What does the Qur’an say about the sonship of Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
It rejects it.
Oh. You want more.
Well, alright. Just because I like you all so much and appreciate your reading.
Anyway, Fatoohi says that in the beginning, God was alone. There was no one else. I suppose this could explain why Allah is not all-loving. After all, who was there for Him to love before creation? This is a problem you have solved in a Trinity of persons.
One important difference between the presentations of God in the Qur’an and the New Testament, at least according to the most popular understanding of the latter, is that the God of the Qur’an is one whereas the God of the New Testament is a unity. Allah is not a number of persons in one, one person in multiple manifestations, one being in different aspects, one in more than one mode, or any such designations that Christianity developed.
Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.
This might sound like a shock, but a unity is one. That’s why it starts with “Uni.” It refers to something that is one. In this case, there is one divine nature. Unfortunately, none of these descriptions Fatoohi gives us are actually anything like orthodox Christianity.
Under pressure to reconcile contradictory statements in the New Testament, Christian theologians work hard to stress that the concepts of divine oneness and unity are one and the same. The Qur’an rejects this equation, as logic does. The God of the Qur’an is one, not united.
Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.
We are not told what these contradictory statements are. Depending on the meaning, unity and oneness could mean the same. I fully agree the Qur’an rejects this, but if Fatoohi wants to say logic rejects this, he needs to show how. Many brilliant Christians throughout history have known logic quite well and yet somehow overlooked something right at the center of what they believe?
Jesus’ sonship of God in Christianity is no different from the concept of offspring of God of the polytheists of Arabia.
Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Unless the polytheists were holding on to some concept of Trinity, yes it was. Also, the polytheists would believe that a child was born in real time as a result of action on the part of the deity. In Christianity, Jesus is eternally begotten by the Father and is not an event that happened in time. The Son always was.
And when Allah said: “O Jesus son of Mary! Did you say to people: ‘Take me (ittakhithūnī) and my mother for two gods besides Allah?’” He said: “Glory be to You! I could never say what I have no right to say. If I have said it, then You know it. You know what is in my mind, but I do not know what is in Your mind. You know all unseen things. (5.116) I never said to them anything other than what You commanded me: ‘worship Allah, my and your Lord.’ I was a witness over them while I was among them, and when You took me You were the watcher over them. You are a witness over all things. (5.117) If You punish them, they are Your servants; and if You forgive them, You are the Invincible, the Wise.” (5.118) This dialog happened after God took Jesus to live in a heavenly place and rescued him from the attempt to get him crucified (Fatoohi, 2007: 445-452). Jesus lived until his middle age.
Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Where this took place, we do not know. How Jesus died, we do not know. This would all be news to New Testament scholars. Fatoohi uses them when it suits his goal, but when he wants to go with the assertions from the Qur’an that have no scholarly support in the subject area, he just ignores the scholarship entirely.
Most scholars also think that the deification of Jesus happened after he was gone. Larry Hurtado (2003: 131) stresses that “the Gospels confirm that the worship of Jesus in ‘post-Easter’ Christian circles represents a significant development beyond the sorts of homage given to Jesus during his ministry.”
Fatoohi, Louay. Jesus The Muslim Prophet: History Speaks of a Human Messiah Not a Divine Christ . Luna Plena Publishing. Kindle Edition.
I was unable to track down the article, but I did notice that Fatoohi just cited the first page, which tells me he read enough to get what he wanted and then moved on. The reply to this is “Of course they did!” The resurrection was the confirmation of Jesus and His terms. The resurrection changed everything!
Using Hurtado still, to avoid a long quote, I will just say Fatoohi concludes saying that modern scholarship concludes with what the Qur’an said a long time ago. Jesus was a man and pagan beliefs changed him into a god. This would be news to Larry Hurtado who argues that Jesus’s devotion started early on and sprang from the soil of Judaism at the time. Either Fatoohi has never read Hurtado’s work seriously, in which case he is ignorant, or he knows it and is misrepresenting it, in which case he is a liar.
Either way, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
We’ll continue next time.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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