CONSIDERING CONTEXT
While a Muslim, I used many verses from the gospel of John to challenge the deity of Jesus, such as “the Father is greater than I” and “the Son can do nothing of himself.” As I became more acquainted with the Gospel, I began to see a major problem: John introduced his gospel by announcing that Jesus is God, as we discussed in chapter 30, and he concluded his gospel with a climactic pronouncement from a disciple that Jesus is God (John 20:28). In between, there were many verses that exalt Jesus and give him the honor due to God alone. This is why even skeptical scholars like Bart Ehrman say that Jesus is portrayed as divine in John’s gospel.
How could I use verses from John’s gospel to deny the deity of Jesus when that Gospel as a whole certainly proclaimed that Jesus was God? That would be disingenuous, extracting verses out of their context to suit my purposes rather than seeing what they actually say.
It was this realization that led me to change the way I approached the Bible. Instead of searching for verses from the text that I could use to support my Islamic position, I started reading each verse carefully for the meaning it intended to convey. This meant understanding verses in light of one another and having to put the puzzle pieces together. How could John’s gospel call Jesus Lord and God (John 20:28) and say that the universe was created through him (John 1:3), while also saying that “the Father is greater” than Jesus (John 14:28 NIV) and that Jesus can do nothing apart from the Father (John 5:19)? A proper understanding of John’s gospel must account for all these verses, not just some.
The way to account for them, the way that the Christians of Nicaea and Chalcedon accounted for them, is by understanding that Jesus is God, that the Father is God, that the two are not the same person, yet there is only one God. In other words, the only way to account for the teachings of John’s gospel is through a monotheistic model with multiple persons: a Trinitarian model.1 In this model, the Father is greater than Jesus and Jesus does not do anything apart from the will of the Father, but both the Father and Jesus are God.
An appropriate question that Muslims often ask is, “How can Jesus be God if the Father is greater than he is?” The question is easy to answer with an illustration. When I consider myself compared to the president of the United States, I would not hesitate to say that the president is greater than I. He is in charge of the entire nation and is one of the most powerful men in the world, whereas I am just a normal citizen. So the president is greater than I, far greater; but we are both equally human. In his essence, the president is just a human being, as am I, and in that sense we are equal. So when I say, “The president is greater than I,” I am referring to his office, not his essence. In office, he is greater than I; in essence, we are equal. Similarly, when Jesus says, “The Father is greater than I,” that does not mean Jesus is not God. The Father has a different role, a higher office than Jesus, but that does not mean the Father is greater in essence. They are both equal in essence. They are both God.
REVISITING THE DOCTRINE OF JESUS’ DEITY AND THE TRINITY
A proper understanding of the doctrine of Jesus’ deity resolves many of the Islamic arguments, even the ones using the texts of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. That Jesus hungered and thirsted does not challenge Jesus’ deity, because Christians believe in the hypostatic union that we discussed in chapter 10—that Jesus has a divine nature and a human nature, which means he really was a human and he really did hunger and thirst. For the same reason, God really could be a prophet. Since God can come into the world according to the Judeo-Christian teachings, he can take a human nature and be both God and man. There is nothing mutually exclusive about his humanity and his deity.
I remember when I encountered this argument for the first time as a Muslim, I resisted it. Surely, to be God is to be unlimited, whereas to be human is to be limited. How can someone be limited and unlimited at the same time? For example, God knows all things, and Jesus did not know all things (Mark 13:32). How can Jesus be God?
The Christian response, found in Philippians 2, is that God voluntarily limited the expression of his deity when he became human. Yes, theoretically Jesus could have known all things while on this earth, but he chose not to because he “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” (Phil. 2:6–7 NIV). He limited himself voluntarily, becoming a real man, so that as a man he could atone for the sins of man.
For that reason, he was a real human. Jesus was born. He could grow in wisdom and in stature. He was dependent on the Father, and as such he could pray to the Father. This is not “God praying to himself,” as some allege, because the Son is not the Father. There are two persons here, two selves.
Although there are many verses that I used to challenge the deity of Jesus as a Muslim, these two clarifications resolve almost all of them: the context of the verses and understanding the doctrine of the hypostatic union.
WHY DID JESUS NOT SAY “I AM GOD”? UNDERSTANDING THE MESSIANIC SECRET
Muslims ask a good question when they ask why Jesus did not boldly and publicly proclaim his deity, but a good answer is readily available: He did not want to announce his identity right away. This is stated explicitly at the beginning of Mark’s gospel. When Jesus was casting out demons, “He would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was” (Mark 1:34 NIV). Mark makes it explicit: Jesus wanted to keep his identity a secret for a time.2
There were a variety of reasons why. When people came to learn about Jesus, they crowded around him so much that he was no longer able to go into towns (Mark 1:45). Also, as the Pharisees and Herodians began to see what Jesus was doing and claiming, they began to plot how they might kill him (Mark 3:6), but Jesus did not want to be killed until it was the right time.3 When Jesus and the disciples discussed the issue, he explained to them why he wanted to keep his identity secret: because “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again” (8:31 NIV).4
So Jesus did not want to publicly proclaim his identity. This is known among scholars as the “Messianic Secret.” When the days of his death and ascension were approaching, he headed straight for Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). That is when he was arrested and taken before the Sanhedrin to reveal his identity.
As a Muslim, I did not concede this point until I realized something surprising. Both Muslims and Christians agree Jesus is the Messiah, but in the Gospels Jesus only publicly proclaimed that he is the Messiah one time.5 That one location is at his trial before the Sanhedrin, the very passage where Jesus claims to be God.
To repeat, the one time in the Gospels that Jesus publicly claimed to be the Messiah was the same time he publicly claimed to be God. Since Muslims believe Jesus was the Messiah even though he publicly proclaimed it only once, we cannot demand he proclaim his deity more often or more boldly. He was not in the business of proclaiming his identity over and over again. He chose to wait for the right moment.
Also, though Jesus did not often proclaim his identity publicly, the Gospels inform their readers of his identity through the narrative of the text. For example, Mark 1:1 identifies Jesus as the Son of God;6 Mark 1:11 shows God himself declaring that Jesus is his Son; verse 3:11 shows a demon declaring Jesus is the Son of God. By showing spiritual beings declaring Jesus’ sonship, Mark is able to inform his readers that Jesus is no mere mortal, letting the readers in on the secret even before Jesus’ public proclamation at the trial.
Mark uses other means to inform the perceptive reader that Jesus is beyond human, as discussed in the previous chapter. He uses controversies, such as his public remission of the paralyzed man’s sin (2:5); he uses claims of sovereignty, such as his sovereignty over one of the Ten Commandments (2:28); he shows Jesus performing miracles that only God should be able to, such as calming the seas (4:38–39) and walking on the water (6:48).
Throughout his gos
pel, Mark is preparing the reader for the moment that the Messianic Secret will be revealed, when Jesus will tell everyone who he really is, tying together all his words and deeds. This makes 14:62, the climax and divine revelation, all the more powerful and important to understand. It is there that Jesus claims to be the divine Son of Man from Daniel 7 and the One sitting on the throne of God from Psalm 110:1.
These two claims, Jesus’ most powerful proclamations of deity in the Gospels, are also our anchor of confidence that Jesus actually did use these terms.
ASSESSING HISTORICAL ACCURACY
What is powerful about Jesus’ claims before the Sanhedrin, historically speaking, is that they pass the most stringent scholarly criteria for historical accuracy. The title “Son of Man” is used more than eighty times in the four gospels, almost always by Jesus himself, in multiple settings.7 Scholars are confident that Jesus actually used this phrase for himself because there was no widespread expectation that the Messiah would be the Son of Man. In addition, the Christians in the early church did not really refer to Jesus as the Son of Man. Why would all four gospels show Jesus calling himself the Son of Man when no one expected the Messiah to speak that way and when people did not really refer to him in those terms later? The most plausible reason is that he actually used the title himself. Thus it passes the most stringent criterion of historical investigation, the criterion of dissimilarity.8 That Jesus called himself the Son of Man is virtually certain.
Similarly, there can be little doubt that Jesus was considered the Lord of David who sits on the throne of God at a very early point in Christian history. It is the most commonly quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament, deeply ingrained in the Christian conscience well before the New Testament was written.9 The best explanation for this early Christian unanimity regarding Psalm 110:1 is that Jesus himself taught and proclaimed that he is the one sitting at the right hand of the Power, worthy to rule the universe with the Father.
Thus we can be confident that Jesus’ boldest proclamation of his identity, the one time he publicly proclaimed that he was the Messiah and God, are words that Jesus himself actually proclaimed.
CONCLUDING OUR ASSESSMENT OF THE MUSLIM RESPONSE
The fact is not just John’s gospel but all the Gospels teach that Jesus is God. Though there are some verses in the Gospels that might appear to challenge Jesus’ deity, understanding them in their context and understanding the Christian doctrine of Jesus’ deity resolves them. Even Ehrman, the skeptical scholar most favored among Muslims, has now changed his mind and says: “The idea that Jesus is God is not an invention of modern times, of course. As I will show in my discussion, it was the view of the very earliest Christians soon after Jesus’s death.”10 The best explanation for this immediate belief that Jesus is God, as the evidence shows, is that Jesus himself claimed to be God.
CHAPTER 32
CONCLUSION
JESUS CLAIMED TO BE GOD
The very earliest Christian records are unanimous: Jesus is God. All four gospels teach that Jesus is divine, and even before they were written, Christians had firmly established God’s incarnation as the core of their faith. This was not a teaching that evolved over time but one that was present at the inception of the church and has its roots in Jesus’ proclamation. It makes sense when we study Jesus’ life through the lens of first-century Judaism, including the Old Testament records of Yahweh visiting man and the expectation that he would come again. The common Islamic response, that there are verses that contravene the teaching of Jesus’ deity, usually does not take into consideration the context of those verses and at other times misunderstands the Messianic Secret or the doctrine of the hypostatic union.
When I was studying the Gospels as a Muslim, I was shocked to discover these facts. Having always believed that the doctrine of Jesus’ deity was invented decades if not centuries after Jesus’ death, I realized that the Islamic explanation for Christian beliefs does not work. The very first Christians believed that Jesus is God, including the disciples themselves. How could the disciples have concluded this, especially considering the Jewish emphasis on monotheism and on worshiping God alone?
The best conclusion is that Jesus himself claimed to be God. The Gospels are telling the truth. As a Muslim my mind rebelled against this, but considering the perspective of an objective investigator I had to admit that it was the best explanation of the evidence. Nothing else accounted for the origins of the church without strain.
Putting together the components for the case for Christianity, there was little room for me as a Muslim to object. The historical evidence was so contrary to Islamic teaching that there was no ground for me to stand on.
MIDWAY SUMMARY TO QUESTION 2
ASSESSING THE CASE FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM’S EFFORTS TO ACCOUNT FOR CHRISTIAN ORIGINS
After studying the historical origins of the Christian faith, I came to these conclusions: that Jesus died on the cross is as certain as anything historical can be; that he rose from the dead is by far the best explanation of the events surrounding his death; and that Jesus claimed to be God is the best explanation for the immediate Christian proclamation of Jesus’ deity.
Putting it all together, the historical evidence for Christianity is very strong: Jesus claimed to be God, and he proved it by rising from the dead. The case for Christianity is powerful.
Despite my ardent desire to believe Islam, I had to admit that history was in favor of Christian claims, and even more reluctantly, that it challenged Islamic teachings. In order to believe the Quran when it says Jesus did not claim to be God, we have to ignore the best explanation of early Christian beliefs; and to believe the Quran’s teachings about Jesus’ death, we would have to dismiss all the historical evidence. So the records of Christian origins testify against Islam.
But the evidence is actually even more problematic for Islam than it might initially appear. Far more problematic. Islamic teachings about Jesus are utterly incompatible with history.
THE UTTER INCOMPATIBILITY OF ISLAM WITH JESUS’ IDENTITY
For Islamic teaching to be true, it is not enough for Jesus to simply deny deity; Jesus has to proclaim that he is merely a human prophet. But the earliest records are categorically against Islam on this point.
Even a cursory glance at the Gospels shows us that Jesus sees himself as greater than a mere human. Of course, as we have already seen, Jesus considers himself able to forgive sins, receive worship, heal people in his own authority, demand the honor that is due to God, hear and answer prayers, ransom mankind by his death, and exist even before Abraham was born. But Jesus also commended people who called him God (John 20:28), claimed to be the king of another realm (John 18:36–37), descended from heaven (John 3:13), and claims to be the judge on the day of judgment (John 5:22–23). Such teachings are not just found in John’s gospel; the Synoptic Gospels agree that Jesus is the king over an eternal kingdom (Matt. 25:34), that he is the one who will judge mankind (Matt. 25:32), that he has the authority to grant people salvation (Luke 23:43), that he has elected people who will go to heaven (Mark 13:27), and that his return to earth will be as the return of the master to his own house (Mark 13:35). Of course, this is all in the context of Jesus’ claim to be heir of God’s throne from Psalm 110, sitting on the throne of God, and as the divine Son of Man from Daniel 7 who is worshiped by all men in his eternal kingdom.
These are the teachings of the Gospels, the earliest biographies of Jesus’ life, produced during the lifetimes of Jesus’ disciples. There is absolutely no early Christian record of a merely human Jesus. All evidence indicates that Jesus’ followers uniformly believed him to be divine, unquestionably more than a mere human.
How can the Islamic model account for this? Why is it that the followers of Jesus preached a superhuman Jesus, in fact God himself? Without dismissing the history, there is no alternative explanation. Islam requires us to believe that Jesus was so incompetent as a teacher and prophet that he was not able to instill this most s
imple fact in his followers’ minds: that he was merely a human. Given that Islam’s central proclamation is tawhid, this means Jesus was an abject failure. In fact, he was worse than a total failure, since he left his disciples believing the exact opposite of tawhid.
Could I really conclude that the Messiah was so woefully incompetent? Of course not, but that is what Islam requires us to believe if we are to take the historical evidence seriously. The records of Jesus’ identity are not just slightly mismatched with Islamic teachings; the records of Jesus’ identity are categorically incompatible with Islam. If Jesus truly taught tawhid, he was an entirely incompetent Messiah, worse than an abject failure.
THE UTTER INCOMPATIBILITY OF ISLAM WITH EARLY CHRISTIAN PROCLAMATION
Similarly, Islam teaches that the disciples were godly men, but the entire body of evidence testifies that the proclamation of the early church was the death and resurrection of Jesus—something Islam denies. How could I account for this discrepancy as a Muslim?
The only option that accounted for the historical evidence was that the disciples simply got the facts wrong; but upon consideration, this posed a serious problem for my Islamic belief. If Allah saved Jesus from the cross while making it look like Jesus died, as most Muslims believe, then Allah is responsible for the disciples’ proclamation of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Therefore, Allah started Christianity, a false religion that has kept billions away from Islam. Worse, Christians believe Jesus is God because of their faith in his resurrection, yet the Quran tells us that people who believe Jesus is God will go to hell (5.72). Could I really believe that, just to save Jesus from the cross, God deceived the disciples, letting them proclaim that Jesus is the risen Lord and thereby sending billions of people to hell?
No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity Page 21
