God is Love; Not so Allah

Someone recently asked me a question via e-mail and I thought I would include it here along with my brief response (of course names and other sensitive material have been edited out):

Greetings my brother in Christ,

I am working on [something]. [It] consists of a handful of articles that I have written critiquing world religions. One of them of course being Islam. Mike Robinson told me a little bit about you so I would like your input on a question that I am asking a few apologists.

Men like Francis Schaeffer and John Frame as well as some historic greek philosophers, have made a similar argument that God cannot be personal or love if he is a unitarian type god etc. For these two things require multi-persons.

I am kinda surveying a couple of Christian apologist to see how they feel about this argument. At one time I believed that [the] majority of Christian apologist would agree to this statement, but after a few recent conversations I am not to sure how many Christians believe this argument. The response argument being that God can have self love for himself etc. What do you think?

Thanks,


Greetings _______,

For my part, a unitarian god looks like little more than an abstraction, so it is very difficult to conceive of such a being loving "himself" much less others. But if we grant the personality of such a god for the sake of argument, and therefore the possibility that he could "love" himself, then we must ask if loving oneself is really what we mean by love. Usually a person who is defined by self-love is not really thought of as loving in the true sense of the term. Certainly this is not the Biblical definition of love, where love is seen in giving itself away to others and for the sake of others. In fact the word used for love in 1 Corinthians 13 in the King James Bible communicates the point quite well: charity.

4Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
6Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
7Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
9For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
10But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
13And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Would we consider a person charitable if he gives things to himself?

"That Ebenezer Scrooge, what a guy! he just took a million dollars out of his account and stored it in his personal vault at home. Have you ever seen anything so charitable as that in your life? Oh, if the world were only filled with more people who were so charitable as that."

I don't think so.

Likewise, to say that the monad of post-Christian apostate Judaism or the new-fangled "god" of Islam are love because the "god" of either loves himself is to use the word "love" in an equivocal sense, i.e. not in the sense we mean when we say that God is love and when we say that love requires a God who is multi-personal.

I hope that helps. If you have any follow up question, by all means feel free to write back.

Semper Paratus,

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Sam Shamoun has written an article related to the above that is well worth reading: The Triune God - The Greatest Conceivable Being that Exists.

The Trinity in the Old Testament: A Brief Summary of the Evidence

The latest articles on Answering Islam are all up now. I contributed the following article on the Trinity.

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In order to establish some kind of continuity between the message of the prophets and the doctrine of Tawheed, which Muslims allege is taught in the Qur’an, some Muslims argue that the Old Testament (not to mention the New) does not teach the doctrine of the Trinity. With an eye to this, the following aims to present a brief summary of the evidence that the prophets taught the Trinity....

To read the rest of this article, go here. After reading, come back and leave your comments/questions.

Yahya Snow Challenged to Debate the Trinity

See the following blog posts on my debate challenge to Yahya Snow:

My Challenge

Yahya's Response

My Reply

Anyone interested in seeing this debate go forward, please contact Yahya Snow and encourage him to accept both the challenge and the debate topic.

Silencing A Muslim Dawagandist

Here is another reply that just went up at Answering Islam, this one in response to an attack against the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by Sami Zaatari.

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Anyone familiar with Zaatari's method of reasoning knows that his arguments against Christianity are often false just on their face (and for that reason have a face only someone like Zaatari could love), and thus any analysis expended on them is bound to be a case of overkill. What is generally true turns out to be no less the case when it comes to one of Zaatari’s latest reckless attacks on Christ and Christianity, which centers on Isaiah 53, a passage he believes refutes the Lord’s resurrection, a doctrine that is admittedly central and indispensable to the Christian faith. (Zaatari’s article can be found here.)

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After reading the rest of this article, which can be found here, please return and leave your comments.

A Lie Upon God

I have a new article up at Answering Islam, which is a response to Ibn Anwar, a pronounced Muslim and anti-Trinitarian.

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In a recycled article that now appears on the Muslim Responses website, a Muslim dawagandist named Ibn Anwar attempted to refute the Trinity and prove Islam’s peculiar brand of monotheism from the Holy Scriptures, specifically from a passage found in Mark’s account of the Gospel. This article constitutes a rebuttal.

In the opening paragraph Mr. Anwar provides the following explanation of his thesis:

“There are quite a number of verses and passages throughout the New Testament that teach and propagate the absolute Oneness of God the Creator and Jesus' subservience to Him as a servant and worshipper. We will not be scrutinising [sic] all those verses here. What we will do is focus on just one passage which to my understanding as I will prove in due course succinctly refutes the Trinity and shows Jesus' admission to absolute numerical monotheism. Before we proceed it is noteworthy that Muslim apologists in general like to quote Mark 12:29 in particular whenever arguing for Jesus' monotheistic belief, but, they almost never discuss the immediate verses that follow that would indeed strengthen their case further as we shall see…”

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To read the rest of this article, go here. As always, you are invited to return here and leave your comments after reading the article.

The Plural of Majesty: Allah is Neither Plural Nor Majestic; or, How Modern Muslims Have One-Upped Muhammad

Silence and Propaganda Are the Best Policy

In a lengthy paper entitled Let Us Make Man: A Trinitarian Interpretation of Genesis 1:26 (and Related Passages), I argued, in a long train of others before and since, on prima facie, exegetical, systematic and historical grounds that the plural pronouns used by Yahweh, the one true God, in places like Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8, are only properly understood in light of the rich Trinitarianism of Biblical revelation rather than in terms of any kind of impoverished or sterile unitarianism (not to mention polytheism). Space was also devoted in the paper to refuting some of the more popular alternative approaches, including the old canard that the phenomenon found in these passages are only instances of some kind of literary plural or figure of speech – such as the plural of majesty, the plural of respect, the plural of deliberation, and the editorial “we”.

To date, no Muslim has refuted the kind of positive evidence I (and others) have provided, apparently going with the motto that silence on this score is the best policy, and no Muslim has thought it meet to address the problems with the alternative views that I (and others) have enumerated, but for all that Muslim dawagandists have not stopped repeating the idea that a literary plural – specifically, the plural of majesty – is in view, a tactic that amounts to nothing more than propaganda.1 In light of this, it seems to me that it is high time to once again explain the problem this view has, and add to the list of problems certain considerations that show that this way of explaining the passages is illicit, given what Muslim sources themselves tell us, and incongruous, given the Islamic view of God.

To read the rest of this article, go here. As always, after finishing the article you may return here and leave your comments in the provided combox.

An Open Blog Post To Sami Zaatari: On Genesis 1:26

Sami, your most recent article on Genesis 1:26, which you wrote to attack the Trinity, is so incredibly bad I am beside myself. I would write a response, but your article doesn't come close to tackling what I have already said on the matter here.

In fact, though there is nothing in your article I haven't already responded to in the paper linked above, I have been meaning to add something else to the section of that article dealing with the Muslim objection for quite some time. Thanks for stirring the pot; I will get right on it.

Update (8/24/09): Instead of adding to my original article, I decided to write an entirely different one dedicated to debunking the "Plural of Majesty" explanation. It includes specific material relevant to showing that such an explanation is not at all available to Muslims. That means it is back to the drawing board for dawagandists like Zaatari. It can be found through the following link: here.

The True Shahada: Defended - Part I & 2

Introduction

In an article entitled “The True Shahada”, I provided a comparison and contrast between John 17:3, a verse Muslims often see as supportive of their brand of unitarianism, and Islam’s Shahada, which Christians see as a blasphemous denial of the Father and the Son. A Muslim, who prefers to remain nameless – which would otherwise be fine except that in this case it seems calculated to save him (her?) from embarrassment once his underhanded tactics and criminal mishandling of my article was exposed – has provided a “response” to it called “The True Shahada Indeed”, and the reader is encouraged to read both my original article and the purported reply before continuing.

The rest of this article can be read at Answering Islam, at the following link: See Here. For Part Two, See Here. As Always, if you have any thoughts, you may leave them here in the combox.

Say Not Three Gods: A Reply to Sami Zaatari And His Counterfeit Trinity

In an article found here, which the reader is encouraged to look at before continuing with this paper, Muslim apologist Sami Zaatari thinks he has demonstrated that Christians are polytheists rather than monotheists. (Presumably that means it is open season on Christians, and the wonderful blessing of Dhimmi status may be dutifully denied to Christian’s in Muslim lands).

Whatever Zaatari thinks he has shown, I must confess at the outset,....

This article has been moved to the Answering Islam website. To read the rest of it, go here. The comments section will remain open on this blog. Do come back and leave your thoughts.

Hear, O Muslims!

Introduction

A number of Muslims point to the Shema – originally found in Deuteronomy 6:4 and quoted by Jesus in the New Testament accounts of the Gospel (Mark 12:29-30; and Lk. 10:27) – as evidence for the antiquity and universality of Islam as well as for its continuity with prior revelation.[1] In the view of these Muslims, the Shema corresponds to and confirms, even as it is thought to be confirmed by, their confession of faith, the Shahada, as well as other teachings of the Qur’an that are held to explicate this confession. No doubt the motivation for this stems in part from Muhammad’s claim that the Qur’an is a confirmation of what came before it in the Torah and the Gospel (e.g. S. 3:3).

Notwithstanding the above, the Shema found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and the Shahada which Muslims splice together from contextually unrelated verses of the Qur’an (and/or from post-Quranic traditions), stand in total contrast to one another, putting those who look to the Shema as proof for their contentions on the horns of a dilemma.

To read the rest of this article, please go to the Answering Islam website found here. After reading it in full, come back and leave your comment.

Genesis 19:24 Trinity Article!

The promised article on the Trinity from Genesis 19:24 is now available here. Leave your comments in the comments section if you have any.

Trinity Article Now Available!

For those who are interested, my article on the Trinity has recently been posted on the Answering Islam website. It is fifty pages long, and consists of both a positive defense of a Trinitarian interpretation of Genesis 1:26 (and other related passages from the Old Testament) as well as a refutation of popular non-Trinitarian and anti-Trinitarian interpretations of those passages. It can be found here.