← White Horse Inn
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host / Announcer
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- [00:47]
Dr. Adam Francisco
There was a certain point where I asked, his first name is Omar. You know how it was that Muslims denied that Jesus was crucified on the cross when making the same point you just made, Mike, that it's like at least 600 years after the actual events and we've got eyewitness testimony, companions of eyewitnesses who say it happened as a matter of fact or did not happen. In a corner you have Roman authors, Tacitus, Suetonius, you got Josephus. It's like sort of well known event, if you will, in the ancient world. I asked him, why is it you would? Because him being a scholar, I said, you as a scholar, how is it you prefer a text that's 600 years after the events with no connection to eyewitness testimony or any other historical evidence, Prefer the Quran over Tacitus, or better yet, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? And his answer really kind of help me understand like the where apologetic conversation kind of, kind of reach a dead end, he says. And he kind of smiled and he said, you know why? Because I'm a Muslim first and a scholar second.
- [01:58]
Justin Holcomb
Oh, wow.
- [01:59]
Dr. Adam Francisco
And wow. I thought I just scored points, but he got a standing ovation for that. Wow, you know. And as we talked about that, I made the point. I don't remember exactly how it went, but I said, so you're allowing your sort of ideological commitments, determine what is the case rather than what is the case, tell you what your worldview should be. And he said, that's right.
- [02:35]
Podcast Host / Announcer
Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church. This is White Horse Sin, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.
- [02:57]
Mike Horton
Hello and welcome to another edition of White Horse Inn. I'm Mike Horton with my good friends Bob Hiller, Walter Strickland, Justin Holcomb, and we have a good friend over many years here, Dr. Adam Francisco, who's director of academics for our friends at 15, 17 or. And he also is a professor in the Concordia University system. It's great to have you on, Adam.
- [03:24]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, it's great to be here, Mike.
- [03:26]
Mike Horton
Besides being a terrific Lutheran theologian, Adam is a scholar in Islam. Lots of background in those studies. So we thought it would be a good idea to have him on. Since a lot of online discussions today, which is what we're talking about in this series, a lot of online discussions are active around Muslim apologetics. And so we want to know how we can be ready to give to our Muslim neighbors and friends, perhaps even family, a reason for the hope that we have. So, first of all, Adam, could you give us a little bit of Islam 101, the different schools, maybe how they differ, just very broad brush kind of way.
- [04:14]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Sure. I'll try to keep this really brief, but it's 1400 years of history, so we'll see. It starts every Muslim, whether they're Sunni, Shia, or like the Sufi, that's more of the mystical variety that cuts across Sunni and Shia believes that in the seventh century, a man named Muhammad was called to be a prophet. And he's seen as the last in a long line of prophets that extends all the way back to Adam. The Quran, in fact, sees Adam and Noah and Abraham and Jesus as prophets of Islam. Jesus, first miracle in the Quran, is speaking from the cradle, where he tells Mary that he is a prophet of Allah and so on. So all Muslims believe that. They believe that the Quran, and there's some variance here across the different sects of Islam, that the Quran is a perfect transcription of what Muhammad taught. Some will go so far as to say it's a. And and it's a perfect copy of a Quran that's up in heaven, that's maybe even on golden tablets. That's a bit of a bad joke, but fascinating. And they regard the Quran, Sunnis, which is like 85 to 90% of the Muslim world, as the. The eternal speech of Allah. And like a real austere Muslim, while there's lots of tradition, the example of Muhammad in his biographies and anecdotes concerning Muhammad and what's called the Hadith, all Muslims agree that the basis for Islamic doctrine is found in the Quran and the Quran alone. The other material helps you interpret the Quran, but it's the Quran that. That tells you what you to believe and how you're to pray and act. Generally, there are five core beliefs in Islam. Everybody's heard about the five Pillars. Those are more like the things you got to do to be a Muslim in good standing from prayer and Giving alms to the poor, making a hajj or a pilgrimage to Mecca and so on. There are five core beliefs though. If there's one thing you could say that all Muslims, if they're aware of their tradition, will confess. The first is a doctrine of, maybe we could call it Unitarian monotheism. They'll use the term tawhid to describe that. That is God is one in essence and one in person. The Quran says in quite a few places he cannot have a partner, he cannot have a son. The second would be a doctrine of creation that emphasizes the invisible aspects of creation, that there are other creatures out there, angels and jinn or genies. And they are quite. The genies in particular are quite active and whispering in the ears of all people, enticing them into sin and so on. Third doctrine and fourth kind of go hand in hand. It's a doctrine of prophets that Muhammad is not a new. Like he didn't bring a new revelation, he simply reasserts the revelation from prophets in the past. And if you read the Quran, there's about two dozen prophets named and they all, with one exception are biblical names from Adam to Abraham, Moses and so on. Then along with that is that that fourth teaching that says some of these, these prophets brought books or scripture. So the Quran will refer to the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel in one place. It refers to the, the Sahu for the Scrolls of Abraham which Mormons have I guess recovered. But another bad Mormon joke. But then the fifth one is the.
- [08:05]
Bob Hiller
Don't stop with those please.
- [08:08]
Dr. Adam Francisco
They're kind of inside jokes though, so I don't know if that's all right. The fifth is the doctrine of the Day of Judgment, that there will be a final judgment where everybody will be judged on the basis of their good and bad deeds. And there's disagreement over how it all pans out in the end. There are like real orthodox Sunni Muslims historically assert a doctrine of. It's usually called the divine decree, which is a, you know, pretty hard determinism that says regardless of what you believe or what you've done, Allah is determined at all from the beginning, whereas others will stress the, the, the free will that you, you might have and, and so on. So those are the five core tenets. Islam grew in the early days all the way up until around the time of the Protestant Reformation, a little thereafter, mostly by force, by imperial expansion if you will. I wrote my dissertation on Martin Lutheran Islam. And one of the things that was really interesting in reading histories of Protestant Reformation is how at least before the 20th century, not a whole lot of emphasis is given to the Turks and the distraction they, the role they played in distracting the Pope and the Emperor from dealing with Luther. And what was interesting though is seeing how the Turks are banging on the gates of Vienna in 1529 and working to push deeper into central Europe to overtake Christendom. Never happened, thankfully.
- [09:42]
Mike Horton
But don't conservative Muslims believe that Jesus was good as far as he went, but he only touched on the inner life and the heart and individual morality, whereas Muhammad brought a kingdom with him? Muhammad was a political figure.
- [10:06]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, the way they'll usually describe that. So if you ask a Muslim, well, if Jesus was a prophet of, of Allah or Prophet of Islam, how is it that his message is so different than Muhammad's? And the way they'll usually put it though, there's a lot more nuance than what I'm going to say is that all the previous prophets were sent to particular groups of people. The Quran says that Allah has never left himself without a witness to the various tribes and nations and clans and so on. Muhammad universalized the message. So all the prophets in their view taught the same theology, but they taught different ethics and laws that were particular to the culture these folks found in. And Jesus in particular is an emphasis that he's, you know, his emphasis was on reforming the inner spiritual life, if you will. When Muhammad comes around, not only does he restore a theology that had been corrupted by the Jews and the Christians, but he brings a law and an ethic that is for all people. Even though it's in Arabic, it's for all people.
- [11:10]
Justin Holcomb
This is super helpful, Adam. As we think about, you know, Muslim influencers, do you find that there's a specific kind of Islam that's being purported by these influencers? Because sometimes if we're talking about, you know, some forward facing Christians, we would sort of critique how they are engaging with the Christian faith. So any idiosyncrasies with those sort of influencers that you're seeing before we jump into the meat of the, our discussion.
- [11:35]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, so I failed to address this earlier, but most are going to be from what we could describe as the Sunni position. So the big division in Islam is between Sunni and Shia. So 85 to 90% Sunni and 10 to 15% Shia. The Sunnis, what makes them distinct is for Sunni is from the Arabic terms Sunnah, which means tradition. And they believe that the tradition of Islam is, was established once and for all by Muhammad. And some would go a little further and say the first four caliphs of Islam. So up until the 661 AD and the example they gave, the way they answered questions, their ethic and so on, that seals everything. To deviate away from that is to introduce innovations. Even if you're asked the question, you know, can. Because Coca Cola has like a minuscule amount of alcohol. This was a big question in the Fiqh Council in North America, I guess, two decades ago, you know, can Muslims drink Coca Cola? And Muhammad never answered that question or had that question or the caliphs. And so they had to deliberate. And for the Shia, they could have answered that question easily because for them, because Islam is by its essence, expansionistic. It's going to reach cultures that are very different than Muhammad's culture, and new questions are going to arise. And Islamic clerics are able to discern Allah's will. Whereas in Sunni questions that are new that Muhammad or the first four caliphs, the rightly guided caliphs, answered, those aren't even questions Muslims would really entertain. So that. That Sunni is super traditionalists such that everything's done by the 7th century. All you need to know for living. The influencers are mostly from a more like popular or populist type of sunism. So sunism is, you know, because it's so. There's so numerous. There's lots of variants of it. And they're going to all believe that the Quran is Allah's eternal speech, but they're going to be a little more flexible, especially those who grew up in the West. They're going to be used to interacting and moving about in a second culture of culture, because they recognize. And this kind of goes back to the thinking of a guy who was described as the Martin Luther of Islam once. His name's Tarik Ramadan. He was like the reformer of Islam. He was going to bring conservative Sunni orthodoxy to the Western world because there is no, to use their terminology, Darul Islam anymore. There is no Islamic world with a caliph at the center. So Muslims face a situation that's kind of like Muhammad faced before Islam really became a thing. And so every Muslim is a missionary, so to speak, and can. Can use methods and means that are not ideal, that are. That in, you know, decades or centuries past weren't even a possibility, and use that with. With liberty. So social media. Adam, let me ask, why do you think it's so effective right now in the West? Because it seems like, and maybe I don't know the. I don't know any stats or numbers, but like Andrew Tate's really popular with young Men. But it does seem like Islam. It's fascinating to me how much Christianity seems to get dunked on, but Islam is seen as sort of this thoughtful and reverent and important thing for us to take seriously. So what is it about the west and what is it about Islam that's sort of meeting up right now? I don't have a definitive answer there. I mean, I'll take some stabs at it. I think one is there's just this sort of huge vacuum in the West. Secularism, if you will, has left the west spiritually, ethically, theologically void. And Islam asserts itself with confidence. There's a. I don't follow social media influencers, but I know I'm aware of a few of these Muslim debaters. Daniel Hakikachu has sort of been making the rounds. He's made it into my algorithm at least, and he debated. I think he's an orthodox small or a big old orthodox Christian. Andrew Wilson. And the debate was over what's better for culture or civilization, Islam or Christianity. It's a very long debate. It's kind of funny because Daniel Hakikachu kind of gets. Islam gets skewered. But Daniel Hakikachu, he, he maintains throughout. And his, his presence on the social or the realm of social media, his presence is that Islam is the most based, that is not woke of the religions. And so therefore it's good for culture because it will restore sort of normative gender or sexual positions and. Oh, I shouldn't say gender roles, sorry.
- [16:52]
Mike Horton
Here are some questions that may come up because people are listening to some of these social influencers. The doctrine of the Trinity actually isn't taught anywhere in the Bible itself. It's something that people came up with especially at the time of Constantine. And how do we respond to people when it's not obviously just Muslims, it's Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, all kinds of folks.
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Bob Hiller
And before you answer that, Adam, can you also, in the Trinity sphere of questions, what do Muslims, most Muslims think? Or what does the Quran say that Christians believe about the Trinity?
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Dr. Adam Francisco
Okay, so let me take that one first.
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Bob Hiller
The reason I'm asking is because I've heard that people are like, oh yeah, it's God the Father, Mary and Jesus. And so I'm kind of just curious, what do they think we think we believe about Trinity? And then Mike's Trinity question.
- [17:48]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, well, there's so the Quran. There's two places that I can think of right off hand at the end of. I believe it's Chapter or Surah 4 of the Quran tells the people of the book, in particular Christians, that they should not be excessive in their religion is the way that wording is. But what that means, don't go into theological extremes and do not say tathletha, which is. You could translate that. Do not confess the Trinity. So. And that kind of leaves it at that. But there's another passage. I believe it's in the following chapter that it's the context, if you will, is the last day and Jesus returns as everybody's being judged and Allah points to all the Christians and says to Jesus, did you tell these people that they should take you and your mother Mary as lords besides Allah? It suggests that the Quran's understanding of the Trinity is this tritheism where Mary replaces the Holy Spirit. But you know, Muslim debaters, and there's a long history of this, know full well what what Christians mean by the Trinity. The typical argument, the point they'll bring out with respect to this is the term Trinity is not in the Bible. The doctrine as. As Dr. Horton put it, was they. They could say, along with that great historian Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code, that there would be no doctrine of the Trinity or the deity of Christ had it not been for the Council of N. Something like that. There is a very long. You can trace it back at least ten hundred, maybe twelve hundred years in the Islamic corpus of writings on Christianity. There's this idea that somewhere between Paul and Emperor Constantine, the religion of Jesus is transformed and the usual culprit is Paul. They will say something like he blends Jewish monotheism with a Greco Roman polytheism and outcomes a trinity, something like that. And yes, yeah, well, they. And what's interesting in all this, and I don't want to get too far afield here, is they, at least up until very recently. I haven't seen it in the last few years, but if you were to go to like youtubeislam.com I haven't been there in a long time. I'm sure Pastor Hiller is there every morning, all the time. If you typed in something like New Testament or Trinity or something like that, the lectures that you'd. The video clips that would appear right away would be things by Bart Ehrman and Elaine Fagels and others of their ilk. And so they'll say even Christian scholarship is affirming what we Muslims have said all along, that Christian evolved. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they will accuse Christians of using a term, but also at inventing a doctrine that is not found in Scripture. And I think the easiest, or maybe not easiest, but the best way just to start talking about that with a Muslim is to acknowledge, yes, the term Trinity is not found in the Bible, nor is the Islamic term tawhid. These are terms that we use because they're the best terms we got to describe the data in the text. And then, and you know, you all know this way better than I. You know, there are plenty of pretty clear passages that, that led Christians to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity. The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, I don't know, we could go over a few of them. But like they think Matthew 28, when Jesus says to baptize in the name singular, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or promises the Paraclete or the Holy Spirit, or promises he's going to send the Holy Spirit after petitioning his Father. So what are you supposed to do with that data? Monotheist. But we see in the Scriptures that there's three persons and you get the doctrine of the Trinity out of that. And I found like personal, I don't want to get into personal anecdotes so much, but in my conversations with Muslims, when you just emphasize that, yeah, the term is not something we find in the Bible. It's just a helpful term to help to make sense of the data in the Bible that is not like, that is kind of mysterious, but not a.
- [22:14]
Mike Horton
Contradiction because it's one in essence and three in persons, rather than one in essence or three in essence and three in persons. Is that where they kind of get hung up when it comes to the Trinity? Well, besides not believing that Jesus is God.
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Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah. Well, they'll say that just doesn't make sense that you have three persons in one being. And it's interesting, like when I get that sort of accusation or objection, it really comes from a place where they will. You'll see. Like Sam Shamoon is a great Christian debater of Islam, in my view. He's like, if you're going to watch somebody do this on the Internet, he's the guy to watch. He will emphasize how Muslims come to the theological table with notions already in mind of what God must look like. And if Christians don't fit that framework or that procrusting bed, they cry foul. But they do really believe, like historically believe that Christians are essentially tritheists. And it probably. Back to your question, Justin.
- [23:20]
Bob Hiller
I know we have other topics since this will be brief, but when you were talking about the Quran and they talked about the eternal Quran and I know enough to know about the Asherite Mutazilite debates because the Mutazilites said there wasn't a. The Quran was created when it was revealed. And the Asherite said, no, no, no, the Quran is eternal. I mean do they don't. Isn't there a sense within Islam that there is something else eternal from God? Isn't there a little problem that they have with their own doctrine of the Quran?
- [23:51]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, so you could, this guy I mentioned earlier, Sam Shamoon, loves getting into that because if the Quran is uncreated, that kind of gives it this a similar status to Allah and then you've.
- [24:04]
Bob Hiller
Got to like an eternal word. Maybe I don't.
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Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:08]
Justin Holcomb
So Dr. Francisco, I do have another question for you. I mean, as we're just kind of thinking about the Trinity, you know, as Protestants, we were talking about the second person of the Trinity of which, you know, essential claims, you know, for Muslim apologists is that Jesus identified himself only as a prophet or a servant of God and not divine. And so how would they deal with verses that portray Jesus's divinity and so on and so forth? There just seems to be a lot to, to be engaged with there.
- [24:41]
Dr. Adam Francisco
So, so my, my experience here, and this is God had a lot of this is that if they've read the New Testament, if they've read the gospels or somewhat aware of them, they're going to point out that there are places where Jesus prays the Father or. But also they're going to point to places where Jesus says things like I and the Father are one. And they're gonna, they're usually going to, they'll move forward and say, see the, the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are incoherent. So what with Muslims typically understand, maybe they don't want to understand that Christians don't just confess that Jesus is fully God, but also fully man. So those passages where Jesus is praying to God the Father or crying out to God the Father, why have you abandoned me? Usually the way I'll respond is, well, that's Jesus human nature. And that will sometimes clarify it. But for them, like with the doctrine and the Trinity, they'll say but isn't this contradictory? How can God be at the same time man? And then we're back to the same thing where Muslims, we're all guilty of this in some way. Right? But Muslims typically have a preconceived notions of the way God must be and how he can act. I like to emphasize that a lot because with, with Muslims, because they sense, tend to have this posture, this disposition that they let the revelation. The Quran in their case, do the talking. But really, when it comes to doing theology and apologetics, they bring in all sorts of philosophical presuppositions before they even let the revelation speak.
- [26:29]
Podcast Host / Announcer
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- [27:16]
Bob Hiller
Real quick on the Jesus stuff and this is like rapid fire having in Muslim scholars. Great. So I'm not intending this to be a huge long question. I've read the Quran and I was surprised at some of the things that were said about Jesus in the Quran. And I think Christians would be surprised of, of. Can you just go through just like a, a bullet point list of some of the things the Quran says about Jesus? That he's, he's a prophet, obviously, but he's like the greatest prophet, one of the greatest prophets, the sinless prophet. So just all the really high view of Jesus in the Quran.
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Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah. So he's, he's, he's born of the only or of the Virgin Mary and she's the only female named in the Quran. There are female females referred to, but you never get their name. He performs miracles at an early age. He speaks from the cradle. That's chapter 19, verse 33ish in the Quran. But also performs other miracles in his early life, like breathing on clay pigeons, not the kind you shoot with a shotgun, but like little trinkets and they come to life.
- [28:20]
Mike Horton
Which he got from the Gospel of Thomas, right?
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Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah. Well there's the Gospel of Thomas and there's a couple other infancy gospels that were floating around. Some heretical communities that sort of had established themselves outside. This is getting to the weeds with the Byzantine Empire in the northern parts of the Arabian Peninsula. So yeah, a lot of borrowing from the Quran from other sources.
- [28:43]
Bob Hiller
Does the Quran refer to Jesus as sinless? Is that accurate or am I exaggerating?
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Dr. Adam Francisco
He's sinless. Not all the prophets are sinless, but, but he's not the only one. Muhammad, of course, in their view, is sinless. Moses, I believe, was sinless and Abraham. And what's really surprising for the Christian reading the Quran for the first time is in chapter four, around verse 157, 158, you get this sort of statement about Jesus or you get Jews boasting that they killed the Messiah, they did not kill him, nor was he crucified or nor did he die. Instead he was taken up into heaven. So you get a denial of the, a pretty clear denial of the crucifixion of Jesus and this idea and it's developed in the Hadith, the traditions that arise outside the Quran, that maybe Judas volunteered to take Jesus place and be crucified in his stead after Allah performed like a facelift to make him look like Jesus.
- [29:44]
Mike Horton
Don't they have total contradictions like it's Judas or it's Sergius or he ascended spiritually because his soul was the Holy Spirit. He ascended and clearly getting that from the Gnostic Gospels.
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Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, this all sounds like it's come from the Gnostic Gospels. Judas the hero and all of this.
- [30:05]
Bob Hiller
I mean, no, it was from Allah.
- [30:08]
Mike Horton
Can you address the whole issue here of I don't know what Islam's position is actually on the history of the life and times of Jesus because it seems that they have really conflicting views, especially about his whereabouts after the so called crucifixion.
- [30:30]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yes. And it's in within the Quran itself, but also the interpretation of the Quran, you find lots of contradictions. So like the Right Reverend Dr. Justin Holcomb put it earlier.
- [30:46]
Justin Holcomb
One of the.
- [30:46]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Things about the Quran is if when you read it, you're not reading a text that's written chronologically, it's just a smattering of stories. So you get in a couple verses, it'll be talking about Moses and then the following verses will talk about the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. And then we'll refer to them as brother and sister. And so you get some who will say, well it's referring to they're both, they're both Israelites or their sisters and brother and sister in the faith and things like that. But it's pretty, the natural reading of the text is that they're actually, they live at the same time, they're brother and sister. So you get lots of contradictions with Jesus. So there's that passage that says he was not crucified nor did he die, but he was taken up into heaven. But then there's another passage that says he dies and rises again. And, and the way Muslims will deal with some of these differences, some of it will say, well, the text is what the text is. Those who try to reconcile these difficulties or contradictions will say well, the death and resurrection of Jesus is something that's going to happen at the Last Judgment when he returns. But then you mentioned, Dr. Horton, that I almost said great little. There's a little book out there published by a group called the Ahmadis. There's a lot of Ahmadi Muslims in America and they tend to. They're. They're all heretics within Islam. They had to flee the eastern parts of Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan 100 years ago because they're being so heavily persecuted. But they're very pacifistic but very missionary. They have some real bizarre theology. But they produced a book called Jesus in India that argues that Jesus, when there's that mix up on the road to Golgotha and Simon the Cyrene takes up the cross and Jesus sort of slips out of the crowd and heads eastward looking for the lost tribes of Israel and eventually winds up in Kashmir. And there's a. Allegedly there's happened to me before, so.
- [32:51]
Mike Horton
I appreciate that.
- [32:55]
Justin Holcomb
GPS and all, but there's a.
- [32:58]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Allegedly there's a tomb in Kashmir somewhere of Jesus. And I'm told that the locals, though, they know nobody's buried there, but they love when Westerners come there because they want to see the tomb of Jesus, so they pay these fees to see it and so on.
- [33:12]
Justin Holcomb
So as we're thinking about the Quran's testimony to Jesus, am I correct in thinking that the Quran actually affirms scripture in some way? And if so, does that further complicate its testimony to Christ? If the Scripture is contradicting what the Quran is saying, even though it's internally contradictory?
- [33:31]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah. So there's several passages in the Quran where people of the book usually it seems the context suggests it's Jews, but it could have been Christians too. Come to the Muslims in Medina when Muhammad's up there and he's got total power over this little city and they have this internal dispute within the Jewish community and Muhammad's told about this and Muhammad tells his followers, tell them they've got their books, they've got the Torah, they should discern what is right and wrong from the Torah. So you have lots of little instances like that where Muhammad seems, in the Quran, seems to be confirming that the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel are legitimate authorities. At the. At the very least there's. So if you ask Muslims today, well, if they're like, if they are, as the Quran suggests, revelations from. From God, why is it that the teachings contradict the Quran in places, in many places. And the usual response they'll give is that the scriptures, the Old and New Testament have been corrupted. The term they'll use is tariff. And there's different ways they'll describe it. The Quran does not suggest that the texts have been textually corrupted through scribal errors or purposeful additions or takings away or something like that. But the Quran suggests in one place that the Jews and Christians or people of the Book, that's the chronic language for both groups have misinterpreted the text. So the usual examples they'll give or the usual example is Deuteronomy 18 when Moses says another a great prophet will come from Israel who will be greater than I. And for them that's a reference to not Jesus but rather to Muhammad. Okay, so that's an example of like the corruption in interpretation of the text. There are some who will. This is something that develops a couple centuries after the Quran's put together. They will argue that the text itself has been corrupted and not just by like very not. We're not just talking scribal variants. We're talking things have been taken out or purposely changed or added. A fairly common example is Jesus in chapters 14 and 16 of John saying that he's going to petition the Father to send the Paraclete to his disciples. And some will go so far as to say is if you go to the Greek New Testament and you change one vowel and one consonant and I don't know if it's Paraklitos or Parakleton, I can't remember off the top of my head. But if you change it to the other and translate that Greek into Arabic, what you get is the name Ahmed. And if you go To Quran chapter 61, verse 6, it has the Prophet Aisa or Jesus saying I give you good news of a prophet who will come after me. His name is Ahmed. Ahmed is just another way of saying Muhammad.
- [36:30]
Mike Horton
Interesting.
- [36:32]
Dr. Adam Francisco
So they believe that there's actually been scribes who have purposely removed references to Muhammad in the text.
- [36:40]
Mike Horton
Does it help to bring up or is this offensive to bring up to Muslim if you're talking to one? This is anachronistic obviously because you're talking about a 7th century product that has no textual history that is actually connected to the first century in contrast with the embarrassment of textual riches that the New Testament enjoys. And so why should we believe that the text written by Muhammad or transcribed by Muhammad or whatever centuries later than any of the living witnesses would be the standard for a first century document? Just if we're talking about historical transmission, not even talking about my Bible can beat your Bible, but just historical transmission, right?
- [37:45]
Dr. Adam Francisco
So this is the, the big issue, the oftentimes unspoken issue in Christian, Muslim apologetic discourse is, and I'll give it like an actually a person, another personal example. Years ago, this is maybe 20 years ago, I was at a mosque, invited to a mosque in Indiana to have a dialogue with this imam, who's also a professor at University of Notre Dame. I don't know if he's still there or not, but his professor of peace studies of all things in Notre Dame, but he served as the leader of that mosque. And it was a friendly exchange where basically the instruction was that we're to describe from our particular tradition, from me from the standpoint of Christianity and him from Islam, what both religions believe about Jesus. And then we had a time where we could ask each other questions. And there was a certain point where I asked, his first name is Omar. You know how it was that Muslims denied that Jesus was crucified on the cross when making the same point you just made, Mike, that it's like at least 600 years after the actual event and we've got eyewitness testimony, companions of eyewitnesses who, who say it happened as a matter of fact or did not happen in a corner. You've got, you have Roman authors, Tacitus, Suetonius, you got Josephus. It's like sort of a well known event, if you will, in the ancient world. I asked him, why is it you would. Because him being a scholar, I said, you as a scholar, how is it you prefer a text that's 600 years after the events with no connection to eyewitness testimony or any other historical evidence, Prefer the Quran over Tacitus, or better yet, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And his answer really kind of helped me understand like the. Where apologetic conversation kind of, kind of reach a dead end, he says. And he kind of smiled and he said, you know why? Because I'm a Muslim first and a scholar second.
- [39:51]
Justin Holcomb
Oh, wow.
- [39:52]
Dr. Adam Francisco
And I thought I just scored points, but he got a standing ovation for that.
- [39:58]
Bob Hiller
Wow.
- [39:59]
Dr. Adam Francisco
You know, and as we talked about that, I made the point, I don't remember exactly how it went, but I said, so you're allowing your sort of ideological commitments determine what is the case rather than what is the case, tell you how, what you should, what your worldview should be. And, and he said, that's right. And wow. And that's fascinating. And not to, I mean, I'm not trying to score points with you here, Mike, but I remember you Wrote an article in Modern Reformation a long time ago where you made the point point how while worldview doesn't determine, or while assumptions don't always determine a worldview, they play a heavy role in how a worldview shapes out. And I think this is where apologetics comes to a dead end when you're interacting with somebody who's ideologically committed to something, dogmatically committed to something, and it's a position that's not built on sort of facts, but rather just sort of.
- [40:52]
Mike Horton
A. Yeah, I wanted to ask you too, before get away from Christology, that I was on a plane having a long conversation with Muslims sitting next to me. Absolutely wonderful cordial conversation. And he was very interested in having the conversation. I did kind of go to the evidence for the resurrection and so forth, and like I would do with any anybody else. And I said, so what about the historical evidence? This is like talking to a Mormon. As you've already said, Adam, what about the historical evidence? And he said something equivalent to burning in my bosom. He says, when you submit to Allah, you know, but you're a very intelligent man. Are you just dismissing all of these historical arguments? And he just completely bifurcated the historical from the fiddistic sort of commitment. I wonder if I should have instead. And this leads us into the next question, if I should instead have focused on the existential question, how are you right with God? And just stay away from that. You know, as you said, you just get to a dead end there. Maybe I wouldn't have had a dead end in the conversation if I had started with really kind of cracking that one. Open repentance takes the place of someone dying for your sins. How does that work?
- [42:36]
Bob Hiller
Can I piggyback on that? Because that's exactly where my other question is. And I just. Because I think they dovetail. It seems like Islam is about Muhammad is a prophet revealing the will of God so you can do what God wants, so you can be made right with God. So I don't want to be too simplistic, but I'm going with Mike on how are you right with God? God reveals God's will through Muhammad. You learn it, you read it, you know it, you do it, you're good. Christianity says there's a sin problem, not so much a knowledge problem. And the sin problem influences your knowledge problem. But you don't so much need to hear the will of God so you can do it. You need to receive the gift of what the work of Jesus. Jesus is prophet, priest and king. Now, I'm imagining going back to Mike's question, that that's a scandal, which maybe it's illogical, maybe it's unjust, but the fact is faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. Maybe Mike should have proclaimed the gospel instead of argued about philosophy. That's what I hear Mike saying, that he did wrong. But I'm with you because when you were asking the question, I was thinking I would have done the same exact thing. I would have been like, what about, what about the text? What about the history? The apologies of me would have come right out. And I am wondering like what, what about the actual gospel?
- [43:51]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah. So you know, Dr. Montgomery would always say gospel first or evangelism first, apologetics second. In fact, your conversation with the man on a plane, Mike, I've had a, I had a, a guy whose daughter, he was a Missouri Synod pastor. His daughter converted to Islam. And so he showed up my office in Fort Wayne at the seminary and said he had told me about his daughter, but he just sort of showed up at the door and said, here's my daughter, I won't name her name, but you need to talk to her. And just sort of left. And I'm like, okay. So we had a two hour conversation and I just asked her sort of things, not existential questions, but her story, you know, like, how is it that you're now Muslim when you're raised in a Christian home? And she was a bright, very bright young girl. And it became pretty clear pretty quickly that this was a boyfriend. There's pressure from a boyfriend. They were kind of from near Dearborn or Dearborn, a stand outside of Detroit. So we had a good two hour conversation and she had memorized things. She had converted because of pressure from the boyfriend, but had kind of intellectually came, came up with a story how she'd done this research and she was like quoting full on paragraphs from, from Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, telling me that, you know, she did some reflected on her, the faith she was raised and she learned that the Bible was filled with errors and, and so on. So I did all the fancy. Well, I don't know that it was fancy, but just apologetic work. And I'm thinking this is eventually I'm going to win this or something like that. And it came to a dead end. And then I asked her, I said, you know enough about Christianity and you clearly know Islam well, for somebody who's new to the Islamic faith, does it not concern you that in this new faith of yours that you have no assurance of salvation. And her response is another one of these, what they call these aha moments, I guess, where she said, it doesn't bother me because Allah has already determined my fate. My job is to be a good. To submit to Allah. And the way Muslims generally talk about this is that all human beings are actually by nature Muslim. There's a primordial covenant that's established with all of humanity. And so when they don't even talk about conversion, they talk about reversion back to your original nature when you embrace Islam. But wow, they, they. So when they. If you embrace Islam, the goal is not to. Not assurance of salvation. They're really not concerned about that the way that Christian or Christian theology is concerned with that question. They're concerned with what do you do now in this life? Yeah, Submission, following the. I mean, every prayer they say starts with the recitation of the first chapter of the Quran. That petitions a lot that they would be able to follow this, what they call the Sirat mustaqeen, a straight path to paradise. So I mean, salvation paradise is. Is there. But the focus is now what.
- [47:13]
Bob Hiller
What does a Muslim hear when they hear about the active obedience of Christ, about him submitting to the will on our behalf? And does that just sound like. How does that. How do they hear that?
- [47:24]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, for them. So there's a. There's one passage in the Quran that says something like one cannot die for the sins of another. And that's the typical. And I don't remember chapter and verse anymore, but that's the typical passage they'll quote to being a passage against any sort of substitutionary atonement or anything like that. And so while they can hear it, it doesn't. Because the Quran says there is no vicarious or Christ does not live this vicarious life and die in our place or anything like that. It's just not on the table. It doesn't fit the framework. So, Adam, what do they do with the Day of Judgment? Because you said one of the five major teachings is judgment. So is that a hopeful day? Is that just an inevitable day like the Quran is all over the place on that question. The picture, the. The way there's a lot of agree. Everybody agrees that there will be a day of Judgment, that it will be preceded by a general resurrection. The living and the dead and all people will be judged on the basis that are good and bad deeds is kind of what the Quran suggests. But there's a lot of verses that say there will be surprises, there will be people who are non Muslims who did the best that was in them, so to speak, and actually end up in paradise. And there will be Muslims who are naughty Jack Muslims maybe, and they end up in hellfire. So there's a determinism there. The way that sometimes it's described when they get into the details is as every individual stands before Allah. There's two scrolls that have been written on since you've been born. There's these recording angels sitting on your shoulder, as they say. And one is writing every bad deed you did and one is writing every good deed that you did. And they're unraveled at the end of time and depending on what's. What's longer is going to largely determine where you end up. Unless of course, you die as a shaheed or a martyr in this life, then you'll, you get immediate salvation. But then the Quran says that you're going to be taken up into paradise and there'll be like these black eyed houris, these perpetual virgins who are going to be like reaching down to you and say, come on up here. You're going to receive your reward. But it was such an honor to die in the path of Allah that you petition to go back down and do it all over again. So again, the Quranic eschatology and martyrology I guess you could describe it is, it's all over the place in the Quran, but it's, it's eerie, very sensual. Playboy Mansion and actually quite, quite dangerous too. Like, because if that's, if you're like some, if you're some teenage kid with no hope of finding a spouse or whatever, you know that, that you get this reward, there it is.
- [50:06]
Justin Holcomb
Yeah, it's interesting. The, the good and bad deeds versus the determinism versus the martyrdom and those things come together. That's, that's something I'll need to look into more.
- [50:14]
Bob Hiller
Thanks for.
- [50:14]
Mike Horton
Yeah, that's really helpful. Adam. Thank you for, for coming in and, and helping us understand more about Islam and how to communicate with these wonderful people we encounter who in many cases are happy to talk to us about it. We have to be ready to give them an answer for the hope that we have. Thanks again.
- [50:34]
Dr. Adam Francisco
You're welcome.
- [50:41]
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