthermore, the New Testament does not say that there is any merit, anything we ought to feel proud of, in believing something to be true or in belief in the sense of commitment to someone who deserves it. If you believe something to be true, it should be simply because of the evidence. If you commit yourself to Allah, it should be because it's your obligation, because this is what we were made for. (Notice how this follows Miller's exposition of the Muslim notion of "piety.") If you commit yourself to Isa, it should be for the same reason, but only once you determine that Jesus is due your commitment. There is no deserved merit in doing what we ought to do; judgment is deserved if we don't do it.
Jesus told a parable of a servant who labors for his master in the field. At the end of the day the master tells him to wait on him while he eats and that only after that may the servant eat. "Should the master thank the servant?" Jesus asks. "No," he says, "we, like the servant, should say, 'We are unworthy servants, we have only done for our master as he deserves.'" (Luke 17:7-10.) Christians believe God has paid The Great Price to redeem them, that this is how God has demonstrated how very much He loves us. After what has been done for us, we are painfully aware that there is no thanks or merit that we deserve for submission and obedience.
Faith, or at least our ability to have faith, is, indeed, a gift of God. But then, all that we have is a gift of God and all people are given the ability to choose to have faith. (As much as we affirm that faith is a gift of God, we should notice that the New Testament passage that is taken to state this is more likely claiming rather that grace, not faith, is a gift of God.7)
Jesus' deity. Miller says he finds inconsistencies with the doctrine of the incarnation and Trinity (p. 3). The basic idea in the New Testament is that God became a man in Jesus and yet, as God, he is still distinct from God the Father (John 1, Colossians 1, 2, Philippians 2, etc.). So that means that somehow God is--or timelessly chose to be--other than absolutely one. (The distinction between the Father and the Son has nothing to do with biological generation, though this is the image that too easily creeps into our thinking.)
In the ancient Hebrew affirmation, "The Lord your God is one God," (Deuteronomy 6:4), a strong word indicating absolute unity could have been chosen for the word used for "one," but it wasn't. Instead, the word chosen was the same word that spoke of Adam and Eve, though being two, becoming "one" flesh (Genesis 2:24). This word is sometimes used to speak of things that are more than one, which yet should be considered one. Perhaps the Son is one with the Father as two persons could conceivably be the same in awareness and knowledge and thought while at the same time be two distinct persons, two centers of consciousness. The personhood of God might be much more than that (that is, a center of consciousness) but it is hard to imagine that it is not at least that. The Father and Son might be one in other ways, say in will, in love, in emotion, etc. We do not know all the ways God the Father, Son, and Spirit are one and yet distinct. But that they can be such is not really a problem. In this sense 1+1+1 can equal 1 (contra Miller, p. 5).
Miller asks how the Unchanging One can pass through a human life and death or change in knowledge. Let's consider this question by looking at some positive characteristics of the mind of God.
Why can't one facet of God's mind be immutable and timeless while another be temporal and changing? If God does not have both then He is less than all knowing since there is a mode of knowledge He does not possess. In the same manner, God might be able to empty Himself of all knowledge to become a being that gains knowledge. One Christian view might have it that one person of the Trinity (the Father) maintains the timeless mind and immutability while the other (the Son) emptied Himself of knowledge, if only for a limited period of time. But then again, there is no apparent necessity that each person of the Godhead cannot have both temporal and timeless knowledge.
How can Jesus be both God and man? The same person simply attains a different nature. I am the same person that I was when I was a week old, yet the content of my knowledge is very different now than it was then. Are we to presume to say that God cannot empty Himself of His infinite knowledge and take the limited mind of a man? Does the Muslim think of God as less powerful than does the Christian? (I'm aware that other questions could be raised at this point but I confine myself to answer only the objections raised by Mr. Miller.)
With this we can understand how one person can be of more than one nature through time. But we can also imagine the two occurring simultaneously: an omniscient mind being the same person--the same center of consciousness--as one that is totally emptied and open to receive knowledge. In a science fiction story a man may travel back in time to meet himself as a child. The two are the same person, yet they are two. Though this idea is not inconceivable I still think that the better explanation is that Jesus simply gave up his omniscience for a short time during his incarnation and regained it upon his resurrection.
Most importantly we should be able to see that no case can be made against the idea that the changeless One could also become a changing one. The history of philosophy and theology are filled with accusations of inconsistencies and contradictions in various doctrines which, once closely examined, cannot be shown to be inconsistent at all. Even if my analogies and arguments are not convincing, we need to at least realize that Miller's claim has no force until he can show a clear inconsistency.
Gary notes that John 3:16 cannot mean that Jesus is God's only son because the word for "only begotten" is used elsewhere in places where the son clearly is not the particular father's only son (p. 15). The passage he cites, Hebrews 11:17, does help us to understand the term better. Isaac was not Abraham's only son but he was the son of greater importance for the Israelites. In Genesis God speaks of Isaac as Abraham's only son. The writer of Hebrews is simply repeating what God had spoken. Isaac was Abraham's only son in a legal sense; through Isaac alone would the promise to Abraham be fulfilled.
Gary points out that Jesus is not the only one called God's son in the New Testament. Christians, peacemakers, even the entire human race are called children of God (Acts 17:28-29). All people are God's children in the sense that God is our source and creator. This is surely the thought Paul draws on when he quotes the ancient pagan poet Aratus.
Peacemakers are children of God in a special sense. Peacemakers are those who desire and seek what God seeks. If you show you have someone's heart, you show yourself worthy to be called their child. Jesus is commending such a person as being a child of God in a sense that those who don't have such a heart cannot be called.
John speaks of followers of Isa as being sons of God in a unique sense as well. He says that this is an amazing gift, a privilege we have which isn't to be considered the norm for everyone in that it is not received by everyone. Those who believe in Jesus, who trust in him for salvation, are made God's children though they were alienated from God before (1 John 3:1).
So what can John 3:16 mean when it calls Isa God's only begotten son? Using the term "only begotten," in this passage and comparing it with the previous mentioned passages that do not use these terms, it must mean that Jesus is God's son is some sense unique from all of God's other children. As Isaac was Abraham's son in a sense no other son of Abraham could claim, so must Isa be God's unique son. It could be that the meaning is metaphysical, that Jesus has a unique relationship with the Father within the Godhead. But it could also be something else. This passage might mean that Jesus is unique as the highest among those categories of people who likewise can be called children of God. This is one of those passages Miller is right in pointing to which Christians sometimes use to say more than the words rightly allow us to say. It fits the idea of the Trinity or the incarnation but it doesn't prove either. On this we agree, although we must not forget that this does show us that Jesus is in some sense unique among all who are called children of God.
When Miller goes on to claim that Jesus never did claim deity and that this idea is really based on the speculation of later Christians, we must disagree. We will later claim that following our discussion of John 8:56-59 Isa did claim deity and that Miller was unable to refute this.
Suppose Miller is correct that Jesus never claimed to be God. Christians might feel disappointed since their case would not be quite as strong as they had thought. If it can be demonstrated that Jesus' New Testament biographies, the Gospels, indicate that he claimed deity, then we're a step closer to showing that he did actually claim it. But even if we're quite sure that he never claimed deity, as disappointed as Christians might feel, they might still feel that they have good reason to believe he is God.
It is not at all inconceivable that Jesus desired to withhold this information. Perhaps it was meant to be disclosed at a later time. (More later on this point.) Indeed, the writings of Apostles such as John or Paul are the most substantial and explicit sources for this doctrine in the New Testament. If their writings are accepted, the deity of Isa can hardly be denied.
(For more arguments concerning the diety of Jesus see below.)
Biblical inspiration. Now we would have to have good reason to accept the words of these later New Testament writers or speakers. This gets us into Miller's discussion of the inspiration and authority of the Bible (pp. 9-14). The Christian accepts the authority of the Bible primarily because of Jesus' statements. The evidence of the resurrection, fulfilled prophecy, religious experience, etc. has persuaded us that Jesus is the Messiah and that he has spoken God's truth, God's Injil. On the basis of historical and archeological evidence, the written Gospels have been determined to be accurate accounts of Jesus' life and teaching. We accept the truth of the earlier Hebrew Scripture because we see in the Gospels that Jesus accepted it. But we also find that he claimed that his disciples would also be given God's revelation (John 14:26). The Holy Spirit would bring to their remembrance the things Jesus taught and would lead them into all truth.
This accounts for the truth of some of the New Testament writings, but what about those written by people like Paul who didn't hear Jesus directly? Paul's authority is established by the fact that his message was judged to be from God by the Apostles who had been with Jesus, those whom the Spirit of God would lead into all truth. And Paul's message was not entirely what he had received from those earlier Apostles and others who had learned directly from Jesus. Some of what he had proclaimed he said he received directly from God without consulting the Apostles; but ultimately he brought his message to the Apostles for their judgment (Galatians 1:11-12, 2:1-2). Furthermore, they accepted Paul as an Apostle, as one specially sent directly by Jesus with God's revelation (Galatians 2:6-9).
(This accounts for the teachings of most of the New Testament. For those that are left, like the book of Hebrews whose author is unknown or 2 Peter for which we lack [or have lost] early verification that Peter was the author, I would appeal to an idea often found in Reformed theology: the doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit. The idea here is that God gives an awareness, a sense of assurance that this work is from God. We have argued elsewhere that this is adequate reason for belief.)
Now the reason Christians do not feel threatened by the idea that the copies of the Bible we now have are not necessarily inerrant is that it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter that some obscure number in the text was smeared and later miscopied. And it is this kind of insignificant transcriptional mistake that we usually run into when we suspect an error.
Paul once wrote that he left his coat in Troas and asked Timothy to pick it up for him (2 Timothy 4:13). Now we have no reason to believe this was an error on Paul's part but we also have no reason to believe this must in principle be inerrant even in the original. Maybe he was tired and forgot that it was really left in, say, Pergamum. If God did speak to Paul giving him the teachings that were meant to be given to the people, then God would preserve those teachings. But it simply doesn't follow that God would be obligated to make sure every non-teaching statement he makes (such as this one) will be preserved or must be inerrant in the original. What Paul or Jesus taught, we have good reason to believe is from God and has been adequately preserved.
Miller points out that much of what we have as Isa's words in the Gospels are paraphrases (p. 13). We admit this is so, but that doesn't make the Gospel accounts any less God's word. If it is not necessary that we always have Jesus' exact words, then God would not be concerned to preserve them exactly. Now sometimes it might be important to have the exact words. And some of Isa's words are preserved in the original language or they're easily reconstructible to the original.
Gary comments that "Isaiah 40:8 . . . states that God's word stands forever--it doesn't get lost in the recopying," (p. 12). At this point, however, it should be very clear that nothing the Christian accepts as being God's word is lost.
Jesus said that "he who is faithful in little is also faithful in much and he who is unrighteous in a small thing is unrighteous also in much," (Luke 16:10). Miller claims that this does "not allow for this separation of small and big errors" in the Bible as Christians think (p. 13). Certainly God is faithful in all things both great and small that apply to Him, but we must not think He must be faithful in something He has left in human hands: the preservation of words that do not affect the essential meaning of the revelation. He is also faithful to preserve every precise word that does affect the meaning of the revelation if that is what God does want us to have. And to determine as closely as possible the exact meaning of each word, phrase, etc. gives us a more exact understanding of the revelation. But we must be very careful not to presume to dictate to God that He must preserve only the original words or that only thus may He reveal His message to us.
Miller mentions Paul's statement that concerning a particular matter he doesn't have a command from God but that he gives his own advice as one who is trustworthy in the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:25). He is saying that though God has not definitely spoken on this issue, his own spiritual insight should be seriously considered. Why, Miller asks, should we assume that this teaching should be considered inspired, or "God-breathed"? Well, isn't it possible that God would want Paul to give his insight which might happen to apply to any particular person as that person seeks God's specific leading for him or herself? There is no contradiction here as Miller claims (p. 11) since it is quite possible that God did order this type of spiritual advice to be written. It is not a direct command from God, but the Bible is never claimed to be made up of only direct commands and words from God. That is a misunderstanding of the meaning of inspiration.
In his final statement on this issue Miller quotes Jeremiah 8:8 as indicating that the Hebrew Scripture has not survived verbatim even to Jeremiah's day (pp. 13-14). We have already argued that there is no necessity that what we have now is exactly as it was originally written. But even so, it cannot be claimed that this revelation of God--whether verbatim or paraphrased--has been lost. This passage only indicates that false scribes had attempted to change the law or make a new Torah. God said they would be put to shame for rejecting God's true word (v. 9). Their lies would not stand.
Jesus, the only way to God. Gary cites Jesus' statement, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me," (John 14:6) (pp. 19-20). Admittedly, this does not demonstrate Jesus' deity. Gary claims that it cannot mean that Isa is unique for all time either; that the words "the way, the truth, the life" do not indicate uniqueness anymore than does "Reagan is the President." But there certainly is a connotation of uniqueness in these terms. If Jesus had thought there would be other ways or another truth or another life he would have said he was a way or a truth or a life. And to say "I am the truth" is very different than saying "I am the president." Truth we usually consider to be timeless, presidents we don't. One changes every few years, the other doesn't. Thus the burden of proof would be on Gary to show that this "truth" is in the same category as presidents, not other truth.
The most conclusive disproof of Miller's claim is found in Isa's following statement that no one comes to God except through him. Thus the way he is speaking of is the way to God. There is no other way to God, he says. Because life and truth are only found in God and Jesus says that only he provides the way to God, he must be uniquely the truth and life. Also, because Jesus is the only way to God, the truth and life can hardly be ordinary truths or ordinary life.
Notice that he is speaking to people who would consider themselves to be alive and yet he says that they can have life (John 10:10). So he cannot here mean normal life. Now if they do not yet have this new kind of life they must be in a corresponding state of death or non-existence. You're either alive or you're not. So as life is to death so is this new life Isa offers compared to their present life, no matter how good their present life might seem to be.
Now Jesus' statement that he came not only to give life but to give it abundantly does not alter this. That it might be called abundant life is not a quantification of life, it's merely a parallel expression of what has already been stated. He has shown us that our life is death compared to the life he gives. Isn't another way to say this--though an understatement--to call it abundant life? This certainly makes more sense than to say that the word abundant makes this kind of new life a measurable quantity, a kind of life which need not be unique at all.
So the life Isa gives--which he also calls abundant life--is something you either have or you don't. We've already seen that he has claimed that only he can give this life by providing the only way to God (another reason this life must be unique). This life is unique because it is the life that is found by anyone who comes to God this one and only way (14:6). This is the life we find in being accepted by God and in relationship with God.
We see that the meaning of these passages does become clearer when we do as Miller suggests, when we consider the context and other relevant passages on the same subject. But the clear meaning is hardly an overspecification (pp. 14, 20) as he claims. The meaning is that Jesus was not just another prophet, he was and is
the only way to God and to the life which God alone can give.
If God gave up His only son to die for us to bring us back to Himself because this was the only way we could find God, if God loved us this much, then it is not at all presumptuous for Isa to say that no one can come to God except through him. The Muslim who is truly obedient to God will seek to determine whether this is true or not and will diligently call upon God to know the truth. If God's acceptance and forgiveness comes only through Jesus, nothing could be more important than finding out if this is true and finding God's acceptance if it is.
The wars of Islam. Miller claims that if the fact that Mohammed waged wars disqualifies him as God's spokesman, then it does the same for people like Joshua as well (p. 2).
But Joshua's warfare was commanded by God in order to carry out God's punishment. God told Abraham that this couldn't be done in his own time because the people's wickedness was not yet complete; they did not yet deserve this (Genesis 15:16). It would be hundreds of years before the iniquity of the Amorites would be complete and the invasion of Canaan could begin.
The Muslim invasions, however, involved forcing populations to accept Islam. Those who couldn't in right conscience believe it to be true were forced to hypocrisy, to profess that they believed it while in fact they did not. Those who were not forced to convert (which sometimes included Christians and Jews) were not allowed to persuade Muslims of their non-Muslim beliefs and Muslims could not reject their beliefs. There was no place for honest inquiry into the truth.
Certainly some who called themselves Christians have forced conquered populations to accept Christianity. But such an act completely contradicts all that Isa or his disciples ever taught (e.g., Matthew 26:51-52, John 18:36). What right does one person have to tell another what to believe? Won't God give the truth to those who seek it from Him? Shouldn't each person be allowed the dignity to decide such questions for him or herself? Isn't that their right and their obligation? Is there such a lack of evidence for Islam that it must be forced upon people?
The evidence for Islam. What, indeed, is the evidence Miller presents for Islam? He attempts to answer claimed inconsistencies in the Qur'an but he doesn't really give us any reason to believe that it is from God (p. 33ff.). It seems that Miller here merely recites the Qur'an's claim that this lack of inconsistencies is itself evidence that it is from God (4:82).
But even if we grant that no inconsistencies can be found in the Qur'an, we still wouldn't have reason to believe it's from God. It is not surprising to find books of law, poetry, worship or even history without internal or other inconsistencies. Yet we never suppose that because of this God gave these works to their respective writers.
And is it certain that there are no inconsistencies in the Qur'an? We should notice that some of the texts mentioned in the endnote references of this paper (such as The Islam Debate or Balance of Truth) deal with a number of claimed inconsistencies and contradictions which Miller has not here answered.
No miracles or fulfilled prophecies can be pointed to to substantiate the Qur'an (as Pfander shows in Balance of Truth). The predominant claim the Qur'an makes to substantiate its claim to inspiration is it's peerless beauty (2:21, 17:91) and Miller doesn't even mention this. He is surely aware of how extremely subjective such an argument must be. What objective grounds can be presented to show that the Qur'an surpasses the Mu'allaqat or the Maqamat of Hariri for instance. Non-Muslim readers have certainly claimed that it doesn't. It's interesting that Arabic translations of the New Testament Gospels will sometimes raise something of a stir among Muslims who read them. It seems that the sheer beauty of Jesus' words have disturbed some with the thought that, just perhaps, they're more beautiful than those of the Qur'an.
Speaking very personally, I admit that if I knew nothing more about Mohammed than what I read in some of his very beautiful words of worship in the Qur'an, I could hardly help but honor this man. But even if this writing is unrivaled, this does not prove that he was God's prophet; it only shows that he might have been a most gifted poet.
So my basic problem with the claims of Islam remains: I simply find no reason to believe it.
This is the continuation of the abridged interview/debate published in Point/Counterpoint. 1:2 or at the previous file of this webpage.
On Believing in Issa
Point/Counterpoint (Hereafter P/CP): Muslims believe Isa, or Jesus, was a Prophet, indeed, the Messiah. You have maintained that you have no difficulty accepting the accuracy of the biographical accounts as recorded in the New Testament (i.e., the Gospels). Yet Jesus is recorded as saying that anyone who believes in him or commits oneself to him would have eternal life (John 3:15). He also spoke of a need for people to repent: to turn to God and turn from their sins (a notion which is also proclaimed in the Qur'an). The first of Isa's followers to proclaim his message after the crucifixion appear to have made these same issues primary (Acts 2:38, 10:43). Should the Muslim "believe in Jesus" in the same sense? [No response received to this question.]
On Seeking God
Miller: It can too easily become something like a love potion. Someone drinks it and falls in love with the first person he sees. People seem to be doing that kind of thing when they say, "I will totally surrender to whatever guidance comes." They mean by that, off goes the critical faculty, the faculty for deciding between true and false.
Relationship with God and Atonement
P/CP: Do you find the notion of seeking a relationship with God in Islam?
Miller: Oh, yes, of course. In fact that's the thing that's often missed because people see what they expect to find usually. They may read the passage that is usually translated, "God does not love those who do not love Him," and in that way they may form an image of a God toward whom you have to make the first move. But that's overlooking the total explanation of the matter.
There's one feature of the Qur'an that can't be missed. All the chapters except one start with a statement which specifically talks about something which could be explained like Evangelical language. It says, 'rachman' to describe that attribute of God with which He loves and cares for everyone, even those who hate Him; they all get the same treatment. 'Rach-heem' describes that attribute of God which is such that if you make the choice, you can enter into a very personal relationship with Him. So you can find this new relationship with God and even those who don't want it, even those who hate God, God still loves.
The relationship one has with God is really a continuation of a perfectly natural process. When God speaks to man, it is not of help to a man unless that man first has a quality called in Arabic 'taqua.' This word you find feebly translated into English as 'piety.' The man with taqua is the man who doesn't think he's something more nor less than a man. He knows what men are, what they should reach for, which things are beneath them, which things are above them. So he appreciates, "here is God, here is man, here is the world," and so on, and acts accordingly. When guidance comes to that man he takes appropriate action. That is the man who has this relationship with God. In fact, as the Qur'an puts it, "anyone else is living like cattle." And then the verse says, ". . . no, in fact, worse than cattle," because at least cattle are doing what they were meant to do.
Miller: One point you mentioned had to do with relationship. You were saying God is holy, man is sinful, how is there a relationship?
P/CP: Yes, how can there be a relationship?
Miller: It seems to me that this is really a manufactured problem. People seem to carry an idea that God is so holy and I'm so evil, how could God stand to be near me? Whereas Jesus was supposed to have said that God is so close to you that He counts the hairs on your head. It doesn't seem to bother Him, the nearness.
And the solution that's sometimes put forward seems to me to just make another problem. You may say God is one hundred percent holy and man is not, so we need someone in the middle. Well, how holy is this one in the middle, this mediator? The usual candidate people have in mind is one hundred percent. Well, then you still have the same problem. If this is what separates God and man, one is still totally holy and one isn't. You still have it unless you have some kind of pretty holy mediator, I guess. It just seems like a problem which is [needlessly] created and doesn't go away [once it is accepted].
P/CP: Isa's statement that God numbers the hairs on our heads doesn't explicitly say anything about God being close to us, but I think you're right that it can be used to show this, though perhaps only in the sense of His love and care for us. Indeed, the Hebrew Scripture also talks about God's closeness to us, that no matter where we go, He is there (Psalm 139). Certainly the New Testament writer, Paul, affirms this (Acts 17:27-28). But it isn't hard to see that God could be close to us in these ways, that in Him we all live and move and exist, and that we can yet be spiritually separated from Him. God told Israel that their sins had separated them from Him (Isaiah 59:2) and Jesus said that without repentance from sin all would perish. Doesn't this indicate some kind of separation between God and humanity, to say the least?
But as you have said, two and two isn't four because the teacher says it is. Likewise, whatever anyone else has said, the problem remains that evil is something God cannot have part in or condone, and we have done evil. Now that doesn't stop God from loving and caring for us, it just shows us that under these conditions we cannot have the relationship with God we need. [No response received to this question.]
P/CP: What do you mean by "forgiveness"? I can think of two possible meanings. It could mean that God just doesn't see our sin. It's like God saying, "Come, I can have relationship with you now, I just won't see your evil." The obvious problem is that sin isn't really removed and that God who is holy has relationship with people who are not.
The other thing forgiveness may mean is that the sin is really removed by God's command. You would say that this is what really occurs?
Miller: Maybe that's closer to what I'm getting at, except that, still, maybe you mean one thing by sin while I mean another. I'm thinking in terms of the Lord's Prayer as it is sometimes translated in modern language where it says to pray this way: ". . . forgive us our debts the way we forgive a debt [or our debtors]." That's what sin means. You have a debt, something you have to make right. Well, if someone owes me money and I forgive it, then that's the end of that; it means I never see my money. It doesn't mean that I pretend that the debt doesn't exist; I've canceled the debt. Because I say that that money you owe me, now it's a gift.
P/CP: This takes us to possibly the most essential difference between Islam and Christianity. Islam says evil can be removed by a command. Christianity says sin requires a price of death and separation from God. This alienation can only be removed by the substitution, by the sacrifice of one who is able to, but doesn't deserve to pay the price. Indeed, it may be that only God Himself could pay it and that somehow God alone endured the pain we deserve.
You point out the problem of needing a sinless mediator and how this cannot really solve the problem. The Christian would say that we need a sinless mediator, but not, as it were, to stand between us and a God who is too holy for us to be close to. The sinless mediator becomes our substitute by dying in our place and thus removing our sin. He's our mediator in the sense that He has removed what we could not in our own power remove so that we might have relationship with God.
Miller: As to entertaining the possibility that God may function in such a way that some sort of action is taken that seems appropriate to give some demonstration of God's justice, and so on, here too the Muslim might say, "If the crucifixion is just to demonstrate God's justice, then I don't need it. God is just, I'm sure of that. I don't need the demonstration." So then he has to wonder why anyone would insist, "but you must accept the crucifixion!" You see what I mean? [The Christian] starts off saying it's only a demonstration of God's justice but he finishes by saying that you have to accept it. A person may have historical doubts.
P/CP: I suppose that some forms of Christianity would say that the death of Jesus was only a demonstration of God's justice in this sense. I have to agree with you that it seems to be a very deficient view, at least if nothing more is claimed. However, I think the arguments get stronger when it is claimed that the death of Jesus actually did something that was needed to bring us to God rather than that it just shows us something.
But you say that God's self-sufficiency and His being the source of all makes Him never unable to do anything He may want to do. So God can do anything He wants to?
Miller: No, precisely not. There's a verse that's often quoted and the American reader sees it and he misunderstands. He reads in the Qur'an, "God does as He pleases," or words to that effect. And somehow that gives a picture in his mind of God being arbitrary. If He doesn't like your looks, He won't forgive you. But the point of the verse is that God does as He pleases meaning that nothing prevents Him from doing the godly thing. He's not in the position of saying, "I'd like to do this but I can't, I'm only God." The only restriction God has is that He doesn't do ungodly things. He is not oppressive, he's not stupid, and so on. He's totally reliable. The Qur'an talks about His characteristic behavior being 'sunna avala' and it says it never varies one bit. That is to say, given the same circumstances, God will respond in precisely the same way every time. He is totally reliable, he's not capable of whim, there's not the slightest change. Given the same circumstances in two situations, He will respond the same in both.
PCP: Now you've said that God can never say, "I'd like to do this but I can't," and yet God cannot do something that's ungodly, something that contradicts His nature. So there may be quite a few things He cannot do, though He simply would never like to do them. But certainly the Christian would say the same thing or something very close to it. Indeed, for God to be able to forgive sin without a substitutionary death or to cause the greatest possible good to occur without allowing evil might be things God simply cannot do because they ultimately contradict His nature or (what might be the same thing) because they are logically impossible.
Jesus' death and atoning sacrifice
Miller: The most important problem is something you're not likely to meet up with in a discussion with a Muslim because he would not likely pursue it this far. If the death of Jesus were supposed to remove our sin and cancel our debt and the animal sacrifices were supposed to be symbolic of that act, might not that claimed death of Jesus itself in turn be symbolic of something else? Do we have reason to believe that the death of Jesus in itself removes sin? The sacrifices the Israelites performed in the desert, the lambs and rams and that sort of thing were said to take away sin. And yet the Christian position is that they didn't really. God said they did, but he didn't mean that they literally did, but they exhibited something of the nature of how sins are taken away.
Again it is said that Israel was ransomed from Egypt, but ransomed in what sense? They were simply brought out of Egypt by the power of God and yet by way of making it look as though there were a price. I think it was said that the firstborn of Egypt were the ransom that was paid for the children of Israel. That too is just a symbolic connection, just as when Jesus said "eat my flesh," he didn't really and literally mean "eat my flesh." Just as he said--if the reports are accurate of his words--he's going to be killed; well, maybe he meant killed like Jonah was killed, which in fact is something he said on more than one occasion. He said that this generation would be given the sign of Jonah: just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, so the son of man would be in the belly of the earth for three days. So anybody who threw Jonah overboard would have said, "we killed him." But he wasn't really dead. He was alive for three days even though he was "buried."
Maybe when Jesus said, "I'm going to die," he meant die in the same sense that he meant it in John 12 when he said, when you plant a corn of wheat it dies. You put it in the ground but the seed doesn't really die or it would never grow. It's either that or he misunderstood biology.
So you might say all of these things: eating his flesh, killed like Jonah was killed, died as a corn of wheat, Egypt is the ransom, the sacrifice of rams in Leviticus takes away sin. Does it? Well, yes and no; they indicate a pattern of something but in themselves they don't after all.
They simply act out the kind of thing your saying there seems to be a necessity for, but in themselves they don't really do the job. So if Jesus says, "I came to give my life a ransom in exchange for many," he means, possibly, that I came to tell you what you need to know and that is what is going to prevent you from destruction. And you may see me suffer and even die, but that is not what is really doing the job. It's a picture of this familiar pattern that God always uses.
If God by His own power simply pulls Israel out of Egypt, He also clarifies it to the Jews in this way of saying that you may consider that the firstborn of Egypt died to ransom you. But did they really? In the strictest legal accounting of things it suggests not, it was a symbolic thing. And so the Jews have understood until today that redemption is a thing accomplished by the power of God. It's the Catholic understanding of things: redemption means that you take back what was yours, not that you buy it like at the pawn shop. You simply take it because you have a right to it.
In English even, it has taken on both flavors. If you have a pawn ticket you say you've redeemed this thing. You've paid the money to get it back; but on the other hand, it was yours in the first place. If you are somebody who has the capability of taking back what's yours, you don't really pay for it, you just take it. And that's what the Muslim says God can do. He does as He pleases because he's God. But if you want to see it as a neat settling of accounts, then you could view it that way. You can say Jesus died for your sins, but only symbolically in the most real sense of the word.
P/CP: So the Christian view would see the death of Jesus as the real and fulfilling event the sacrifices look forward to and symbolize, just as the Eucharist or communion meal looks back at it and represents it.
Miller: I know that's a workable sort of a theory but the point is that when these sacrifices of rams and lambs are rehearsed in the Old Testament they never say they're symbolic. They simply say, "You're guilty of sin? Do this and your sin is forgiven." It doesn't say, "but not really, because the real lamb is yet to come." It doesn't say that, that's a Christian school of thought.
P/CP: You find that, say, in the book of Hebrews and elsewhere in the New Testament.
Miller: Yes. So the Jews have always understood that if God says for this sin to do this and your sin is forgiven, they understand that of course a lamb is not worth my sin; but if I do this thing, I'm obeying God and that's the point. It's in fact one of the few things you find quoted in so many words in both the Old and New Testaments and the Qur'an. In Hosea chapter six, I believe (it's quoted by Jesus and it is also quoted in the Qur'an), the basic principle is that it is not the blood sacrifice that does the job, it is your loving loyalty to God. It is obedience or awareness of God, your God consciousness, your piety, however you want to translate it.
So when Jesus quoted Hosea, he said that people had got off the track thinking that somehow this blood pleases God, when in fact it does not. What God respects is that He told you to do this thing and you did it. So your forgiveness is in obedience to God, in doing what He asked, not in the actual thing that's done. I suggest there's a possibility of the same kind of thing in the case of Jesus: that even if he died, that's not what saved men from their sins. It's that he did something and demonstrated his obedience to God and it's obedience to God that gets sins forgiven, not the shedding of blood.
P/CP: I couldn't find any reference in the Hebrew Scripture concerning the firstborn of Egypt being ransomed for Israel. However, Isaiah 43 speaks of Egypt and several other nations being ransomed for Israel. Some comments by biblical scholar Edward Young might be helpful at this point.
Ransom has the literal significance of covering. God has set the covering for His own people. By means of substituting the nations in their stead God procured Israel as His own. Under the Mosaic law the Israelite redeemed his own by the payment of a price, the offering of a substitute. The thought here is that instead of Israel's having been given up, three nations have been offered in its place.. . . The judgment that resulted in destruction fell not upon Israel but upon these nations. They became the vicarious compensation for Israel.9
The concept of ransom was well understood in ancient times as payment given for the freeing of, say, a captive or slave. It was given as their substitute. So if there were said to be a ransom given for Israel, we should understand that somehow, some kind of price was paid. If it is symbolic, we still cannot say anything less than this. God did not simply bring them out of Egypt by His power. I'm simply pointing out that if a text talks about there being a ransom paid, we need to accept the normal meaning of the term in order to understand what the writer intended to say. It cannot mean that God did what He wanted to without some kind of substitution unless you can show that a ransom can mean that.
Concerning Jesus' statement that he came to give his life (or soul) a ransom for many, the clearest meaning is that he will give up his own life as a substitute, an exact equivalent exchange, in the place of others (the meaning the Greek "anti" must have here) so that the many might no longer be held captive. To suggest that it means that he gave his life to teaching in order that we may not perish just doesn't fit. If the redeemed party is held captive by an enemy or is doomed to destruction, then the one giving his life must be bound over to the enemy's power or to destruction. We can imagine any other Prophet saying that my teaching will keep you from destruction but we cannot imagine him or her saying, "I give my soul a ransom in your place," to convey this thought.
You say that, "if you are somebody who has the capability of taking back what's yours, you don't really pay for it, you just take it." But if it is no longer yours by right, a price must be paid.
Before getting into the heart of the issue of blood atonement and animal sacrifice, I think we need to see that there isn't really any contradiction between the two notions: one, that the blood of an animal can actually take away sin as the Law of Moses says, and, two, that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin, as the writer of the book of Hebrews says. This New Testament writer is only repeating what you have suggested, that the ancient Hebrews were aware that a lamb is not worth my sin. An animal sacrifice cannot take away sin if it is taken to have that power in itself. It can take away sin if it is seen as representing something else.
You suggest that that something else which is represented is obedience alone and the Christian argues that it's a sacrificial death, yet a sacrifice greater than that of a mere animal. Is one view as likely as the other? Not if God told Moses why the animal sacrifice removes sin. Leviticus 17:11 says, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the alter to make atonement by reason of the life [which is in the blood, 11a]." It is because the life is in the blood, we are told, that atonement is possible.
The Hebrews may have understood that the blood of an animal was not really enough in itself to bring atonement and that the sacrifice probably represented something else known only to God, but they couldn't have doubted the clear words of God in Leviticus 17 indicating the reason blood provides atonement. It cannot be simply obedience that brings reconciliation, not in the face of so clear a statement. If an animal sacrifice were not adequate to remove sin, another kind of blood sacrifice must be.
The laying of hands onto the animal before it was killed or sent away into the wilderness indicates an identification with the animal. Thus the notion of substitution, the animal dying or being banished in the place of the person, is difficult to avoid.
The idea of just recompense was ingrained into the Hebrews by means of the Law. Islam has carried on the same belief that for whatever evil you do, you deserve to have that done unto you. The Hebrews further understood that by their sin they deserve death. Because the life is in the blood they would have recognized that one life--that of the animal--is given up in place of another. Even today, there is a Jewish tradition of killing a chicken and swinging it over ones head, saying, "this is my substitute." The concept of substitution in the animal sacrifices has always been too obvious to ignore.
If the animal sacrifice indicates covering of sin through substitution, then it is difficult to imagine that God could ever allow any other means of atonement.
Let me recap the argument. First of all, we are told that the animal sacrifice brings atonement. We are not told that it does so through its own power or through the power of something else it represents. Secondly, we are told that it is through blood (life given up in death) that the sacrifice is effective. (Blood does not atone unless it is given up in death.) Thirdly, as you've claimed and as Christians, Muslims, and Jews agree, it is not the death of any animal in itself that can bring atonement. But if removal of sin comes through a death, it cannot come through obedience alone. We have to conclude that it is the death of the one the animal is a symbol of, whoever or whatever that may turn out to be.
If we see that a lamb is not worth my sin and yet that death is necessary for sacrificial atonement, then it follows that it must be the death of one far greater than any lamb, perhaps even far greater than any normal human, which will alone be able to sacrificially remove sin and bring peace with God. And sacrificial removal of sin appears to be the only way sin can be removed when we consider its substitutionary meaning as we have done.
It's very difficult to imagine how a blood sacrifice could have been just an arbitrary choice on God's part. If God arbitrarily chose for us an act by which we could please Him by displaying our obedience, why would it be the killing of an animal and why all the emphasis on blood? And again, Leviticus 17 indicates that atonement comes not because it's what God arbitrarily chose but because "the life . . . is in the blood."
Now this argument won't get very far if, as you've claimed, both Jesus and the Hebrew Prophets claim that it's obedience alone and not the shedding of blood that brings forgiveness. I think you had mentioned Isa's reference to Hosea 6: "I desire compassion ["loyalty"] and not sacrifice," (Matthew 9: 13).
Hosea is here pointing out a need for "loyalty" and a "knowledge of God" to a people who perform the sacrifices but who do evil and quickly vacillate in their concern for God (v. 6). Hosea tells them that their sacrifices mean nothing if they do evil. These people are like those who think they can sin because they can always repent and God will forgive them. It's very understandable that the Prophet should see such an attitude as abhorrent to God.
If it were not for the fact that these prophecies were stated in the context of Israel's blatant disregard for the laws of God, we might think that the Prophets meant that the sacrifices were at this point rejected by God. But even then, such an interpretation would contradict the statement of Leviticus that the sacrifice does atone; and the Prophets cannot contradict the Torah, the Law.
Through Moses God told Israel that if any Prophet would come who would lead the people away from Himself, he must be rejected and considered a false prophet (Deuteronomy 13:13). At the time of this writing God was known to the people only through these words of Moses and the historical tradition Moses was recording. So for any prophet to contradict God's self-disclosure through Moses would be to reject the God of Israel and of Moses. And this was a message Moses claimed was given directly by God to himself. So if Hosea were intending to deny the teaching of the Torah, he would never have been accepted as a true Prophet by Israel or Judah.
Even if Moses' command were disregarded and the hearers actually believed Hosea was saying that sacrifice was to be rejected and other means of atonement were now acceptable, then why did sacrifice continue? Clearly the original hearers did not understand the Prophets as saying that sacrifice was no longer effective.
So the only adequate understanding of Hosea is to see him as saying simply that the sacrifices are of no use when people live in blatant sin and disregard their point and purpose. Other Prophets have made statements similar to Hosea's but almost always within a context of national sin and hypocrisy. None of the statements from the Psalms or Prophets can be shown to indicate that atonement is possible without sacrifice.
When Jesus quoted Hosea he was responding to those who criticized his association with the tax collectors, those who were legally authorized by Rome to extort the people. Isa's legalistic antagonists were right in saying that the tax collectors had done evil and deserved God's judgment. Their rejection of the tax collectors may even be said to reflect the judgment God must eventually mete to them for this sin. But Jesus said that even though they may deserve this as the Law shows us, what God desires is that they come back to God with repentance, that they know the mercy of God. The Law shows that evil deserves judgment, its purpose is not negated. But God desires more than just the helpless recognition of this reality; He desires that the lost find forgiveness. This is what Isa meant when he said that he came to seek the lost (such as these) and that the sick, not the healthy, need a physician. It was after saying this that he said that his opponents need to understand Hosea's statement that God desires mercy and not sacrifice.
So when Jesus spoke of sacrifice he meant impersonal and mechanical legalism. Sacrifice is a ceremony which may be totally devoid of compassion and human concern just as legalism (as we usually think of it) might be. Both sacrifice and legal observances may be mere ceremonies. Both have an important purpose but both need to be put aside when they conflict with human concerns: when people do evil by disregarding the needs of their fellow humans while dwelling on symbols and legalities, as was done in Hosea and Jesus' time. So Isa was quite correct in comparing legalism with sacrifice. As Hosea is saying that God wants heart felt concern for people and Himself and not mechanical rituals, so Isa is calling for concern for people rather than just impersonal legalities.
Matthew recorded another incident where Jesus cites this passage (12:7). Here Isa is defending his disciples for picking grain to eat on the Sabbath. Again he uses the term 'sacrifice' to speak of the law which was under discussion. And again he points out that one is not guilty for disregarding such laws when human needs would be neglected by keeping them.
The Law shows us the reality of our condition and need for God's mercy. Sacrifice shows us or points to that which fulfills it. Neither the Law nor the sacrifices can be shown to be rejected by God. That Jesus saw the sacrifices not as being rejected but as fulfilled by himself is evident in his statement that he came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law and Prophets, the Hebrew Scripture, and that heaven and earth will pass away before the smallest letter shall pass from the Law (Matthew 1:17-20).
Now you've brought up some points to argue that Jesus didn't really claim that he was going to die. Concerning his statement that you have to eat my flesh, that's extreme enough that our first impression should be that he probably meant something symbolic. And his comments elsewhere, particularly those in which he calls himself the bread of life and the water of life and those spoken during the Last Supper, substantiate this impression and help us to understand what that meaning was. But just because one's statements indicate they should be taken symbolically at one point does not give us reason to believe all the rest should also be taken symbolically.
There is nothing strange about Isa's statement, "I'm going to be killed." There is nothing here that would suggest that this should be taken symbolically. The most normal understanding of one's words are what we should accept as being the intended meaning unless we have evidence for some other meaning. In fact, he indicates the details of his being delivered to the Gentiles to be mocked, spit upon, scourged, and killed; even specifying this to be by crucifixion (Luke 18:31-34, Matthew 20:17-19, et. al.). It is impossible to believe that such a detailed description could be symbolic of something else.
Jesus did say that he would be in the heart of the earth just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish. Because Jonah wasn't really killed you suggest that maybe Isa wouldn't really die either. In a simile like this some features will remain the same while others will differ. The time period is the same, three days and three nights; the place of confinement is different, the belly of a sea monster and the belly of the earth. From this example alone, then, there is no way of telling whether Jesus would, like Jonah, not die or whether he would. (Except that the phrase "heart of the earth" would more likely suggest actual death, since it suggests the abode of the dead. Those who enter the abode of the dead should normally be assumed to be actually dead unless we have special reason to believe that they are not. So far we have no such reason). Maybe Isa and Jonah had even an analogous kind of "burial." Again this in itself doesn't give us reason to believe Jesus did or did not actually die.
When Jesus talked about a grain of wheat dying in order that it bear fruit, he gave us another analogy in which the specifics may or may not be identical. His death and the grain's death both produce fruit, that's the same. The kinds of fruit are different. Both die, that's the same. Are the kinds of death different? That we just do not know.
So far these comparisons do not give us any substantial evidence that Jesus would or would not actually die. But his clear statements that he would die make it most evident that he actually believed he would. There is nothing that would give us reason to accept these statements as being symbolic. Language would become meaningless if one's apparently clear statements are not understood as such. We cannot give only a symbolic meaning to a statement that gives no evidence of intending a symbolic meaning.
Without going into detail, I think that much more can be said. The first three Gospels, the Synoptics, indicate that Jesus saw his death as necessary although completely voluntary on his part. He was also aware of all that this death would cost him. He saw it as directly related to the remission of sins, that in some way he would be dying in the place of others, and that this was a necessary prelude to the complete realization of the kingdom of God. He saw himself as a substitute and a sacrifice fulfilling certain of the Suffering Servant prophecies of Isaiah.10 In addition to many of these same features, John's Gospel also emphasizes that Jesus' motive for dying was his love for us (John 15:13,14; 13:1 ff.) and that his death would result in his exaltation and triumph.11 So I think it is unavoidable that the Gospels indicate that Isa believed he would die by crucifixion and that he saw his death as being necessary to bring us back to God.
I've claimed that the Hebrew Scripture teaches that one cannot find atonement without the shedding of blood and that it is not an animal's death which can bring this atonement. The substitutionary sacrifice must point to one far greater than any animal. If this is true then when the Prophet Isaiah writes about one God calls His Servant who takes away our sins by his death, one who is compared to a lamb led to slaughter (53:7), we must have the very one the animal sacrifices anticipate and prefigure.
But who is this Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53? It cannot be Israel. Since "he was wounded for our transgressions," and "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all," (v. 5-6) this must refer to the sins of the writer and his audience (that is, all people) and "he" must refer to someone else.
Might Isaiah be speaking of an ideal Israel? No, because even an ideal Israel would be made up of people who have not lived without sin. If no one other than the Suffering Servant can provide atonement, how can there be atonement for the Suffering Servant? Again, if Genesis 3 indicates that the wages of sin is death, then how can ideal Israel pay for someone else's sin without first dying for his own? (In the Qur'an compare 17:15; 35:18.) Indeed, how can a sinful Israel be an ideal Israel at all? If the animal sacrifices teach us the need for a substitute to remove sin, then who is ideal Israel's substitute?
Not only does this passage suggest that the Suffering Servant is sinless (v. 9b) but the very symbolism of the animal sacrifice itself indicates that the one who will die in our place must be sinless. If the animal which dies for our sins must be spotless and without blemish, wouldn't that mean that the one the animal prefigures must be without spot or blemish of sin? Because Israel is not sinless, it cannot qualify as the Suffering Servant. No, Isaiah is speaking of a unique individual.
So who is the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53? There is one anticipated individual spoken of again and again in the Hebrew Scripture. This is the Messiah, a specially anointed one who would rule in Israel, bring peace to the world, and whose kingdom would be eternal. It is very natural to identify the Suffering Servant with the Messiah since both speak of such an unique and anticipated redemptive figure. No one other than the Messiah and the Servant are depicted in Hebrew Scripture as being so exalted because of the wisdom of their acts (e.g., Isaiah 52:13; 53:12). It is not at all surprising that many early Rabbis saw them as one in the same.
More evidence that the two are the same is the fact that predictions in Isaiah concerning the Suffering Servant and the Messiah are often nearly exactly the same. Messiah is spoken of as a light to the nations (9:2) and a sign or banner to the nations thus causing them to seek him (11:10). Likewise the Suffering Servant is called a light to the nations (49:6; 42:6) bringing salvation to the ends of the earth (49:6). He is also spoken of as being a covenant to the peoples (42:6). Again, as Messiah will regather Israel (11:12), so the Servant of God will regather and restore Israel to God (49:5, 6).
I have argued that Moses and the Hebrew Prophets understood that only the shedding of blood--and not an animal's blood--can remove our sin and bring us relationship with God, that God's predicted Suffering Servant would be the one who alone would fulfill this task, and that this sinless one would be the Messiah. For the Muslim who already accepts the prophetic evidence that Isa is the Messiah, the conclusion must be that he did of necessity die and that this was the most significant event of history.
Furthermore, I've argued that Jesus also claimed this and that he anticipated his death and saw it as a sacrifice, a ransom or exchange in the place of the lives of all people.
Jesus' death and deity in the Hebrew Scripture and New Testament
Wright: The central question dividing Jew and Muslim from Christianity is the identity of Jesus. But where did the Christians get the idea that Jesus was God's Son and that he died as a sacrifice for sin? Muslims see these teachings as examples of the corruption of the original Christianity. They would naturally discount what the New Testament says about this because the New Testament was written by Christians and would, therefore, be unreliable even if the texts had not been changed. But what should a Muslim think about the Hebrew Old Testament? Would it not be impossible for the Jewish Scriptures to support the very things about Jesus which Jew and Muslim denies? Yet this is exactly what we find in the Hebrew texts.
Remember that the Hebrew Old Testament has not been changed since before Jesus' time, and that it was in the Jewish Scriptures that the first Christians found the two things which 500 years later the Muslims reject. Let us look at some of this evidence.
In about 600 BC the Prophet Isaiah wrote the following about the Suffering Servant of the Lord (Isaiah 52:13-53:12, nasv):
Behold My servant will prosper, He will be high and lifted up, . . . He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; . . . He was despised and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.. . . But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, . . . He was cut off out of the land of the living, . . . His grave was assigned to be with wicked men, yet with a rich man in His death; although He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, . . . He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with transgressions; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.
About 1000 BC, King David, also a Prophet, mentioned that "Many are the sufferings of a righteous man, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken." (Psalm 34:19-20). The early Christians noted that this verse applied to Jesus when he died, for the Roman soldiers saw that he was already dead on the cross and did not break his legs to hasten his death as they did of the other two who were executed with him (John 19:31-37).
In about 500 BC, the family of the Prophet Zechariah returned to Jerusalem with those who came back from the captivity in Babylon under Cyrus of Persia. He records God's promise of a time of future blessing when "I will pour out on the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication; so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced;. . . and they shall weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a first-born." (Zechariah 12:10, nasv). God expected to be "pierced" and "mourned" for.
It is clear from the Old Testament that the Jewish Messiah was coming to do more than simply the work of a teaching Prophet--he was to die a sacrificial death. The question for the Muslim who is interested in the historic identity of the prophesied Messiah is this: How did the Jews come to change their Scriptures to suit the Christians who believed that Jesus died a sacrificial death? There are other indications in the Old Testament that the coming Messiah would be put to death, but the very clear description of Isaiah 53 could apply to nobody in Jewish history but Jesus. And the Prophet Daniel writing in about 550 BC says plainly that "Messiah will be cut off" before the destruction of Jerusalem (Daniel 9:26). We must again press the question: If the Jews corrupted their texts, making a clearer revelation necessary in the person of Jesus (whom they rejected), how did they come to change their holy books to please the Christians who (mistakenly) believed that Jesus died as a sacrifice? It cannot be argued that the Christians changed the Jewish texts.
But this is not the only thing we find in the Jewish Scriptures which Christians accept while both Jews and Muslims reject. The New Testament teaches that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, that he accepted worship as God, forgave men their sins and took the highest name of all, the name "I Am" which became the name of Yahweh or Jehovah with which God revealed Himself to Moses at the first giving of the Torah. Since the Qur'an correctly identifies Jesus as the Christ, or Messiah, whom the Jews were expecting (Sura 3:45, 4:157, etc.), what did their own writings say about this coming one?
It was the Prophet Isaiah who first said that the Messiah would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14) with which the Qur'an agrees (Sura 19:16-22). The same Prophet also says in a great Messianic passage, "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful. Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6-7). In 2 Samuel 7:14, God reveals to King David about the coming Messiah, that "I will be his Father, and he shall be my Son." In Psalm 45, the singers address the coming Messiah with the words "Your Throne, Oh God, is for ever and ever" (45:6-7). He is called "God with us" by Isaiah in 7:14. Again, Zechariah says of the second coming of Christ (which Muslims also look forward to) "And Jehovah my God shall come, and all the holy ones with you . . . and Jehovah shall be King over all the earth; . . ." (14:1-9 selected). There is much more in the Jewish Scriptures to show that the coming Messiah would be God Himself come to save His people.
Again, the question presses upon the serious investigator: How did the Jews, rejecting the idea that Jesus was God or the Son of God, come to change their texts to agree with the Christians? The Jewish and Christian texts are in full agreement on the two big differences between Muslims and Christians about the identity of Jesus. They both teach that the Messiah would be the Son of God and that he would die as a sacrifice.
We began [in a portion of this piece not cited] by drawing attention to the fact that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have sacred books that tie these religions to real events in history. By the facts of history, they must be judged. But the first facts coming down to us are the texts themselves, and they must be explained somehow in their present state, whether they have been changed or not.
Something for a Muslim to think about: How did the Jews come to change their own Scriptures to agree with the Christians on the two key points which they rejected in Christianity? And how did Mohammed come to agree with the Christians that Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Jews while at the same time denying that Jesus was the Son of God who died as a sacrifice for the sins of the world?
Intellectual responsibility demands our honest answer to these questions. We can choose to avoid the evidence by refusing to read the Qur'an or the New Testament or the Jewish Scriptures, but we remain responsible for what we accept or reject of the truth.
Miller: That's all familiar, it's a very old argument. What is stressed and mentioned at least half a dozen times is, "How did the Jews come to change the Scripture to suit the purposes of the Christian?" I would suggest that both the Muslims and Jews will tell you they do nothing of the kind, that the Old Testament does not suit the Christian.
But before I get into that I need to say that I do not discount the New Testament personally. I find nothing in the New Testament that shows that Jesus claimed divinity. So I'm not forced into the position to say, "Oh, it's all lies." I allow for the possibility that the words might be more or less accurately reported, but I don't find anything that supports a claim of deity. What is in dispute is the interpretation of the words of the Old and New Testament.
The Suffering Servant passages are a good example. It's all very nice to say that it perfectly fits Jesus and so do the lack of broken bones and so on. But the Jews have various other ideas about the application of these Scriptures. They may say that it's yet to come and the destruction of Jerusalem is not the destruction of Jerusalem. It's talking about another time at the end of all things. So what is in dispute is whether these passages do apply to Jesus. Certainly some of them do but the ones that do are not sufficient to establish his deity. They have no relevance to that. There is no connection.
Another example. It was prophesied that Jesus would be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. This is remarkable if he really was betrayed of thirty pieces of silver, but it has nothing to do with, "Is he God?" or "Did he die?" So you see my point.
There are two kinds of things. There may be prophecies from the Old Testament that are applied to Jesus but he never applied them to himself. And some people think they have a license to take all the Old Testament where they like and drop it over Jesus. And the other prophecies which may well fit Jesus perfectly and be accurate don't have anything to do with establishing his deity. That a man is prophesied about does not make him God. John the Baptist was prophesied about.
Let's look at some more examples from the Old Testament that were mentioned. It's not really true that Isaiah predicts Messiah will be born of a virgin. The word does not mean virgin but young woman who may be a virgin. But if someone believes he was born of a virgin anyway [as does the Muslim] that may not really be a thing worth bringing up. But that shows how some things may be overspecified even by the Bible writers.
Take for example Matthew, chapter two, where he cites the occasion of the family going into Egypt and coming back after some time, "that it might be fulfilled that which was written by the Prophet." And he quotes half a sentence out of Hosea chapter eleven, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." Well, the context of that sentence is talking about Israel the nation, that God regarded the nation as His son. Then Hosea says, "and as often as I called him he went on worshiping idols." How can this possibly be applied to Jesus? But somebody did when he wrote this in the Bible. He was doing the kind of thing that goes on even now to try to take a passage from the Old Testament and apply it to Jesus when it can't quite do the job.
Does the title "Mighty God" indicate deity? The Psalms says that men were called gods. God says to Moses in Exodus, "I'm sending you to Pharaoh to be god and Aaron your brother will be your Prophet." Usually you'll find the translations will stick in the word "as" in front of "god" in italics. It's not there in the original language but they do that because they think that to send Moses to be God seems to be too strong.
The angel in the burning bush Moses called "God." If someone gets this title "God" or "mighty God" that doesn't make him the God by identity. Jesus quoted Psalm 82, "Is it not written in the Scriptures, 'men were called gods'?" That somebody is called Immanuel, "God with us," is that supposed to prove he is God? There have been Jews, there are Americans who have the name Immanuel. Neither they nor their parents, I don't imagine, think their son is God incarnate. All of these arguments are insufficient to show deity.
Two other arguments were mentioned that need reply. It was claimed that Jesus accepted worship in the New Testament. That's simply not true. This claim reflects a selective view of words. According to Daniel chapter two, Nebuchadnezzar worshipped Daniel. Now whether Nebuchadnezzar was a pagan or not, if he worshipped Daniel, Daniel should have told him to stop because he was a man of God. So it apparently meant that he saluted him or kissed his hand or something like that. That has been changed in later English translations of Daniel so that the word "worship" isn't there any more. Where it suits their purposes to say that one day a man came to Jesus and worshipped him, they say, "Yes, Worshipped, capital 'W,' that's the stuff you give to God."
But worship in Jacobean English, in Elizabethan English, means your worthiness. Even in Canada the mayor is "your worship." It's not necessarily that thing that you give only to God. The word that's translated from the Greek in this one episode that's usually quoted literally means, "to kiss the hand toward." It means either the man did something like blow a kiss to Jesus or he kissed his hand. People have done that to me; I don't like it but I didn't think they were giving me something they should save and give only to God.
As to the "I Am" statements, that's an argument that won't work with the Greek. For two centuries before Jesus the Hebrew Scriptures have been translated into Greek in the Septuagint. In Exodus chapter three where God gives Himself a name, in the Greek it says, "ego eimi ho on;" which is, "ego": "I," "eimi": "am." These are the very words any Greek has to use to tell you, "I am cold and hungry," or "I am the president." But the title God gave follows: "ho on," "the being," or however you want to translate it. "On," is the noun made out of the verb "be," the "I Am," if you will. So what the Jews were familiar with in the Greek was, "God said, 'I am this: ho on.' "
What Jesus said in John 8:58 is, "ego eimi," "I am." It's not exactly a quotation here if you read "ego eimi" and say, "Well, here Jesus was quoting God's statement, 'ego eimi ho on,' to claim the divine title." Jesus would have had to have said "ho on." Of course Jesus was not speaking in Greek anyway but when his words were being recorded in Greek, the writer, if what he wanted to tell his audience was that Jesus claimed the divine title that God gave Himself, would have written it out, "ego eimi ho on." Just to say "I am" doesn't have anything to do with the idea. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:10, "I am what I am," and he uses the "eimi" and nobody points to that and says, "Oh, Paul claimed the divine name."
A possible explanation of his statement looks at the context of the argument he was in with the Jews. He said, "Abraham saw my day and rejoiced." And they said, "But you're not yet fifty years old, how could Abraham have seen your day?" He said, "Before Abraham was, I am," meaning, possibly, only that Abraham was told about me because what God does has been ordained from the beginning. Mohammed is reported as saying, "Before Adam was, I am a Prophet." But the Muslims don't believe that means he was alive and a Prophet somewhere. It just means, before God made Adam, he had already decided Mohammed would be a Prophet, and to God all things are present tense.
P/CP: When Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am [ego eimi]," his Jewish antagonists took it as blaspheme and were about to stone him. Wouldn't this be evidence of a claim to deity in that his first hearers took it in this way?
Miller: I think I talked about this last night [at the dialogue with Bob Wright at the University of Colorado]. In John 10:30 Jesus said, "The Father and I are one." Again in John 17 he said the same thing several times; but there when he used the same word "hin" for "one," he said, "I, my disciples, and my Father are one." So whatever he meant by this "one," he couldn't have meant that he was God. In both cases he's likely talking about some unity of purpose.
The point that I think I suggested last night was that people read on the next two verses (from John 10:30) and they stop reading. In the following ten verses the Jews explained what they thought Jesus meant: "You have made yourself equal to God." But Jesus doesn't congratulate them on their understanding, rather, he tries to defuse the situation by saying, "No, here's Scripture that says such and such and I say such and such, so how do you come off saying that I've said something blasphemous?"
Consult a dictionary for the word "blasphemy." It is not specifically the crime of claiming equality with God. Rather, it is the crime of speaking irreverently. To Jews dominated by ungodly traditions I imagine most of the speech of Jesus sounded irreverent. The verses following the Jewish interpretation of self-deification in the tenth chapter of John do not show Jesus congratulating the Jews on their insight, but demonstrate their misunderstanding.
[For more concerning the arguments for and against the deity of Jesus, see below.]
P/CP: What about the passage that says "Messiah will be cut off" (Daniel 9:26)? Wouldn't that be reason to believe that the Messiah must die? I understand the word for "cut off" indicates a violent death? I'm aware that some Muslims would respond to this passage by saying that Jesus did die but it wasn't at the crucifixion.
Miller: Lately I have tried to emphasize that the crucifixion is not an issue between Christians and Muslims. The Qur'an addresses the Jews, telling them that the crucifixion was not what it appeared to be. And the Christian would tell the Jew that there is more to the story than the account of any eye witness. As to the details which indicate why the crucifixion was unsuccessful (unsuccessful because the victim was alive the following week) there are a half dozen variations. Of course his version of the details is important to the Christian, but the details are not given in the Qur'an.
I would suggest that my lack of insistence on fanciful stories of the crucifixion is widespread. That is, world wide, Muslims would tell the Jews that they are mistaken if they think they put and end to Jesus. One might listen to one of the various traditional stories associated with the crucifixion but would hardly feel that he has a mission to convince the non-Muslim of the story's truth.
Mohammed's view of the Bible
Wright: Gary Miller has kindly responded to my brief paper on whether the text of the Bible has been corrupted since the time of Jesus. This claim is absolutely necessary to the Muslim position on the need for a final Prophet. Yet Mr. Miller is the only Muslim I have encountered who seems to think it unnecessary to the Islamic apologetic against Christianity to claim that the text has been corrupted, a claim which has been standard for over a millennium.
The Qur'an has a very high view of the Holy Books of the Jews and Christians. In Suras 5:47, 5:68, 10:95, 7:169, 3:84, and a dozen other places we discover beyond any reasonable doubt that Mohammed believed the Taurat, the Zabur, and the Injil to be the same books that the People of the Book had in his day, namely, the Old and New Testament. He frequently claimed that the Jews or Christians whom he discussed religion with did not always tell him the truth about what was in these texts, but he never suggests that they had altered them. He insisted that they were the Word of God.
But Mohammed could not read these books himself, and his ability to read even Arabic is in doubt. He depended on others to tell him what the Bible said, and was incredulous when both Jew and Christian pointed out that their books contained no reference at all to him. His sincerity apparently led him to think that Jesus' prediction of the coming Holy Spirit was really the prediction of himself which he sought in the Injil. But anyone can read Chapters 13 to 16 of John's Gospel and see that Jesus could not possibly have meant a human being by his references to the Spirit of God.
Later Muslims have claimed that the word parakletos ("advocate") was originally perikleitos ("well-known"), rendered "Ahmed" in the Qur'an. This is ingenious, but all the textual evidence for John's Greek is against it. It seems that it was not Mohammed but later Muslims who wanted to alter the Greek Injil. Mohammed, the Rasul, said that the books of the Jews and Christians of his own days were the very words of Allah. But modern Muslims deny this.
Why does Mr. Miller think it appropriate to appeal to the unbelief of the Jews on those passages in their Scriptures which apply to Jesus? Surely, he should be arguing (with the Qur'an,) that these books correctly predicted that Jesus would come as their Messiah. He must see, presumably, that their unwillingness to accept the Old Testament's testimony to el Mesih is motivated by their denial of the main truth that both Christians and Muslims agree on, that Jesus is indeed the Jewish Messiah.
The Bible, crucifixion, and Jesus' claim to deity
Wright: Mr. Miller's failure to take the deity of the Messiah seriously is natural enough, since the Qur'an loudly rejects this Christian doctrine. Yet two things are destroyed with this rejection. Not only is Christianity gutted of its essence, which stands or falls with the full deity of Jesus, but the Old Testament's predictions that the Coming One (ho erchomenos) would himself be God, are also rejected. These verses include Isaiah 40:3, applied to Jesus by John the Baptist; Isaiah 60:13; 9:6; 64:1 ff.; 66:15, 23; Psalm 45:7-8; Zechariah 12:10; 14:3-5; and Malachi 3:1. The historical fact remains that if Jesus is not Jehovah in the flesh, Christianity was never a true religion but was always a hoax. But if this is true, Islam could not "confirm" it in any sense.
Instead of following the safer historic method of the Muslim apologists of the last 1000 years by insisting that the New Testament text has been corrupted, Mr. Miller decides to use the arguments of the Jehovah's Witnesses against the evidence there for Christ's deity. He faithfully follows also their reckless disregard of context.
The point about Jesus saying he was the "I Am" of Exodus 3 is that he was contrasting his continual being or existence with the fact of Abraham's "becoming" ("before A. became or came into being, egeneto, I Am"). This simply repeats John's distinction in the first three verses of the Gospel, that Christ the Word already was before anything else became (egeneto). The Qur'an agrees that Jesus was the Word of God.
As for the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew for "I Am" by ho on rather than ego eimi, does Mr. Miller know that the title of ho on is given to Jesus by John himself in Revelation? Compare 1:4, 8, 11, and 17 with 22:12-16. By the time the Revelation draws to an end, God and the Lamb are occupying the same throne, called "the throne of God and of the Lamb" in 22:1, and as early as 3:21 is both "my throne" and also "my Father['s] . . . throne." Therefore, in Colossians 2:9, Paul calls Jesus "the entirety of the Deity in bodily form."
The deity of Christ is as pervasive in the New Testament as salt is in the sea. To merely taste it is to know it unmistakably, while the cubic salt crystals on the rim of an evaporating pool settle the issue in specific terms, just as the individual key texts do. Consider what Jehovah says of Himself in Isaiah 45:22-24, that "to Me will every knee bow, and every tongue confess allegiance." The Apostle Paul applies this directly to Jesus in Philippians 2:5-11, even changing the "Me" to "Jesus". What are Mr. Miller's choices here? He can either simply reject the Greek as inauthentic, or argue that it has been corrupted (leaving no trace of the original text during the past centuries,) or he can try to show exegetically that Paul meant something else.
Incidentally, Paul did not say "I am what I am" in 1 Corinthians 15:10. He said "by the grace of God I am what I am," a totally different thing, as the context properly quoted makes obvious. Muslims should acquaint themselves with the Apostle's entire argument in context, starting with the beginning of the chapter (1 Corinthians 15) and decide whether Mr. Miller has been fair to Paul about the centrality of Jesus' literal death and resurrection.
What Mr. Miller could mean by the odd statement that "the crucifixion is not an issue between Christians and Muslims" is hard to imagine. It seems to be in the same intellectual category as the proposition that "The existence of God is not an issue between the Muslim and the atheist." Does Mr. Miller think that Christians do not know that the Qur'an denies that Jesus really died when the Jews thought they put him to death (someone else died instead of him, and the Jews were simply tricked by God; Sura 4:157, and elsewhere). Does he think that Christians do not know that for the last 1000 years, Muslim apologists have been arguing against the Christian doctrine of the atonement as being not only unnecessary, but unhistorical, since the Messiah did not die? They do not argue that "the crucifixion was unsuccessful," but that it never happened. As a Western thinker, Mr. Miller knows that the notion that Jesus never actually died is contrary to all the facts both historical and rational. Naturally, he would prefer not to have to defend such an idea publicly.
Let me repeat a point I made in Boulder during our debate: If Jesus is not Jehovah in the flesh, and if he did not actually die on the cross, so making a full atonement for my sins, my religion is pure garbage, and the most cruel hoax in history, and it always was. There could never have been any point of time in history when Christianity or the teachings of Jesus were the truth. In plain language, if Mr. Miller is right, both the Qur'an and 1000 years of Muslim apologetics are wrong. It seems on balance, that he would make a better Jehovah's Witness than a Muslim. If I were a Muslim, I would be very puzzled and angry with him, that he has tried to shift the ground of the real differences between Islam and Christianity so far, rather than simply arguing that the Bible has been changed, as every Muslim knows it must have been, if the Qur'an is correct. [For more on the argument for/against Jesus' deity, see below.]
Earlier Mr. Miller said, "I don't think Jesus died in the crucifixion; I do think he died sometime after that, perhaps even violently." But this is intellectually similar to "I don't think Adolph Hitler died in the bunker in Berlin in 1945; no doubt he died sometime after that, perhaps even violently." The main problem with this kind of statement is that it is totally idiosyncratic and contrary to all the historical evidence that exists. There is simply no historical evidence whatever for this curious speculation. Both Muslims and Christians need to recall that pure imagination can have no claim on the historical intellect.
Why people want to try to bring total contradictions together into some kind of "ecumenical unity" is beyond my grasp. It seems to be more honest to simply recognize that if Islam is the true religion of God, Christianity is mostly nonsense, since they reject each other's essential content. The fact that they agree on some points (such as that Jesus was born of a virgin) seems irrelevant. After all, its the differences that make each religion unique in its own right which count in the final analysis. We are not arguing about the things we agree on.
The bottom line is this: If Islam is correct, and the Bible was once a true revelation of God, then the texts of the Bible are now not only hopelessly corrupted, but are, and always have been, the product of an elaborately constructed literary hoax. Mr. Miller has not yet taken seriously the real problem for the Muslim who has any sense of literary history: If, as the Qur'an makes perfectly clear, the Injil and the Taurat were once the words of God, when were they changed? If he says "before Mohammed, but after the first century AD," he is stuck with the clear words of Mohammed that the Jews and Christians of his own time had in their Scriptures the very words of Allah. If he replies, "after Mohammed," he is stuck with such objective evidence as the Sinaiticus manuscripts, which show that the text we have today is the same as that the church had since at least AD 350. But that means that the text Christians use today is the same text they used in the days of Mohammed, who believed them to be the true revelation of God sent down to us by His Prophets and said so in the Qur'an. It so happens that the most ancient text of the Qur'an (in the old Kufic script) is on public display in the very same room in the British Museum as the Sinaiticus manuscripts! I saw them both there in 1969. What a divine irony; the Lord of heaven and earth certainly has a sense of humor.
And the same goes for the Hebrew Old Testament. We have manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls which fix that text in at least 150 BC as being substantially identical to the one used today. But this means that the Jewish Bible in use today is the same text that Jesus read in his day. It is important to recall that the same type of documentary evidence that proves that we have exactly the same text of the Qur'an today as existed within 40 years of Mohammed himself, also establishes that we have exactly the same text of the Bible that Mohammed himself saw in the hands of the Jews and Christians in his own lifetime.
When the Arabs reached out of Arabia across north Africa and up into the corrupt and oppressive Byzantine Empire, their scholars encountered and actually read for the first time, the original Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible. Dismayed at what they found, they reacted with the first thing that came into their heads: these revealed books must have been changed. This is the natural reaction of any Muslim who reads the Old and New Testaments, and has been the staple Islamic response to the Bible ever since. Unfortunately, it is contrary to all the documentary evidence in existence, of which Islamic scholarship had no awareness in those early days.
In conclusion, since I am an Evangelical, and am concerned for Mr. Miller's relationship to God, I suggest he read with care and prayer, Dr. C.G. Pfander's classical study, The Balance of Truth (Mizan-Ul-Haqq)13 and try to answer its presentation of how the Bible and the Qur'an really compare evidentially. The bottom line of the Injil is that if we will not receive Jesus as Savior, we will finally encounter him as Judge (Acts 17:30-31). How can any Muslim be certain this will not happen to him or her? [Miller could not be contacted to respond to these final statements by Wright.]
P/CP: Let me recap at least the form of the arguments presented so far between Mr. Wright and Mr. Miller. In his first paper Mr. Wright has argued that the deity and atoning death of the Messiah are clearly claimed in the Hebrew Scripture we now have at hand. At the very least, if the Old Testament agrees with the New Testament on these two vital points, then the Muslim might be more apt to question the Qur'an's denial of Jesus' deity and atoning death. To this Mr. Miller has simply argued that the Old Testament has claimed no such thing.
But it seems that Mr. Wright is saying something more. He is saying that because official Judaism would not have reason to change their texts to support such a belief in Messiah's atoning death and deity, we must have in our hands what the Qur'an attests to be the original revelation of God to Moses and the Prophets. This is further substantiated by the fact that we know from findings such as the Dead Sea Scrolls that we have now essentially the same text of the Old Testament that was in use at the time of Isa and earlier. [Of course, if Miller's response is sound, this second response by Wright is answered as well.]
In his latest reply Mr. Wright has moved on to an additional argument. He has claimed that if we take the Qur'an seriously, those Jews and Christians of Mohammed's day did have God's uncorrupted revelation. If that's true, it follows that we have to take the Old and New Testament as we have it now as being that same unaltered revelation. With this claim he cites as evidence the claims for the deity of Jesus we find not only in Jesus' own words but elsewhere in the New Testament as well.
I'm not sure that I would go so far as to say that the deity of Jesus is the essence of Christianity as Mr. Wright has, but I do think he is right that it is clear in the New Testament. But perhaps even more importantly for our purposes, I think the evidence is that Jesus did claim it of himself.
From what you have said so far, Gary, I think that the most you will concede is that we probably have an accurate account of Jesus' life and teaching. I doubt that you will admit that anything stated by even his immediate followers must be considered spiritual truth. A Muslim would say that Jesus was the Prophet, not his followers. And so it's for this reason I'd like to add some comments to Mr. Wright's argument that Jesus did claim identity with God. I believe Isa did claim deity elsewhere in the Gospels but because the evidence appears to be strongest in John 8, I'd like to dwell on that incident.
Jesus' comments in John 10, in which he is about to be stoned for claiming to be one with God, do not really apply to Jesus' claim of divinity in John 8. In chapter 10 he isn't clearly denying deity. What he is clearly claiming is that in some sense people can be called gods; but he's not saying that he isn't God. People might be called gods in the sense of their being given special authority or special honor by God. According to the Gospels, he avoided even claiming to be the Messiah except on certain occasions when what he said would not be misinterpreted by the current popular understanding of the term. Usually he used the title "son of man" instead. So for whatever his reason, he might have been waiting for a more appropriate time to claim deity. My point is that we cannot appeal to this incident in John 10 as evidence that Jesus never claimed identity with God. He might have simply wanted to avoid the issue at that time.
Let's look again at Jesus' statement, "Before Abraham was, I am," in John 8. If he had said, "Before Abraham was, I was there," his claim would have been momentous enough. He would have been claiming to have existed before Abraham.
Yes, I know that we can try to change the clear meaning of even these words. We can say that he was there in the sense that God had from ages past known Jesus and even that everything is present tense in God's mind, and so on. But that is not what he said.
We need to try to discern the clearest, most likely meaning of his statements and accept that this is what he did mean. We can't say, "but he really meant something else," unless we have good reason to believe that, unless we have good reason to change the most obvious meaning. And certainly, the context of this passage does not suggest your interpretation over the most apparent meaning, that he was actually there.
Some rabbis tried the same interpretation you suggest here with Micah 5:2; that is, they said that Messiah only existed in the mind of God before the world existed. But this only gives stronger evidence that this Messianic prophecy claims that this one born in Bethlehem is actually eternal and that it's not speaking of mere antiquity. Jesus must have had this passage in mind (as well as Exodus 3 and Isaiah 43) when he said, "before Abraham was, I am."
Anyway, his clear words were that he was actually there before Abraham lived. But now notice that his statement in the Greek doesn't even have a predicate. It wasn't "I was there" or "I was doing this or that" as it might be in some everyday patterns of speech which would clearly deny identity with the I Am of Exodus 3. It was "I am." Certainly ego eimi can be used to mean "I am he" without any intrinsic claim to deity, but it cannot be used to do so in this setting.
And Jesus didn't say "I was." The use of the present tense in the Greek translation (and thus the equivalent in the original Aramaic that he spoke) makes this sentence very awkward if Jesus didn't mean to identify himself with the I Am. I mean, he knew how to speak his native language. He never would have said to Nathanel, "When you were standing under the fig tree, I am seeing you," (John 1:48). The "I am" of John 8 is in the present tense just as it is in the Greek and Hebrew in Exodus 3:14.
The translator of Jesus' words could have here used "ho on" as did the Greek Septuagint for the Exodus passage, but his use of "ego eimi" was just as clear in it's intention. The original Hebrew in Exodus 3:14 was "I Am that I Am," the same word for "I Am" being repeated. In the second part of the same verse God calls Himself simply "I Am" using again the same word, "ehyeh." Jesus' translator and the translator's audience knew this and understood what this unusual use of ego eimi in John 8 would mean. Jesus' translator used ego eimi, a simple Greek equivalent for this same word and the first "I Am" of the three in the Greek translation of Exodus 3:14. Using the English as a parallel example, it's as if "I Am that I Am" and "I Am" were the original name for God used in the Hebrew. This was translated in the Greek as "I Am (ego eimi) the Being (ho on)" and "The Being (ho on)." Jesus' translator uses the Greek "I Am (ego eimi)" rather than "The Being (ho on)."
If there were any possibility that the translator's audience did not know the original Hebrew form of Exodus 3:14, the obvious similarities in meaning between ho on and ego eimi would have dispelled any doubt.
Jesus likely said one of two possible statements in the Aramaic. He might have said "ehyeh," the same as the Hebrew for the "I Am" of Exodus 3:14. Or he might have said, "ana hu," ("ani hu" in the Hebrew) "I am he." This was another name carrying a distinct claim to deity at this time, usually taken from passages such as those clustered in Isaiah 40-45, and normally translated as ego eimi!14 (Ana hu is also an obvious allusion to the I Am of Exodus 3:14.) Either of these could have been translated into the Greek as ego eimi.
In English as in Greek, the terms "I am" can be used in any sentence without a claim to deity. I have no disagreement with you on this your central argument. But likewise, as we have pointed out, in Greek as in English, if someone were to use these terms in present tense without a predicate and in a sentence which is not in the present tense, the hearer would take it as an obvious reference to the I Am of Exodus 3 and the ani hu, the divine name of Isaiah 43. Mr. Wright's point about the contrast between the changing (Abraham was) and Jesus' changelessness (I am) further substantiates this.
The claim of Messiahship was not considered blaspheme in Jewish thought at this time15 but the claim to be God was.16 Had the current Jewish thought not chosen to ignore the statements in the Prophets that Messiah would be God, even a claim to deity would not necessarily have been considered blaspheme.
Some of these indications in the Prophets have been mentioned by Mr. Wright and myself. I might mention that one Jewish writer (a Hebrew scholar and a follower of Jesus) points out concerning Isaiah 9:6 that Jews in ancient times have been given the name "God with us" or "God is my kinsman" or something similar to that, but never "Mighty God."17 This isn't just a name one might arbitrarily assign to a child. This is what "he shall be called." This is what God says he is. [We might also point out that though traditional Jewish advocates have attempted to reinterpret these words, the most obvious and undistorted meaning of this passage is that he was being called "Mighty God" and "Eternal Father."]
Let's get back to the issue of the response of Jesus' opponents. We saw that it was because they believed he was claiming to be God that they tried to stone him in John 8. One of the most important ways of determining the meaning of a recorded statement is to see how the direct hearers understood it. The response of his hearers makes it evident that he was claiming to be God.
The idea of anyone claiming to be God is repulsive to most Muslims. But we should understand that if God had thousands of years ago foretold that He would come to the world as a human in flesh and blood, who are we to tell God He cannot? Certainly so momentous a claim on any human lips should not be glibly and unquestioningly accepted; but likewise we should have no fear of asking God if such a claim is true. And we should accept it to be true if we feel that God has told us that it is.
I know of Jewish seekers who have become convinced that Jesus is the Messiah and that because of his death and resurrection we can be made right with God. But the claim that Jesus is God was not something they could easily accept. They committed their lives to Jesus but only much later could they come to believe that this was God become man.
I would think that the same considerations apply to the Muslim who stumbles over this issue. If the evidence we have given persuades you or if you have called upon God and He has shown you that this is true, then do commit your life to Isa as Messiah and Lord and trust in his death and resurrection to bring you forgiveness and reconciliation with God. But if you cannot yet accept that he is God, let God tell you. That Jesus is God is not something you need to believe to find relationship with God and removal of sin according to Christian Scripture. It may be something God will require you to accept eventually, but that is something between you and God, something to be determined as you earnestly seek Him and His truth.
References:
1. W.M. Watt, Islamic Revelation in the World (Edinburgh: University Press, 1969) 54-56.
2. The Muslim World, 34, 214ff.
3. Terry L. Miethe, ed., Did Jesus Rise from the Dead: The Resurrection Debate, (Harper and Row, 1987) 23. William Lane Craig goes into the evidence for this date in detail in Assessing The New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989) 1-84.
4. Craig, 245.
5. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur-an: Text, Translation and Commentary (Al-Madinah Al-Munawarah, Saudi Arabia: King Fahd Holy Qur-an Printing Complex, 1989 revision) 300, n. 759.
6. Ali, 2:53, n. 68.
7. See Roger Forster and Paul Marston's God's Strategy in Human History (Tyndale Publishers, Wheaton, IL: 1973) 268-69.
8. For more on this aspect of the epistemology of belief see Dennis Jensen, "The Evidential Value of Religious Experience," (Master's Thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1979).
9. Edward Young, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Isaiah Vol. III (Eerdmans, 1972) 143.
10. Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (InterVarsity Press, 1981) 436-48.
11. Guthrie, 449-59.
12. Josh McDowell and John Gilchrist, a debate with Ahmed Deedat, The Islam Debate, (San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers Inc., 1983) 108.
13. C.G. Pfander Mizan-Ul-Haqq, The Balance of Truth (Villach, Austria: Light of Life, 1986).
14. Ethelbert Stauffer, Jesus and His Story, trans. Richard and Clair Winston (N.Y.: Knopf, 1974) 174-95.
15. See H.J. Schoeps, Paul, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961) 162.
16. Psalms of Solomon 2: 28-29; Mekilta Exodus 15: 7-11; Deuteronomium 21: 22; and Mishna: Sanhedrin 4: 5.
17. Michael Brown, audio cassette tape of a debate, Can Jesus be Proven to be the Jewish Messiah from Jewish Scripture, tape 2, side 2, 264'; available for $5 from Messianic Vision, Box 1918, Brunswick Ga 31521.
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