The Crucifixion Debate: Opening Part I

Thank you and good evening. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Peace to all who bow the knee to Jesus, our Creator and our Lord. Just over two years ago, I stood in this very room and debated a man identified by many as the leading historical Jesus scholar in the world, John Dominic Crossan.

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels and the Crossan Debate

We debated the historical reliability of the Gospels. It is ironic that tonight, in essence, I defend the Gospels again, but in a completely different context. You see, Dr. Crossan does not believe in an afterlife, in judgment, or in miracles.

Shabir Ali does. Crossan does not believe God has given special revelation, but Shabir Ali, along with all faithful Muslims, does. While not an atheist, neither is Dr. Crossan a classical theist. He dismisses the vast majority of the biblical accounts as nothing but parables, and all prophecy is nothing but wish fulfillment.

And yet, ironically, if Dr. Crossan were here this evening, he would be on my side of this debate, at least in reference to the historical reality of Christ's death. Despite his great skepticism about all things supernatural, he accepts the historical fact that Jesus of Galilee was crucified at the beginning of the fourth decade of the first century in Jerusalem.

He would not view his death as a purposeful one, and would surely not view it as a sacrifice for sin, but even the highly skeptical Dr. Crossan accepts as a historical fact the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

And yet, this evening, we debate the question, was Jesus Christ crucified as a willing sacrifice to the sins of God's people? The question has two parts, one historical, one theological. On both, there is dispute between Christians and Muslims.

The historical question is that of the crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah. The theological question turns upon the Christian insistence that God forgives sin only in and through faith in Jesus Christ, due to his giving himself as a sacrifice for sins, or, in the words of scripture, he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

This is a debate involving two men committed to two of the world's major religions. I am an elder in the Reformed Baptist Church, representing the Christian faith's historic proclamation that Jesus Christ was the Lamb of God whose death on Calvary's cross propitiated the wrath of God against all who trust in Christ.

Shabir Ali is a believing Muslim, the head of the Islamic Dao and Information Center in Toronto, and as a believing Muslim, he rejects the idea that Jesus was crucified and died on Calvary's cross as an atonement for sin.

Both of us accept that God is our creator, and that God has spoken. Even the Quran says that Allah revealed the Torah and the Gospel for a guidance to mankind, so we both believe that at the time of Jesus, God was engaged in supernatural revelation.

Neither of us can consistently join Dr. Crossan in viewing all divine revelation with skepticism, so what brings us here tonight to debate? We are not here this evening due to any lack of clarity on the New Testament's part regarding our thesis.

If we leave aside 2nd century Gnostic sources that have no meaningful historical pedigree in the 1st century, and that suffer from incurable theological pre-commitments to dualism, resulting in their rejection of Jesus as a true human being, we are left with the unanimous testimony of the Christian scriptures, the apostles, disciples, and even the few secular sources that have come down through history, that Jesus died at the hands of Pontius Pilate at the instigation of the Jews around the beginning of the 4th decade of the 1st century.

The Gospels, Paul's epistles, and Luke's history of the early church, the Acts of the Apostles, all have solid credentials as originating within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses themselves. In fact, if, as I believe, Luke is providing documentation to be presented in the trial of Paul in Rome, then this puts its date within 3 decades of the crucifixion.

Likewise, if one were to postulate that Mark came before Luke, as surely my opponent this evening does quite often in his talks, that would put Mark no later than 20 or 25 years after the events of the ministry of Jesus, and perhaps even less.

In any case, the New Testament is plain in its affirmation of the historical event of the crucifixion. We will look at its consistent theological teaching in a moment. While we would hardly expect a great deal of information about an itinerant Jewish rabbi and teacher to find its way into secular historical records of the day, there are two sources outside the New Testament that should be mentioned this evening.

The first is found in Josephus, the Jewish historian, rang less than half a century after the events of Christ's ministry. There is much dispute about the text, and many feel portions of it are a later Christian interpolation.

But this does not need to detain us, for what is important is that Josephus not only mentions Jesus, but likewise makes reference to Pilate and to crucifixion. It is highly probable that this portion of the reference is original with Josephus himself.

Likewise, 85 years after Jesus' ministry, the Roman historian Tacitus made derogatory reference to the Christian movement, and in doing so likewise notes that the founder had been executed during the reign of Tiberius, and he even mentions the specific name of Pontius Pilate.

While some might suggest Tacitus is just reporting what he had heard from Christians, it is significant that if there was any controversy over the fact that Jesus had been executed under Pontius Pilate, there simply is no evidence of it from the first century documents.

What we find from every source that has any legitimate claim to coming from the first hundred years after Jesus echoes the words that most scholars, conservative and liberal alike, believe to be some of the earliest of the New Testament.

This is the core teaching of the Christian faith, and anyone who wishes to suggest otherwise has a very, very tall challenge ahead of them. But I doubt Shabir Ali will argue that the New Testament as we possess it today teaches anything other than this very truth, so why are we here this evening?

The Qur'an's Denial of the Crucifixion

I submit to you that the only reason we are here this evening is because of 40 Arabic words written in a book that can be dated no earlier than 625 years after the ministry of Jesus. These 40 words were written in a different culture, 765 miles away from Jerusalem, over half a millennium removed, and without any direct or first-hand connection historically to the events in Jerusalem.

Indeed, these 40 words find no literary connection to the first century at all, for they were written by a man who had no first-hand knowledge of the New Testament, for it had not yet been translated into the Arabic language.

I refer, of course, to Surah 4, 157 of the Qur 'an, which reads,. And because of their saying, We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger, or Rasul. They slew him not, nor crucified him.

But it was made to appear to them, and those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof. They have no knowledge thereof, save pursuit of a conjecture. They slew him not for certain. Shabir Ali has admitted in a debate in 2004 that this text is, in fact, key to his understanding of the issue of the crucifixion of Jesus.

I shall, of course, leave it to Shabir to explicate his own views on this text. But for the moment, I wish to make sure my assertion is fully understood. I realize the Muslims in the audience do not believe these to be the words of Muhammad, but that they are the words of Allah.

The Muslims in the audience this evening may even be tempted to be offended when I disagree with these words, and in fact assert that these words are false, erroneous, and that they are based upon ignorance of the scriptural teaching.

It cannot be any secret that a Christian who understands Islamic teaching, and yet remains a Christian, does not believe Muhammad was a prophet. There is nothing to be accomplished in glossing over our differences.

The Theological Divide Between Christianity and Islam

May I point out that if Shabir Ali is right, then those I honor as apostles and prophets are actually false teachers and promoters of idolatry. Shabir has made it plain that he blames the Apostle Paul for, in essence, hijacking Jesus, who, according to Muslims, was himself a Muslim, supplanting the original followers of Jesus, and replacing the simple message of Jesus found today only in the Quran with the false and blasphemous teaching that Jesus is the son of God, and that he died for the sins of the world.

We should not minimize the fact that we are asked by our Muslim friends to believe that the New Testament is hopelessly corrupt, the Gospel is false, and the worship of Jesus amounts to the unforgivable sin of shirk.

If the Muslim is tempted to be offended at the assertion that Muhammad was ignorant of the biblical record written in a language he could not understand, and that hence he made errors in his teachings, the Christian has significantly more reason to experience temptation to offense at the necessary results of Islamic teachings.

But I, for one, did not come here this evening to feign offense at the Islamic denials of my own faith. I am here to lay these truths out on the table, and to shine the bright light of truth upon them, a light available only when both sides come to the table and honestly lay out their differences.