The Christian Concept of Salvation Falsifies the Trinity

October 30th, 2017 Ibn Anwar

Major Problems with the Christian Concept of Salvation: The Trinity becomes muddled in Christian Soteriology

by Ibn Anwar, BHsc. (Hons), MCollT

The concept of vicarious atonement is fundamental to mainstream Christianity. It is postulated that salvation is only acquirable through the acceptance of the death of Jesus on the cross as a divinely instituted sacrifice. In this Christian salvific saga, the Father is said to pour all His Wrath onto the Son and in so doing, He satisfies the need for Justice where sin is concerned. The so called tension between Justice and Mercy– a unique concept in western Christianity* –is resolved and God can appropriately offer the latter without dispensing with the former.

Upon close inspection of the above doctrine, which is the most fundamental feature of western Christian faith, several problems and difficulties arise. Firstly, the inescapable impression that the vicarious atonement gives is that the Father is the source of Wrath and the Son is the source of Love. Whilst the Father punishes, the Son gives. These two in Christian theology are supposed to be equal in every respect. They are designated as ‘Persons’ within One God. If that were true, then this God, apparently, did not satisfy the alleged tension between the attributes of Justice and Mercy after all or if He did, then He only managed to satisfy one third of Justice because the rest of God, i.e., the Son and the Holy Spirit, did not pour out their Wrath. And this fact is in direct opposition to John 5:19 which says that the Son does everything and anything He sees the Father does. If John 5:19 were true then the vicarious atonement would be false as it would render the Son as wrathful instead of loving whilst he was affixed on the cross, but if the vicarious atonement were true, then John 5:19 would be false because the Son did not emulate the Father’s wrath but was instead exuding love in his sacrifice. However, according to standard Christian teaching, the Wrath that is said to have been poured onto the Son on the cross was supposed to have been the complete and full Wrath of God as a complete entity. If one accepts that premise, then one must reevaluate one’s reading of those many instances in the Bible where God shows His Wrath. If the cross received the full measure of God’s Wrath and only the Father actually poured His Wrath on it, the necessary implication is that God’s attribute of wrathfulness belongs only to the Father and so the wrathful instances of God in biblical history were instances of only the Father and not the full God, which is supposed to be the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit together. Following this line of thought, one must then necessarily surmise that Justice comes only from the Father who satisfies it with His Wrath. If that were true, then God as a complete Being becomes crippled with disproportionate attributes unevenly distributed to the three members that make up the One Being.

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Sin did not enter the world through Adam

October 28th, 2017 Ibn Anwar

Who was the first sinner?: Lucifer’s Forgotten Legacy

by Ibn Anwar, BHsc (Hons), MCollT

Contrary to popular belief, Adam should not be held responsible for the introduction of sin into this world. To that effect, Paul was wrong to claim that it was Adam’s fault that sin came to earth. He mistakenly writes,“When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.” (Romans 5:12; NLT)* According to the biblical record and the Catholic tradition, the sin of a fallen angel preceded Adam’s very existence. The fallen angel was none other than Lucifer and it was this being, not the human Adam, that caused sin to enter into the world for the first time according to Isaiah 14:12:

“How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!”

Though quite a number of commentaries such as Ellicott’s Commentary have interpreted the passage to mean the King of Babylon, many classical commentators and even modern commentators maintain that the passage is referring to the fallen angel Lucifer.

Celebrated Christian evangelist and preacher Billy Graham identifies the person in Isaiah 14:12 as the devil Lucifer and brands him the first sinner. Graham’s entry on Lucifer begins with the title ‘The First Sinner Commits the First Sin.’ After clearly having identified Lucifer as the first ever sinner, Graham writes:

“Lucifer (meaning “morning star” in Hebrew) was an angel created to glorify God, but this was not the role he wanted. His heart’s desire was to be the chief authority; he wanted to sit on God’s throne and rule the universe. Isaiah 14:12-14 tells us: “”How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

When Lucifer asserted his desire to be more than God, a great revolution took place in the universe. Many angels joined with Lucifer and became his rebel army. Evidently when God judged Lucifer’s crimes, God changed his name to Satan, the Evil One, and sentenced him to eternal exile.” [1]

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Jesus Did Not Preach Christianity

October 27th, 2017 Ibn Anwar

Jesus Christ: Christianity is a cult that I never knew about.

by Ibn Anwar, BHsc (Hons), MCollT

Christian apologists love to have a laugh at the Islamic claim that Jesus was a Muslim. Poking fun at that Islamic proposition is a longstanding tradition in the Christian apologetic ministry. The Christian apologist would gleefully say, in misplaced victorious fervour, that “the Islamic or Muslim claim that Jesus was a Muslim is nothing but the ravings of a delusional desert man, who had no clue what he was talking about, which resulted in anachronisms, that is, historical errors, as he went along inventing his cult that he labelled Islam.” Whether Jesus was a Muslim or not is a subject that we will not delve here. That has been discussed in a previous article called ‘Jesus was a Muslim and not a Christian’. What we will discuss in this article is the fact that the above mentioned Christian apologetic argumentation is the psychosis of Christian apologia as it tries to deflect its own insecurities for its own shortcomings, which is symptomatic of what psychologists term ‘psychological projection’.

History bears witness to the obvious reality, that many Christians conveniently pretend to not exist, that Christianity– in its primitive sense –is a first century post-Christ cult whilst orthodox Christianity is really a new religion divorced from its alleged founder, at the very least, by a few hundred years.

Jesus was a religious personality that preached his religious message within the framework of his own religious tradition without intending in any way to start a new religion with a new name; complete with a new set of rules and doctrines. His mission did not envision a global community of Jewish and non-Jewish people. The so called Gentiles (non-Jewish nations) had little to no share in even the crumbs of his ministry (See Matthew 15:26-27; and Matthew 7:6 where Jesus disclaims the ‘goyim’ or gentiles as “dogs and pigs” who have no share in holy and sacred things that he was offering to his own people). The truth of the historical claim that Jesus’ message did not encompass what we call today Christianity is writ large in the Christian Holy Bible for all to see.

“Don’t think that I have come to destroy the law of Moses or the teaching of the prophets. I have not come to destroy their teachings but to do what they said.” (Matthew 5:17; International Children’s Bible)

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The Changing Faces of Jesus

October 27th, 2017 Ibn Anwar

Which Jesus do you believe in?

by Ibn Anwar, BHsc (Hons), MCollT

Reading the four gospels with a careful eye to detail will reveal to the discerning reader four blatantly different pictures of the “Lord” that, without disingenuous convoluted harmonising tactics of the fundamentalist, underscores the message of Islam that the Christians had hijacked the real Jesus and made him into their own image. Let us sample an example of how Jesus’ image was contrived in the canonical gospels below by ancient, nameless, Christian propagandists.

Did Jesus heal ‘many’ or ‘all’ of them? You decide!

“That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door,The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.” (Mark 1:32-34)

In the Markan version of the incident above, which happens to be the oldest, the sick and the ailing were all brought to Jesus and though many (verse 34) were miraculously healed by Jesus’ touch, not every person was lucky enough to be given that gift. This fact is revealed by Mark’s use of “all” and “many”. According to Mark, although all the sick were brought to Jesus, only ‘many’ of them were healed.

 

Using Mark as a source, Matthew revamps the story and creates a greater Jesus in his version of the same event.

“When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.” (Matthew 8:16)

The Markan Jesus healed “many” of all the sick that were brought to him and though the average reader may find that amazing, it didn’t sit too well with Matthew as he was writing his own gospel, while cribbing Mark as a source. The Matthean Jesus has him heal literally every sick person that was presented to him. Matthew’s Jesus is clearly a more developed person with greater power. Noting this point, Professor in the Religion department at Carleton University, Dr. Zeba Crook in a debate with Richard Carrier says:

“Here is a summary story in which Mark is summarising all the great things that Jesus has been doing. And Mark tells us that they brought him all who were sick and he healed many. That’s pretty subtle but still, Matthew has a problem with it and he switches the quantities. Very simple, but it clearly has the same effect. Matthew’s Jesus is bigger, better and stronger than Mark’s Jesus” [1]

Which Jesus is your Jesus?

Notes:

[Atheism TV]. (2014, May 10). Jesus of Nazareth: Man or myth? A discussion with Zeba Crook and Richard Carrier. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgmHqjblsPw

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Christian scholar and apologists say the Qur’an has been preserved

October 27th, 2017 Ibn Anwar

The Qur’an has been well preserved says conservative Christian scholar

by Ibn Anwar, BHsc (Hons), MCollT

 
Dr. Norman Geisler, who is a highly respected Christian evangelist and notable systematic theologian known for his sought after works in apologetics, says that the Qur’an that Muslims have today has been reliably preserved:
 
“The fact that the Qur’an has been kept from any textual corruption is another evidence often given by Muslims for the miraculous nature of the Qur’an’s marvelous preservation.” [1]
 
Notwithstanding Geisler’s view concerning the Qur’an prior to the so called Uthmanic recension, he admits that the Qur’an that Muslims have today is “almost a perfect copy of the original”:
 
“While it is true that the present Qur’an is a nearly perfect copy of its original, it is not true that this is exactly the way it came from Muhammad.” [2]
 
As a matter of fact, in the conservative Christian camp, Geisler is not alone in his view that the Qur’an has come down to us unaltered from Uthman’s recension. Echoing Geisler’s sentiment, alleged former Muslim Dr. Abraham Sarker, whose book has been praised by many conservative Christian quarters, states that the Qur’an Muslims refer to today has been faithfully preserved from the original:
 
“While the Qur’anic version that stands today is a faithful copy of the revision by Uthman, this remaining copy does not exactly reflect Mohammed’s original.” [3]
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Memorisation preserved the Qur’an

October 27th, 2017 Ibn Anwar

Memorisation as the primary mode of Qur’anic preservation

by Ibn Anwar, BHsc (Hons), MCollT

A small segment of over 20, 000 memorisers of the Qur’an gathered together for a ceremony to officiate The National Association of Institutions of Qur’anic Memorisation by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak at the Federal Territory Mosque in Kuala Lumpur on the 20th of February 2016

Muslims throughout the ages have long insisted that the preservation of their holy book is unlike any other — through the memory of its believers and reciters. Whereas other historical books were retained through the passage of time in writing, the Qur’an stands as a unique literary text that is preserved primarily through the memory of Muslims known as the ‘huffadh'(memorisers of the Qur’an). Though the writing of the Qur’an began early on, even in the time of the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w., at its inception, the Qur’an was first memorised by the first ‘hafidh’ (singular of ‘huffadh’), the Prophet s.a.w. himself. Those who attended to the Prophet s.a.w., received the revelation from the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. and retained it in their own memories and they in turn taught what they had heard and remembered to those that attended to them and so that has been the manner by which the Qur’an has been traditionally preserved.

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Is God One Person or Three Persons?

October 18th, 2017 Ibn Anwar

The Human Mind says NO to the Trinity: God is a [single] person says Trinitarian mathematician Professor John Lennox

by Ibn Anwar, BHsc (Hons), MCollT

Muslims, Jews and Christian Unitarians strongly insist that God is absolutely One. He is a Single Person. Christian Trinitarians depart from that doctrine and teach instead that God is THREE Persons. However, it is a fact that is clearer than crystal that the biblical record contains no passage that identifies God as Three Persons. With well over 6700 instances of the singular pronoun that is used by God in the first person (“I,” “Me,” “Mine,” “Myself”) and of Him in the second and third person (“You,” “Him,” “His,” “Himself”), the biblical record begins and ends with the presumption that God is only one person.

A couple of days ago I watched the Oxford Mathematician Professor John Lennox and the Oxford biologist Professor Richard Dawkins duke it out in a debate that they had on the question ‘Has Science Buried God?’ It was my third time watching the debate. This time round, I noticed something interesting. Whenever Lennox, who is a brilliant and respected mathematician at one of the most prestigious universities in the world and is also incidentally a Christian apologist respected in Christian apologetic circles, refers to God, he inadvertently spoke of Him as One Person and not Three Persons. This is in complete contradiction to standard Trinitarian doctrine, which he believes in as a Trinitarian Christian. According to standard Trinitarian doctrine, God is Three Persons and not One Person. The fact that Lennox, as a mathematician, could not resist but subconsciously affirm the unitarian view of God shows that if the human being does not purposefully pressure the brain into consciously saying “Three Personsin one God” when speaking of God, what naturally comes out is “God is one Person.”

As my skills with the computer are very limited, I enlisted our brother Yahya Snow‘s help (as he is very savvy with video editing) to put together the video with the relevant clips of instances in the debate where Lennox referred to God as a [single] Person. Yahya has done a wonderful job and we ask Allah’s blessings to accompany him in all his endeavours. The finished product can be seen in the attached video below.

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