Turning the Tables: Can Any Muhammadan Explain How Can Allah Die and the Quran be Destroyed?

Since Muslims always bring up the issue of God dying as a way of showing Christians the absurdity of their believing that Christ is God who died https://bloggingtheology.net/2017/04/12/can-evangelical-apologists-answer-the-question-how-can-god-die/, I have decided to turn the tables on them in order to give them a taste of their own medicine.

According to the Quran, every soul (nafs) shall necessarily taste death and shall be judged for what it has done:

But how will it be, when We gather them for a day whereon is no doubt, and EVERY SOUL (kullu nafsin) shall be paid in full what it has earned, and they shall not be wronged? S. 3:25 Arberry

The day EVERY SOUL (kullu nafsin) shall find what it has done of good brought forward, and what it has done of evil; it will wish if there were only a far space between it and that day. God warns you that you beware of Him; and God is gentle with His servants. S. 3:30 Arberry

EVERY SOUL (kullu nafsin) shall taste of death; you she surely be paid in full your wages on the Day of Resurrection. Whosoever is removed from the Fire and admitted to Paradise, shall win the triumph. The present life is but the joy of delusion. S. 3:185 Arberry

The day that EVERY SOUL (kullu nafsin) shall come disputing in its own behalf; and EVERY SOUL (kullu nafsin) shall be paid in full for what it wrought, and they shall not be wronged. S. 16:111 Arberry

EVERY SOUL (kullu nafsin) shall taste of death; then unto Us you shall be returned. S. 29:57 Arberry

The Quran also testifies that Allah himself is/possesses a soul (nafs):

And mention when God said: O Jesus son of Mary! Hadst thou said to humanity: Take me and my mother to yourselves other than God? He would say: Glory be to Thee! It is not for me that I say what there is no right for me to say. If I had been saying it, then, surely, Thou wouldst have known it. Thou hast known what is in my soul (fee nafsi) and I know not what is in THY SOUL (fee nafsika). Truly, Thou, Thou alone art Knower of the unseen. S. 5:116 Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar

Say: To whom belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and the earth? Say: To Allah. He has prescribed for HIS SOUL (ala nafsihi) mercy, that He may bring you all together to the Day of Resurrection whereof there is no doubt. Those who ruin their souls (anfusahum) will not believe. S. 6:12

For I have chosen you for MY SOUL (linafsi). S. 20:41

This, therefore, means that Allah himself shall taste death and be judged for what he has earned. Note how this works out logically:

1. Every soul must necessarily taste death and be judged for all it has done.

2. Allah is/possesses a soul.

3. Therefore, Allah must necessarily taste death and be judged for all he has done.

Now the question arises how can Allah die when he is supposed to be God, and therefore a self-subsisting and ever living being? And after he is dead who is going to give him life again? It cannot be Allah who will resurrect himself since he will be dead and therefore will no longer be alive. And if he is no longer alive then he will no longer possess the consciousness or cognizance to realize that he needs to raise himself back to life.

Moreover, how can Allah give an account for what he has done when he is supposed to be the judge of all creation? Will Allah judge himself, or will someone else be his judge?

That’s not all. Orthodox Muslim theology teaches that the Quran is the eternal, uncreated speech of Allah, being one of his essential attributes:

35. The Qur’an is the Word of God that emanated from Him without modality in its expression. He sent it down to His messenger as a revelation. The believers accept it as such literally. They are certain it is, in reality, the Word of God, the Sublime and Exalted.

36. Unlike human speech, it is eternal and uncreated. (The Creed of Imam Al-Tahawi (Al-Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah), translated, annotated and introduced by Hamza Yusuf [Zaytuna Institute, 2007], p. 54; bold emphasis ours)

73. We do not argue about the Qur’an. Rather, we testify that it is the Word of the Lord of the universe as revealed through the Trustworthy Spirit, who taught it to the paragon of messengers, Muhammad. It is the Word of God, the Sublime and Exalted. No mortal speech compares to it, and we do not say it is created. (Ibid., p. 64; bold emphasis ours)

And yet we know that many have destroyed the Quran, either by ripping it apart (tearing it to shreds),

It is as though what We have sent down is on those who make divisions therein. Those that tear the Quran into shreds. S. 15:90-91 Mohammad Shafi http://islamawakened.com/quran/15/st59.htm

Or by burning it, which is what the third Muslim caliph ordered to be done to all the Qurans which did not agree with his own version of it:

Narrated Anas bin Malik: Hudhaifa bin Al-Yaman came to Uthman at the time when the people of Sham and the people of Iraq were Waging war to conquer Arminya and Adharbijan. Hudhaifa was afraid of their (the people of Sham and Iraq) differences in the recitation of the Qur’an, so he said to ‘Uthman, “O chief of the Believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Book (Quran) as Jews and the Christians did before.” So ‘Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, “Send us the manuscripts of the Qur’an so that we may compile the Qur’anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you.” Hafsa sent it to ‘Uthman. ‘Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, ‘Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and ‘AbdurRahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. ‘Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, “In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur’an, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, the Qur’an was revealed in their tongue.” They did so, and when they had written many copies, ‘Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. ‘Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, BE BURNT. Said bin Thabit added, “A Verse from Surat Ahzab was missed by me when we copied the Qur’an and I used to hear Allah’s Apostle reciting it. So we searched for it and found it with Khuzaima bin Thabit Al-Ansari. (That Verse was): ‘Among the Believers are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah.’ (33.23) (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 6, Book, Book 61, Number 510 http://searchtruth.com/book_display.php?book=61&translator=1&start=0&number=510)

This means that human beings can and have burned, and therefore destroyed, one of the core, essential attributes of Allah himself! Again, note the logic of this:

1. The Quran is the uncreated speech of Allah, and therefore one of his necessary attributes.

2. The Quran can and has been destroyed by men, such as we find in the case of the third caliph Uthman who burnt the Qurans that were circulating at that time.

3. Therefore, men have the capacity to destroy, to burn, one of the eternal attributes of Allah.

Once again, how can a necessary characteristic of Allah be destroyed without this impacting a profound change in his essential being? And since it can be destroyed doesn’t this nullify Allah’s omnipotence and immutability? After all, for finite creatures to be able to burn or destroy a core attribute of Allah means that Allah was powerless to stop them, and further shows that Allah’s nature can and did experience a profound change since he went from having a specific attribute to no longer having it for a period of time.

With that said, can any Muhammadan answer these questions without arguing in a circle or denying the plain reading of their primary sources?

Related Articles

Soul-Man: Shall Allah Taste Death According to the Qur’an? http://answeringislam.net/authors/rogers/allah_soul.html

Source: https://answeringislamblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/turning-the-tables-can-any-muhammadan-explain-how-can-allah-die-and-the-quran-be-destroyed/ 

IHS

“Objective” Biblical scholarship proves that Muhammad was a false prophet

 Muslim polemicist Paul Bilal Williams shared an on his blog, and titled the post “Objective biblical scholarship can be quite surprising sometimes…” https://bloggingtheology.net/2017/04/13/objective-biblical-scholarship-can-be-quite-surprising-sometimes/. The image is a citation from an unnamed biblical source. Here is what it says concerning the 4 Suffering Servant Songs, a term that biblical scholarship coined in describing the relationship between Isaiah 42, 49, 50 and 52:13-53:12:

Songs of the Suffering Servant: A set of four poems or songs found in Isaiah 40-55, in which the prophet speaks of a “Servant of the Lord” who suffers for the sake of the people of God. Jewish interpreters typically understood this to refer to the Jews who were sent into exile to Babylon; later Christians claimed that the passages referred to a suffering messiah, Jesus. (The term “messiah” is not used in these passages.)

Williams cited this reference in order to refute the Christian use of Isaiah 53 as a prophecy of the vicarious death, resurrection and exaltation of the Lord Jesus. Williams erroneously thinks that since “objective” Biblical scholarship confirms that Isaiah 53 is about national Israel then it cannot possibly be a prophecy of the Messiah’ substitutionary death for the salvation of sinners.

It is rather unfortunate for Williams that he doesn’t see how the assertions of these so-called objective biblical scholars end up proving too much, since these views basically end up condemning Muhammad as a false prophet (which he certainly was).

1. According to “objective” Biblical scholarship Isaiah 53 is about national Israel:

“Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah 53:1-12

2. As the readers can see, the Servant is to suffer for the sins of the nations in order to make atonement for them.

3. Both Christianity and Islam acknowledge that Jesus Christ is an Israelite and therefore a member of national Israel:

“An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew 1:1

“When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” Mark 10:47-48

“In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’” Luke 1:26-33

“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne. Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying, ‘He was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh experience corruption.’ This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” Acts 2:29-32

“When he had removed him, he made David their king. In his testimony about him he said, ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, to be a man after my heart, who will carry out all my wishes.’ Of this man’s posterity God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised;” Acts 13:22-23

“the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” Romans 1:3-4

“They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” Romans 9:4-5

“Brothers and sisters, I give an example from daily life: once a person’s will has been ratified, no one adds to it or annuls it. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring; it does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ as of many; but it says, ‘And to your offspring,’ that is, to one person, who is Christ. My point is this: the law, which came four hundred thirty years later, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise For if the inheritance comes from the law, it no longer comes from the promise; but God granted it to Abraham through the promise.” Galatians 3:15-18

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel,” 2 Timothy 2:8

“Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’” Revelation 5:5

“It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” Revelation 22:16

4. As such, Isaiah 53 necessarily includes and applies to Jesus, and therefore establishes that his death was for the express purpose of making atonement for the sins of the nations:

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 – cf. Matthew 20:28

“While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26:26-28 – cf. Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19-20

“For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless’; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.” Luke 22:37

“The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” John 1:29

“This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” John 6:50-51

“Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’ The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.” Acts 8:26-38

“whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed;” Romans 3:25

“And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Hebrews 9:27-28

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.” 1 Peter 2:21-25

“but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin… My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 1:7, 2:1-2

“In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:10

5. Since Muhammad denied the vicarious death of Jesus, and further denied that national Israel would suffer for the salvation of the nations, this means that per the interpretation of Isaiah by William’s own Biblical scholars, Muhammad was a false prophet who stands condemned by the testimony of Isaiah himself.

6. Moreover, according to “objective” Biblical scholarship Isaiah 42 is one of the 4 Suffering Servant Songs that speak of national Israel. As such, Isaiah 42 CANNOT be a prophecy about Muhammad since the latter wasn’t an Israelite and therefore could not be the Servant spoken of by the prophet.

7. Therefore, all of those Muhammadan apologists who claim that Isaiah 42 is a prophecy of Muhammad are either lying or ignorant of the facts established by the same “objective” Biblical scholarship that Williams just got done appealing to.

“Objective” Biblical scholarship can be quite surprising indeed!

All Scriptural references taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Holy Bible.

Source: https://answeringislamblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/objective-biblical-scholarship-proves-that-muhammad-was-a-false-prophet/ 

IHS

Two Yale Scholars Prove that Islam is a False Religion

It never ceases to amaze me how Muslim polemicists will constantly cite liberal biblical scholarship to refute the Christian faith, while rejecting that the implications that same scholarship has on the truth claims of their own religion.

Take, for instance, Paul Bilal Williams’ post titled “Yale: ‘The Synoptic Gospels do not portray Jesus as preexistent’” http://bloggingtheology.net/2017/01/09/28159/, where he cites the work of John J. and Adela Yarbro Collins titled, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature , for the express purpose of establishing that the Synoptic Gospels, i.e., Mark, Matthew and Luke, deny the divine prehuman existence of Christ. Williams writes,

This will come as a shock to most people to learn that New Testament scholarship is broadly in agreement that the gospels of Matthew and Luke do not portray Jesus as preexistent and have no awareness of the notion of the Incarnation of God. In the light of Christian teaching about the origins of Jesus this is surprising as both gospels have extended birth narratives where such ideas would naturally be mentioned. Here is an extract from a recent academic discussion from Yale University in the USA.

And then posts a picture from p. 209 of Collins’ work:

The Synoptic Gospels do not portray Jesus as preexistent. In Mark ‘son of God’ signifies first and foremost that Jesus is the messiah (1:11 in its allusion to Ps 2:7 and explicitly in 8:29). During his lifetime Jesus has authority and will suffer as the hidden Son of Man (2:10, 28; 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34). He will exercise his messiahship as the exalted Son of Man (8:38; 13:26-27; 14:62). Matthew emphasizes Jesus’ messiahship in the opening sentence: “the account of the descent of Jesus = messiah, son of David, son of Abraham (BiBlos geneseo ‘Iesou Christous hyiou David hyiou ‘Abraam). Both Matthew (1:20) and Luke (1:35) portray Jesus as begotten by God in the sense that he was conceived by the power of God and had no human father. In neither case, however, is this idea combined with the notion of preexistence and incarnation. As in Mark, ‘son of God’ and ‘Son of Man’ are equivalent in Matthew. Matthew goes beyond Mark in emphasizing that Jesus as Son of Man has a kingdom (13:41; 16:28) and will act as judge (19:28; 25:31-46).

Page 209 from the Conclusion of King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature, by Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins – both professors of biblical criticism and interpretation at Yale University.

In this post I am going to show how the claims made by these two scholars end up proving that William’s religion cannot be true and that Muhammad was false prophet.

Christ as the Divine Son of Man

Collins referenced the following passages where Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man: 

“Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of HIS Father with the holy angels.” Mark 8:38

“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then HE will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” Mark 13:26-27

“Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’ Jesus said, ‘I am; and “you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,” and “coming with the clouds of heaven.”’” Mark 14:61b-62

Notice that according to these verses Jesus is the Son of Man who rides the clouds of heaven, appears in the glory of his Father, which identifies the Son of Man as God’s own unique Son, sends forth the angels, and sits enthroned at the right hand of God.

It is clear that Christ is identifying himself as the Lord of David who is mentioned in Psalm 110:1, a fact confirmed elsewhere in Mark,

“While Jesus was teaching in the temple, he said, ‘How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declared, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’” David himself calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?’ And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.” Mark 12:35-37

And as the divine figure whom the prophet Daniel saw coming on the clouds in order to reign forever, and whom all nations must worship:

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” Daniel 7:13-14

Suffice it to say this now raises some serious problems for Williams’ Islamic beliefs since, according to the Quran, it is God Almighty who comes on the clouds of heaven with his angels in order to judge the nations:

What do they look for, but that God shall come to them in the cloud — shadows, and the angels? The matter is determined, and unto God all matters are returned. S. 2:210

No indeed! When the earth is ground to powder, and thy Lord comes, and the angels rank on rank, and Gehenna is brought out, upon that day man will remember; and how shall the Reminder be for him? S. 89:21-23

And it is God alone who reigns supreme over all creation, since he does not permit anyone to share in his sovereign rule, not even a son!

It belongs not to any mortal that God should give him the Book, the Judgment, the Prophethood, then he should say to men, ‘Be you servants to me apart from God.’ Rather, ‘Be you masters in that you know the Book, and in that you study.’ He would never order you to take the angels and the Prophets as Lords; what, would He order you to disbelieve, after you have surrendered? S. 3:79-80 Arberry

And say: ‘Praise belongs to God, who has not taken to Him a son, and who has not any associate in the Kingdom, nor any protector out of humbleness.’ And magnify Him with repeated magnificats. S. 17:111 Arberry

Say: “Allah knows best how long they stayed. With Him is (the knowledge of) the unseen of the heavens and the earth. How clearly He sees, and hears (everything)! They have no Wali (Helper, Disposer of affairs, Protector, etc.) other than Him, and He makes none to share in His Decision and His Rule.” S. 18:26 Hilali-Khan

to whom belongs the Kingdom of the heavens and the earth; and He has not taken to Him a son, and He has no associate in the Kingdom; and He created every thing, then He ordained it very exactly. S. 25:2 Arberry

The foregoing establishes that the only way that the prophets David and Daniel could describe the Messiah as the Lord who rides the clouds of heaven and who rules from God’s own throne, and whom all nations are to worship forever, is if they believed that he is God in the flesh (though not the Father or the Holy Spirit). And since this is the plain, explicit teaching of these inspired emissaries taught concerning the Person of Christ, Muhammad therefore stands condemned as a false prophet for contradicting the message of God’s true spokespersons that came before him.

The literal, unique Son of God

Williams also failed to appreciate that Collins is basically arguing that both Matthew and Luke are affirming that the virginal conception and birth of Jesus literally makes him the Son of God. Lest the readers misunderstand, we do not mean literal in the sense that God sired Jesus through sexual procreation, but through a creative act by the Holy Spirit in which Christ is both human and divine. He is human in that Jesus was conceived in the womb of a woman; he is also divine in that the conception took place by God’s own Spirit, thereby making him the actual Son of God in a unique, divine sense.

After all, being begotten by God makes Jesus divine by nature, just as his being begotten by a human mother makes him human. As critical NT scholar Bart D. Ehrman explains (whom we might add is no friend to conservative Evangelical Christianity):

Luke himself–whoever he was-does not think Jesus was a preexistent Son of God. As it turns out, he does not think Jesus became the Son at the baptism either, as we will see. Then why does he have the voice say this? Again, Luke is fond of incorporating a variety of preliterary traditions that he had heard, even if they differ from his own views. And so in a speech of Acts he can include a tradition that says Jesus became the Son of God at his resurrection (13:33); in his Gospel he can include one that says Jesus became the Son of God at his baptism (3:22); and he incorporates another tradition that says he became the Son of God at his birth (1:35). Maybe Luke simply wanted to stress that Jesus was the Son of God at all the significant points of his existence: birth, baptism, and resurrection.

Jesus as Son of God at His Birth 

In the final form of Luke’s Gospel, it appears that Jesus is to be thought of as becoming the Son of God, for the first time, at the moment of birth. Or, to be more precise, at the moment of his conception. We saw in Chapter 1 that in the pagan world there were a variety of ways that a human could be thought of as having become divine. Some humans were made divine at their deaths, when they were taken up to the heavenly realm to live with the gods (e.g., Romulus). This would be comparable to Christian traditions that Jesus was exalted to God’s right hand as his Son at the resurrection. In other pagan traditions a divine human was born that way, after a god such as the lusty Zeus had sex with a beautiful woman he could not resist. The offspring was literally the son of Zeus (e.g., Heracles [Roman: Hercules]). There are no Christian traditions in which this happens. The God of the Christians was not like the philander Zeus, filled with lust and full of imaginative ways to satisfy it. For the Christians, God was transcendent, remote, “up there”–not one to have sex with beautiful girls. At the same time, something somewhat like the pagan myths appears to lie behind the birth narrative found in the Gospel of Luke.

The Birth of Jesus in Luke

In this Gospel, Jesus was born of Mary, who had never had human sex. She had never had divine sex either, exactly, but it was God, not a human who made her pregnant. In the famous “annunciation” scene, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary, who is betrothed to be married but has not yet gone through the ceremony or had any physical contact with her espoused, Joseph. Gabriel tells her that she is specially favored by God and will conceive and bear a son. She is taken aback-she has never had sex: How can she conceive? The angel tells her in graphic terms: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the one who is born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). I call this description “graphic” because there is nothing in it to make the reader think that the angel is speaking in metaphors. In a very physical sense the Holy Spirit is to “come upon” Mary and “therefore”–an important word here–the child she bears will be called the Son of God. He will be called the Son of God because he will in fact be the Son of God. It is God, not Joseph, who will make Mary pregnant, so the child she bears will be God’s offspring. Here, Jesus becomes the Son of God not at his resurrection or baptism, but already at his conception.

It is interesting to observe that the Gospel of Matthew also has an account of Jesus’ birth in which his mother is a virgin. One might infer from this account as well that Jesus is the Son of God because of the circumstances of his unusual birth. But in the case of Matthew, this conclusion would indeed need to be made by inference: Matthew says nothing of the sort. There is no verse in Matthew similar to what Luke says in Luke 1:35. Instead, according to Matthew, the reason Jesus’s mother was a virgin was so that his birth could fulfill what had been said by a spokesperson of God many centuries earlier, when the prophet Isaiah in the Jewish Scriptures wrote, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Matthew quotes this verse and gives it as the reason for Jesus’s unusual conception–it was to fulfill prophecy (Matt. 1:23)… It does not take too much thought to realize, though, that Matthew may have been giving “scriptural justification” for a tradition he inherited that originally had a different import: like Luke’s tradition, the one that came to Matthew may originally have spoken of Jesus as the unique Son of God because he was born of a virgin, with God as his father.

Whether this is the case or not, I should stress that these virginal conception narratives of Matthew and Luke are by no stretch of the imagination embracing the view that later became the orthodox teaching of Christianity. According to this later view, Christ was a preexistent divine being who “became incarnate [i.e., “human”] through the Virgin Mary.” But not according to Matthew and Luke. If you read their accounts closely, you will see that they have nothing to do with the idea that Christ existed before he was conceived. In these two Gospels, Jesus comes into existence at the moment of his conception. He did not exist before.

Whether or not Matthew’s tradition originally coincided with Luke’s view that Jesus was conceived by a virgin without sexual intercourse so that he was LITERALLY the Son of God, this view, as most pronounced in Luke, is a kind of “exaltation” Christology that has been pushed back just about as far as such a view can go. If an exaltation Christology maintains that a human has been elevated to a divine status, then there is no point for that to happen earlier than the moment of conception itself. Jesus is now the Son of God for his entire life, beginning with … his beginning. One could argue, in fact, that this has pushed the moment of exaltation so far back that here we no longer even have an exaltation Christology, a Christology from “down below.” For here, Jesus is not portrayed in any sense as beginning life as a normal human who because of his great virtue or deep obedience to the will of God is exalted to a divine status. HE STARTS OUT AS DIVINE, FROM THE POINT OF HIS CONCEPTION. (How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee [HarperOne 2014], 6. The Beginning of Christology: Christ as Exalted to Heaven, pp. 240-244; capital emphasis ours)

This, too, is incompatible with Williams’ Islamic beliefs since the Quran outright denies that Jesus is God’s Son,

The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the Son of God’; the Christians say, ‘The Messiah is the Son of God.’ That is the utterance of their mouths, conforming with the unbelievers before them. God assail them! How they are perverted! S. 9:30 Arberry

And further denies that the Muslim god is a father to anyone, since he neither begets nor is begotten, irrespective of whether that begetting is spiritual or sexual in nature:

Say the Jews and Christians, ‘We are the sons of God, and His beloved ones.’ Say: ‘Why then does He chastise you for your sins? No; you are mortals, of His creating; He forgives whom He will, and He chastises whom He will.’ For to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and of the earth, and all that is between them; to Him is the homecoming. S. 5:18 Arberry

The Creator of the heavens and the earth — how should He have a son, seeing that He has no consort, and He created all things, and He has knowledge of everything? S. 6:101 Arberry

And they say, ‘The All-merciful has taken unto Himself a son. You have indeed advanced something hideous! The heavens are wellnigh rent of it and the earth split asunder, and the mountains wellnigh fall down crashing for that they have attributed to the All-merciful a son; and it behoves not the All-merciful to take a son. None is there in the heavens and earth but he comes to the All-merciful as a servant; S. 19:88-93 Arberry

Had God desired to take to Him a son, He would have chosen whatever He willed of that He has created. Glory be to Him! He is God, the One, the Omnipotent. S. 39:4 Arberry

who has not begotten, and has not been begotten, S. 112:3 Arberry

Ironically, Muhammad said that if God had a Son then he would be the first to worship him,

Say, ‘If the Merciful One has a son then am I the first to worship him. S. 43:81 Palmer

Which is precisely what Christ’s own followers actually did after seeing Jesus’ sovereign power and control over the natural elements!

“Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’” Matthew 14:22-33

This shows that even Muhammad realized that God’s Son would have to be truly divine and therefore worthy of worship.

Now since the very Yale scholars that Williams’ appealed to acknowledge that the Synoptic Gospels identify Jesus as the divine Son of Man and (in the case of Matthew and Luke) the unique Son of God from the very moment of his blessed, miraculous conception, Williams is therefore left with no choice but to reject Muhammad as a fraud, as a false prophet and antichrist for rejecting what our earliest witnesses to the historical Jesus taught concerning him.

So much for Williams’ appeal to Yale’s scholars!

All Scriptural quotations taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Holy Bible.

Source: https://answeringislamblog.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/two-yale-scholars-prove-that-islam-is-a-false-religion/ 

IHS