Dr Greg Bahnsen - Introduction to Apologetics: Methods XII Islam (Part 22)

We come into your holy presence, Father, thankful that we have a mediator in your son, Jesus Christ. And we do pray that you would hear us as we pray in his name and come before you and ask to be washed of our sins because of his shed blood and to be received because of his righteousness and justified by his resurrection. We do pray that you would bless us this evening as we meet in your name to study your word. We pray that you would help us to learn how to better defend that Word, that you would give us an understanding of those religions which stand against your word. And that you would give us not only an intellectual skill for dealing with arguments of opposing faith, but you also give us a heart of compassion that cares for the eternal destruction that comes with believing things that are not true about you. We do pray, Father, that you would help us tonight to be better equipped to help people come to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to glorify you and enjoy you forever. We thank you for the enjoyment you give us in your presence and pray for your blessing in Jesus name. Amen. All right, tonight we're going to take, I think, an interesting step in terms of our whirlwind tour of worldviews because we're going to be looking now at religions that come closer to being like Christianity in their claims and the kinds of claims that they make. Just so we can see real quick where we have been. I began to illustrate the problems with non Christian worldviews by looking at essentially atheistic, materialistic views. And then we saw the contradictions inherent in these views and turned to views that are not materialistic, but in some sense believe in spiritual or mental or non physical entities or realities or forces. And I took a fairly secular one. First, just to show in the realm of philosophy what people have done, we looked at the philosophy of Plato. Having seen that secular philosophy did not provide an adequate worldview, even though it granted that there are spiritual realities, we turn to the major world religions. And I have divided those world religions into three classifications since the third of those three that we come to tonight. The first kind of world religion is a religion of transcendent mysticism. I said this is typified in Hinduism. A second kind of world religion would be that of eminent moralism, typified in a religion like Buddhism. But as we saw last week, any number of other options are there. Daoism, Confucianism, so forth. So we've eliminated a whole lot of worldviews. I mean, we're really narrowing the field. What we come to tonight then Are those world religions which are, well, we could say biblical perversions. They have, in one way or another aped Christianity and perverted Christianity. But they are similar to, and in some cases claim to be Christian in their character. And I'm going to give you a real quick breakdown of world religions that I consider biblical perversions. They're in three classes. First, those which are Unitarian. And we would put here those religions that deny the Trinity, insist that God is one person, only one person. And Islam, our chosen subject for tonight, is a key illustration of that. But there are Christian cults that are Unitarian as well. And you should be able to come up with the most obvious one. Well, the Unitarians. Okay. And then the Jehovah's Witnesses. Right. Who are Aryan in their view of God. Okay. Then there are polytheistic perversions of Christianity. This may, this may seem real weird. Can you think of any polytheism? The Mormons. Exactly. The Mormons teach that there are many gods and that you can become one of them. And then thirdly, there are perversions of the Bible which are pseudo messianic, those that teach that in some way Jesus failed to do everything that needed to be done. And someone is going to come along to help out the Moonies, the classic illustration of that. Okay? So I just want you to be aware that before we go into this last chapter category that we really have covered the field. There aren't many other options available. And I'm going to take what most people consider the greatest apologetical challenge to Christianity tonight, and that's the Mohammedan or Muslim faith. Okay. If it doesn't work out, the rest of these, as you know, are going to end up being biblically refuted as not going to be all that difficult. We will take some time on them. And then right now I'm planning that the last lesson in this particular part of our course will be on an interesting question that's been raised. Well, what if we don't have a particular worldview to match Christianity, but we take Christianity and just eliminate the parts in it we don't want, and then we call that our worldview? So I'll be talking about that. The idea of, you know, your kind of mix and match or smorgasbord worldview approach to see if that then could undo our apologetics. But tonight we'll look at the classic Unitarian perversion of the Bible found in a contrary religion, Islam. Anyone know what Islam means or what Muslim means? Submission. The Muslims are those who have, quote, submitted to Allah. And I'M going to take just a moment to summarize the history of the Muslim faith and their 12 major distinctives from this book that I've recommended in the past to you by Kenneth Boa, and that for the sake of trying to keep me on time here, Islam worships one God, as I've already told you, and that God's name is Allah. When Mohammed, who is allegedly the prince prophet of Allah, began to promote the outlook that has come to be called the Muslim faith or Islam, the Arabians worshiped many gods. They were polytheistic, very crass. One of the gods they worshiped was Allah. The uniqueness, of course, is that Muhammad came along and said, Allah is the only God and you must, must get rid of these others. In fact, Muhammad was very much against the idolatry of his Arabian brothers and this is what got him into trouble. Not just into trouble, but led to his flight from the city of Mecca and also to numerous wars. Yes. Do you know if the Arabs use a different word for the Hebrew God and they differ? Allah. They both come from elves. Well, I could not tell you. Etymologically I think Allah means the God where El in Hebrew refers to Elohim, which is the term for God, highest dignity, majesty, that sort of thing. I'm not sure that they're really related, but maybe they are. Okay. Muhammad was born in 570 AD. His father died before he was born. His mother died shortly thereafter. He was raised for a while by a grandfather, then eventually by an uncle who was a caravan driver, trader. And he had a lot of contact then with people in various cultures and religions. Eventually he married a very wealthy woman, 15 years his senior and didn't have to work any longer and so had time to reflect on things, was upset with the polytheism, as I said, of his brethren, and would often go off to a cave and meditate. Now, in this cave he began to have violent convulsions and what are now deemed revelations. You need to be aware when you talk to a Muslim that Muhammad himself initially was scared about these revelations, thinking they had come from Satan and it was his wife who said that he should submit to the revelations, which he did, and he began to write them. Well, actually to dictate them probably for the next 22 years, as I recall. And these then become the chapters called surahs of the Qur', an, which is a word that means reading. Either the reading or that which is to be read. Okay. Before he died. Now let's just talk a little bit about the Political intrigue here. He died in 620. Those of you taking notes before he died, he clashed obviously with the culture of his day, which was not only polytheistic and people take the religion seriously, remember. But much of the wealth of the Arabians depended upon the polytheism because people would travel to various cities to do their homage and so forth. And so there was a commercial side to this warfare. And Mohammed was eventually driven out of the city of Mecca and he took slightly to the city that was then renamed Medina. And Muslims date everything from Muhammad's flight. His. Yeah, that's right, his gyra. And so their calendars begin at that point. There were a number of wars between the followers of Muhammad and the polytheist. And Muhammad eventually became a very powerful man. He eventually returned to Mecca but not very long after that he died. Then there were a succession of caliphs, the rulers of the Muslims and intrigued their family problems, so forth and so on. Let me tell you the 12 major things you should know about the Islamic Faith. First, the five doctrines plus one. Then there's going to be five pillars plus one. The five doctrines. Allah is the one true God. Unitarianism 2. Allah has sent many prophets to guide men. Muhammad is the last and the greatest of these prophets. Three of the four inspired books they do hold to the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospel of Jesus and the Quran. Of the four inspired books, the Quran is the most important. Muslims, if they've learned their faith, consider us and Jews, people of the book. This is really strange. Most people think you have the Quran and the Bible, they're in competition. But you see, if you want to look at it from the Muslim perspective, what you have is the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospel of Jesus. Jesus, the Quran. And that's the book. And we're all people of the book. Now we have some problems of course, because we're polytheistic on their view, holding to the Trinity. But that's crucial. They believe that there are many intermediary supernatural beings, angels and demons. That's the fourth doctrine. And fifthly, there will be a final day of judgment or resurrection and eternal heaven and hell, which will be determined for every individual by a weighing of his good and bad deeds. Their eschatology says that heaven is a place of sensuous delight and gratification. To put it very euphemistically, you need to read some of their descriptions of heaven. Okay. And then Bob. Yeah, I'm not sure how they do that, whether they consider probably John's Gospel because they will often say that John is a prophet as well. If not, it's probably all four run together as the gospel. They call it the Gospel of Jesus, but of course, Jesus didn't write one. No, no, none of that kind of fun stuff is found in this. They don't get their. Their fun describing how the world came about. They get it talking about how the world's going to end up. And it is fun. I mean, especially if you're a male. I'm sorry, but that's true. I mean, we're going to get to recline on couches all the time and beautiful maidens with dark eyes will feed us grapes and satisfy our every desire. What that means. No, I do know what that means. And it was evident in Muhammad's life too. The sixth doctrine that has come to be held almost as ferociously as the five that are known as the five doctrines of Islam. The doctrine of Kismet, the doctrine of fate. They believe that everything is set ahead of time and there's no free will. There's nothing you can do about it. Think about that next time you play the game. Kismet. What you are finding out is the way things were fated when you throw the dice. Okay, then. There are five pillars of Islam, but it's come to be six. The most interesting things. The first is the recitation of Islam's creed. That creed's very short. There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. Secondly, the practice of prayer five times a day, prescribed prayers. Third, the practice of alms giving. Fourth, the month of fasting, the month of Ramadan. Fifth, the pilgrimage to Mecca. And then the sixth, that has come to have traditional value as well. The hijab Jihad. Pardon me, which is what? Holy war. Exactly. Where Muslims have the right with pious intent to kill polygamists. Excuse me, polytheists. They are polygamists. Polytheists. And those who will not honor Allah. The promises made to those who would engage in holy war were quite an incentive to the early Muslims. They took over Northern Africa. And had it not been for Charles Martel and the Battle of Tours, probably the Muslims would have taken over Europe. Just how powerful they were at one time. Of course, we're seeing a resurgence of Muslim faith today, aren't we? Many places in the world. Okay, I tried to make that a quick summary of the history and the doctrines of Islam. You're talking to a Muslim now. What are you going to say? He's got his divine revelation, he's got his prophet, he has his God, he has his creed. He has some people think everything that you have as a Christian. So I guess his worldviews is just the toss of the coin, right? Which one do you like? No, it doesn't come down to that. And I'd like to show you why. First of all, the Koran claims to be a confirmation of the Old Testament law and the New Testament Gospel as previous revelations of Allah. And what I'm going to do is read you some sections of the Qur' an this evening. To keep this short, I'd better read everything. Okay, from Surah 3, Chapter 3 of the Quran. There is no God but God, the living, the self subsisting. He has sent down unto thee the book of the Quran with truth, confirming that which was revealed before it. For he had formerly sent down the law and the Gospel a direction unto men. And he has also sent down the distinction between good and evil. Okay, so here you have it. In their own words, the Quran is the confirmation of the previously given revelation in the law and the gospel. And the Quran even draws on the Bible as well as certain apocryphal literature. Probably better not take time to read all this. It's about four pages. But the virgin birth is taken right out of the Bible, you know, and you'll find it in the Qur'. An. So there you have the Qur' an claiming to be a confirmation of the previous revelations, drawing upon the previous revelations and as a matter of fact, from our standpoint, it would have to be a confirmation of previous revelations. And if Muhammad was going to be accounted the Prophet of God, remember these words from Deuteronomy 13. If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you, saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them. You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear him. You shall keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him and cling to him. But the prophet or that dreamer of dream shall be put to death. Now here you have interesting thing. The prophet comes along and he works miracles, okay? In Deuteronomy 18 it says if somebody comes along and prophesies things and they don't come true, then execute him. He's not a true prophet. But in Deuteronomy 13 you have someone who does miracles. And so at that point, oh well, then he's a good guy. We can trust this person. Now there's another test. It's not just that the that there are miracles or the prophecies come true. It's that he does not say things contrary to what God has revealed previously. God does not lie. He does not contradict himself. Therefore, subsequent revelations must be consistent with previous revelations or they cannot be thought to be revelations from the same God who gave the previous revelation. I would think common sense would teach us that as well. But we have biblical reason and authority to believe that. So let's put all this together. The Bible tells us that any prophet who comes must say things that are consistent with previous revelation. The Quran says that it confirms previous revelation, draws on previous revelation. Okay, now I set you up well enough. You see what the apologetics need to be. However, the Quran contradicts the Bible. And what we want to say is that the Quran contradicts the Pentateuch, the Psalms and the Gospels because Muslims themselves claim those as inspired. That's where you're going to want to put your argument that's going to be the most persuasive or powerful. A couple of interesting contradictions of fact with the Bible I think might whet the appetite of someone you're speaking, speaking to. Let me read to you from Surah 19 in the Quran, Picking up in the middle. So Gabriel replied, so shall it be. Thy Lord saith, this is easy with me, and we will perform it, that we may ordain him for a sign unto men and mercy from us. For this thing which is decreed, this is the virgin birth wherefore she conceived him. And she retired aside with him in her womb to a distant place. And the pains of childbirth came upon her near the trunk of a palm tree. She said, would to God I had died before this, and had become a thing forgotten and lost in oblivion. And he who was beneath her called to her, saying, be not grieved. Now hath God provided a rivulet unto thee, and do thou shake the body of the palm tree, and shall let fall right dates upon thee, ready gathered, eat and drink, and calm thy mind. Moreover. Moreover, if thou see any man and he questioned thee, say verily, I vow to fast unto the merciful. Wherefore I will by no means speak to a man. So she brought the child to her people, carrying him in her arms. And they said unto her, O Mary, now hast thou done a strange thing. Thing. O sister of Aaron. Thy father was Not a bad man, neither was thy mother a harlot. But she made signs unto the signs, unto the child to answer them. And they said so forth and so on, so forth and so on. Did anything strike you as strange in this description of Mary giving birth to Jesus under her palms? Palm tree. She goes in, they say to Mary, O sister of Aaron. This is really embarrassing. What was the name of Aaron's sister? Miriam. Exactly. You see, remember you're dealing with an oral and auditory call culture. They have heard the stories of Mary, they've heard the stories of Miriam, and they thought the same person. And it gets put into this divine revelation. Another interesting contradiction of fact. And I'm, I'm not going to be able to read all, but I, I have it right here photocopied out of the Quran. I didn't want you to think I made this stuff up. It's pretty weird. According to the Quran, Jesus was not crucified, but Judas was crucified in his place. So we got a few facts wrong here. But I have a couple of contradictions of theology that I think are perhaps more devastating to the worldview, showing the philosophical or theological incompatibility of the Koran of the Bible. You know, of course that Muslims worship but one person as God and therefore they must deny that Jesus is divine. And I have a couple of paragraphs in the Qur' an I would read to you where it is said that Jesus is not and cannot be the divine son of God. But of course, Jesus presented himself is the divine son of God in the Gospels. Afterwards. Okay, it would take me a while to. Chapter 4 is a good beginning in the Quran for that. And then the Trinity is denied, obviously, but also misunderstood. The Quran specifically refers to the doctrine of the Trinity as three gods. But of course the doctrine of the Trinity, which had already been formulated in Christian orthodoxy in the 400s, you know, so we're dealing with the 6 and 7 hundreds. At the time, the development of the Muslim faith had already made very clear that the Bible does not teach three gods, but three persons as one God. And yet it comes into the Quran as three gods. And so we have these contradictions of fact and contradictions in theology. Now I, it would be a short lesson if I stopped here, but you need to be aware. I can stop here. I've done my job. That's it. The Muslim faith has been destroyed because of its contradictions, its internal contradictions. It's not just you say this, I say the other, and rah, rah for each team. It's that they say something and then I come back and say, see, but you're not even consistent with what you say. And of course, Deuteronomy says they would have to be consistent with the Bible if they want to claim that the Bible is a form of revelation of Allah. Anyway. Now can you imagine, can you get creative here? Can you imagine what a Muslim might do to overcome these problems? I appeal to the Bible for matters of fact, I appeal to the Bible for matters of theology. And I say, here are these contradictions, but maybe I don't have the true version of the Bible. And this is interesting. One of the apologetical arguments Muslims present is the miracle of the Koran, its miraculous preservation. The claim is made that the Quran has never suffered a deviant reading. Deviant here shouldn't be understood morally a deviant reading. It just means diverse reading. And yet we know that there are many deviant readings in manuscripts for the New Testament. However, most people who have studied that would say the Bible is the most authentic ancient manuscript. Many we have and compare what we know about Plato's manuscripts in the Bible and it's just overwhelming. And no one claims that we don't know what Plato said. But nevertheless, for the Muslim, he says, but my book has none. And so now what he's going to say is, you have a corrupted book, I have an uncorrupted book. So if there's a contradiction between the two, most likely it's your book that's made the mistake, not mine. Okay, now at a point like that, I wouldn't suggest you get into worldviews and so forth. I think you just need to deal with the factual claim on its own footing. You need to be aware that one of the later caliphs, when Muhammad died, the surahs had not been established for the Quran. The surahs were established in the second, excuse me, in the first caliphate. And then I believe it was the fourth or fifth caliph called in all copies of the Koran and destroyed those that didn't agree with his piece of literature in the history of the Western world. So I don't find any value to that argument whatsoever. Okay. The contradictions show the Qur' an not to be the book that it claimed to be. But I'd like to look philosophically at the theology of the Quran for a few minutes here. What the Quran teaches about Allah is that Allah is completely transcendent. There are two doctrines that Muslim theology refers to. First is the doctrine of tanza. T, A, N, Z, I, H, Tanza. According to this Allah has no characteristic whatsoever that hints at impermanence, that is to say change, alteration, weakness. Indeed, Allah cannot, according to the doctrine of Tanza, Allah cannot be affected by the actions of his creatures or even the attitudes of his creatures. He is so far beyond them, so unlike anything in us, that there is no change whatsoever of any kind, any kind of impermanent and any kind of reaction. Okay? There's a second doctrine that emphasizes the transcendence of God in the Muslim faith and that is the doctrine of Mukhalafa. M U K H A L A F A Mukhalafa is the doctrine that God is so different from his creatures and the created order that he cannot be properly described in any category of human experience. So you talk about love, you talk about anger, you talk about comfort, you talk about any category that you understand in terms of your human experience. You can't talk about Allah that way. Allah is completely different from us, completely different from Muslims. Well, we got an interesting philosophical problem, don't we? If what Muslim theology says about Allah is true, how could any Muslim know anything about Allah? Because Allah is so different from us, so unaffected by anything in us, and so totally un unlike anything that we experience, that he cannot be described in any human category. But that's all we've got as human categories. Our language is tied to our experience. Consequently, Muslims have protected the transcendence of God in such an absolute way that they've made the Qur' an an impossibility. If Allah were as transcendent as the this theology claims, Allah could not have revealed himself in the Quran. Actually, I'd have to say Allah could not have revealed itself, right, because the he is part of human experience. But you'll catch Muslims doing that all the time. Very male dominated culture. As you know, Allah is the he, but you don't, you see, you gotta, you've got to make people be honest with their claims. If God's beyond human categories and experiences, don't call God He. It's an it. Nothing can be said about, cannot say anything about itself in terms that we would understand. And therefore revelation has been made impossible. Okay, I told you before, based on Paul's words in second Timothy. But those who oppose the Christian faith end up opposing themselves. That is, they are at war internally. They cannot put together an outlook on life that is consistent. And we've seen now a number of major inconsistencies within Muslim theology where the Muslims make it impossible to accept the Koran for what it claims to be, and then even more make it impossible that they could even be a Quran because of their view of God. A couple of things that Muslims say about the Bible and the Quran I'll conclude with this tonight, all too short dealing with this major faith according to Muslim apologetics Deuteronomy 18 which talks about a prophet greater than Moses coming refers not to Jesus but to Muhammad of course. Why according to them can it not refer to Jesus? Well first of all because Jesus was not a lawgiver, Moses was this is going to be a prophet greater than Moses should be a lawgiver. The problem with that is that Jesus was a lawgiver. In fact the Sermon on the Mount is why any Christian commentator will tell you is parallel to Moses on the Mount. Jesus gives the law of the kingdom from the Mount, he was a lawgiver. And where they get this I don't know but Muslims will say it can't refer to Jesus because Christians view Jesus as the son of God, not as a prophet. Well the answer is well we, we believe that Jesus is the son of God who was a prophet, priest and king and he was a prophet. And then finally they say the gospels allegedly do not consist of words which God gave to Jesus. Well in John 12 verse 49 Jesus said for I have not spoken on my own authority but the father, father who sent me gave me a command what I should say and what I should speak. So here's again where they're not familiar with the claims of the Bible so they're attempted to say it can't be Jesus here is inaccurate. There's another interesting claim made about John 14:16, John 15:26 and John 16, all three verses where Jesus promises the coming of the comforter. Muslims say so the Bible prophesies the coming of Muhammad, who is the comforter. Well you know that a lot could be said to embarrass that kind of claim but I'm simply going to refer to John 14:26 where Jesus himself explains the coming of the comforter as the spirit sent by his father which would take place just a few days after he said that as a matter of fact. So it doesn't wait for 600 years for the coming of Muhammad at all. Again what you have here is just going to the Bible, the law, the Gospels to find anything that might give some support from Muhammad. But it's very weak. Anybody can make religious claims. When someone shows up making such claims you have to say if this is not to be deemed arbitrary then you need to tell me why I should accept these claims. Muhammad has no basis for Being accepted, he worked no miracles. I believe that his life itself, I mean, it'd be hard to believe that a man who spent 20 years of his life killing other people to be compared to Jesus in terms of being a prophet of God and so forth. You look at the fact that he had all these wives, he had family problems and so forth, he just doesn't seem like the sort of person you would take as a prophet. But you see, that kind of argument only goes so far. That's evidentialism. Up to this point, Muslims can deal with that. Those problems are wiped away by the fact, well, he was a prophet, so we just need to adjust our attitude and so forth. In the end, it comes down to what did this man say? And what this man said does not put together a consistent worldview. And what this man claimed to be saying in the name of God, he could not have been saying in the name of God if God is what he said God was. And so that, in a nutshell, is my critique of Islam. You want to ask some questions before we stop tonight, John? What's his name? Oh, okay. Go ahead. I'm not sure who it is that was invited to debate me, but a Christian group at UC Riverside, year and a half ago, must be a year and a half ago, invited me to come debate some fellow who claimed to be a great Muslim apologist. So maybe it's the same guy, but they couldn't work it out. I agreed to it, and I'm not sure if he turned it down or was traveling or something like that, but I'd be happy to do the debate. Yes. Yeah. I should tell you that in my classroom notes here. Exactly. In my classroom notes here. That is a major portion of what I taught my students about dealing with Muslims is they have law without gospel, they have all these moral rules, but they have no way of dealing with our infractions against them. And so if you do stress sin, and there's no doctrine of atonement in the Koran and so forth, I think that's very important for getting through persuasively, evangelistically, to the heart of the person. Tonight, however, I've simply focused on this idea of which is true, which is false. It's been a more philosophical, theological thing, but evangelistically, that's crucial. Yeah. Got three short questions too. Short and long. Is everything in the Quran written? Supposedly, by the way, Not. Well, here's an interesting thing. One of the arguments for the Quran's inspiration is its eloquence as well as its consistency. And Then some Muslim apologists will say, and Muhammad was illiterate. So if an illiterate man came up with such a grandiose piece of literature, then it must be inspired because the greater cannot come from the lesser. The problem with that is that even if Muhammad was illiterate, we know that he used the manuenses, he used scribes, he used secretaries, in fact, many authors in the ancient world, Homer was blind, wrote the two greatest epics in the ancient world, and so clearly did it through scribes. And Muhammad could have done the same thing. But yes, now to answer your question, he did not write it, I don't think. But every bit of it is supposed to come to Muhammad from Gabriel. The angel Mohammed is encouraged to read all four books. No, because you see, only the Quran has this textual purity. And so you've got to kind of follow the Quran. The last question is, do we have any very good explanation other than the victorious warriors get rewarded, inheritance for the tremendous extent, particularly in the Islam? Well, I think that's a very important part of the explanation. What I already said, I wouldn't minimize that. But you need to understand the downside is that what they were allowed to do, those that would not submit, the Qur' an gives directions for killing in the most cruel way, people who will not submit. And in the case of those who are not quite as bad, maiming them, cutting off one hand and then the foot, the opposite foot, like left hand, right foot. And people realize that these people would follow through with that. Evangelism by the sword. And I don't think evangelism by the sword really changes hearts, but it will certainly change lifestyles. People will say what you want them to say. I think that's it. Just the viciousness of the holy war coupled with the incentive that this was really an eschatological sort of thing, that if they died in war or they were really good warriors, they were going to get, you know, all sorts of rewards.