Presup Applied to Islam

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today we are going to be talking about a very interesting topic pertaining to apologetic methodology and how it is applied to Islam.

And so I know I've received many, many messages from folks throughout the years. They find the presuppositional approach very powerful against the atheist, the agnostic, the skeptic. But what typically comes up is how is this approach used against competing religious perspectives, right?

We speak of God when we use, say, for example, what we call the transcendental argument that God, the God of scripture, provides what we call the preconditions for knowledge, for intelligible experience, right?

It's one thing when we're talking to the atheist, and yet it is another thing when we're talking to someone who holds to a religious perspective in which at the foundation of their perspective is this absolute God.

And so it seems that the presuppositional argument can be used by non-Christians, people who hold to differing deities and things like that. And so I wanna go and have a discussion with Anthony Rogers, who is a Christian apologist.

And I'm sure once I invite him on the screen with me, he's gonna share a little bit more about his background. But I have to say, I heard of Anthony Rogers quite a bit. His name was floating around on the interwebs and the Facebook, but I really didn't get a chance to really hear him and see his ability as an apologist until I saw a video where he interacted with a gentleman by the name of Brandon Tatum, Brandon Tatum.

And I don't know much about Brandon Tatum, but it is my idea that he has a very big public platform and he was challenging folks to defend the Trinity. And so this gentleman, Brandon was a, I suppose he's a modalist of sorts.

Maybe Anthony can clarify that when I invite him on. But when Anthony got on the show with him and they began to go back and forth, I quickly realized, well, perhaps Brandon quickly realized that he was a little bit out of his depth in terms of understanding the Trinitarian perspective and really coming to grips with someone who really knew how to defend the Trinity.

And so that was my first exposure to Anthony Rogers. And on top of that, and then I'll invite, I'll invite, I guess, Pastor Rogers. I mean, you can't see him, but I can see you. Is that okay? Should I call you Pastor Anthony, Pastor Rogers?

We'll just, I'll call you Anthony for now. But it was really, really interesting that I was actually invited to speak at an apologetics conference in which I would be sharing the platform with Anthony Rogers.

And so I was like, huh, that's the same guy I saw in the previous video. So I really need to connect with him and see if he'd be willing to come onto the show and talk about Islam. And I just so happened to learn that he was a presuppositionalist in his apologetic methodology.

So I'm looking forward to getting him on and hearing what he has to say in terms of how he got into all that stuff. And then we're gonna jump right into the meat and the potatoes. What you'll learn when you look into Anthony Rogers' YouTube stuff and all the content that he has out there, what you will learn is that unlike myself, where I like to speak about the meta apologetics, right?

The apologetic methodology, right? Anthony Rogers takes all of those things. And in his ministry, you see the practical outflow of it. So I use the terminology when I teach, presuppositionalism, transcendentals, preconditions.

But Mr. Rogers here, not that Mr. Rogers, is this Mr. Rogers? Really knows how to just incorporate it organically into his interactions with unbelievers. I mean, he has an evangelistic heart and that's where you will see the practical utilization of a presuppositional approach in a very powerful way, I think.

So all that to say, let me invite Anthony Rogers on the screen with me and he'll introduce himself in more detail in just a moment here. All right, how's it going, Anthony? It's going great. Thank you so much for coming on.

I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. That's right. Now, real quick, you do have a YouTube channel, right?

Yeah, it's just under my name, Anthony Rogers. So fancy name, shows my creative genius. That's right. I mean, really, I just signed up one day and it's been there for like a decade. I haven't really tried to build up the channel until I think the end of last year.

So it was just under my name. Maybe at some point, I'll change it to some name that's

Apologetics, okay, very good. Well, I wanna encourage folks right now, if you can multitask right now while you're watching this live stream and open up another window, open up YouTube and subscribe to Anthony Rogers' YouTube channel.

He's got debates, interactions with Muslims. He's debated Shabbir Ali once or multiple times. How many interactions have you had with Shabbir?

Twice, in fact, next Saturday, I'm doing two more debates with Shabbir.

Okay, very good. And so there's a lot of debates on your channel, a lot of teachings. What's very interesting that folks might find is that you go into some great detail in defending the doctrine of the Trinity from the Old Testament.

And so folks might be interested in taking a listen to that. So guys, go to Anthony Rogers' YouTube channel right now and subscribe and then come back here, okay? So you definitely won't be disappointed.

So Anthony, so who are you? Tell us a little bit about who you are.

And then we'll take it from there. Yeah, so I was born and raised in Southern California. I come from a Sicilian family and that meant, among other things, that my familial background religiously is Roman Catholic.

However, as I was growing up, my mom was at one point thrown off when asked by the nuns at the local church that she was constantly participating along with in various activities. She was once asked to teach a Bible study to women and she thought, wait a minute, I don't know the Bible.

And that bothered her because she had been involved in the Catholic church for her whole life. And so for that reason, she started seeking out Protestant churches and I didn't become a Christian in all of that, but I was at least brought within the hearing of the gospel.

And growing up in Southern California at that time, in Southern California, there was an influx of gangs stretching down from Los Angeles down into Riverside, Orange County and all that sort of thing.

And I got swept up in all of that. I guess that puts it to innocently. I quickly threw myself in with all of that, I guess I should say. And eventually got in a good bit of trouble. And in 1993, when I was just turning 18, I had gotten into trouble, legal trouble, and was actually incarcerated.

While incarcerated, shows you something of the Lord's providence here, but I was put in a cell with a self-professed devil worshiper and he was trying to tell me certain things about the Bible. And I said, I don't think that's true.

And he said, well, I'll show you how to get a Bible and I'll prove it to you. And so he showed me how to get a Bible. I wrote a kite as they're called, that's how you request something, at least in those days.

And I got a Bible. He couldn't show me what he thought he could show me. And now I had a bunch of time on my hands and a book to read. So I started reading the Bible. It terrified me to no end. I didn't, when I read the Bible, I didn't understand the gospel.

But one thing that came through loudly and clearly was the fact that the God that it was talking about was nobody I wanted to meet in my current condition. I read of God wiping out the world in a flood, sparing only eight people, opening up the ground and swallowing whole groups of people, fire coming down from heaven and devouring whole cities.

And I thought, if I was caught by a human court and found guilty, then if I was gonna stand before this God, then there was no hope for me. And so I kept reading, thinking maybe I'll find the answer. And I didn't until somebody finally preached the gospel to me and showed me all of this from the Bible that somehow I was missing.

And I was just immediately overjoyed. I wanted to tell people about Christ. I assumed that this good news would be received as such by others and quickly found out that they weren't happy with what I was telling them.

And people wanted to push back against it. And so it was out of that that my interest in apologetics was born. So it's really rooted in a desire to tell people the gospel. It's evangelistic ultimately in its origins.

And so it's not primarily an academic thing, although I don't deny that there's an academic component there obviously, but I just wanted to tell people the gospel and that got me involved in apologetics.

So eventually I went to, after I got out of prison, I had to go back and get a high school diploma because I didn't in school. Then I had to go to school and actually went to Christ College in Lynchburg, Virginia.

And it's now defunct, but at the time, one of the professors was Michael Butler, who was a protege of Dr. Bonson's. And after graduating from there, there was a bit of a period in between, but eventually I went to seminary.

I went to Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina. And after graduating from Greenville Seminary, I passed my ordination exams and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church of America.

And you'll not find this surprising, but I became the regional director for Metanoia Prison Ministries. And so my pastoral activity is actually done in the prison. So I don't pastor a particular church, but I service prisons throughout South Carolina and doing a number of things in relation to that.

But that's basically who I am. That's very interesting.

There's always the interesting backstory. I mean, we see people on YouTube and on the internet and we forget there's a whole journey that has preceded what we see there on the screen there. And it's awesome to see God's grace being manifested in so many different and unique ways in various people's lives.

So thank you so much for sharing that. Now, how did you get into presuppositional apologetics? That's always an interesting thing. Folks who get into apologetics usually go through the classical and evidential methodology, but what got you into presupp?

Yeah, so I was converted in 93 and I got out of prison in 1995 and began going to a PCA church in Las Vegas, Nevada. Okay. And at that time, a couple, an older couple, their last name is Pollard. Still remember their names, even though I'm terrible with names and it's been decades, but I still remember their name.

Okay. But they were members of a congregation, an OPC congregation in California that was actually pastored by Dr. Bonson. And so they moved to the Las Vegas area and they brought some stuff with them.

And I remember listening, first of all, to the Stein debate and then to a bunch of other stuff. And so that was the initial thing. And like most people, I think if your introduction to presuppositionalism is something like the Stein debate and you don't necessarily have a background in philosophy, you can probably tell that something powerful is happening here and can't necessarily put your finger on everything.

But you know that, you know, I remember, in fact, I think it was David Bonson, one of Bonson's sons, who said he was a young man at the time. And he just remembers the people in the crowd going crazy at one point in the debate in particular.

And it was the point during the cross-examination period when Stein said, you know, are the laws of logic material? And you know, that whole discussion there. And he just remembers, you know, so here's his son, doesn't really understand what's going on, but he knows that something's happening.

And so for me, I started studying philosophy at that point. I started reading a lot of science, just all sorts of other things that wouldn't have normally been an interest for me. Again, it all goes back to my evangelistic interest.

I thought this is the sort of thing that is informing people, influencing people, and so I want to know this stuff so that I can interact with it when the occasion arises. And so the more I started studying that material, continuing to listen to Bonson, and then getting into other stuff, Bonson wasn't a lone ranger.

There were a number of other people. And so that, yeah, that's how it was all born. And so I think I've heard almost everything apologetically that Dr. Bonson did, all of his debates, including, and I wish there were more of this sort of thing, but including his debate with a Muslim and a Jewish person.

Now, unfortunately, the format of that particular debate didn't allow for certain things to take place. It was a three-part debate. And so what that meant was Bonson was going in two different directions with these guys.

And I think they each got, let's just say 20-minute openings. And then I think they all got a 10-minute response. And after that, it was just people asking questions. And so you can see in that the very limited format, you don't necessarily get to chase people down and finally show how they've reached the end of their rope and hung themselves with it.

But with all that said, what he said was powerful and you could see where all of it was going. But I always wish, as somebody who started doing Islamic apologetics, that there was more of that sort of thing from somebody who really knew the method.

Hmm. Very interesting. John, I'm sorry, Jeff Downs puts here, he says, Anthony and I are speaking at a conference in October. And so he's saying there's a conference in October, see the schedule, et cetera, on the page of Knox Reform Presbyterian Church.

So if folks are interested in seeing Anthony and I, and I think Dr. Robert Bowman give some talks on apologetics, you can check out the Knox Reform Presbyterian Church Facebook page and take a look at the schedule.

We'd love to meet some of the online listeners. I just got back from Reform Theological Seminary, visiting Dr. James Anderson up there. And interestingly enough, Hank Hanegraaff had an interesting three-hour conversation with Hank at the CRI headquarters.

But I had just gotten back from RTS and I went to the bookstore and there was the guy who was at the cash register. He's like, I know who you are, man. And I follow your YouTube channel. So it's really cool to see just the wide reach that this content, online content, really people are following, people are being encouraged and blessed by.

And so it's very exciting. So if folks wanna get to that conference, check out that information I just shared. We'd love to see you.

So, all right. One thing, if I could just throw in here, one thing I lament about my misspent youth is I grew up near Rancho Santa Margarita, California. And that's where CRI used to be based before it moved to North Carolina.

And I loved Walter Martin when I found Walter Martin stuff, loved his material. And so I think, man, all that time I lived right there, I could have benefited and just didn't.

Well, unfortunately, Hank has taken the turn that he has. I have to say that my three-hour conversation with him was the most enjoyable conversation I've had in years. I mean, I went to the studio, he was at the tail end of his broadcast.

You can kind of see through the recording window. And then he took me into his office and we just sat down and talked about our differences. It was excellent. So it was definitely a blessing to get to meet him.

Unfortunately, we're on the opposite sides of the spectrum there, but I was grateful for the opportunity. He was a really nice guy. So, all right. Well, let's jump right into the topic here. Presupp apply to Islam.

Now, when we speak of presuppositional methodology, it's important to set up the parameters, especially when we're doing it within the context of like teaching here, right? I'm not a Muslim. He's not a Muslim.

It's not a debate. I mean, we're talking about strategies as to how to employ a method as it pertains to a specific religious perspective, right? One of the popular criticisms of presuppositional apologetics is that, sure, yeah, that works against an atheist, but as though presuppositionalists never thought about this.

What happens when a Muslim comes along? It's like, oh yeah, that's right. I don't know. I guess maybe there's nothing we can do. I have to whip out my classical and evidential methodology there, and that's all I've got.

Actually, the presuppositionalist is always consistently a presuppositionalist, even when he is using specific biblical arguments, appealing to evidence and things like that. And so it's important to set up the parameters.

Why Facts Need a Philosophy of Fact

So as Christians, we have a worldview. The Muslim has a worldview. The Christian has presuppositions and it affects how we interpret the data. The Muslim has his set of presuppositions that affects how he interprets the data.

And so now you have two worldview circles, if you will, that to all intents and purposes, it seems as though it's impossible for us to communicate because everything I'm gonna say to the Muslim, he's gonna filter through his Muslim presuppositions and everything that the Muslim shoots out over on my side, I'm going to interpret in light of my Christian commitments, which by the way, that's what should be the case, right?

When we engage with Muslims, we do so in a way that does not sacrifice our commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all of reasoning. Yet, that does not mean we sit there and just say the Muslim's wrong and that's it.

What we wanna do is engage, and this is where I wanna kind of ask Pastor Rogers to kind of lead off the discussion here. When we internally critique the Muslim, right? If we follow, for example, the Proverbs 26 methodology, don't answer the fool according to his folly and then answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

How do we apply that to the Muslim? Where would one begin to use a presuppositional framework when engaging a Muslim?

Yeah, so if I could back up a little bit just to fill in some of what you said, but so that they can see this in relation to some of the stuff that they've heard before, if they're familiar with these issues and then for those who haven't perhaps.

But one of the things that's involved in what you're saying is that the facts don't speak for themselves, right? Everybody has a philosophy of fact. Christians have a philosophy of fact, non-Christians have a philosophy of fact, and our contention is the non-Christian philosophy of fact destroys the facts and isn't capable of actually making the facts intelligible.

And so a lot of people scoff at that sort of thing and they just think that's just absurd, but anybody who's even really, I think, at the sophomore level of studying worldviews and how people think and reason can't help but notice this sort of thing.

And this, again, is the sort of thing that I was looking at and realizing as I was hearing Bonson and then I'm reading these philosophical works and so forth. One of the things, so just to give an example, if we're talking about something like the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, as you know, the naturalist or the atheist, the agnostic, somebody who doesn't begin with a theistic approach to things, they will, generally speaking, resist any facts or arguments you make for the resurrection of Christ.

However, their presuppositions are such that they could, in principle, still accept the resurrection, but it wouldn't be the same fact that Christians are talking about, right? It's because they have a different philosophy of fact.

And so, for example, if they believe that time and chance is ultimate, somebody rising from the dead just means something strange happened from our perspective, right? We don't, in a chance universe where Wuerl is king, to quote an early philosopher, chance, chaos, right?

Chaos is king. Out of the womb of chance, anything can spring. And so, it's not a fact. It doesn't prove anything, right? It's just a strange occurrence in a strange universe.

Real quick, if I can interrupt, and that's why classical apologists are not correct when they say, well, if you demonstrate Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus believed the Old Testament, and so the whole Bible's true.

Well, wait a minute. There's a whole bunch missing there. And that's why I like what you just said there, that the resurrection in isolation, issuing from the womb of chance, is an occurrence with no context.

So, I think that's a great point. But go ahead, I'm sorry I interrupted there.

Yeah, no, no. So, that's right in line with what I'm saying. And just a couple of quotes here, and maybe you're familiar with, well, I'm sure you're probably familiar with Michael Martin since he was somebody that Bonson was going to interact with and Martin pulled out of the debate and then Bonson did a whole series of stuff critiquing his book, Atheism, A Philosophical Justification.

I have Martin's book back there, and one of the quotes that stood out to me back then, which I have here, he says, the believer in Jesus' alleged resurrection must give reasons to suppose that it can probably not be explained by any unknown laws of nature.

Now, there's actually a long quote here that goes along with that and really just says the same thing. But one of the things you notice from a quote like this is what Martin is saying is not that the resurrection occurred, but even if it did occur, he's saying the Christian has to prove that it couldn't be explained by some unknown laws of nature.

And so what he is appealing to here to discount the resurrection, meaning what the Christian says it means, being the kind of fact the Christian says it is, is this appeal to the unknown. And in fact, later in the same context, he actually gives three arguments.

All of these are actually interesting, but I'll just read the final one. He says, finally, it might be the case that what we thought were strictly deterministic laws are in fact statistical laws. These are compatible with rare occurrences of uncaused events.

Thus the events designated as miracles may be wrongly designated. They may be uncaused in the sense of being neither naturally nor supernaturally determined. Advocates of the miracle hypothesis then must show that the existence of miracles is more probable than the existence of some uncaused events.

It's not inconceivable that on very rare occasions, someone being restored to life has no natural or supernatural cause. So what is it when you say that something has neither a natural nor supernatural cause?

Well, that's a chance event. And so notice what Martin is ultimately relying on, chance. And so again, he's not saying the resurrection happened, but he's saying, even if it did, it's not the resurrection of the crucified incarnate son of God who died for our sins and rose for our justification, right?

That's not what Martin means. And anybody who's dealt with just cults, we're not talking about atheists or philosophers here, but everybody seems to realize this when it comes to cults, but don't carry this over into their discussions with other groups like atheist agnostics.

But we often will say, in fact, Walter Martin, I mentioned him earlier, he actually pointed this out in his book, Kingdom of the Cults, where the cults actually have a lot of the same terminology as Christians, but they use the terms differently.

And so I forget all the ways he referred to that, term switching, definition juggling, whatever. The idea is they're using the same terminology, but they mean something else. And that's basically what I'm talking about here when I mentioned that you have to not only consider the facts, but the philosophy of fact.

Those two things go together. And in the non-Christian philosophy of fact, it's possible to accept something like a resurrection, but not in the Christian sense. And so no fact can be allowed to speak for Christianity in that kind of a context.

And so the idea that you could just prove the resurrection and this person by virtue of that alone is going to become a Christian is just foolhardy. Now I grant, I would grant to people that, God is able to change a person's presuppositions.

He's able to challenge them through our presentation of facts and so forth. But I think there's more going on than the evidentialist often really takes into account. Ultimately as reformed people, we would say that it's the spirit's activity, opening the heart, illuminating the mind, enabling them now to see the facts in a new light that ultimately is what issues in a person seeing the facts for what they are and so forth.

But now one other thing, and this gets us closer to Islam. One of the things that I learned because I also used to engage Jewish people a lot, and this in many ways is similar to Islam in part because post-Christian Judaism and Islam share a lot of connections.

But now notice I'm talking about post-Christian Judaism. People are terribly informed when it comes to Judaism. The assumption is that the Judaism of today is the Judaism of the first century and before that.

And it just isn't. There's just a hundred things wrong with that kind of thing. But post-Christian Judaism followed a certain trajectory and that trajectory ultimately ends up influencing Islam. Muhammad was influenced by a lot of Jewish groups, Talmudic Jews that had migrated into Arabia.

And so you even see a lot of this incorporated into the Quran. You find Talmudic stories and other Midrashic ideas in the Quran and there they're mistaken for biblical events and things. But in reading Jewish people, if you read, for example, Mahmanides, who's perhaps the greatest rabbi in the minds of Orthodox Jews, one of the things that Mahmanides said is he said that he believes, even though he hated Christianity, he believes that God used Christianity for the purpose of preparing the world for the Messianic age.

So he called this a, or it's been called a Preparatio Messianica. So, you know, the preparation for the Messiah. And what he said is by virtue of Christianity coming about, God was able to spread things like moral monotheism to the Gentiles.

You know, various Jewish ideas now enter into the mainstream of Gentile thinking. And so in Mahmanides idea, there is a sense in which providence is at work here in accounting for the rise of Christianity.

However, of course, he's not saying that Christianity is true. He's simply saying that God used this toward the end that when the Messiah does come, now the world will be, it's like, you know, Christianity is getting the world all suited up for a Jewish party, right?

When the true Messiah comes and he puts down all rule and subjects everyone to the Jews once again, and the Jews, you know, have hegemony over the world, that sort of thing. That's all that Christianity is all about.

But this led later Jewish thinkers like Kaufman Kohler, who is a, you know, a Jewish guy. If you're familiar with Jewish studies, you'd know Kaufman Kohler. But he wrote, and I actually have his quote here somewhere if I can find it.

But he basically argues the same thing. And he points out that this is the view that was held by a number of other Jews as well. He quotes, for example, Zechariah 14, eight, where it says it'll come to pass on that day that living waters will go out from Jerusalem, half towards the Eastern Sea, half toward the Western Sea, and the Lord shall be king over all the earth.

In that day, the Lord will be one, his name one. And then he says, these prophetic words of Zechariah may be applied to the two great world religions which emanated from Judaism and one fully half of the human race as it exists at present for the God of Abraham.

Though they have incorporated many non-Jewish elements in their systems, they have spread the fundamental truths of the Jewish faith and Jewish ethics to every part of the earth. Christianity in the West and Islam in the East have aided in leading mankind ever nearer to the pure monotheistic truth.

Consciously or unconsciously, both found their guiding motive in the messianic hope of the prophets of Israel and based their moral systems on the ethics of Judaism. And then he goes on and he attributes this to divine providence.

He's basically tapping into Mahmanides. He's saying that this was all part of God's design, not because Christianity is true, but because God is using it to prepare the world for the true Messiah. Now, where this leads then is, first of all, you can see now how a Jewish person will look at evidence supplied in favor of Christianity and regiment that evidence in terms of their pre-commitments.

Oh yeah, all that looks great because God was at work, God was doing things, right? And now the specifics of how they apply that to certain things may vary, but at least you have an idea of the kind of framework in terms of which they're going to think as they reason about the evidence that we would present to them as Christians.

Now, here's an interesting thing. Many Jews, well, I should take that back. So many Jews do hold this notion, but this then can show you that it's even possible, and somebody's gonna think I'm out of my mind here, it's even possible for a Jewish person to say, I believe Jesus rose from the dead and still not be a Christian.

Oh, Pinchas Lapid. And that's exactly where I was going, Pinchas Lapid, who is a Jewish guy, and see, again, you study presuppositionalism, you're familiar with this sort of thing. In fact, I could have quoted earlier, and I thought about it, but Kai Nielsen, an atheist, in his debate with J .P. Moreland, a pretty famous debate, it's been published in book form.

But he actually said, if there were good evidence for Jesus' resurrection, I'd believe it, it wouldn't prove Christianity, though. So he was like on the brink of acknowledging, oh, okay.

Well, I had a debate with an atheist, online atheist, Tom Jump, and he brought up this whole point. And he says like, I can grant that Jesus was raised from the dead. That doesn't prove that God is omnipotent and all of these other things.

It wouldn't prove Christianity. Yet you have many apologists focusing so much energy on the evidence for the resurrection, which is fine to a degree, obviously. I mean, I wouldn't be against that, but we can't pretend that our arguments prove more than they actually do, because a presuppositionally aware unbeliever will regiment their perspective in light of their broader commitments, which I think is a brilliant, brilliant observation on your part.

Let me just say one thing real quick. Corinth Chandler, thank you so much for that super chat. I do appreciate super chats. You can send in questions if you preface your question with a Q or the word question.

And of course, super chatted, that's a real word, super chatted questions will go to the top and be asked first, but thank you so much. Every dollar does support Revealed Apologetics and is greatly appreciated.

All right, I just wanted to give a quick shout out there. Okay, go ahead. If I was interrupting a stream of thought there, I do apologize. Oh yeah, no problem.

Yeah, so I was gonna quote Lapid, just so people know that, now they know that I'm not the only one out of my mind since you've seconded the motion, but now let me quote it so that they know we're not just both out of our mind.

Sure. This is Pincus Lapid from his book, The Resurrection of Jesus, A Jewish Perspective. So it's subtitled Jewish Perspective. He said, as a faithful Jew, I can't explain a historical development, which despite many errors and much confusion has carried the central message of Israel from Jerusalem into the world of the nations as the result of blind happenstance or human error or a materialistic determinism.

So he's saying here, he can't explain that away in such a way. And, but one of the things, just to stop here for a second, mid quote, he, it strikes me as, you know, somewhat, not just somewhat, but really problematic for him as a Jewish person to say, he's acknowledging that Christianity spread the central message of Israel from Jerusalem into the world of the nations.

When I read that, it's almost like I'm reading the prophetic statements to this effect, right? Sure. Where it talks about the law of the Lord streaming forth from Jerusalem and going out into all the world, you know, Isaiah two and other passages or the nations flocking to Jerusalem to hear the word of the Lord.

He's claiming that Christianity has done this and, you know, so as a Jew, he has to, he has to suppress even biblical evidence at this point in order to keep up the charade, right? He has to suppress what he should be aware of from the prophets regarding Christianity.

But in any case, he goes on, he says, he can't explain this away as a faithful Jew. And then he goes on, he says, the experience of the resurrection as the foundation act of the church, which has carried the faith in the God of Israel into the whole Western world must belong to God's plan of salvation.

Now, he doesn't mean that Christianity is the way of salvation. He's just saying, like I was talking about before, this sort of thing is what God is doing and ultimately moving history in this direction of what Jews think of when they talk about the messianic age or the messianic hope.

So there we have an example of a Jewish person. So now a religious person, right? Who is not presuppositionally neutral. He has certain pre-commitments, certain presuppositions in terms of which he thinks and reasons and by which he evaluates the facts.

Generally speaking, you know, people will normally resist the idea that Jesus rose from the dead, but in principle they could accept even that, right? But their presuppositions, I mean, it is true that in the main, people are just not going to accept the resurrection given their presuppositions without a change of worldview.

But again, the point here is that in principle, even that doesn't have to challenge their fundamental assumptions as unbelievers. And so this brings us to Islam. And what's interesting here is we actually have to push it back a step in the sense of, like, if we're talking about something like the resurrection, because the vast majority of Muslims don't even believe Jesus was crucified.

Right. And so the resurrection is out of court already, right? You can't have Jesus rising from the dead if he didn't die, right? And so no Muslim can accept the idea that Jesus rose from the dead unless you can first persuade him that Jesus was crucified.

But now the problem is, you know, and this should be a natural question at this point, why would a Muslim not think that Jesus died? You know, that's just the, you know, that's how things normally happen.

Why is there anything special in the case of Jesus? Now, I do want to say that not every Muslim says this, but it is the norm. And it's because this is how a particular verse of the Quran has been interpreted.

Surah 4, 157 says, in response to the Jews, it says, they said in boast, we have killed Christ Jesus, the messenger of God. And then it says, but they killed him not nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them.

And then it says that, you know, they're in doubt concerning the matter. They have no certainty on it. And Allah raised Jesus up to himself. So classically, Muslims have interpreted that to mean that Jesus didn't really die by crucifixion.

Instead, Allah took Jesus up apart from death to himself. Now, this in itself is problematic for Muslims because, and many people won't know this, but the Muslim view of death doesn't, you know, for Christians, we say, at least Orthodox Christians, we say at death, there's a separation between soul and body.