The Rise of Islam in the West with Adam Francisco

At Sola Media, we're committed to helping Christians deepen their faith through clear, Christ-centered teaching rooted in the riches of the Reformation. Every podcast, article, and resource we produce is offered free of charge. And it's only possible because of generous monthly supporters. When you become a partner today, you'll receive two remarkable books as our thanks. We discover the Holy Spirit by Dr. Michael Horton and praying with Jesus by Pastor, Adriel Sanchez. We believe these books can guide you into a clearer understanding of the Spirit's work and a richer prayer life. To become a partner and receive these two books, visit solimedia.org/partner. There was a certain point where I asked, for some of his Omar, how it was that Muslims denied that Jesus was crucified on the cross when making the same point you just made Mike. That it's like at least 600 years after the actual events. We've got eyewitness testimony, companions of eyewitnesses who say it happened as a matter of fact. It happened in a corner. You've got Roman authors, Tacitus, Sutonius, Josephus. It's like a well-known event, if you will, in the ancient world. I asked him, why is it you would? Because him being a scholar, I said, you as a scholar, how is it you prefer a text that's 600 years after the events with no connection to eyewitness testimony or any other historical evidence, prefer the Quran over Tacitus. Or better yet, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. His answer really helped me understand where a apologetic conversation kind of reached a dead end. He said, he kind of smiled and he said, you know why? Because I'm a Muslim first and a scholar second. Oh wow. I thought I just scored points, but he got a standing ovation for that. And as we talked about, I made the point, I don't remember exactly how it went, but I said, so you're allowing your sort of ideological commitments to determine what is the case rather than what is the case. Tell you what your world view should be and he said, that's right. [Music] Applying the riches of the Reformation to the Modern Church, this is White Horse's Inn, a weekly round table discussion about theology and culture. [Music] Hello and welcome to another edition of White Horse Inn. I'm Mike Horton with my good friend's Bob Hiller, Walter Strickland, Justin Holcomb. And we have a good friend over many years here, Dr. Adam Francisco, who's Director of Academics for our friends at 1517.org. And he also is a professor in the Concordia University System. It's great to have you on, Adam. Yeah, it's great to be here, Mike. Besides being a terrific Lutheran theologian, Adam is a scholar in Islam, lots of background in those studies. So we thought it would be a good idea to have him on since a lot of online discussions today, which is what we're talking about in this series. A lot of online discussions are active around Muslim apologetics. And so we want to know how we can be ready to give to our Muslim neighbors and friends, perhaps even family, a reason for the hope that we have. So first of all, Adam, could you give us a little bit of a Islam 101 for the different schools, maybe how they differ, just a very broad brush kind of way? Sure, I'll try to keep this really brief, but it's 1400 years of history. So we'll see. It starts every Muslim, whether they're Sunni Shia or the Sufi, that's more of the mystical variety that cut across Sunni Shia, believes that in the seventh century, a man named Muhammad was called to be a prophet and he's seen as the last in a long line of prophets that extends all the way back to Adam. The Quran, in fact, sees Adam and Noah and Abraham and Jesus as prophets of Islam. Jesus' first miracle in the Quran is speaking from the cradle where he tells Mary that he is a prophet of a law and so on. So Muslims believe that. They believe that the Quran, and there's some variance here across the different sects of Islam that the Quran is a perfect transcription of what Muhammad taught. Some will go so far as I say, and it's a perfect copy of a Quran that's up in heaven. That's maybe even on golden tablets. That's a bit of a bad joke. But that's it. And they regard the Quran Sunnis, which is like 85 to 90% of the Muslim world as the eternal speech of a law. And like a real austere Muslim, while there's lots of tradition, the example of Muhammad and his biographies and anecdotes concerning Muhammad and what's called the Hadith, all Muslims agree that the basis for Islamic doctrine is found in the Quran and the Quran alone. The other material helps you interpret the Quran, but it's the Quran that tells you what you to believe and how you're to pray and act generally. There are five core beliefs in Islam. Everybody's heard about the five pillars. There's some more like the things you got to do to be a Muslim good standing from prayer and giving alms to the poor, making a hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca and so on. There are five core beliefs though. If there's one thing you could say that all Muslims, if they're aware of their tradition, will confess. The first is a doctrine of maybe we could call it unitarian monotheism. They'll use the term ta'uhid to describe that. That is God is one in essence and one in person. The Quran says in quite a few places, he cannot have a partner, he cannot have a son. The second would be a doctrine of creation that emphasizes the invisible aspects of creation, that there are other creatures out there, angels and jinns or genies. And the genies in particular are quite active and whispering in the ears of all people enticing them into sin and so on. Another doctrine and fourth kind of go hand in hand, it's a doctrine of prophets that Muhammad is not a new, like he didn't bring a new revelation, he simply reasserts the revelation from prophets in the past. And if you read the Quran, there's about two dozen prophets named and they all with one exception are biblical names from Adam, Taberam, Moses and so on. And along with that is that fourth teaching that says some of these prophets' books are scripture. So the Quran will refer to the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel. In one place it refers to the sohu for the scrolls of Abraham, which Mormons have, I guess recovered. But another bad joke. But then the fifth one is the-- Don't stop with those please. They're kind of inside jokes though. I don't know if I can get them but-- The fifth is the doctrine of the day of judgment that there will be a final judgment and where everybody will be judged on the basis of their good and bad deeds. And there's disagreement over how it all pans out in the end. There are real Orthodox, Sunni Muslims, historically assert a doctrine of-- it's usually called the divine decree, which is a pretty hard determinism that says regardless of what you believe or what you've done, a law is determined at all from the beginning. Whereas others will stress the free will that you might have and so on. So those are the five core tenets. Islam grew in the early days all the way up until around the time the Protestant Reformation, a little thereafter, mostly by force, by imperial expansion, if you will. I wrote my dissertation on Martin Luther and Islam and one of the things that was really interesting in reading history as a Protestant Reformation is how at least before the 20th century, not a whole lot of emphasis is given to the Turks and the distraction. The role they played in distracting the Pope and the emperor from dealing with Luther and what was interesting though is seeing how the Turks are banging on the gates of Vienna in 1529 and working to push into deeper and to central Europe to overtake Christendom. Never happened, thankfully. But-- Don't conservative Muslims believe that Jesus was good as far as he went, but he only touched on the inner life and the heart and individual morality whereas-- Muhammad brought a kingdom with him. Muhammad was a political figure. Yeah, the way they'll usually describe that. So if you ask him, well, if Jesus was a prophet of a law or a prophet of Islam, how is it that his message is so different than Muhammad's? And the usual, the way they'll usually put it, though there's a lot more nuance than what I'm going to say, is that all the previous prophets were sent to particular groups of people. The Quran says that a law has never left himself without a witness to the various tribes and nations and plans and so on. Muhammad universalized the message. So all the prophets in their view taught the same theology, but they taught different ethics and laws that were particular to the culture these folks found. And Jesus in particular is an emphasis that he's, his emphasis was on reforming the inner spiritual life, if you will. When Muhammad comes around, not only does he restore a theology that had been corrupted by the Jews and the Christians, but he brings a law and an ethic that is for all people, even though it's an Arabic, it's for all people. This is a super helpful atom. As we think about Muslim influencers, do you find that there's a specific kind of Islam that's being purported by these influencers? Because sometimes if we're talking about some Ford facing Christians, we would critique how they are engaging with the Christian faith. So any idiosyncrasies with those influencers that you're seeing before we jump into the meat of the art discussion? Yeah, so I failed to address this earlier, but most are going to be from what we could describe as the Sunni position. So the big division in Islam is between Sunni and Shia. So 85% to 90% Sunni and 10% to 15% Shia. The Sunnis, what makes them distinct, is for Sunni is from the Arabic terms Sunnah, which means tradition, and they believe that the tradition of Islam was established once and for all by Muhammad and some would go a little further and say the first four calleafs of Islam. So up until the 661, 80, in the example they gave, the way they answered questions, they're ethic and so on, that seals everything. To deviate away from that is to introduce innovations. Even if you're asked the question, because Coca-Cola has like a minuscule amount of alcohol, this was a big question in the Feeck Council in North America. I guess two decades ago, Ken Muslims drink Coca-Cola. And Muhammad never answered that question or had that question or the calleafs. And so they had to deliberate and for the Shia, they could have answered that question easily. Because for them, because Islam is by its essence, expansionistic, it's going to reach cultures that are very different than Muhammad's culture. And new questions are going to arise. And the Islamic clerics are able to discern Allah's will. Whereas in Sunni, questions that are new that Muhammad or the first four calleafs, the rightly guided calleafs answered, those aren't even questions, Muslims would really entertain. So that Sunni is super traditionalists such that everything's done by the seventh century. All you need to know for living. The influencers are mostly from a more like popular or populist type of Sunism. So Sunnis is, you know, because it's so numerous, there's lots of variants of it. And they're going to all believe that the Quran is Allah's eternal speech. But they're going to be a little more flexible, especially those who grew up in the West. They're going to be used to interacting and moving about in a second culture, sector of culture because they've they recognize. And this kind of goes back to the thinking of a guy who's described as the Martin Luther of Islam. Once he names Tree Gramidon, he was like the reformer of Islam. He was going to bring conservatives, Sunni orthodoxy to the Western world, because there is no, the twos are terminology, Darul Islam anymore. There is no Islamic world with a calleaf at the center. So Muslims face a situation that's kind of like Muhammad face before Islam really became a thing. And so every Muslim is a missionary, so to speak. And can can use methods and means that are not ideal that are that in decades or centuries past weren't even a possibility and use that with liberty, so social media. Adam, let me ask, why do you think it's so effective right now in the West? Because it seems like, and maybe I don't know the, I don't know any stats or numbers, but like, Andrew Tates really popular with young men, but it does seem like, Islam, it's fascinating to me how much Christianity seems to get dunked on, but Islam is seen as sort of this thoughtful and reverent and important thing for us to take seriously. So what is it about the West and what is it about Islam that's sort of meeting up right now? I don't have a definitive answer there, I mean, I'll take some stabs at it. I think one is there's just this sort of huge vacuum in the West. You know secularism, if you will, has left the West spiritually, ethically, theologically void and Islam asserts itself with, with confidence. There's a, I don't follow social media influencers, but I know I'm aware of a few of these Muslim debaters, Daniel Haki Kachu is, has sort of been making the rounds. He's made it into my algorithm at least. And he debated, I think he's an orthodox, small or a big old orthodox Christian, Andrew Wilson. And the debate was over what's better for culture or civilization, Islam or Christianity. It's a very long debate, kind of funny, because Daniel Haki Kachu, kind of gets, Islam gets skewered, but Daniel Haki Kachu, he, he maintains throughout and all his, his presence on the social, or the realm of social media, his presence is that Islam is the most based, that is not woke of the religions. And so therefore it's good for culture because it will restore sort of normative, you know, gender or sexual positions and, oh, I should say, gender roles. Right. Well, what, here are some questions that, that, that may come up because people are listening to some of these social influencers. The doctrine of the, the Trinity actually isn't taught anywhere in the Bible itself. It's something that, that people came up with, especially at the time of Constantine and, how do we, how do we respond people when it's not, obviously just Muslims, it's Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, all kinds of folks. And before we answer that Adam, can you also, in the Trinity sphere of questions, what do Muslims, most Muslims think, or what does the Quran say that Christians believe about the Trinity? Okay. Okay. So let me take that one first. And the reason I'm asking is because I've heard that people are like, oh yeah, it's God, the Father, Mary and Jesus. And, and so I'm kind of just curious, what do they think we think we believe about Trinity and then, yeah, yeah, Mike's Trinity question. Yeah, there, well, there's, so the Quran, there's two places that I can think of right off hand. At the end of, I believe it's chapter, or Surah four of the Quran tells the people of the book, in particular, Christians, that they should not be excessive in their religion as the, the way that wording is, but what they, means don't, don't go into theological extremes and do not say Tathletha, which is, you could translate that, do not confess the Trinity. So, and it kind of leaves it at that. And then, but there's another passage, I believe it's in the following chapter that it's the context, if you will, is the last day. And Jesus returns as everybody's being judged in a law points to all the Christians and says to Jesus, did you tell these people that they should take you and your mother, Mary, as lords besides a law, it suggests that the Quran's understanding of the Trinity is this tri-theism where Mary replaces the Holy Spirit. So, but when Muslim debaters, and there's a long history of this, know full well what, what Christians mean by the Trinity, the typical argument, the point that you bring out with respect to this is the term Trinity is not in the Bible. The doctrine, as Dr. Horton put it was, they could say along with that great historian, Dan Brown, in the Da Vinci code, that there would be no doctrine of the Trinity or the deity of Christ had it not been for the Council of Nacee or something like that. There is a very long, you can trace it back at least 1,200, maybe 1,200 years in the Islamic corpus of writings on Christianity. There's this idea that somewhere between Paul and Emperor Constantine, the religion of Jesus is transformed. And the usual culprit is Paul. They will say something like he blends Jewish monotheism with a Greco-Roman polytheism and outcomes a tri-theism. Sounds like he'd often hurt that. Something like that. And yes, well they, and what's interesting in all this, and I don't want to get too far field here is they at least up until very recently. I haven't seen it in the last few years, but if you were to go to like YouTube Islam.com, I haven't been there in a long time. I'm sure Pastor Hiller is there every morning all the time. If you typed in something like New Testament or Trinity or something like that, the lectures that you the video clips it would appear right away would be things by Bart Erman and Elaine Faggles and others of their ilk. And so they'll they'll say even Christian scholarship is affirming what we Muslims have said all along that that Christian is involved. Yeah, exactly. So, but when so what they they will accuse Christians of using a term, but also inventing a doctrine that is not found in scripture. And the I think the easiest or maybe not easiest, but the best way just to start talking about that with the Muslim is is to acknowledge yes, the term Trinity is not found in the Bible nor is the Islamic term Tao head. These are terms that we use because they're the best terms we got to describe the data and the text. And then and you know, you all know this way better than I. You know, they're playing a pretty clear passages that that led Christians to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity or the Orthodox doctrine of Trinity. I don't know we could go over a few of them, but like they think Matthew 28 when Jesus says to baptize in the name singular Father, Son and Holy Spirit or promises the paracletre or the Holy Spirit or promises going to send a Holy Spirit after petitioning his father. So what are you supposed to do with that data? Monotheous, but we see in the scriptures that there's three persons and you get the doctrine of Trinity out of that. So and I found like like person, I don't want to get into personal anecdotes so much, but in my conversations with Muslims when you, when you just emphasize that yeah, the term is not something we find in the Bible. It's just a helpful term to help to make sense of the the data in the Bible that is not like that is kind of mysterious, but not a contradiction because it's one in essence and three in persons or one in essence or three in essence and three in persons. Is that where they kind of get hung up when it comes to the Trinity? Well, besides not believing that Jesus is God. Yeah, they will. They'll say that just as it makes sense that you have three persons in one being and it's interesting. Like when I get that sort of accusation or objection, it really comes from a place where they will, you'll see like Samshamoon is a great Christian debater of Islam. In my view, he's like, if you're going to watch somebody do this on the internet, he's the guy to watch. He will emphasize how Muslims come to the theological table with notions already in mind of what God must look like. And if Christians don't fit that framework or that procrastine bed, they they cry foul. But they do really believe like historically believe that Christians are essentially tritheists. And it probably back to your question Justin. I know we need we have other topics and this will be brief, but when you were talking about the Quran and they talked about the eternal Quran. And I know enough to know about the asherite Mutazalite debates because the Mutazalite said there wasn't a the Quran was created when it was revealed and asherite said, no, no, no, the Quran is eternal. I mean, do they don't isn't there a sense within Islam that there is something else eternal from God? Isn't there a little problem that they have with their own doctrine of the Quran? Yeah. So you could this guy mentioned earlier Samshamoon loves getting into that because if the Quran is uncreated, that kind of gives it this similar status to a law and then you've got to like an eternal word maybe. I don't. Yeah. So Dr. Francis, I do have another question for you. I mean, as we're just kind of thinking about the Trinity, you know, as Protestants, we would talk about the second person of the Trinity of which, you know, essential claim for Muslim apologists is that Jesus identified himself only as a prophet or a servant of God and not divine. And so how would they deal with verses that portray Jesus's divinity and so on and so forth? There just seems to be a lot to be engaged with there. So my my experience here and this is I got had a lot of this is that if they've read the New test, if they've read the Gospels or or somewhat of where they're going to point out that there are places where Jesus prays the Father or but also they're going to play a point to places where Jesus says things like I and the Father are one and they're going to they're usually going to they'll move forward and say see the the Matthew Mark, Luke and John are in coherent. So what with Muslims typically don't understand maybe they don't want to understand that Christians don't just confess that Jesus is fully God, but also fully man. So those passages where Jesus is praying to God the Father or crying out to God the Father, why have you abandoned me? Usually the whale responds, well, that's Jesus human nature. And that that will sometimes clarify it, but for them like with the doctrine and the Trinity, they'll say, but isn't this contradictory? How can God be at the same time man? And then we're back to the same thing where Muslims, we're all guilty of this in some way, right? But Muslims typically have a preconceived notions of the way God must be and how He can act. I like to emphasize that a lot because with Muslims because they tend to have this posture, this disposition that they let the revelation, the Quran in their case, do the talking, but really when it comes to doing theology and apologetics, they bring in all sorts of philosophical presuppositions before they even let the revelation speak. Most Christians agree that baptism matters, yet many are unsure what it means or why churches practice it differently. In this free download, three views on baptism, you'll explore three major Protestant perspectives to the Lutheran, Baptist and Presbyterian voices. Each view is presented clearly, charitably, and most importantly, rooted in Scripture. Whether you're new to the topic or seeking deeper understanding, this resource will help you think carefully about baptism and its place in the Christian life. Download your free digital copy today at soulimedia.org/offers. Real quick on the Jesus stuff, and this is like rapid fire having in Muslim scholars. Great, so I'm not intending this would be a huge long question. I've read the Quran and I was surprised at some of the things that were said about Jesus and the Quran. I think Christians would be surprised. Can you just go through just like a bullet point with some of the things the Quran says about Jesus that he's a prophet, obviously, but he's like the greatest prophet, one of the greatest prophets, the sinless prophet. So just all the really high view of Jesus and the Quran. Yeah, so he's born of the only of the Virgin Mary and she's the only female named in the Quran. There are female's referred to, but you never get their name. He performs miracles and in early age, he speaks from the cradle that's chapter 19 verse 33-ish in the Quran, but also performs other miracles in his early life, like breathing on clay pigeons, not the kind of issue with a shotgun, but like little trinkets and they come to life. Which he got from the gospel of Thomas, right? Yeah, well, there's the gospel Thomas and there's a couple other, yeah, infancy gospels that were floating around some heretical communities that sort of had established themselves outside and it's getting to the weeds with the Byzantine empire in the northern parts of the Ravenpidenceless. So yeah, a lot of borrowing from the Quran from other sources. Does the Quran refer to Jesus as sinless? Is that accurate? Yeah, he's exaggerating. He is sinless. Not all the prophets are sinless, but he's not the only one. Muhammad, of course, in their view, is sinless Moses, I believe was sinless in Abraham. And what's really surprising for the Christian reading Quran for the first time is in chapter 4, verse 157-158, you get this sort of statement about Jesus or you get Jews boasting that they killed the Messiah, they did not kill him nor was he crucified or nor did he die. Instead, he was taken up into heaven. So you get a denial of the, a pretty clear denial of the crucifixion of Jesus and this idea and it's developed in the Hadith, the traditions that arise outside the Quran that maybe Judas volunteered to take Jesus place and be crucified in his stead after a lot of performed like a facelift to make them look like Jesus. Don't they have totally contradictions like it's Judas or it's Sergius or he ascended spiritually because his soul was the Holy Spirit. He ascended and clearly getting that from the Gospels. Yeah, this all sounds like it's come from the Mastikospels, Judas the hero and all of this. I mean, no, it was from Allah. But the contradict guys, can you address the whole issue here of, I don't know what Islam's position is actually on the history of the life and times of Jesus because it seems that they have really conflicting views, especially about his, whereabouts after the so-called crucifixion. Yes, and it's within the Quran itself, but also the interpretation of the Quran, you find a lot of contradictions. So like the right Reverend Dr Justin Holcom put it earlier. One of the things about the Quran is when you read it, you're not reading a text that's written chronologically. It's just a smattering of stories. So you get in a couple verses, it'll be talking about Moses. And then the following verses, it'll talk about the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. And then we'll refer to them as brother and sister. And so you get some who'll say, well, it's referring to their, they're both, both Israelites or their sisters and brother and sister in the faith and things like that. But it's pretty, the natural reading that taxes that they're actually, they live at the same time, their brother and sister. So you get lots of contradictions with Jesus. So there's that passage that says he was not crucified nor did he die. Somebody has taken up into heaven. But then there's another passage that says he dies and rises again. And the way Muslims will deal with some of these differences, some of it will say, well, the text is what the text is, those who try to reconcile these difficulties or contradictions will say, well, the death and resurrection of Jesus is something that's going to happen at the last judgment when he returns. But then you, you mentioned, Dr. Horton, that there's, I almost said, great, little, there's a little book out there published by a group called the Amadi. There's a lot of Amadi Muslims in America. And they tended, they're, they're all heretics within Islam. They had to flee the Eastern parts of Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan 100 years ago, because they're being so heavily persecuted. But they're very pacifistic, but very missionary. They have some real bizarre theology, but they produced a book called Jesus in India that argues that Jesus in the, when the, there's that mix up on the road to Golgotha and Simon the Syrians takes up the cross. Jesus sort of slips out of the crowd and heads eastward looking for the lost tribes of Israel and eventually winds up in Kashmir. And there's a allegedly there's a, I can there, but appreciate that. Yes and all. But there's a, allegedly there's a tomb in Kashmir somewhere of Jesus. And I'm told that the locals though, they know nobody's buried there, but they love when Westerners come there, because they want to see the tomb of Jesus. So they pay these fees to see it. Not one. So as we're thinking about the Quran's testimony to Jesus, does it, am I correct in thinking that the Quran actually affirms scripture in some way? And if so, does that further complicate its testimony to Christ if the scripture is contradicting what the Quran is saying, even though it's internally contradictory? Yeah. So the, there's several passages in the Quran where, where people of the book, usually it seems the context suggests it's Jews, but it could have been Christians to come to the Muslims in Medina when Muhammad is up there and he's got total power over this little city. And they, they have this internal dispute within the Jewish community. And Muhammad's told about this. And Muhammad tells his followers, tell them they've got their books, they've got the Torah. They should discern what is right and wrong from the Torah. So you have lots of little instances like that where Muhammad seems, in the Quran seems to be confirming that the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel are legitimate authorities at the, at the very least. There is, so if you ask Muslims today, well, if they're like, if they are as the Quran suggests revelations from, from God, why is it that the teachings contradict the Quran in places in, in many places? And the usual response they'll give is that the, the scriptures, the old and New Testament have been corrupted. The term they'll use as tariff and there's different ways they'll describe it. The Quran does not suggest that the texts have been textually corrupted, you know, through scribeliers or like purposeful additions or taking away or something like that. But the Quran suggests in one place that the Jews and Christians or people of the book, that's the chronic language for both groups have misinterpreted the texts. So the usual examples they'll give, or the usual example is Deuteronomy 18 when Moses says another, a great prophet will come from Israel, who will be greater than I. And for them, that's a reference to not Jesus but rather to Muhammad. So that's an example of like the corruption in interpretation of the text. There are some who, this is something that develops a couple centuries after the Quran's put together. They will argue that the text itself has been corrupted and not just by like very, we're not just talking scribal variants. We're talking things have been taken out or purposely changed or added. A fairly common example is Jesus in chapters 14 and 16 of John saying that he's going to petition the Father to send the paraclete to his disciples. And some will go so far as to say is if you take the go to the Greek New Testament and you change one vowel and one constant, and I don't know if it's paracletos or paracleton. I can't remember all the top of the head, but if you change it to the other and translate that Greek into Arabic, which you get is the name Ahmed. And if you go to Quran chapter 61 verse 6, it has the prophet A.E. Sora Jesus saying, I give you good news of a prophet who will come out for me. His name is Ahmed. Ahmed is just another way of saying Muhammad. Interesting. So they believe that there's actually been scribes who have purposely removed references to Muhammad in the text. Does it help to bring it or is this offensive to bring up to Muslim, you're talking to one? This is anachronistic obviously because you're talking about a seventh century product that has no textual history that is actually connected to the first century. In contrast with the embarrassment of textual riches that the New Testament enjoys. And so why should we believe that the text written by Muhammad or transcribed by Muhammad or whatever centuries later than any of the living witnesses would be the standard for a first century document. Just if we're talking about historical transmission, not even talking about my Bible can be your Bible, but just historical transmission. Right. So this is the big issue, oftentimes on spoken issue in Christian Muslim apologetic discourse, is I'll give it like an actually another personal example. Years ago, this maybe 20 years ago, I was at a mosque invited to a mosque in Indiana to have a dialogue with this Imam who's also a professor at University of Notre Dame. I don't know if he's still there or not, but his professor of peace studies of all things at Notre Dame. But he served as the leader of that mosque. And it was a friendly exchange where we basically were the instruction was that we're to describe from our particular tradition, from me, from the standpoint of Christianity and him from Islam, what both religions believe about Jesus. And then we had a time where we could ask each other questions. And there was a certain point where I asked his name is Omar. How it was that Muslims denied that Jesus was crucified on a cross when making the same point you just made Mike that it's like at least 600 years after the actual events. And we've got eyewitness testimony, companions of eyewitnesses who say it happened as a matter of fact or did not happen in a corner. You've got you have Roman authors, Tacitus, Sutonius, you got Josephus. It's like sort of a well-known event, if you will, in the ancient world. I asked him, why is it you would because him being a scholar, I said, you as a scholar, how is it you prefer a text that 600 years after the events with no connection to eyewitness testimony or any other historical evidence prefer the Quran over Tacitus or better yet Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And his answer really kind of helped me understand like where a apologetic conversation kind of kind of reached a dead end. He says, and he kind of smiled. And he said, you know why? Oh wow. And I thought I just scored points, but he got a standing ovation for that. As we talked about, I don't remember exactly how it went, but I said, "So you're allowing your sort of ideological commitments, determine what is the case rather than what is the case, tell you what your worldview should be." Wow. And he said, "That's right." Wow. And that's fascinating. And not to, I mean, I'm not trying to score points with you here, Mike, but I remember you wrote an article in Modern Reformation a long time ago where you made the point how, while worldview doesn't determine, or while assumptions don't always determine a worldview, they play a heavy role in how a worldview shapes out. And I remember thinking, "This is where Apologix comes to a dead end." When you're interacting with somebody who's ideologically committed to something, dog medically committed to something, and it's a position that's not built on sort of facts, but rather just sort of a assumption. I wanted to ask you, too, before we get away from Christology, that I was on a plane having a long conversation with Muslim sitting next to me, absolutely wonderful, cordial conversation. And he was very interested in having the conversation. I did kind of go to the evidence for the resurrection and so forth. And like I would do with anybody else, and so what about the historical evidence? This is like talking to a Mormon, as you've already said, Adam. What about the historical evidence? And he said something equivalent to burning in my bosom. He says, "When you submit to Allah, you know." And I said, "But you're a very intelligent man. Are you just dismissing all of these historical arguments?" And he just completely bifurcated the historical from the fideistic sort of commitment. I wonder if I should have, instead, this leads us into the next question. If I should instead have focused on the existential question, how are you right with God? And it's just stayed away from, as you said, you just get to a dead end there. Maybe I wouldn't have had a dead end in the conversation if I had started with really kind of cracking that one open repentance takes the place of someone dying for your sins. How does that work? Can I piggyback on that? Because that's exactly where my other question is. Because I think they dovetail. It seems like Islam is about Muhammad as a prophet revealing the will of God, so you can do what God wants, so you can be made right with God. So I don't want to be too simplistic, but I'm going with Mike on, "How are you right with God? God reveals. God's will through Muhammad. You learn it. You read it. You know it. You do it. You're good." But sin problem, not so much a knowledge problem, and the sin problem influences your knowledge problem, but you don't so much need to hear the will of God so you can do it. You need to receive the gift of what the work of Jesus, Jesus is Prophet Christ in King. Now I'm imagining, going back to Mike's question, that's the scandal, which maybe it's theological, maybe it's unjust, but the fact is faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God, maybe Mike should have proclaimed the gospel instead of argued about philosophy. That's what I hear Mike's saying that he did wrong. But now I'm with you because when you're asking the question, I was thinking, "I would have done the same exact thing." I would have been like, "What about the text? What about the history? The apologizes of me would have come right out, and I am wondering, what about the actual gospel?" Yes, so Dr. Montgomery would always say a gospel for a sort of angelism, first apologetic second. In fact, your conversation with the man on the plane, Mike, I've had a guy whose daughter, he was a recent pastor, his daughter converted to Islam, and so I showed up in my office in Port Wayne at the seminary and said, "You know, he had told me about his daughter, but he just showed up at the door and said, "Here's my daughter, I won't name her name, but you need to talk to her." I just sort of left him, "Okay." We had a two-hour conversation, and I just asked her things, not existential questions, but her story. How was it that you're now Muslim when you're raised in a Christian home? She was a very bright young girl, and it became pretty clear pretty quickly that this was a boyfriend. There was pressure from a boyfriend. They were kind of from near Dearborn or Dearborn to stand, and that's how to Detroit. We had a good two-hour conversation, and she had memorized things. She had converted because of pressure from the boyfriend, but had kind of intellectually came up with the story, how she had done this research. She was quoting full-on paragraphs from Barterman's misquiting Jesus, telling me that she did some reflected on her faith. She was raised, and she learned that the Bible was filled with errors and so on. I did all the fancy—well, I don't know if that was fancy, but just apologetic work, and I'm thinking, "This is eventually—I'm going to win this." Or something like that. It came to a dead end, and then I asked, "You know enough about Christianity, and you clearly know Islam well for somebody who's new to the Islamic faith. Does it not concern you that in this new faith of yours that you have no assurance of salvation?" Her response is another one of these—what they call these "aha" moments, I guess, where she said, "It doesn't bother me because Allah has already determined my faith. My job here to be a good—to submit to Allah." And the way Muslims generally talk about this is that all human beings are actually by nature Muslim. There's a primordial covenant that's established with all of humanity, and so when they don't even talk about conversion, they talk about reversion back to your original nature when you embrace Islam. So, if you embrace Islam, the goal is not to—not assurance of salvation, they're really not concerned about that. The way that you Christian or Christian theology is concerned with that question. They're concerned with what do you do now in this life? Yes, submission. Following the—I mean, every prayer they say starts with the recitation of the first chapter of the Quran that petitions a lot, that they would be able to follow the—they call the "Sirat-a-Mustakin," a straight path to paradise. So, I mean, salvation, paradise is there, but the focus is now. What does a Muslim hear when they hear about the active obedience of Christ about him submitting to the will on our behalf? And is that just sound like—how do they hear that? Yeah, for them, so there's one passage in the Quran that says something like, "One cannot die for the sins of another." And that's the typical—and I don't remember chapter and verse anymore, but that's the typical passage of, quote, "to being a passage against any sort of substitutionary atonement or anything like that." And so, while they can hear it, it doesn't because the Quran says, "There is no vicarious—or Christ does not live this vicarious life and die in our place," or anything like that. It's just not on the table. It doesn't fit the framework. So Adam, what would they do with the day of judgment? Because you said one of the five major teachings is judgment. So, is that a hopeful day? Is that just an inevitable day? Like the Quran plays— The Quran plays— All over the place on that question. The picture, the way there's a lot of a great—everybody agrees that there will be a day of judgment, that it will be preceded by a general resurrection living in the dead. And all people will be judged on the basis that are good and bad deeds, just kind of with the Quran suggests. But there's a lot of verses that say there will be surprises. There will be people who are non-Muslims who did the best that was in them, so to speak, and actually end up in paradise. And there will be Muslims who are naughty, jack Muslims maybe, and they end up in hellfire. So there's a determinism there. The way that sometimes it's described when they get into the details is as every individual stands before a law, there's two scrolls that have been written on since you've been born. There's these recording angels sitting on your shoulder, as they say. And why is writing every bad deed you did, and why is writing every good deed you did? And they're unraveled at the end of time, depending on what's longer, is going to largely determine where you end up. Unless, of course, you die as a Shaheed or a martyr in this life, then you'll get immediate salvation. But then the Quran says that you're going to be taken up into paradise, and there'll be these black-eyed hurries, these perpetual virgins who are going to be reaching down to you and say, "Come on up here, you're going to receive your reward." But it was such an honor to die in the path of a law that you petition to go back down and do it all over again. So it gets the chronic eschatology and maridorology, I guess you could describe it as it's all over the place in the Quran, but it's eerie, very sensual. Playboy mansion. And actually quite dangerous, too. Because if you're some teenage kid with no hope of finding a spouse or whatever, you know, that you get this reward. It's interesting. The good and bad deeds versus the determinism versus the martyrdom and those things come together. That's something I'll need to look into more. That's really helpful. Adam, thank you for coming in and helping us understand more about Islam and how to communicate with these wonderful people we encounter who in many cases are happy to talk to us about it. We have to be ready to give them an answer for the hope that we have. Thanks again. You're welcome. This is a production of Soul and Media. This podcast is made possible by generous listeners like you. 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