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The Fatherhood of God
00:26:23
To call God “Father” is a cherished blessing for Christians. Yet for Muslims, few ideas could be more offensive. Today, R.C. Sproul and Abdul Saleeb contrast the Christian doctrine of adoption with Islam’s distant view of Allah. Request...
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- [00:00]
A
We Christians feel the privilege to be able to talk to God in such intimate terms. And we believe that through faith in Christ, we can become adopted children of God. And so when Christians talk to Muslims, they think that they're sharing some good news, but they don't understand that to Muslim ears, that sounds horrible news. That sounds blasphemous to think of God as our Father and us as children of God.
- [00:31]
B
You can't turn around on the TV or scroll social media these days without reading something about Islam. Most of the news centers on conflict, but we don't usually hear or read anything about what Muslims believe or what motivates them theologically. I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and welcome to the Tuesday edition of Renewing youg Mind. Today, RC Sproul continues his discussion with former Muslim Abdul Saleem. They're talking frankly about the differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity. And today our focus is on the fatherhood of God, a notion that is comforting to us as Christians, but it's a concept that many Muslims find disturbing. Why? Here's Dr. Sproul.
- [01:25]
C
We continue now with our series on the Crescent and the Cross as we examine the conflict and theological ideas between historic Christianity and the Muslim religion. In our first segment, our guest, Abdul Saleeb, gave us a brief overview of the principal points of conflict and indicated that the conflict comes not only from Islam, but Islam has found allies in the Western world in attacking the four major points of historic Christianity, our doctrine of God, our doctrine of Christ, our doctrine of man, and our understanding of the Scripture. And so we're going to begin to look at each one of these issues together in the sessions to come. Abdul, it's good to have you again today. Thank you. And I'm going to again pass the ball to you so that you can tell us where we need to focus our attention in this session.
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A
Let's start our talk about the doctrine of God. We will talk about the Trinity in the next session, but let's talk about an important concept in the Christian faith, which is the fatherhood of God. Jesus taught us in the Lord's Prayer to address God as our Father who art in heaven. We Christians feel the privilege to be able to talk to God in such intimate terms. And we believe that through faith in Christ, we can become adopted children of God. And so when Christians talk to Muslims, they think that they're sharing some good news, but they don't understand that to Muslim ears, that sounds horrible news. That sounds blasphemous to think of God as our Father and us as Children of God. I want to read first of all a few passages from the Quran, the holy book of Islam, to set the stage for this conversation. As Christians again, we need to understand that since both Islam and Christianity are monotheistic faiths, there are many things we do hold in common. Christians and Muslims believe that God is one, that God is just, that God is sovereign, that God rules, that God forgives, God has sent prophets and has sent revelations. There are many areas of agreement. I want to say that in the beginning between the Christian view of God and the Islamic view of God. But we cannot ignore the fact that there are very fundamental differences. And so the fatherhood of God that we are talking about right now. Let me read a chapter of the Quran. Each chapter in the Quran is called the Surah. Surah 112rc chapter 112 of the Quran is a chapter that is recited in prayer every day by millions of Muslims around the world. This is an essential part of the daily prayers of a Muslim. And this is what the chapter says. This is the whole chapter. It's just a few verses. Say he is God, the one and only God, the Eternal, the Absolute. He begetteth not, nor is he begotten, and there is none like unto him. Islam has a very great deal of emphasis on the absolute sovereignty of God. Surah 19:35 it is not befitting to the majesty of God that he should beget a son. Glory be to Him. When he determines a matter, he only says to it be. And it is. And then the commentator the Quran I'm reading from is a translation by Yusuf Ali, a very prominent Muslim translate of the Quran. And in the footnote of this verse he says this begetting a son is a physical act depending on the needs of man's animal nature. God most High is independent of all needs, and it is derogatory to him to attribute such an act to Him. It is merely a relic of pagan and anthropomorphic materialist superstitions. This belief goes back to the Quran itself that to talk about God as our Father implies sexual relations and attributes something which is not right to God. In Surah 6:101 it says to him to God is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth. How can he have a son when he hath no consortium? He created all things, and he hath full knowledge of all things. One last passage that I will read from the Quran, Surah 2 of the Quran, verse 116. They say God hath begotten a son. Glory be to Him. Nay, to him belongs all that is in the heavens and on earth. Everything renders worship to him. And once again, Yusuf Ali, in his footnote on this verse, says it's a derogation from the glory of God. In fact, it is blasphemy to say that God begets sons like a man or an animal. And then, of course, as Christians, we say that's not what Christians believe. We are not attributing a sexual act to God when we talk about the fatherhood of God or that we are sons of God. But that's not how a Muslim understands. And then this is what Yusuf Ali goes on to say. The Christian doctrine is here emphatically repudiated. If words have any meaning, it would mean an attribution to God of a material nature and of the lower animal function of sex. And so all of this to say that to a Muslim ear, it sounds like horrible news. It sounds like blasphemy to call God with such intimacy as our heavenly Father. And I'm just using the word father, but there is a whole plethora of images in the Bible, rc, as I'm sure you know even better than I do, that the images that we get about God as a shepherd who carries the sheep in his arms, as a husband, a wounded husband who goes after his unfaithful wife. The nation of Israel, Christ is viewed as the bridegroom coming for his church, the bride. We have all these tender images of God and his relationship to humanity, but the dominant Quranic and Islamic image of God is that of a master, and our relationship with him is that of a servant to a master. And so Islam does not allow for any intimacy between humanity and God and for us to call God our heavenly father. So as Christians, we just need to be informed about the Muslim mindset and what they hear when they hear phrases like heavenly Father or Son of God and things, you know, similar phrases. And we need to pay attention to these issues.
- [08:23]
C
Well, thank you for that. Let me say two or three things in response. First of all, as you've already indicated, Orthodox Christianity would agree virtually with every one of those texts in terms of a complete repudiation of any kind of crass idea of divine physical propagation of children like we find in Greek and Roman mythology, gods interacting with human beings, the rape of the Sabine women, that sort of thing is utterly foreign to Judeo Christianity as it would be to Islam. Obviously, when Christianity speaks of the fatherhood of God and when it speaks of the Son of God and when it speaks of the children of God it does not mean to communicate this crass idea of physical, biological propagation, although that has arisen in certain cults, it has been completely rejected by virtually every church that has ever been a part of the World Council of Churches, liberal or conservative. Also, the rejection and repudiation, Abdul, of the idea of the fatherhood of God is one place where the Muslim scholarly community cannot appeal to the liberal element of Western Christianity for support. In this case, they are not their allies. We think, for example, back to the 19th century, where we saw basically the origins of the discipline or science of comparative religion. As the world was getting smaller and smaller through modern forms of travel and people began to interact with people from other cultures, the whole science of comparative religion developed, seeking to discern the points of commonality that linked Judaism with Hinduism and Buddhism and Confucianism, Daoism, Islam and Christianity and all of them. And so there was a new interest, seeking the lowest common denominator. And in German scholarship, among those who were introducing this science of comparative religion, the quest was for the so called Wesen or essence or being of religion, things that you find as the basic stuff that is true of all religions. And one of the most significant academicians of that era was the church historian and theologian Adolph von Harnack, who wrote his history of Christianity and is usually seen as the most definitive study of the history of Christian dogma. But in addition to that, he wrote a small monograph on this question that was translated into English, entitled what is Christianity Again, Looking for the vase and the isness, the stuff of which Christianity is made. And he basically reduced the essence of the Christian religion to two basic premises, the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man, saying that this was the basic message of the Christian faith. And it was somewhat astonishing to me that he would see as the core essence of Christian thought this concept of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. When I'm convinced that the New Testament doesn't teach either of those premises. So what we have to do then is look carefully at how the New Testament particularly, and the Old as well, articulates their understanding of the fatherhood of God and the so called brotherhood of man. An important scholar in the 20th century by the name of Jeremias, wrote a study on this concept of the fatherhood of God in which his thesis was this. He looked through all of the literature, not only the Old Testament, but of the Talmudic writings, the Rabbinic writings, and every extant Jewish text that survives to the 20th century, to examine how within Judaism, the title Father was attributed to to God. And in his study he argues that nowhere in the Old Testament or in any of the Rabbinic writings do we ever find a Jewish person addressing God in prayer directly as Father. So there is that absence of intimacy that the Muslim scholars are pointing attention to as well. In fact, in Jeremias study, he came to the conclusion that the earliest example that we have in extant literature is in the 10th century AD in Italy, that we ever find a Jewish person in print addressing God directly as Father. With of course, one notable exception, and that is that in every recorded prayer of Jesus of Nazareth in the pages of the New Testament, with one exception, Jesus routinely addressed God as Father. Now again, Jeremias goes on and says that the Jewish people, as I'm sure this is true also with Muslims, had a list of prescribed and acceptable titles that could be used in worship and in private prayer that would not be in any way denigrating to the glory and majesty of God. Conspicuously absent from that list was the title Father.
- [14:41]
A
That's correct.
- [14:42]
C
There were rare occasions where God was referred to indirectly as the Father of the human race only insofar as he was its Creator, but not in the crass way to which the Muslims are objecting or in the way we're speaking here. So the basic thesis that Jeremias set forth for the scholarly world to consider was that we in the Christian community today again routinely address God as Father. The Lord's Prayer is an integral part of our corporate worship. And if you listen to a group of Christians sitting around praying, inevitably the overwhelming most common form of address you will hear from their lips as they pray is Father. And yet, because it is so predominant in our Christian culture that we sort of take this for granted. Whereas what Jeremias was saying, that in Jesus Day, that he called God Father, was a radical departure from Jewish tradition. It was a radical innovation. And its significance was by no means missed by his contemporaries. This was one of the things that infuriated his enemies, that he would have the audacity to suggest that he had this kind of intimate relationship with God. And not only that, but in the pages of the New Testament, that relationship is seen from the other perspective, where God is heard speaking from heaven, declaring what this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And Jesus bears the title Son of God, although in a very carefully guarded way. When Christ is called the Son of God, he's called the Monogenes, the only begotten of the Father. And the Church understood very early that that did not mean that he had a beginning in time. We'll get to that when we look at the Trinity. But there wasn't any idea of the Father's procreating or siring a Son in any sense other than the eternal procession of the Second Person of the Trinity from the First Person of the Trinity. And that's the only sense in which we can speak. Well, it's not the only sense. The other sense is that when the Bible speaks of sonship, it speaks not only in terms of this concept of biological generation, but it also speaks regularly of sonship as a description of a relationship of obedience. In Jesus own teaching. When he talked about setting people free, you recall how upset the Pharisees were saying, you know, we're in bondage to no man. We're the children of Abraham. Jesus said, you're the children of those whom you obey. You're the children of Satan. To be called a child of God meant to be one who obeyed God. So sonship was defined not in biological terms, but in ethical terms. And in that sense, the New Testament speaks of the unique relationship that Christ has as the one who is perfectly obedient to the Father. But again, when Jesus then talks to his disciples and tells them how to pray, he said, when you pray, pray like this, saying our Father. That was radical. That was astonishing to the initial hearers of that. So it doesn't surprise me at all that Muslims would be offended by that. So would Orthodox Jews, because it was a serious departure. Because the whole history of the biblical view is that there's a wall of partition separating man from God because of sin. There was the angel with the flaming sword guarding the entrance to paradise. Lest we could have an intimate relationship with God. Paul, when he writes to the Romans in the eighth chapter, speaks about this concept of our adoption by virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit, who gives us now, as we are adopted into the family of God by the Spirit, now we have the right and the authority to. To say abba, Father, to address God as Father, saying that the relationship of estrangement that defined our relationship prior to the work of Christ and the atonement which we'll also look at, that the wall of partition has been removed. And God has been so gracious that he's not only forgiven us of our sins, but he's invited us into the intimate fellowship of being family members. Even though we are not his children by nature, we are his children by adoption. By virtue of our relationship to Christ, we are now included in the family of God. Now remember, in the Old Testament, one of the most moving stories was the story of, of the lame son of Jonathan, Mephibosheth, who was lame in both legs when the news came that Saul had been killed and his son with him. There were those in David's camp who wanted to institute a purge of any survivors from the family of Saul, lest they would try to seize power from David and keep David from rising to kingship. You know the story. David was upset about that. And he said, well, is there anybody left from the house of Saul that I can honor him for my love for Jonathan? So they go on this search mission. They find this lame son who had been secreted away, and they bring him to David. And Mephibosheth is terrified. He assumes he's coming for his execution. And instead David said, as long as he's alive, he will eat at the king's table and he will be regarded as a member of the king's family, which is what we do when we come to the Lord's table. We come as his children because of the love of the Father for the Son that we are adopted, and we can have this filial relationship. The fact that this differs from Islam is true. I think this is one of the ways in which the Muslim religion is so profoundly impoverished that it doesn't have an avenue to be restored to that filial relationship, to that relationship of intimacy for which we were created in the first place. So if we examine this concept of adoption, we see that it's vital to our whole understanding of redemption. And again, not to take it for granted, remember when John, writing his epistle, first drawn, he says, behold. When he introduces his statement, he uses that word behold. That's like a railroad marking sign with a flashing red light. Stop looking. Listen. Hold it right here. Pay attention. Something important is coming. Behold. What manner of love is this apostolic astonishment that we should be called the children of God, so that even the apostles in the first century were overwhelmed with amazement that that status of a filial relationship to God would be accorded to us because of the work of Christ. Now, I don't see anything intellectually that would preclude the truth of such a matter, if indeed God has reconciled us through an atonement, which is the other thing the Muslim faith lacks. I don't think it should be seen as a thing impossible or even improbable that we should have an intimate relationship with God.
- [23:13]
A
Yes. First of all, thank you very much for that description. I think it's for us Christians, it's important to know and emphasize the fact that we're not talking about a physical procreation on the part of God as we talk to Muslims. And the fact that you emphasize the aspect of obedience as a definition of sonship is very important. We also need to understand that when Islam came on the scene, it was in the context of paganism. So in fact the Quran originally was denouncing the pagan views of the fatherhood of God and the sonship. It was in that context. But later Islamic theology just kind of took off from that. Never developed our relationship with God in terms of intimacy and relationship which you described. And I think it's very interesting for Christians to know this. Fuller Seminary recently did a survey of 600 former Muslims who had become Christians, and one of the factors that was involved in the conversions of these former Muslims was the emphasis on the love of God and the intimacy that believers can have with God as their heaven. That was one of the factors that drew these former Muslims to Christ, and I think we need to present that to the Muslim people.
- [24:30]
B
Continuing their discussion on the differences between Christianity and Islam, that was RC Sproul with his guest Abdul Saleeb. This is Renewing youg Mind and I'm glad you're with us. It's rather eye opening to learn some of these differences, isn't it? Although all Christians recognize that Islam presents a false way of salvation, we might take for granted the idea that God as our heavenly Father is a doctrine that should immediately bring comfort. Continue studying these differences when you request access to the complete eight part series with Dr. Sproul when you give a donation today at renewingyourmind.org, or when you call us at 800-435-4343. We'll unlock the series in the free Ligonier app, plus send you the DVD set of James Anderson's series exploring Islam. We'll also unlock those messages and the study guide in the app too. There's a convenient link to donate in the podcast Show Notes, or you can visit renewingyourmind.org to make your gift. Please know that renewing your mind would not be possible without your regular generosity, so thank you for your support. There's more to come from R.C. sproul and Abdul Saleeb, so hope you'll join us Wednesday here on Renewing your Mind.
- [26:03]
C
Sam.