No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity
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In this latter scenario, should the blind man conclude that a miracle has occurred? I would argue that, in the latter case, he is justified in concluding that a miracle has occurred. Even though the physical act is the same in both scenarios—oil pouring over his head—the latter scenario is charged with supernatural expectation. On account of the context, it is not unreasonable to conclude he has experienced a miracle.
Furthermore, if the circumstances can be verified by an investigator, the investigator also ought to conclude that a miracle has occurred. Let us imagine that the man’s praying and arguing with God were caught on surveillance video, as were the family’s prayer session and anointing with oil, with the result that the blind man can now see. Not only can an objective investigator responsibly conclude that a miracle has happened, it is his duty to do so. Otherwise, he is not being objective but is importing a naturalist bias.
In the same way, if something extraordinary and inexplicable has happened in history, and that extraordinary event is charged with supernatural expectation, and there are solid historical facts surrounding the event that have no other probable explanation, a historian can reasonably conclude that a miracle has indeed happened.
CONCLUSION
As a Muslim observing Mike’s debate, I had to agree that if Jesus really did die on the cross, there was excellent reason to believe he rose from the dead. Historically speaking, the three facts are indisputable: Jesus died by crucifixion, his disciples truly believed they had seen him risen, and even men who were not his disciples truly believed they had seen him risen. Nothing accounts for these facts without strain apart from the resurrection hypothesis, and even as objective observers, the spiritually charged context allows us to conclude that a miracle has happened. Along with the early church, history testifies that Jesus rose from the dead.
But despite what history indicated, I was not yet convinced Jesus actually died on the cross. There was one other matter that I and the Muslim world around me found not just problematic but highly offensive.
CHAPTER 26
THE ISLAMIC RESPONSE
ALL PAUL’S FAULT
After Mike presented the minimal facts for Jesus’ resurrection, Shabir Ally took the stage to defend the Islamic stance. He responded primarily by challenging fact 1, asserting that we cannot be sure Jesus died by crucifixion. Not only was this an understandable response on account of 4.157 of the Quran, but it was actually the expected response. Muslims are normally less concerned with the supernatural implications of the resurrection than with the physical death of Jesus in the first place.
Part of the reason why is because, along with Christians, most Muslims believe in Jesus’ ascension. Immediately after denying Jesus’ death on the cross, the Quran says in 4.158, “Rather, Allah raised him toward himself.” On account of this belief, the average Muslim does not immediately conceive of the resurrection as a problem, usually assuming it to be a corollary of the Christian misunderstanding that Jesus died on the cross. According to the average Muslim, yes, Jesus was raised to heaven, but no, he did not first die on the cross. It was not a resurrection but an ascension.
For these reasons, of the hundreds of Muslim-Christian dialogues I have seen and taken part in, first as a Muslim and then as a Christian, Muslims make a robust effort to challenge Jesus’ death but generally leave the rest of the case for the resurrection untouched. Apart from what was discussed in chapter 22, there is no common response to the arguments for the resurrection, with one significant exception.
MUSLIMS AND PAUL
Since the Quran teaches that Jesus was a prophet and that his followers were righteous men, we regarded Jesus’ disciples with high esteem. According to 3.52, the disciples answered Jesus’ call to righteously follow Allah, and in 3.55, Allah promises to exalt Jesus’ followers, making them superior to others until the Day of Resurrection.1
That said, Muslims today recognize that Christian teachings are diametrically opposed to Islamic doctrine. Christianity teaches that God became a man and died on the cross for our sins—doctrines that Muslims consider inconceivable and blasphemous. So, from our perspective as a Muslim community, Christian teachings had been corrupted.
But when were they corrupted? When we trace these beliefs back, we find that they were the beliefs of the earliest church. Therefore, Muslims have to believe that somehow, during the time of the disciples themselves, the early church was infiltrated and its message corrupted. This had to be the work of someone powerful, someone other than the disciples.
There is only one obvious figure who fits that description: Paul.
It is for this reason that Paul’s motives, character, and authority are called into question. It was Paul who took the religion taught by Jesus and turned it into the religion about Jesus. In the debate with Mike, Shabir Ally described mainstream Christianity as a Pauline invention. “Later Christianity would follow the line of Paul,” argues Ally. “There was tension between Paul and the original disciples of Jesus and the family of Jesus, so Paul was celebrated and the family and disciples of Jesus were denigrated.” Ally implies that the disagreements Paul had with Peter and James are evidence of a schism in early Christianity wherein the Pauline version ultimately won.
A second common and important argument is that Jesus told his disciples to follow the Law, whereas Paul said the Law has been abolished. The evidence for this position is found by highlighting Matthew 5:17, in which Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (NIV). This verse seems to imply that Jesus has come to uphold the Law, but Paul says in Romans 3:28, “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (NIV). Therefore, Muslims say Paul contradicts Jesus.
There are many other common challenges to Paul that Muslims suggest, but the third and final one we will cover here is one of the most significant. Muslims often argue that Paul never saw Jesus, and that he rarely comments on the historical Jesus in his letters. Therefore, Paul must not have been concerned about who Jesus actually was, but rather was interested in turning Jesus into the Son of God, even God himself.
This has been but a quick foray into the reasons why Muslims distrust Paul and consider him to be the corrupter of true Christianity and the founder of the blasphemous religion that worships a man and ignores God’s law—that is, today’s mainstream Christianity. This view is espoused by Muslim apologists and imams worldwide, and it filters down unabated to the average Muslim, as it did to me. In truth, almost every single Muslim-Christian conversation about early Christianity I have heard comes to a gridlock on the person of Paul. It is hard to exaggerate how much Muslims distrust Paul and how much they hold him accountable for the shape of Christianity today.
CONCLUSION OF THE ISLAMIC RESPONSE TO THE RESURRECTION
Not only do Muslims disagree that Jesus actually died on the cross, they consider the entire foundation of Christianity to be questionable because a man who was not a disciple and who never even saw Jesus successfully infiltrated the ranks and hijacked the early church. The religion taught by Jesus became the religion about Jesus, and what was a religion about following God’s law and worshiping God alone became a religion that ignored the law and worshiped a man alongside God. Though Christianity originally looked much more like Islam, it has been lost forever because of Paul.
CHAPTER 27
ASSESSING THE ISLAMIC RESPONSE
PAUL AND THE DISCIPLES IN PROPER PERSPECTIVE
To be fair, the Muslim challenge to Paul is not entirely unwarranted. He is a very surprising character in the early church with an equally surprising degree of influence. Can we really trust Paul? If Paul never met Jesus before the crucifixion, how could he accurately relay the religion taught by Jesus? Might today’s Christianity be a Pauline product?
This question became a popular one in academic circles during the 1980s, and a few Western scholars even answered it affirmatively. Perhaps the most notable s
uch response was by the Jewish scholar and dramatist Hyam Maccoby in his 1986 book, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity. Maccoby goes as far as saying it was Paul who founded Christianity.1 Arguments similar to his were popularized by the equally idiosyncratic Karen Armstrong, a favorite of many Muslim apologists, who said, “Paul has not only been an important influence on Christianity, but . . . in a very real sense he was its founder. He could be called the first Christian.”2
On account of efforts such as theirs, this view became a hot topic of discussion in university forums, but the dust settled quickly and the victory was decisive: Paul remained a follower of Christ, not the founder of Christianity. The scholarly consensus has remained firm ever since.3
With all this in mind, it goes without saying that this is a good question that deserves much more space to cover than we have here, so we will answer the question of Paul broadly and briefly. After that we will consider the particular problem that this challenge to Paul causes for the Islamic view of Jesus’s disciples before finally recentering this discussion on Jesus’ resurrection.
EXAMINING PAUL
Part of the reason why almost no scholar today agrees with the common Muslim characterization of Paul is that it depicts him as a usurping deceiver. I recall an imam at our mosque teaching us that Paul saw a power vacuum among the disciples after Jesus died, so he infiltrated the church and climbed the ranks to take over the reins. The problem with this portrayal is obvious to those who know Paul’s background: He was far more secure in his power as a student of Gamaliel, in the line of Hillel, than he would have been in the persecuted church. He already had the authority to arrest heretics and preside over executions, and his power would only have grown. Instead he chose the meek life of a persecuted man who labored for his wages (Acts 18:3).
That Islamic portrayal of Paul as a deceiver is also doubtful because Paul was sincere enough to die for his faith. The record of his martyrdom comes within a few years of his beheading, and scholars do not doubt it.4 As we explored before, people willing to go to their deaths for their beliefs may very well be mistaken, but they are almost certainly sincere. According to the records, Paul was lashed five times, beaten with rods three times, and even stoned until assumed dead before he was ultimately executed (2 Cor. 11:24–25). If he were simply deceiving people, he had ten opportunities to repent before receiving life-threatening punishments. Would he not have given up the charade? What was there to gain by deceiving everyone if he was about to lose his life? In truth, Paul gave up power, prestige, personal safety, and even his life. He did not receive any material gain by following Jesus.
Paul, the Jewish Law, and the Authority of the Disciples
It is true that Paul had an argument with Peter, as recorded in Galatians 2:11–14, but it is important to read the context. Paul informs us that shortly after his conversion, he went to Peter and stayed with him for fifteen days. After sitting under Peter and at times James the brother of Jesus, Paul went from city to city proclaiming the gospel for fourteen years. Then, to make sure he was still preaching according to the disciples’ teaching, he traveled back to Jerusalem and submitted his preaching to the disciples. After hearing him, Peter, James, and John gave him their approval and sent him on his way back to Antioch saying that he should preach to the Gentiles while they preached to the Jews in Jerusalem. All the while, Paul refers to the disciples as “pillars” of the church and those of “high esteem” (Gal. 2:6, 9 NIV).
The argument only occurs when Peter was placed in a new situation and, so as not to offend some people, he acted with double standards. Leaving Jerusalem, where he was a preacher to the Jews and the church was full of believers from Jewish backgrounds, Peter traveled to Antioch in Syria, “the headquarters of Gentile Christianity.”5 Although the law of the Jews forbade them from eating with Gentiles, Peter was willing to eat with the Gentiles because he no longer considered the law binding (Gal. 2:12; cf. Acts 10; 15:10–11). But when believers from a Jewish background came to Antioch from Jerusalem,6 Peter did not want to offend them, so he stopped eating with the Gentiles. This, understandably, caused problems in Antioch, and Paul corrected Peter for his double standard.7
Virtually none of this account fits with the common Muslim characterization of Paul. It was Paul who first went to Peter and stayed with him and James. Later, Paul submitted what he was teaching to the disciples and continued preaching only when he received their approval. These are not the actions of someone who is trying to subvert the church, but rather those of a man who is submitting himself to the authority of the disciples.
When it comes to the Jewish law, it was Peter who gave his approval for Paul to be a minister to the Gentiles, and it was Peter who did not consider Christians to be under the law, such that he ate with the Gentiles. The only measure that Paul used to argue with Peter was Peter himself: Peter had been willing to eat with the Gentiles at one time but refused to do so at another. Paul never attempted to invoke any authority over Peter but questioned Peter by his own standards: “If you, being a Jew, live like Gentiles and not like Jews, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” (Gal. 2:14).
According to the book of Acts, it was Peter himself who inaugurated the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles. The tenth chapter of Acts shares the story of Peter’s receiving a vision to preach to the Gentiles and then being led by God to Caesarea to do exactly that. While preaching to Cornelius and those with him, Peter says, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (Acts 10:28 NIV). It was this encounter that Peter invoked in Acts 15:7–11 when Peter himself suggested that Gentiles not be bound by the law.8
So Paul does not rebel against Peter and James. Rather, he submits to their authority. When there is need to correct Peter, Paul does not dare invoke his own authority but reminds Peter of his own standards. Finally, Paul is not the one who absolves Gentiles of following the law; that is Peter, the very disciple who ushered in the era of evangelizing the Gentiles.
Jesus Came to Fulfill the Law
So if Peter and Paul are in agreement that people are not bound by the law, what should we make of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17 when he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (NIV)? Does this mean that Jesus has come to follow the Law and expects his followers to do the same?
The first thing to note is Jesus says he has come to “fulfill” the Law and the Prophets. Not “follow” but “fulfill.” The Greek word here, pleroo, has the senses of fullness and bringing to an end, just as the word fulfill does in English. When someone fulfills something, it is finished and one is no longer bound to it. For example, if we take a loan, we are bound to make regular payments, but once we have fulfilled our loan, having paid it in full, our payments are brought to an end. In the same sense, Jesus is saying, “I am not cancelling the Law and the Prophets; I am their fulfillment, bringing them to their completion and finishing them.” To say that “fulfilling” the Law and the Prophets means to “follow” the Jewish law is to misunderstand the verbiage of Matthew 5:17 and to miss its meaning.
Secondly, when Jews referred to the Law and the Prophets in this way, they were referring to the books of the Old Testament, not the commandments of the Jewish law. Remember, the Hebrew Bible is composed of the Law and the Prophets and the Writings. So Jesus is here saying he has come to fulfill the Old Testament, not to follow commandments.
Drawing these insights together, we can understand the verse more correctly: Jesus is saying that the Old Testament finds its completion in him. He is not abolishing it but completing it. The Old Testament is being fulfilled because Jesus has come.
There is more to say about these rich verses, especially since the verses immediately following Matthew 5:17 are sometimes thought to enforce the notion that Jesus expected people to follow the Jewish law. A careful rea
ding shows that is not the case.9 It should also be noted that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches some ethics that go directly against Jewish law, such as not taking oaths.10 Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus says a few times that he has come to bring something new, not to simply follow the old (Matt. 9:16–17; 13:52).
So Peter’s teaching that people are not bound by the law are teachings that Paul consistently applied to the Gentiles, and they are entirely compatible with Jesus’ message.
Paul and the Historical Jesus
The last challenge concerning Paul that we will cover is the assertion that Paul, never having seen Jesus, was less concerned with the historical Jesus than he was in turning Jesus into the Son of God, even God himself.
Although commonly assumed, it is not certain that Paul never saw Jesus during Jesus’ earthly ministry, because this is a conclusion mostly based on silence.11 It is true that Paul does not often talk about the historical Jesus in the New Testament. But this does not mean he was unconcerned with the life of Jesus. After seeing the risen Jesus, Paul went to visit Peter for fifteen days (Gal. 1:18). What are we to assume Paul and Peter did during those two weeks? As the scholar C. H. Dodd famously put it, “We may presume they did not spend all the time talking about the weather.”12 Paul learned about the historical Jesus while sitting under the authority of Peter. In fact, the word Paul uses for his meeting with Peter is historeo, the very Greek word from which the English word history derives. He was keenly interested in the historical Jesus.