WM 167: Why do Muslim Apologists love the Modern Critical Text?

I have posted WM 167: Why do Muslim Apologists love the Modern Critical Text? Listen above. Notes below:

Those of us who defend the traditional text of Scripture have often been accused, especially by one PIA, of having no meaningful apologetic. We are told that we cannot use our approach “in the real world” while at the same time we are told that in order to meaningfully speak with non-Christians, and especially Muslims, that we must embrace the modern approach to text criticism. We must convince Muslims that the text of the Bible, though it has supposedly been corrupted, it can be reconstructed, and its past corruptions do not affect the Bible’s authority and reliability.

Defenders of the TR have pointed out that such an approach is, in fact, a capitulation to Muslims who gleefully embrace scholarly rejections of the Bible’s textual integrity and abandonment of the doctrine of providential preservation of the text.

We all know there is one apologist who quite frequently humble-brags (humble-boasts) about being invited to give presentations on the text of the Bible before Muslim audiences and within Muslim mosques, where he concedes its textual corruption. He never seems to stop and wonder why it is that the Muslims are so eager to have him “dialogue” with them, or why they so often post extended clips of his teaching (not taken out of context but given in full context) to their own apologetic social media sites.

Along these lines, I would commend to you the CB Roundtable #3 from May 26, 2020 in which Pastor Pooyan did a presentation on the TR and Apologetics, explaining that in fact it is the traditional text that is most useful in doing evangelism with non-believers and with those who Muslim backgrounds, in particular. One of the things that stood out was that Pastor Pooyan noted that the ministry of religion in the Iranian government is actively involved in translating scholarly materials from the West (including works of prominent evangelicals) on the text of the Bible. Why are they doing this? Not to promote Christianity but to undermine it and to further the Muslim narrative on the hopeless corruption of Scripture.

So, let’s move on to the first clip. This was sent to me a couple of months ago by a friend. It is a video from the Muslim apologist Adnan Rashid from a 4/17/20 titled “Will David Wood Accept Islam?” Start at the 15:22 mark.

Notice how Rashid draws on Bruce Metzger, Bart Ehrman, as well as Michael J. Kruger to make his point.

Next, let’s go to a more recent clip. This comes from an online debate between the Eastern Orthodox internet philosopher Jay Dyer (perhaps POIA, Popular Orthodox Internet Apologist) in a debate with Shabir Ally from June 6, 2020 where the topic was “Is Jesus God Incarnate?” What is interesting here is the fact that while they were debating the Trinity, Ally drew upon James White as an ally to disregard the CJ. Listen to 50:45-54:30.

So, “Why do Muslim Apologists love the modern critical text of the Bible and those who promote it?”

Sadly, the answer is because it fits their narrative of the Christian Scriptures as being textually corrupted, hopelessly confused, and not providentially preserved by God?”

It is, in fact, only those who hold to the historic Protestant view of the Bible as “kept pure in all ages” who will be able to offer a meaningful apologetic to Muslim and other skeptics.

We are living in some strange times. It is sad to see historical monuments begin torn down without regard for the history and traditions which undergird them. And it is equally sad to see a literary monument come under withering attack (since the nineteenth century) and unrelenting attempts to topple it.

As noted here more than once, such attacks seem to continue to be resisted and frustrated by at least a remnant. To what do we attribute the tenacity of the traditional text? Ignorance? Naivete? Threadbare tradition? Perhaps, but there is another explanation for this tenacity. Perhaps it continues to persist, because it is the Word of God.

JTR

Charles Marsh on avoiding the "comparative religions" approach to evangelism

I shared this quote in WM 136 from Charles Marsh, who served as a longtime Brethren missionary in North Africa, from his book The Challenge of Islam (Ark Publishing, 1980), under a section headed “Mistakes to avoid” in doing evangelism with Muslims:

Do not give him a free tuition in Islam! Remember that not every Muslim is a theologian. In fact, many who come to Europe as students or workmen know very little about their faith. A man in the villages of Algeria once assured me, ‘Everything I know about Islam I learned from the missionaries!’ The Christian states, ‘The Bible says…, but you Muslims believe….’ The Muslim was totally unaware of that particular point of the Islamic faith. It is the missionary who taught him. Avoid the type of discussion which is based on comparative religion. Religions have always antagonized, but faith in a living God who works in men’s lives carries conviction (171).

See also this blog post on Marsh from 2015.

JTR

WM 122: TR and Apologetics: Robert Truelove Interviews Pooyan Mehrshahi

Image: Cover to the Gospel of John in Farsi, translated from the TR, Trinitarian Bible Society (read online here).

I have posted to sermonaudio.com WM 122: TR and Apologetics: Robert Truelove Interviews Pooyan Mehrshahi (listen here).

This episode shares an interview posted to Robert Truelove's youtube channel on May 16, 2019 and is shared with his permission (watch the video here). Pooyan Mehrshahi is pastor of Providence Baptist Chapel in Cheltenham, England (listen to his sermons and teaching here). He is also engaged in ministry to Farsi speaking people through the Parsa Trust (look here and here).

The podcast addresses the challenge made by some modern text advocates that adoption of the confessional text means the supposed abandonment of meaningful apologetics, especially with Muslims. Pastor Pooyan ably points out that this challenge is groundless, and, in fact, it is the modern critical text position that proves problematic in apologetics.

Enjoy! JTR

Calvin on Papists, Mahometans, and the Sufficiency of Scripture

I’ve been reading Calvin’s commentary on John as I preach expositionally through the Fourth Gospel. In those sermons I only get to refer to a fraction of the Geneva master’s insights. One overlooked comment from recent sermons on John 4 was Calvin’s contrast of the woman at the well’s simple trust in Christ (turning from the corruption of Samaritan religion) with that of “Papists” and “Mahometans” in his remarks on John 4:25:

I wish that those who now boast of being the pillars of the Christian Church, would at least imitate this poor woman, so as to be satisfied by the simple doctrine of Christ, rather than claim I know not what power of superintendence for putting forth their inventions. For whence was the religion of the Pope and Mahomet collected but from the wicked additions, by which they imagined that they brought the doctrine of the Gospel to a state of perfection? As if it would have been incomplete without such fooleries. But whoever shall be well taught in the school of Christ will ask no other instructors, and indeed will not receive them.

….There is, therefore, no danger that he will disappoint one of those whom he finds ready to become his disciples. But they who refuse to submit to him, as we see done by many haughty and irreligious men, or who hope to find elsewhere a wisdom more perfect—as the Mahometans and Papists do—deserve to be driven about by innumerable enchantments, and at length to be plunged in an abyss of errors….

Notice that Calvin sees the problem with both groups to be their tendency to make “wicked additions” to Scripture in order to bring it to “perfection.” For Calvin, the Scriptures are sufficient and complete as they are.

JTR

The ancient Greek roots of the confinement of women to the home in Islam

When reading Ibn Warraq’s analysis of women in Islam, I was struck by this statement:

The veil was adopted by the Arabs from the Persians, and the woman’s obligation to stay closed in at home was a tradition copied from the Byzantines, who in turn had adopted an ancient Greek custom (Why I am Not a Muslim, p. 315).

What I found intriguing is the idea that the Muslim practice of primarily confining women to the home has its roots in the ancient Greek practice. Classicist William Stearns Davis in a work on daily life in ancient Athens observes:

An Athenian never allows his wife to visit the Agora. She cannot indeed go outside the house without his express permission, and only then attended by one or two serving maids; public opinion will likewise frown upon the man who allows his wife to appear in public too freely; nevertheless there are compensations. Within the home the Athenian woman is within her kingdom (A Day in Old Athens, p. 39).

In Roman society, though women had considerably more freedom than in ancient Greece, including the general freedom to leave the home and to appear in public, there were still significant limitations.  William Stearns Davis describes the status of women in Rome in the early second century A.D.:

Roman women are, indeed, excluded from seats in the Senate and from the long-defunct right to vote in the public assemblies. They cannot command armies nor receive governorships, although every now and then an angry senator vainly proposes a resolution that governors shall not take their wives along with them to the provinces, lest the latter constitute themselves the real rulers of the district. Women do not act as judges or jurors. Nay more: legally, they are under legal disabilities calculated to stir the rage of their “equal suffrage” sisters of a later day. They have always the status of minors, and are subject to the legal control of either father, guardian, or husband to their dying hour (A Day in Old Rome, p. 60).

One of the ironies of modern times is the fact that Christianity is often depicted by its critics as patriarchal and misogynistic, when, in fact, the spread of Christianity, especially in the West, gave women unprecedented dignity and liberty.

JTR 

Book Note: Ibn Warraq, "Why I am Not a Muslim"

Ibn Warraq, Why I am Not a Muslim (Prometheus Books, 1995, 2003): 402 pp.

Ibn Warraq (a pseudonym, meaning “son of a papermaker”) is a Pakistani former Muslim and now secular thinker who has become a leading critic of Islam. He wrote this book in 1995 in response to threats against Salman Rushdie and what Warraq believed was a failure among Westerners, in particular, to defend free speech and to critique Islam.  You can watch a video of Warraq sharing his personal story, while doing a talk on “Why I am Not a Muslim” here.

Warraq offers a sometimes scathing rationalistic, Enlightenment-influenced review of Islam, covering the historic roots of the movement, the life of Muhammed, the Koran and hadith, Muslim theology and practice, the view of women in Islam, and Muslims in the West, among other things. Warraq writes as a religious skeptic, a modern David Hume, rather than as a Christian apologist.  Indeed, he is just as skeptical of Christianity as he is of Islam. The back cover has endorsements from the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Anthony Flew.

Though Warraq says he is not “a scholar or a specialist" (xv), the book has a scholarly feel to it, with numerous references to primary and secondary works on Islam.  Like the works of another former-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, perhaps the most intriguing thing about the book is that is written by someone who knows the theology and practice of Islam from firsthand experience and finds it wanting.

Here are some gleanings from Warraq’s book:

On Muhammed:

Assassinations, murder, cruelty, and torture must all be taken into consideration in any judgment on the moral character of Muhammed (p. 99).

On the Koran:

The doctrine of abrogation [the Muslim view that some verses in the Koran are superseded by later verses] also makes a mockery of the Muslim dogma that the Koran is a faithful and unalterable reproduction of the original scriptures that are preserved in heaven. If God’s words are eternal, uncreated, and of universal significance, how then can we talk of God’s word being superseded or becoming obsolete? Are some words of God to be preferred to other words of God? Apparently yes. According to Muir, some 200 verses have been cancelled by later ones. Thus we have the strange situation where the entire Koran is recited as the word of God, and yet there are passages that can be considered not “true”; in other words, 3 percent of the Koran is acknowledged as falsehood (p. 115).

Muhammed was not a systematic thinker, and it is futile to look for a coherent set of principles in the Koran (p. 334).

On Islam and Monotheism:

Far from raising the moral standards of the Arabs, Islam seems to have sanctioned all sorts of immoral behavior (p. 116).

Enough has been said to show that such a system [Islam] is as rich and superstitious as any Greek, Roman, or Norse polytheistic mythology (p. 117).

The Muslim doctrine of the Devil also comes close at times to ditheism, i.e., the positing of two powerful Beings (p. 118).

On Islamic “Fundamentalism”:

Hence in my view, there is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. Islam is deeply embedded in every Muslim society, and “fundamentalism” is simply the excess of this culture (p. 185).

On Islamic Imperialism:

Although Europeans are constantly castigated for having imposed their insidious and decadent values, culture, and language on the Third World, no one cares to point out that Islam colonized lands that were the homes of advanced and ancient civilizations, and that in doing so, Islamic colonialism trampled under foot and permanently destroyed many cultures (p. 198).

On Islam and Slavery:

Slavery in the Islamic world continued, astonishingly enough, well into the twentieth century…. There is enough evidence to show that slavery persisted in Saudi Arabia and the Yemen up to the 1950s. Slavery was so deeply rooted in these countries that abolition was a very slow process. It was due to foreign influence that the process began at all. Islam …. has never preached the abolition of slavery as a doctrine…. (p. 205).

On Women and Islam:

To see Islam as sex-positive is to insult all Muslim women, for sex is seen entirely from the male point of view; a woman’s sexuality, as we shall see, is either denied … or seen as something unholy, something to be feared, repressed, a work of the devil (291).

Modern reformist Muslim intellectuals—male or female—when confronted by the apparent backwardness of the position of women (a situation which has remained stagnant for centuries) have tended to invent a mythological golden age at the dawn of Islam when women putatively enjoyed equal rights….  These same Muslim thinkers, when faced by the textual evidence of the inherent misogyny of Islam, are confused and anguished…. The reformists cannot win on these terms—whatever mental gymnastics the reformists perform, they cannot escape the fact that Islam is deeply antifeminist… Islam has always considered women as creatures inferior to men in every way: physically, intellectually, and morally (p. 293).

On Islam and freedom:

No Muslim country has developed a stable democracy; Muslims are being subjected to every kind of repression possible. Under these conditions healthy criticism of society is not possible, because critical thought and liberty go together (p. 294).

But multiculturalism is based on some fundamental misconceptions. There is the erroneous and sentimental belief that all cultures, deep down, have the same values; or if these values are different, they are equally worthy of respect. Multiculuralism, being the child of relativism, is incapable of criticizing cultures, of making cross-cultural judgements. The truth is that not all cultures have the same values, and not all values are worthy of respect (p. 356).

JTR

The Vision (10.2.15): He came from above

The past few weeks I have enjoyed reading two works by Charles R. Marsh, a longtime Brethren missionary to the people of Algeria.

The first book I read on plane trips between Kuala Lampur and Hong Kong is titled The Challenge of Islam (Scripture Union, 1980).  It is a compelling and sometimes heart rending account of Marsh’s ministry to the Muslims of Algeria, including the hardships and opposition that he and those who became believers through his ministry suffered.  This week I’ve been reading a second book by Marsh titled Share Your Faith With a Muslim (Moody Press, 1975).

One concern that Marsh offers in both books is that Christians who witness to Muslims should avoid what he calls “the comparative religions” approach to evangelism.  He observes:

In many lands Muslims still have a very superficial knowledge of their religion.  They repeat the witness to Muhammed, follow Muslim prayers, and observe the fast of Ramadan.  Remember that while we should know what Muslims believe, our aim is not to compare religions but to lead them to a personal commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ (Share Your Faith With a Muslim, p. 6).

Marsh warns that Christians should not unwittingly instruct Muslims in the finer points of their religion (and, thereby, entrench them their beliefs) but speak to them instead of Christ!

In one chapter in Share Your Faith With a Muslim Marsh provides a helpful outline of a gospel presentation he made many times to Muslim hearers on Jesus as the Son of God.   In his discussion of the incarnation of Christ, Marsh provides this illustration to describe how Jesus “came from above” to take a human body and become a man:

Two men once fell into a deep pit.  One said to the other, “Save me from this wretched place.  Please get me out of the dirt and mud.”  The other replied:  “You idiot, how can I?  I am in the same plight as you.”  They were both in the pit, and neither could help the other.  Then they heard a voice from above calling them to grasp a rope.  The man who had not fallen into the pit was the only one who could save them.  He brought help from above.  The very best man among the prophets could not save us from the pit of sin, but Jesus did not inherit a sinful nature.  He came from above.  God sent angels to announce his birth (read Mt 1:20 and Luke 2:9).  How wonderful all this is.  Never man was born as this man. He is unique in His birth.  He is incomparable (p. 47).

The only tweak I might add to the illustration would be to note that Christ not only drops the rope into the pit but he climbs in himself and lifts us out!

May we learn to speak and live clearly and plainly for Christ, who came from above to rescue us from the pit of sin.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

NOTE:  As stated on Sunday:  Thanks to all the members and friends of CRBC who worked last weekend to make the 2015 Keach Conference a success.  Everyone pitched in to spruce up the church building, make bulletins, record sermons, cook meals, greet guests, and extend hospitality overall.  It was a great team effort!

Blog recommendation: Answering Muslims

Yesterday morning I noticed while listening to NPR and the BBC on the radio that they were suggesting that the shooting this week in the Jewish school in Toulouse, France might have been the act of a Neo-Nazi or a racist, anti-immigrant nationalist.  They were even suggesting that the shooting might have been encouraged by right-wing rhetoric in France's current Presidential election campaign. The one possibility they did not suggest was that it might have been the work of an Islamic terrorist.  Today, however, the French police have cornered the presumed terrorist who is Mohammed Merah, a French citizen of Algerian descent, claiming to be part of al-Quaeda.  For an interesting blog that often makes plain the kinds of obvious conclusions that media like NPR and BBC fear to mention, check out Answering Muslims, the Islamoblog of Acts 17 Apologetics.

Sermon of the Week: James White on Islam

This past week I listened to apologist James White's 5 part series from The 2011 Bunyan Conference at Grace Reformed Baptist Church, near Houston, TX on the subject of Islam.  Though I do not agree with White on his views of the text of Scripture, I was helped by his presentation.

White makes the point that text criticism is a major issue in apologetics with Islam, since they hold that Christian Scriptures are corrupted.  It irks White that Muslims draw on secular NT critics--like Ehrman--to make their points.  The problem is that they might draw just as well from evangelical text critics--like Dan Wallace--who have embraced "reasoned eclecticism."  How might holding to a providentially preserved traditional text change the dynamics in dialogue with Muslims?  White makes the point that the stabilization and standardization of the Koranic text (though there are still variants which orthodox Muslims ignore) came through civil enforcement.  This makes the persistence of a consistent traditional text of Christian Scripture all the more amazing since it did not come from civil enforcement and appeared across geographical borders.  In other words it simply came from churches which acknowledged it by their practice to be the authentic, preserved Word of God.

White takes on plenty of other issues.  I think the best is his argument that the Koran does not understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity but confuses it with tri-theism.  Worth listening.

JTR