Intro to Islam

Greetings and welcome. My name is James White. In the ancient Christian church, there was a man by the name of Ignatius of Antioch. He was going to Rome to be martyred by the Romans, and he wrote letters to churches along the way.

As he wrote to one of those churches in the year 107 A .D., he wrote these words. There is one physician of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first passable and then impassable, Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Early Christian Confession of Christ in Ignatius

Now, why should we be concerned about this very high confession of faith made by a man who was going to his death within a very short number of years after the last of the apostles of Christ died? The reason we should be concerned about this is because of the fact that it reveals to us that the heart of the Christian faith regarding who Jesus Christ was and what He did, the fact that He was very God of very God, that He was the Son of God, that He truly entered into human flesh and that He died upon a cross to bring about the salvation of those who believe in Him was not something that developed many, many years after the time of Christ, but it is the very heart of the Christian faith and has been from the beginning.

This man's words, recorded for us as he goes to his death, they reflect the very words of the New Testament, showing that there is a consistency from the time of Christ all the way through to this point in history, demonstrating that this truth of the Christian faith has always been a part of what unites Christian people together.

Christianity and Islam in Historical Sequence

Why is this important? Well, because 600 years later, after the time of Christ, came Muhammad and the views of Islam. And in that context, we have been told that the very heart of the Christian faith, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He is true God of true God, that He was truly a man, but He was also likewise truly God, that the eternal Son entered into human flesh and that He did so to die upon a cross as the atonement for sins.

Well, Islam tells us that that is not the case and that in fact, Jesus never taught these things. Jesus was a Muslim. Jesus prayed as Muslims pray. That's what we are told by our Muslim friends today.

And He never taught these things. And yet, where did these words from Ignatius come from? Where did these words in the Christian scriptures come from? I think it's very important that we understand the relationship that exists between Christianity and Islam.

Islam comes over half a millennium after the time of Jesus Christ. Christian faith had been firmly and clearly established before Muhammad uttered his first words of prophecy recorded in the Quran. And we can know what Christians believed.

We even know the varieties of Christians that had developed at that point in time. We certainly know the state of the biblical text. We know what the Old Testament looked like at the time of Jesus. We know what the Old Testament looked like at the time of Muhammad.

We knew what the New Testament looked like as well. We know what Christians believed then. And then we have Muhammad. Then we have the Quran. And in that most sacred book of Islam, we have statements that are made regarding the Christian faith.

What Did Muhammad Know About Christianity?

And the question we have to ask ourselves is this. How much did Muhammad know about the Christian faith? We know that he did not have direct access to the biblical texts themselves in the Arabic language because the earliest manuscripts we have translating the Christian scriptures into Arabic come from around 892, well over 200 years after the time of Muhammad.

And so he clearly would not have had access to the biblical texts in their original languages, Greek and Hebrew. And he did not have access to them in his own language. And of course, it is a great point of dispute and argument as to whether Muhammad could read the Arabic language with sufficient capacity to really read any of the Christian scriptures at all.

Many Muslims do not believe he could read anything. And so how much did he know? And how accurate is the Quran in representing Christian theology? Now immediately, I understand, the Muslim says, the Quran has to be accurate because it is the word of God.

But think about this for just one moment. If Christianity, as it has developed, Christianity that believes that Jesus is the son of God, Christianity that believes that Jesus died upon the cross, if that Christianity is false, if that is an excess in religion, to use the words of the Quran, then would not Allah have known exactly what Christians believed at the beginning of the 7th century?

And if he was going to reveal his word, and his word is going to represent what Christians believe, will it not do so accurately? Are we to believe that Allah does not know what the various religions of our world actually teaches?

And so it is a valid question to ask whether the Quran shows an accurate knowledge of what Christians believe. And certainly today, that's a vitally important question. Given the volatility of the relationship between Christians and Muslims, if we are going to talk with one another, if we are going to discuss our faith with one another, there must be a desire for accuracy of representation on both sides.

Accuracy, Manuscripts, and Fairness in Christian-Muslim Debate

I once did a debate with an Islamic apologist, a man defending the Islamic faith, and I was defending the idea that the New Testament teaches the deity of Christ. And I presented numerous texts from the Bible that clearly propound the deity of Christ, and explain the relationship of the divine and the human in Christ, and so on and so forth.

His response was to say that every single text in the Bible that teaches the deity of Christ had been changed, it had been corrupted. And so I asked him, well, what manuscripts do you have? What evidence do you have of this corruption?

And he could not give me any manuscripts that gave this. Well, there are scholars who have said that, well, what scholars? Well, I can't give you their names right now. No matter how hard I tried, the gentleman could not give me any direct documentation substantiating the assertion.

Now, I do not believe that I would have the right to deal with the Quran the way that many Muslims deal with the Bible. I do not have the right to simply speculate and say, maybe this is where it came from, or maybe that's where it came from.

No, we need to apply the same standards of truthfulness and accuracy in research, no matter whose religion that we are examining. And especially when Muslims and Christians sit down and we talk, and both of us have a command from our scriptures to do so.

Both of us have a command that we are to take the claims of our faith, and we are to take them to the others. And we are to press them forward, and we are to do so passionately. But I believe that we must do so fairly and accurately if we are going to honor the word of God.