Islam: What Every Christian Should Know What does the Biblical Revelation say about God? Fairness calls for the acknowledgment that the majority of Muslims have a high view of their absolute deity-Allah. The term ‘Allahu Akbar’ or ‘al-takbir’ (Allah is most great), which is uttered frequently by Muslims in the routine daily prayers and other occasions, coupled with their recitation of some of the most excellent names for Allah including his mercy and benevolence, is a reflection of their devotion to him. The problem arrives when we come to encounter Allah in different light as we have seen above described in capricious terms. I will leave the answer to Muslim scholars to reconcile the lack of harmony in these conflicting accounts. In the mean time, let us gaze at the God of the Bible as He has revealed Himself by tracing some of His perfections throughout the Scripture, particularly those that are relevant to our discussion in connection with the Allah of Islam. The God of the Bible is distinctive and great in at least two ways: First, He is absolute and totally other than His creation. Second, God is personal, imminent and approachable. God is absolute and totally other than His creation. God is totally other in a number of attributes, which according to L. Berkhof are incommunicable (not shared by any human being). These include the following: 1) “Self-existent.” God is totally independent from any causation. 2) ”Unchanging.” God’s perfection is unalterable; His perfection cannot increase nor decrease, for He does not need any improvement nor subject to any deterioration. He is infinitely unchangeable. 3)”Eternal and Infinite.” He exists from all eternity; the first cause of every thing that exists; unlimited by time and space. 4)”the Unity of God.” There is only but one Divine God. He is not composed of different parts or essences, but one in essence in His state of blessed triunity. Other attributes setting Him apart from creation include: 5)“Spirit and invisible.” God is not composed of matter, and does not possess physical nature, nor can He be confined by the span of time and matter. 6)“Creator.” while distinct from all creation, He is the creator of everything that exists. 7)“All-knowing.” The nature of His knowledge is perfect; nothing in the past, the present and the future escapes His perfect awareness. “All-powerful” Yet, His power is conformed to His infinite goodness, never employed capriciously. 7)“Sovereign.” There is no limit to his absolute authority over the universe and humanity. Nevertheless, His sovereignty is the ground for the believer’s confidence, for His sovereignty is an extension of all His perfections including His goodness and righteousness. “Greatness” “For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.” (Deut. 10:17). God is personal, imminent and approachable. He graciously shared certain attributes with man in a limited measure. To these God’s perfect moral attributes now we shall turn, keeping in mind how they contrast to Allah as described in specific passages in the Quran and Hadith as discussed previously: A) The God of the Bible is Holy. While the term “holy” is mentioned only once in the Quran in connection with Allah, the Bible, attributes holiness to God more than ninety two-times. At the center of God’s perfections revealed in the bible is His holiness. It is the essence of His moral character. He is alone holy and all righteousness; morality finds its origin in Him. God is always consistent with His moral purity. “... His works are perfect,and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He” (Deut. 32:4); “His way is perfect” (Ps. 18:30); His “eyes are too pure to look on evil; cannot tolerate wrong” (Hab. 1:13). Consequently, sin and iniquity are foreign to Him and provoke His holy indignation. B) The God of the Bible is trustworthy and faithful. He never leads anyone astray nor entices any to do wrong: “The Lord is abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exo. 34:6); “All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful for who keeps the demands of His covenant” (Ps. 25:10); “God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (1Cor. 10:13); “Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you” (Ps. 9:10). C) The God of the Bible is truthful. One of the disturbing descriptions of Allah in the Quran-at least for me-was this verse: “... and Allah schemed and Allah is the best of schemers” (3:54). On the other hand, one of the most encouraging attributes for God in the Bible in His truthfulness. He can never be misleading, whimsical or arbitrary, but is always consistent and faithful to all His promises. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed. (Josh 23:14); God, ... does not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man, that He should change His mind (1 Sam. 15:29); for the word of the Lord is right and true; He is faithful in all He does (Ps. 33:4); ... God is truthful (John 3:33). D) The God of the Bible is loving and good. The distinct biblical teaching on love finds its justification in the character of God. While this emphasis is practically absent in Islam, it is built intrinsically into the very nature of the biblical God. The Bible says: God is love (1 John 4:8). As far as I know, the Greek term “agape” used in the Bible in connection with the unconditional love of God is an exclusively Christian concept; it is not established clearly in other religions, including Islam. Nothing in us attracted God to love us. As fallen, sinful and rebellious people nothing lovable and worthy is found in us. Gods supreme example of this kind of love was expressed on the Cross, entirely by His grace. God is good. The Word of God says: “O Lord...You are good, and what you do is good, “How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you” (Ps. 31:19;Ps. 119: 68). It is plain that God, unlike man, He has goodness inherent in Himself, for He is eternally good. Unlike other deities, the God of the Bible in never vindictive and unpredictable, but always good and just. His justice is consistent with His holiness, mercy, compassion, graciousness, wisdom, longsuffering and patience. Not so in Islam. Islam teaches that man is essentially good. Such a high view of man’s goodness, based on the denial of original sin, is also found in the early Christian heresy of Pelagianism. Both Islam and Pelagius downplay original sin, transmitted to all human beings as a result of Adam’s fall. Thus man is capable of earning salvation on his own by utilizing certain guidance from Allah and observance of specific rules and rituals. E) The God of the Bible is the God of grace. The basis for Gods Love is His nature and His grace manifested in history in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Bible says: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8). Gods grace reverberates throughout the Bible. In Exodus 34:6 we read: “The LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.” The New Testament echoes the grace of God in these words: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8-9). Thus at the heart of the Gospel is God’s redemptive grace. It is undeserved grace: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (II Cor. 5:18). In Islam, however, grace (‘Nemah’) is not understood in a redemptive sense; rather, it is connected with common grace, benefiting all mankind and connected with the idea of bounty and material blessing and benevolence. It is true that the idea of common grace is found in the Bible - God cares, sustains his creation and restrains human society from destroying itself by evil: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). Nonetheless, this grace is not sufficient for salvation. It is God’s special grace through His redemptive work in Christ by which we are redeemed. God’s grace is always sufficient and efficient; nothing can frustrate its purpose of saving all those who embrace the savior. F) The God of the Bible is knowable. Muslims do not hesitate to assert that Allah is absolute incomprehensible unity, which cannot be described by any human language, or by human perception (Quran 42:11; 6:103). Furthermore, the multiple names for Allah, according to Muslims, are not meant to describe Allah’s essence, but to show that there is no simplistic notion of Allah. All human languages, categories and conventions cannot delineate his nature. The phrase “Allah Akbar” (Allah is great), which summons Muslims for prayer, is meant to remind the believers of his absolute transcendency. Allah made his will known on the pages of the Quran, and to a certain extent by the creation, but he remains hidden, inaccessible in a personal way. The Bible, however, describes God in a distinctive way. We are told that God is a personal Being and has created man in His own image; it seems most reasonable to believe that He would have communion and fellowship with the beings which He had created. This affirmation is echoed in numerous passages in the Scripture: 1) God made himself known to us: “Then the man [Adam] and his wife [Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the Garden.” (Gen 3:8); “The Lord said to Abram . “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you” (Gen. 12:1); “.. I know you by name” (Exod. 33:17); “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart..” (Jer. 1:5); “But now that you know God-or rather are known by God-how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles?” (Gal. 4:9). 2) God is known by His miraculous works: “Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation by testing, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds,like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?” (Duet. 4:34); “Come and see the works of the LORD,... Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted in the Earth” (Ps. 46:8;10); “Come and see what God has done, how awesome His works on man’s behalf! He turned the sea into dry land, they passed through the waters on foot-come, let us rejoice in Him” (Ps. 66:5-6). 3) God is known by His creation: “O LORD, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8:1); “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the works of His hand. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.” (Ps. 19:1-2); “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them”; “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Rom. 1:21). 4) God is knowable by His written Scripture: “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,” (2Tim. 3:16); “the Law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Ps. 19: 7); “And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2Pet. 1:19-21). 5) The God of the Bible is made known in Christ: Conceivably, the heart of the Gospel is outlined in one verse: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). There are three main reasons why Christ came in the flesh: a) He came to show us the Father: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9); “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27); “Jesus answered... “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). It is plain that Jesus claimed that in Him alone God is perfectly revealed. The Shorter Catechism asks the question: “What is God? Answer: “God is a spirit, whose being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth are infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.” This definition is now personified in Jesus Christ. Such a manifestation and full revelation of the Father in Jesus Christ would at once set all abstract conceptions about God at rest, making the Gospel the only viable and clear disclosure of God to man. b) To reconcile us to God: Reconciliation presupposes enmity. Genesis 3 demonstrates the dawn of fear and guilt and alienation from God because of man’s rebellion against the Holy God. When Adam and Eve sinned, they realized their shame and guilt and hid from God, experiencing objective guilt, which can be removed only by God’s own initiative. While the biblical account asserts that Adams sin of disobedience resulted in the total depravity of human nature and carried with it far reaching consequences, it also provides the remedy. The Gospel says of Christ: “He is the image of the invisible God... and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross” (Col. 1:15, 20). This change of attitude from hostility to harmony is the central doctrine of redemptive history where Christ took upon Himself the penalty which we deserve in order to assuage the holy justice of God and restore our broken relationship with Him. Hence, we are released from a state of sin and fear to grace and freedom; for “... God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:19). As far as the Gospel is concerned, nothing in all religious practices-no matter how intense, passionate and sincere they are - can remove man’s guilt and bring him to right relationship with his creator. Samuel Zwemer described the Islamic religious practices as “barren formalism.” The majority of Muslims see that their salvation rests upon the total obedience to the sacred law and engagement in meticulous performance of religious duties. Such conviction results in definite inner crises which, according to Hebrews 9:9, will never clear the conscience. Legalism contradicts the heart of the Christian message of reconciliation, which can only come through faith in Jesus Christ. An increasing number of adherents to Islam find themselves troubled by tradition and are moving away from legalism to a more mystical and personal way of worship. The Sufi sect is very fascinating and worthy of much study. It evolved to become a new “Tarikah” (way) within Islam that moved away from blind obedience to tradition to a more personal relationship with God by stressing certain themes. Some of their major ideas overlap with some biblical and Christian themes. Among these are the inward search for God; the love of God; the immediacy of God (in contrast with his absolute transcendence in traditional Islam); grace (not necessarily the same Christian understanding of grace); humility; love for one’s neighbor; personal communion with God in the form of chanting, dancing, and repetition of certain liturgical formulas. c) He came to destroy the works of the Devil. The Word of God clearly says: “Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:7-8). Certainly, the devil has succeeded in separating man from his fellowship with God in the garden of Eden. However, as we have seen above, the reconciling work of Christ has defeated the devil’s schemes and work. Hope, forgiveness, cleansing from sin, fellowship with God become possible in Christ. The promise of crushing the devil’s head in Genesis 3:15 is now fulfilled through Christ’s victory on the Cross of Calvary. Jesus Christ now achieves what man’s religions were unable to accomplish. “Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin is sinful man” (Rom 8:1-3). The Quran seems to describe Christ in divergent terms. Some, however, substantiate the biblical narratives. For example, the Quran refers to Christ as: The “Messiah” (3:45); His virgin birth (3:47); Advocate to God (3; 45). Another important designation of Jesus is “Word” (cf. John 1:1). In Surah 3:45 translated literally it is, “O Mary! God giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus.” George Sale translates this verse more literally from the original Arabic: “O Mary! God sendeth thee good tidings, that thou shalt bear the Word, proceeding from Himself; his name shall be Christ Jesus” (Sale, George 1734). The “Word, proceeding from Himself” seems to be correlative to John’s affirmation of Christ’s eternality being incarnated as Jesus the Messiah. Martin Luther says at this point: “just as a man has a word in his heart, so also God in His eternal majestic and Deity has a thought, a word in his own heart, with himself. This word, which God the Father has, is so entirely one with Him, so that there is nothing in God which does not also belong to the Word, so that when we see the Word we see God.” John illustrates a great theological truth. Jesus belongs to a timeless eternity. As Augustine says, ”He is in the beginning which has no beginning.” 6) The God of the Bible is approachable. In answering the above stated question, Is God knowable in other religions?, we concluded that the concept of god varies from one religion to another. For some, the supreme deity remains hidden, austere, inflexible and capricious; for others, he is an abstract void that cannot be known, still for some he is always silent, vague and impersonal. In contrast, the Bible sketches for us a beautiful picture of God being knowable and accessible in a personal manner. Moses asks the rhetorical question: “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near whenever we pray to Him?” (Duet. 4:7); “The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them.” (Ps. 145:18); “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt. 5:8); “But when you pray, go to your room, close the door and pray to your father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6); “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” (Rom. 5:1-2); “Come near to God and He will come near to you” (Jam. 4:8). 7) God is known experientially by fellowship with Him through Christ. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Fathers side, has made him known” (John 1:17-18); “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true--even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 02:10:47 +0000
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