No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

  Later in the same chapter, referring to himself, Jesus says, “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28 NIV). Unless we know the Old Testament well, it is easy to miss the fact that the Sabbath is the fourth of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:8). When Jesus refers to himself as Lord of the Sabbath, he is claiming lordship over the Ten Commandments, even though there is only one such Lord: Yahweh.

  In Mark 4:35–41, we find the troubled disciples out on the water in the midst of a storm with waves so high they broke over the boat and began to flood it. Amid adversity they call out to Jesus. Jesus rebukes the wind and says to the waves, “Hush! Be calm!” whereupon the sea is calmed and waves are hushed (v. 39). The disciples ask themselves in amazement, “Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (v. 41). By now, we should realize that Mark expects us to answer these rhetorical questions by turning to the Old Testament. In Psalm 107:25–30, men are on a stormy sea so perilous that their courage has melted and they are at their wits’ end. “Then they cried out to the Yahweh in their distress, and he brought them out of their troubles: He calmed the storm, and the waves were hushed” (vv. 28–29).

  So in the Old Testament, when men are caught in a storm at sea and fearing death, they call out to Yahweh, who calms the storms and hushes the waves. In Mark, when the disciples are caught in a storm at sea and fearing death, they call out to Jesus, who calms the storms and hushes the waves. Once again, Mark equates Jesus with Yahweh.

  In another seafaring passage, Mark 6:45–52, the disciples are struggling to row against the wind. Amid the stormy waves, Jesus walks to them on the water. For those who know the Old Testament, the allusion is clear: In Job 9:8, when Job is speaking about Yahweh, he says, “He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea” (NIV). What Job says only Yahweh can do, Mark shows Jesus doing.

  Having discussed the highlights of Mark 1–6, we see Mark’s endeavor is clear: He portrays Jesus as Yahweh. But regardless of the clarity and multiple allusions, I was not yet convinced. What convinced me that Mark portrayed Jesus as Yahweh was the climax of the gospel—Jesus’ trial.

  DO THE GOSPELS TEACH THAT JESUS IS GOD?—THE CLIMAX OF MARK’S GOSPEL

  In Mark 14:55–64, Jesus has been brought before the high priest and the Sanhedrin. Those who brought Jesus to this trial have been seeking to destroy him since a time early in his ministry (3:6). They hope to incriminate him through his words against the temple, but without sufficient witnesses or a consistent accusation against him, the trial is going awry (14:55–59). Then the high priest stands and demands that Jesus tell them who he is. It appears the high priest hopes Jesus can be incriminated through his identity claims. When Jesus responds, he gives the Sanhedrin more than they hoped for.

  Jesus’ words are: “I am, and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” The meaning of his words will not be clear to us if we do not know the Old Testament, but for the Jewish Sanhedrin, it was so clear that they condemned him to death for blasphemy. What exactly did Jesus say?

  In Mark 14:62, Jesus makes a twofold reference to the Old Testament, claiming the privileges and position of Yahweh for himself. The first reference is to Daniel. Jesus quotes Daniel 7:13–14, an apocalyptic vision of the prophet Daniel, which states, “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (NIV).

  In this passage from Daniel, a being who looks human (one like a son of man) approaches God. Although he looks human, his entrance is on clouds—an entrance reserved for Yahweh in the Old Testament.14 Then the one like a son of man is given everlasting dominion, glory, and a kingdom, even though only God is supposed to have dominion and glory in the everlasting kingdom. Finally, this passage says that all people will serve the Son of Man, but this word serve, whether in Aramaic or in Greek, always denotes a service due to God.

  Thus, Daniel 7 introduces a son of man who rides the clouds, as only Yahweh can; he then receives everlasting dominion and glory over his own kingdom, as only Yahweh has; there, all people will serve him with a divine service, as only Yahweh deserves. The son of man in Daniel 7 is a divine Son of Man. Throughout the gospel of Mark, starting at 2:10, Jesus calls himself “the Son of Man,” though he never explicitly defines what he means by the term. In Mark 14:62, the climax of the gospel, Jesus finally reveals to everyone who he is by quoting Daniel 7:13–14: He is the Son of Man from Daniel 7. He is Yahweh.15

  But claiming the title “Son of Man” was not the only blasphemous act he commits before the Sanhedrin. As if to remove all doubt, Jesus also says he has the right to sit on the throne of God. When he says that they will see the Son of Man “sitting at the right hand of the power” (NIV), he references Psalm 110:1, which says, “The LORD says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’ ” (NIV).

  Sitting at the right hand of God was a right that no one had dared claim, nor dared impute to anyone else, up to this point in Second Temple Jewish history.16 It implied sitting on the very throne of God, and it was tantamount to claiming to be God’s heir, someone who shared sovereignty with God. According to a scholar of the Psalms, “ ‘Sitting at the right hand of God,’ . . . has a very definite meaning: ‘the king is installed into an associate rulership; in this position of honor in the power structure of God he becomes a participant in Yahweh’s strength in battle and victory.’ ”17

  After learning all this, I understood why the Sanhedrin wanted to crucify Jesus for blasphemy. When Jesus claimed to be the Son of Man from Daniel 7 and the Lord of David from Psalm 110, “Both claims imply divine status, authority and power.”18 In response to the question “Who are you?” Jesus’ response is essentially, “I am the One who deserves eternal worship from all mankind in My own kingdom, where I will sit on the very throne of God. I am Yahweh.”

  After reading Mark through the lens of Jewish scripture I could no longer avoid the obvious. From introduction to climax, Mark’s gospel is an exposition of the deity of Jesus. The first biography of Jesus ever written is designed to teach that Jesus is Yahweh.

  WAS JESUS GOD BEFORE THE GOSPELS?

  Although I was shocked to find Jesus’ deity in even the earliest of the Gospels, that was only because I was searching for the doctrine as a Muslim, and Muslims tend to focus on the Gospels. Had I paid more attention to the chronology of the New Testament, I would not have been surprised. The great majority of scholars believe that Christians had been teaching the deity of Jesus well before Mark’s gospel in the very earliest Christian writings we have: the letters of Paul.19 In 1 Corinthians 8:6, Paul splits the Jewish shema into two. The Jewish proclamation of one God is cast as two persons, God the Father and the Lord Jesus. Also, in Romans 9:5, Paul says Jesus is “God over all, blessed into eternity.”

  But the most interesting is certainly Philippians 2:

  Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

  —verses 5–11 NIV (emphases mine)

  This passage is called the Carmen Christi, the “Song of Christ,” and its Christology is among the highest there can be. The beginning of the passage assumes Jesus’
preexistence in the very form of God, his ability to make decisions and act before his incarnation, and even his own hand in being born on earth. Thus the beginning of the Carmen Christi makes it clear that Jesus is God incarnate.

  It then describes the future, when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus’ lordship. The kind of lordship Jesus has is the very lordship of Yahweh, because these are the words Yahweh uses of himself in one of the most powerfully monotheistic passages of the Old Testament: “I am God, and there is no other . . . to me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear” (Isa. 45:22–23). Once again, we find the earliest New Testament passages substituting Jesus for Yahweh.

  But how early is this passage, and is Paul really the author? The scholarly consensus is that this passage is not one that Paul himself wrote but one that he is quoting. Beginning chiefly with the 1928 work of Ernst Lohmeyer, scholars have argued that this is a hymn that uses un-Pauline vocabulary and grammatical structure.20 The vocabulary is so strange at points in this hymn that it is often not found anywhere else in the New Testament; one word is not even found elsewhere in the Greek language.21 Lohmeyer concluded that the hymn was written in Greek by a man other than Paul whose mother tongue was Semitic.22 Others have since agreed, and some have even pushed the envelope, arguing that the hymn was originally written in Aramaic and was only later translated into Greek.23 These reasons and others combine to lead scholars to conclude that the hymn was composed at the end of the thirties AD.24 So not just Paul, but also the pre–New Testament church, perhaps as early as the Aramaic-speaking church, ascribed to Jesus the very identity of Yahweh.

  CONCLUSION OF THE POSITIVE CASE FOR THE DEITY OF JESUS

  When I finished investigating the deity of Jesus, I realized that every layer of Christian teaching depicts Jesus as divine. It is impossible to argue that Jesus’ deity was a late invention, an evolution of Christology. Not only does John’s gospel present Jesus as divine, but even Mark’s gospel and Paul’s writings present Jesus as Yahweh. The very earliest evidence there is, possibly from the very decade of Jesus’ crucifixion, equates Jesus to Yahweh.

  For the earliest Christians, Jesus is more than a prophet, more than the Messiah, and more than divine. He is Yahweh himself.

  CHAPTER 30

  THE ISLAMIC RESPONSE

  DID JESUS REALLY SAY “I AM GOD”?

  When I learned to read the New Testament in light of the Old, I was able to see the deity of Jesus clearly in its pages, but it took me years as a Muslim to get to that point. Even though the Quran affirms that both the Torah and Injil were inspired, Muslims are not encouraged to know either of them in any detail, so instead of reading the Bible on its own terms we read it through the lens of the Quran and Islamic teaching.

  That is why I rejected the deity of Christ for as long as I did. Not only was I predisposed against it, highlighting verses that seemed to challenge the doctrine, but also I expected Jesus to say certain things and speak certain ways if he really claimed to be God. Those two challenges were my main arguments against Christians: There are many verses in the Bible that seem to deny Jesus’ deity, and Jesus never clearly says “I am God.” Together, these were my most compelling reasons to doubt that Jesus claimed to be God, and these are the same arguments that I find most Muslims using today.

  VERSES THAT DENY THE DEITY OF JESUS

  Thanks to the work of Ahmed Deedat and other Muslim apologists, there are many verses isolated from the Gospels readily used by Muslims to argue that Jesus explicitly denied divine status.

  One of my favorites was John 17:3 because it seemed very Islamic in its proclamation: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (NIV). Just like the shahada, this verse proclaims the existence of only one God and a messenger whom he sent. Clearly, the one sent is inferior and separate from the one sending. As far as I was concerned, this verse showed that Jesus’ teachings were very similar to Islam’s, and that he denied being God, saying that the Father is the “only true God.”

  Another verse I commonly used on account of its stark clarity was John 14:28: “The Father is greater than I” (NIV). How could Jesus be God if the Father is greater than he is? This shows that Jesus is both separate from God and inferior to him. Another verse with a similar impact was Mark 10:18: “Why do you call me good? . . . No one is good—except God alone” (NIV). Jesus again distinguishes himself from God and clarifies that he is inferior.

  Just as we would expect as Muslims, there are texts in the Gospels that show Jesus praying to God (Mark 1:35) and saying that people should worship God alone (Matt. 4:10). Mark 14:36 appears to show Jesus praying in desperation to the Father, saying, “Everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me” (NIV). Not only is Jesus praying to God, but he seems to be emphasizing that everything is possible for the Father, not for Jesus, and that Jesus is utterly dependent on him.

  Regarding this dependence, Jesus says that he can do nothing apart from God: “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” (John 5:19 NIV). His inability to do anything by himself was apparent again in Mark 6:5, when he returned to Nazareth and “could not do any miracles there” (NIV). Indeed, Jesus could not even prophesy without God’s intervention, as he said, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32 NIV).

  We very frequently argued that Jesus was portrayed as a human and that the term “Son of God” did not imply a divine status. Adam had been called a “son of God” (Luke 3:38), as had David (Ps. 2:7), Solomon (1 Chron. 28:6), and even unnamed strangers (Gen. 6:2). In fact, the Bible taught that even we could become children of God (Rom. 8:14, Gal. 3:26). Therefore, Jesus was a “son of God” in the same sense, a human sense.

  Finally, Jesus must have been just a human because he ate (John 21:12), wept (John 11:35), slept (Mark 4:38), hungered (Matt. 4:2), thirsted (John 4:7), and even tired (John 4:6). Could God really hunger, thirst, and grow tired? Of course God cannot, and therefore Jesus is not God. Also, he called himself a prophet (Luke 4:24), not God. The matter is settled when we consider his preferred term for himself: “Son of Man.” By using this title, Jesus emphasized that he was just a human, not God.

  JESUS NEVER CLEARLY SAYS “I AM GOD”

  In addition to pointing out the verses that seemed to deny Jesus’ deity and establish his humanity, I often challenged Christians by pointing out that he never actually says, “I am God.” If Jesus were God, why does he not just come out with it and say it? God certainly proclaims his divinity boldly in the Old Testament, with verses such as “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God” (Isa. 45:5 NIV). Christians argue that Jesus is that very God, the one making the bold proclamation in Isaiah 45. Why does Jesus talk so differently about himself, never clearly saying he is God?

  In fact, there seems to be a specific occasion when some Jews interpreted Jesus as saying he is God, but Jesus clears up this misinterpretation (John 10:33–36). The Jews said, “You, a mere man, claim to be God,” to which Jesus responded, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods” ’ . . . Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?” (NIV). When people think Jesus is claiming to be God, he tries to clarify the situation, explaining that many people were called “gods” in the Old Testament and therefore there is nothing wrong when Jesus calls himself “God’s Son.”

  If he really were God, why did he not just say in that instance, “Yes, I am claiming to be God?” Why does he never say anything of that sort? Clearly, he was not claiming to be God.

  THE CLAIM TO DEITY AND THE HISTORICAL JESUS

  Those were the initial arguments I provided against the deity of Jesus, the ones that had been taught to me by the Muslim community, and I was confident that they were powerful. Later, as I progressed in my understanding of the responses to these arguments, I provided another c
hallenge which was more nuanced and sophisticated: Even if it can be shown in the Gospels that Jesus does claim to be God, what reason do we have to think that this goes back to the actual Jesus?

  In other words, even if John depicts a divine Jesus, can we really think that Jesus claimed to be God himself? The same goes for the earlier writings of the New Testament, such as Mark and Paul. Even if they were to show that Jesus claimed to be God, maybe they invented it?

  Given the evidence at hand, and given the very notion itself, it is simply preposterous to believe that Jesus claimed to be God.

  CONCLUSION OF THE MUSLIM RESPONSE

  As Muslims, this was an arena in which we felt very confident: Jesus never claimed to be God. Never did he claim it, and there are many verses where he denies it, teaching that there is only one God. There is no God but one, and Jesus is just his messenger.

  CHAPTER 31

  ASSESSING THE ISLAMIC RESPONSE

  LETTING THE CONTEXT SPEAK

  Taken in isolation, some of the verses presented would pose a challenge to the belief in Jesus’ deity, but that is the problem: The verses are not supposed to be taken in isolation. Much more than in Quranic exegesis, verses in the Bible depend on their context for proper interpretation. Considering the context of the verses and taking a closer look at the doctrine of Jesus’ deity resolves most of the Muslim challenge. To address the entire response, we will also consider Mark’s Messianic Secret and the likelihood that Jesus’ claim to be God goes back to the person of Jesus himself.