Transcription
As strange as it sounds, turning the Apostle Paul into a deceiver may be the only way for Muslims to defend Muhammad. Why do I say that? Well, the Quran repeatedly affirms that Jesus was a Muslim prophet sent by Allah to preach Islam. So when we turn to the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, and we find him saying that he came to give his life as a ransom for others, and that he's going to die on the cross and rise from the dead, and that he's the one who will raise the dead at the final resurrection, and that he's the final judge of all people, we have to ask why doesn't this sound anything like Islam? The obvious answer is that Muhammad was a false prophet who came to lead people away from the gospel. Uh, Muslims don't want to take that route. So they need to blame someone for corrupting Jesus' message.
Now, at the street level, it's common for Muslims to say that Jesus' message was corrupted at the council of Nicaea or something like that. But anyone who knows anything about Christian history knows that belief in Jesus' death, resurrection, and deity can all be traced back to the first century. So unless our Muslim friends want us to believe that Constantine built a time machine and went back to corrupt Christianity in the first century, this explanation won't work. So, Muslims need massive corruption of basic Christian doctrine in the first century. But there's a problem here. They can't blame Jesus for corrupting this message; He was a prophet of Islam. Nor can they blame Jesus' original apostles because the Quran says that they were good Muslims. So, Muslims have to find someone in the first century who's not Jesus and not one of the original apostles, but who's nevertheless powerful enough to overpower all of Jesus' true followers and corrupt Christianity like this. But the closest thing that Muslim apologists can find is the Apostle Paul. So they call Paul a deceiver and blame him for corrupting Christianity, hoping that this will help them rescue Muhammad.
Before we point a finger at the Apostle Paul, however, there are 10 facts we should keep in mind. First, Paul was a brilliant scholar who knew the Old Testament backwards and forwards. The 20th-century atheist philosopher Anthony Flew said that Paul "obviously possessed a first-class philosophical mind." When the Roman governor Festus objected to Paul's claims, he couldn't say, "Paul, you're stupid." He could only say, "Paul, your great learning is driving you mad." Now, being a brilliant scholar doesn't make you right, but since Jesus claimed to fulfill Old Testament prophecy, knowing something about the contents certainly helps, especially if you can evaluate those contents.
Second, Paul was a contemporary of Jesus who knew all of the relevant languages for examining Jesus' teachings. If you want reliable information about a person, it's pretty helpful to be a member of the person's own generation, to be in the same country, and to speak the original languages. So Paul was in the perfect position to learn as much as he wanted about Jesus.
Third, Paul received revelations from Jesus himself. Paul didn't just decide to be an apostle one day. He was chosen by Jesus Christ who appeared to him, changing Paul's life forever. Why would Jesus personally select someone who's going to corrupt his message?
Fourth, Paul tested his revelations. Paul was smart enough to know that lots of people think they're getting revelations from God when they really aren't. So, after receiving revelations and preaching the gospel, he went to Jerusalem and submitted his gospel to the original apostles of Jesus to make sure it lined up with the gospel of Jesus. Paul's message was confirmed by Jesus' apostles.
Fifth, as a Pharisee, Paul was obsessed with preserving and passing on authoritative tradition. Paul describes his life as a Pharisee by saying, "I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions." Paul's obsession with tradition doesn't go away when he becomes a Christian. He just changes the source of authority. As a Pharisee, he would have passed on traditions that he obtained from respected rabbis. As a Christian, he passed on traditions he obtained from Jesus' apostles. So the idea that Paul, who had been trained all his life to carefully and zealously preserve and pass on authoritative tradition, the idea that he's somehow reinventing Christianity out of his own head with no respect for what Jesus and his apostles actually taught, goes against everything we know about Paul and his background.
Sixth, history supports Paul's view of Jesus wherever we can test his claims. Even if we take a critical approach to the history of Jesus, there are certain facts we can establish. For instance, Jesus viewed himself as bringing about the kingdom of God. Jesus viewed himself as the Messiah. Jesus viewed himself as the son of God. Jesus died by crucifixion. Jesus' followers were convinced that he had appeared to them risen from the dead. These are the kinds of things we learn about Jesus through historical investigation. And they're exactly the kinds of things Paul says about Jesus.
Seventh, Paul endured vicious persecution for his message and never backed down. Muslims like to point out that Muhammad was persecuted in Mecca, and this is true. But the persecution Muhammad endured was like a vacation in Hawaii compared to the lashings and imprisonments and shipwrecks and stoning that Paul went through. The reason this is important is that the more you're persecuted, the more reason you have to stop and think, "Was that really a revelation from God? I need to think about it because it's costing me a lot here." Paul's patient endurance in the face of torture and death shows that he certainly wasn't deliberately lying about his revelations and that his experiences of the risen Jesus must have been thoroughly convincing.
Eighth, the Apostle Paul performed numerous miracles during his missionary journeys, including healing a man who was disabled since birth and even raising a young man named Eutychus from the dead. Paul lived such a miraculous life that people would touch him with a cloth, take the cloth to a sick person, and the sick person would be healed. Paul became so famous for casting out demons that exorcists would try to cast out demons by saying, "I command you to come out in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches." Why would God give Paul this kind of power if Paul was corrupting the gospel?
Ninth, Paul lived a morally exemplary life. Before he was Christian, he was blameless according to Jewish law. This doesn't mean that he was sinless. It means that no one could point a finger at him for violating the commands of the Torah. The only thing we would condemn him for was using violence for attempting to destroy the Christian church. But that was before Paul was a Christian. After his conversion, Paul completely renounced violence and promoted love as the key Christian virtue. So if we know that Paul was an extremely moral and pious person, what sense does it make to accuse him of being a wicked deceiver?
Tenth, and this one is specifically for our Muslim friends, Allah confirms the reliability of Paul. In chapter 61:14 of the Quran, Allah says that he aided the true followers of Jesus until they became uppermost over those who rejected Jesus. In his commentary on chapter 61:14, Yusuf Ali says that it refers to Allah aiding the Christians until they permeated the Roman Empire. But the Christians who permeated the Roman Empire were what Muslims would call Pauline Christians. So, did Allah help the wrong Christians? One of the most respected Muslim commentators of all time, Ibn Kathir, comments on chapter 61:14 as follows: "It was said that this verse was revealed about the apostles of Jesus, may peace and blessing be upon him. Ibn Abbas stated that of the apostles and disciples that Jesus sent to preach, there were Peter and Paul who went to Rome." This is a Muslim scholar telling us that Paul was sent by Jesus. The Muslim historian Tabari agrees with this tradition. He writes, "Among the apostles and the followers who came after him were the apostle Peter and Paul who was a follower and not an apostle. They went to Rome." Why would respected Muslim commentators list Paul among the true witnesses of Jesus who preached in Rome? The reason they describe Paul in this way is that many classical Muslim commentators based their views on the Quran. Allah said that he sent the gospel as a guidance for mankind and that he would protect Jesus' followers. So these commentators realize that to say that the apostle Paul corrupted the gospel is to insult Allah. If Allah sent the gospel as a guidance and promised to protect Jesus' followers but was overpowered by the Apostle Paul, this would make Paul more powerful than Allah. So when modern Muslims tell us that Allah's plans were foiled by the Apostle Paul, they're not making Paul look bad. They're making Paul look more powerful than their god.
Why didn't the commentators on the Quran know this? If we cite Ibn Kathir and if we cite historians as Tabari and Hadith and so on, why did they think that Paul was an authoritative disciple of Jesus? Because those are the stories they heard. It is well known in the in the field of exegesis of the Quran that there's the problem of Israiliyat. Those are stories that were heard from the people of the book, here called Israiliyat as though they're all from Jews. But uh, even that term shows uh that that Muslims were not quite savvy about the early Christian histories and who was who and who was telling what. And what they did was they took these stories from Jews and Christians and they incorporated them into their own writing. So they heard that Paul was an important disciple of Jesus and they took that for granted. But when we study now in detail and we go back to the actual wording of the Quran, the Quran itself does not mention Paul, does not name him, does not name actually any of the disciples of Jesus. So uh, David's going on about Surah 16, verse number 14 uh yesterday and today as well is based on actually a specific interpretation of that passage. But uh, while he's trying to prove that that passage is wrong and therefore Allah is wrong and Muhammad is wrong and uh and all of that, he is going by a specific interpretation, and a very important principle is that if you want to disprove a verse either of the Bible or the Quran uh you have to disprove all possible reasonable interpretations of those passages.
Uh, now Shabir says uh that Muslim scholars have described Paul as a true follower of Jesus because they, you know, didn't know that much about history. It's not the Quran that mentions Paul. Well, even here, according to uh certain Muslims, yeah, the Paul the the the Quran does mention him. This is chapter 36:13-16. And set out to them an example of the people of the town. When the apostles came to them, when we sent to them two, they rejected them both. Then we strengthened them with a third. So they said, "Surely we are apostles to you." They said, "You are not but mortals like ourselves, nor has the beneficent God revealed anything. You only lie." They said, "Our Lord knows that we are most surely apostles to you." So, uh, they're apostles sent and the the city supposedly here is Antioch. And we find in Muslim sources, even though even though Ibn Kathir doesn't agree with it, he still cites it. Uh, the names, he still cites this uh Muslim tradition. The names of the first two messengers were Shamun and Yuhanna. And the name of the third was Bulus, and the city was Antioch. So that's Simon, John, and Paul as the the final uh apostles sent to them. Um, Shabir says, "I'm going with a particular interpretation of 61:14 and I have to disprove all possible other all alternative interpretations of the verse." One, I'm going with the most obvious, most natural interpretation of the verse. Again, Allah said before this to Jesus that he's going to make his followers superior until the day of resurrection. And then in 61:14 he confirms that he has done this. He aided the true disciples of Jesus until they became uppermost. But according to the Islamic view, Allah tricked and deceived people into believing Jesus died on the cross and then accidentally made them believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and then the message was corrupted. In what sense? Name any sense in which these guys were uppermost? They're all committing. Sure. That's not uppermost over anyone.
Well, as for the Quranic uh depiction of of supporting the disciples of Jesus, uh I think we've already explained this at length and I don't see why David, you want to just insist that the Quran is wrong on this point. Uh, the the the Quran is welcoming the Christians as they are with their faults. Uh, we cannot hold Christians responsible. For example, Christians born after the council of Nicaea grew up in a milieu in which all they know is the trinity. Jesus is the son of God. So what is the Quran going to blame Christians in those 300 years? Because they knew nothing better than to follow what their parents have taught them and what they heard in in church. The the Quran is accepting them as they are, knowing them to be good people and uh seeing the goodness in their hearts and in their actions. All right. Now, Shabir says that uh that there's no problem with the Quran saying it affirmed Jesus' true apostles and that he said he would make them uppermost even though these apostles eventually were teaching that he's the divine son of God who died on the cross for sins and rose from the dead and that this is the version of Christianity which permeated the Roman Empire. And Shabir says, "Well, you know, God's just tolerant of this." But I mean, think of what God is supposedly being tolerant about here. It's saying Jesus is the divine son of God who died on the cross for sins and rose from the dead. This is some major uh this has some major uh concerns as far as Islam. And so to think, well, you know, God just doesn't mind that much until Islam comes along. But God is actually involved according to Islam in one in in producing the belief in Jesus' death and his resurrection. But then once the message has been preserved, it's not just that God is allowing it to spread. He says he aided those Christians until they became uppermost. So he's actually helping them spread belief that Jesus is the son of God. And about.