Islam challenges the Christian view of God, the Christian view of man, the Christian view of Christ, and the Christian view of the Bible. And it's very important for us Christians to know what it is that we believe and why we believe what we believe. Islam is frequently in the news and on social media, and it has been increasingly so since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in New York City back in 2001. At that time, to help Christians better understand the differences between Christianity and Islam and how to respond to those differences, R.C. Sproul invited Abdul Salib into the studio to help him unpack Islam.
And as Dr. Sproul will explain today, Abdul is a former Muslim and convert to Christianity. and its messages from these 2002 recordings that you'll hear this week on Renewing Your Mind. In this unique series, The Cross and the Crescent, which has both Abdul and Dr. Sproul teaching, they examine Islam's view of God, Christ, Scripture, salvation, and man, and they explain why the historic Christian faith is fundamentally distinct from Islam on every point.
If you'd like to listen to the entire series, plus receive the DVD and digital access to another series on Islam, simply titled Exploring Islam, be sure to give a donation in support of Renewing Your Mind at renewingyourmind.org, and we'll get this resource package to you. To begin, here's that first conversation from the cross and the crescent. This series is going to focus on the interaction between the Christian faith and Islam. Ever since the events of 9-11, there's been, I believe, an unprecedented interest in the theological tenets of Islam. And because of that, we have invited Abdul Salib to help me put together this series of lectures that we're going to call The Cross and The Crescent.
We will follow a format that will basically be dialogical as the two of us will be engaged in conversation about the theological points of issue and of conflict between various manifestations of Islam and Christianity.
Now, in our first session today, rather than following the format that we will follow during this series, I'm going to ask Abdul if he will spend our time giving a basic introduction to the issues that we will be looking at in this series. By way of introduction, Abdul was reared in the Muslim faith in a Muslim country. and he was converted to Christianity and has studied thoroughly both Islamic religion and Christianity. He has a degree in theology from a highly respected Christian institution, and he is the co-author of the book, Answering Islam. Abdul, it's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm going to ask you to take it from here for this session.
today. Arcee, the privilege is mine and thank you for having me and thank you for being here today. Arcee referred to the events of September 11th and I think the first thing I want to say is that I am very glad to see finally the interest in understanding Islam that I see in churches. I think it's very important for the Christian church to know the challenge of Islam and how to respond to the Muslim challenges. We hear reports that there are anywhere between five to seven million Muslims living in America.
There are many Christians who interact with Muslims on a daily basis, whether as colleagues, co-workers, neighbors, barbers. And I think it's very important for Christians to have a better understanding of Islam and what Muslims believe and how to respond to the questions that a typical Muslim would have about the Christian faith. It's also very important, let me say it right in the beginning, that we should not stereotype Islam as just a violent religion. We should not dismiss Islam as a simple religion which just promotes violence, and that's all you need to know about it. That's not at all the case.
In fact, I am here to say that Islam has a very rich tradition in its intellectual history, in its cultural achievements in the Islamic civilization. The Muslim world has produced many philosophers and scientists throughout its history. And I think it's very important for us to take Islam seriously as a very coherent, systematic faith, which has its strong challenges against the Christian faith. And in order for me to introduce the series today, I wanted to focus on four main points. There are four main areas of contention between Islam and Christianity.
After years of having studied Islam and talking about the faith and living and practicing it actually and authoring a book on the subject, I have boiled down the fundamental differences between Islam and Christianity on four major points. Islam challenges the Christian faith about our view of God, who is God. Islam challenges the Christian faith about our view of man. What is man? Islam disagrees with the Christian faith about our view of Christ, and we disagree on the nature and the authority of the Bible.
So you hear many times people talk about all religions basically teach the same thing, and I hope that at least one thing will be clear at the end of this series, that Islam and Christianity have diametrically opposed ideas about these four points that I just mentioned, God, man, Christ, and the Bible. And under each one of these main headings, there are gonna be two sub points, which we will talk in further detail Under God we will talk about the Islamic rejection of the idea of the fatherhood of God It is a great privilege as a Christian that we can call God our heavenly father In fact that's what Jesus taught us to pray. And the intimacy we feel we can have with God as his children through faith in Jesus Christ.
Well, that might be good news to us, but I want to get across to the Christian audience that that does not sound like good news at all to a Muslim when a Muslim person hears us referring to God as our father or ourselves as children of God.
So we need to put ourselves in the shoes of a Muslim person and kind of feel what they feel and think when they hear the Christian terminology. And the more important issue about the doctrine of the Trinity, Islam very strongly rejects any notion of the Trinity, and we will go into more details about that.
So these are the two points we are going to talk about in the doctrine of God, the fatherhood of God, the intimacy we can have with God in the Christian faith, which Islam rejects, and the doctrine of the Trinity. Under the doctrine of man, we are going to talk about two points, the doctrine of original sin and the Christian understanding of sin, which again Islam rejects, and the Christian understanding of salvation. How is man saved? How can we have a relationship with God? We will see that Islam and Christianity offer two radically different versions of how we can approach God.
Regarding our belief about Jesus Christ, he will talk about the Islamic denial of his death on the cross. Islam very clearly rejects, the Quran very clearly rejects Jesus' death on the cross by crucifixion. And we will talk about the Islamic denial of the deity of Jesus Christ. And then the final point, when we talk about the Bible, Muslims reject the authenticity of our Bible, and therefore they reject the authority of the Bible.
So this is the outline of what we will cover in this series. But before we get into the details of this outline, I want to spend some time with you to talk about how the challenges that Islam presents to the Christian faith, the theological challenges that Islam presents to the Christian faith, are not just coming from Muslims. When I speak in churches, I would tell Christians, I don't care if you never meet another Muslim for the rest of your life. These questions are presented to the Christian faith from all different peoples and groups, I'm going to spend some time talking about how Western intellectuals, how liberal Christian scholars, how Enlightenment thinkers have basically expressed these very same challenges that Muslims have had for the past 1400 years. Therefore, it's very understandable how a Muslim person would feel very intellectually justified in rejecting Christianity because they say, see, we've been saying these things against Christianity for 1,400 years, and now your own Western scholars and your own Christian writers are saying the same things that we have been saying.
Now you ask me, okay, what are you talking about? Give us some specific examples. Let's talk about the doctrine of the Trinity. I know that R.C. has done a series on philosophy before, and there's a very famous philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant.
Immanuel Kant, for example, said this about the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity provides nothing, absolutely nothing of practical value, even if one claims to understand it, still less when one is convinced that it far surpasses our understanding. It costs the student nothing to accept that we adore three or ten persons in the divinity.
Furthermore, this distinction offers absolutely no guidance for his conduct. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, I'm sure you're all more familiar with him. This is what he wrote about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. When we shall have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic that three are one and one is three, when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding reared to mask from the view the very simple structure of Jesus, when in short we shall have unlearned everything which has been taught since his day and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples. And a Muslim would say amen and amen to Thomas Jefferson.
Let me also read something from Dorothy Sayers, a Christian writer. She was, of course, writing this in a sarcastic way. But Dorothy Sayers has this famous line about this. It's kind of a play on the Athanasian Creed. The father is incomprehensible.
The son is incomprehensible. The whole thing is incomprehensible. Trinity is something put in by theologians to make it more difficult and nothing to do with daily life or ethics.
So that's the impression that even many Westerners have had about the doctrine of the Trinity. And so a Muslim would come along and say, see, our holy book, the Koran, told us 1400 years ago that there is only one God and we should worship that God, and that Christians have been misled from the teachings of Prophet Jesus when they have professed the doctrine of the Trinity. And now your own Western intellectuals after all these centuries, your own Christian scholars are rejecting such notions. And again, I want you to understand and feel how justified a Muslim person would feel in rejecting the Christian faith. The doctrine of man.
It's a fundamental conviction of the Christian faith that we are born in the state of sin, that Adam's sin has affected us.
Now, I think Arcee would know this better than me, but I think there have been many surveys done, even in evangelical circles or in Christian circles, that basically the vast majority of people in America believe that we are basically good people. The vast majority of people sitting in the pews would say we are basically decent and good people. And there are not that many people that adhere to this notion that somehow sin is deeply rooted within our very nature from the time of our conception And once again a Muslim would come along and say see we been saying this thing to you for all these years, and now your own Western people are coming to the same conclusions. The doctrine of salvation, or let me specifically talk about the atonement. The Christian faith believes that it was because of Jesus' death on the cross that we can have any hope of salvation, that our sins have been imputed to him and his righteousness has been imputed to us.
Islam, on the other hand, claims that every person is responsible for their own actions and for their own salvation. Nobody else can pay for my sin.
Now, let me refer to a book that was written by a Reformed theologian, C. Stephen Evans. I believe he teaches at Calvin Seminary. He wrote a book several years ago called The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith. And part of this book, he traces the Enlightenment rejection of Orthodox Christianity.
He talks about what were the factors involved when Western intellectuals, Enlightenment thinkers, began to move away from Orthodoxy. One of the factors that Evans talks about, he entitles this, moral difficulties with the atonement. Moral difficulties with the atonement. And this is what he writes at one point. Theories of atonement, especially the popular forms of substitutionary atonement, rather than being the solution, are often seen as part of the problem.
The idea that God forgives human sin by virtue of punishing an innocent figure in our place raises a host of moral difficulties. The Enlightenment emphasized a view of individuals as morally autonomous agents. I am responsible only for my own choices. Such a moral perspective poses many questions for theories of atonement. Why must God punish at all?
If punishment is indeed necessary, how can guilt be transferred to someone else? How can the suffering of an innocent person take away my guilt? Once again, a Muslim person would say, that's exactly what we've been saying to you folks. We've been saying it for 1400 years, that it makes no sense that somebody else could take the punishment for my sins. I am only responsible for my own actions.
So Islam plays very well into the hands of modern Enlightenment people that believe that we are all responsible for ourselves. Many times people ask me about the growth of Islam.
Now, do not assume for a minute that Islam is only growing in the African-American community. Islam has a great appeal to people of all backgrounds because it presents itself as a very rational, intellectual, easy to understand faith. Muslims believe Christianity is filled with mysteries and mumbo-jumbos that nobody can understand. You just have to take it by faith. Nobody knows the answers to these questions, but Islam presents itself as a very rational, simple religion, the religion of nature that any child can understand.
I was teaching RCS seminary course a few weeks ago, and there were many lay people in the class auditing the course. And I asked the question to the students. I said, somebody explain to me what the doctrine of the Trinity is.
Now, not a single person answered. The one lady who raised her hand with fear and trembling to answer that question, she said, well, the doctrine of the Trinity means that there are three parts in God. I said, well, stop right there. That's an ancient heresy.
So again, I just want to communicate this point that our own Christian folks do not understand the basics of their own faith to say nothing of trying to explain and defend it to somebody who challenges them. But the challenges do not just come from Muslims. The challenges come from people all around us, whether they are agnostics, rationalists, enlightenment thinkers, postmodernists, or Muslims. But let me continue on. As I said, Islam challenges the Christian view of Christ, the Orthodox Christian view of Jesus Christ.
And once again, a Muslim would feel very justified when he would see something like this. A few years ago, on Easter week, Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek all had the same theme on the cover. The cover was all about Jesus Christ. And this is what the U.S.
News and World Report cover said. In search of Jesus, who was he? New appraisals of his life and its meaning. Newsweek magazine, rethinking the Resurrection, a new debate about the risen Christ. Time Magazine, the search for Jesus.
Some scholars are debunking the Gospels.
Now traditionalists are fighting back. What are Christians to believe?
So a Muslim would say, see? And these articles, a lot of them refer to Jesus Seminar, publications and scholars and liberal Christian scholars who are denying all the fundamentals of the Christian faith in respect to the deity of Christ, identity of Christ, the salvific work of Christ, and so on and so forth.
So a Muslim would say, see, once again, the Quran, God's word to us 1,400 years ago, set the record straight. Your own Christian theologians and scholars and pastors and bishops are just finding out about it. That Jesus never claimed to be divine. Jesus never said the things that you say he said. and that you guys are not coming to the same conclusions that we have been saying all these years.
And the Muslim would say, we didn't start the Jesus Seminar, for example. We didn't start liberal seminaries and seminary professors. It's your own conclusions and research that have led to these things that we have been saying all along, that Jesus was not God incarnate and other things that Orthodox Christianity has said about Christ So once again there is a great sense that a Muslim would feel perfectly and intellectually justified in rejecting the gospel As you witness to a Muslim, many Muslims, you know, the defense walls would go up. They say, no, thank you. That stuff is not true.
We know it. And you better go read your own Christian scholars, see what they are saying, and you better stop this. And then the final point that we are going to talk about, the Christian view of the Bible, as the article of Time Magazine implied, some scholars are debunking the Gospels. Once again, a Muslim would say, your own scholars are saying that the Bible has been corrupted. You cannot go to any university, go to an Old Testament department and find any professor that would believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
You cannot go to any professor in any regular university in this country and not have them believe that the Bible had many hands involved in editing it and revising it and cutting and pasting it and putting it together to produce a particular agenda and point of view. And so a Muslim would say, see, the Old Testament has been corrupted. The New Testament has been corrupted. You know, the famous gospel that the Jesus Seminar folks produce, highlighting the authentic sayings of Jesus and the inauthentic sayings. And I am told that in the Gospel of John, there was just, I think, one sentence in the whole gospel, which supposedly was said by Christ.
Everything else was just later added to supposedly the things that Jesus had said.
So a Muslim would say, see, as we said, your Bible has been tampered with. It is no longer the pure word of God as the Quran is. And therefore, you should no longer believe in it.
So Islam, as we said, challenges the Christian view of God, the Christian view of man, the Christian view of Christ, and the Christian view of the Bible. And it's very important for us Christians to know what it is that we believe and why we believe what we believe. Once again, you might never meet a Muslim, but these questions and these issues are raised, not just by Muslims, but by many people from different walks of life. And as Christians, we need to be better equipped about our own faith. And so I am very excited, R.C., about your invitation to do this series.
And I am hoping that this would be a great tool that God would use in equipping believers in the church and to understand more deeply what it is that they believe, to understand what is the doctrine of the Trinity and what significance does it have for my life as a Christian.
So what that God is one in three, you know?
So what does that mean? And what's the relevance? What's the practical value for my worship, for my life as a Christian, for my witness in the world? Why do we believe these things? Is it just because we are fond of mysteries or do we have reasons for our faith?
And I am really looking forward to getting engaged in this conversation with RC and delving deeper into these issues.
Well, I can't wait either. I think it should be really lots of fun, and I hope it'll be instructive. And I want to just put an exclamation point after what you have just said, that we would be naive and extreme to think that the attacks against the integrity of classical Christianity are coming merely from other world religions or simply from the secular world. They are coming obviously from within the church at a degree that is unprecedented in church history in the day in which we're living. And so that just makes the stakes all the higher and the pressure all the greater for those who are committed to Orthodox Christianity to be able to answer these attacks that have been laid at our doorstep.
Yes. A sobering conclusion to this first discussion between R.C. Sproul and Abdul Salib. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, the daily discipleship podcast of Ligonier Ministries. What you heard today is the first message in an eight-part series called The Cross and the Crescent.
Dr. Sproul and Abdul came together for this series of conversations because it is important that we understand the radical differences between Christianity and Islam. If you would like lifetime digital access to this series, we'll unlock it for you as our way of saying thank you for your donation in support of Renewing Your Mind and Ligonier Ministries when you call us at 800-435-4343. You can also give your gift easily online at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. We'll also send you a DVD set of Exploring Islam with James Anderson so that you have two tools to aid you as you seek to better understand the differences and better defend the historic Christian faith.
So that's digital access to the cross and the crescent and the DVD and digital access to the messages and study guide of Exploring Islam when you donate today at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. If you'd like access to all of this teaching, but you live outside of the U.S. and Canada, you can respond with your support at renewingyourmind.org slash global. Thank you for your generosity, which helps us proclaim the one true gospel. I'm Nathan W.
Bingham, and tomorrow, R.C. Sproul and Abdul Salib continue their conversation about Christianity and Islam. You'll discover why Muslims take issue with the notion that God is our Father. That'll be Tuesday, here on Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.
