Civilization and Self-Control

By Bojidar Marniov

“I don’t want men looking at me lustfully when I work here.”

This is how a Muslim girl, cashier at Wal-Mart, replied to my wife’s question about the purpose of her head-covering, wrapped tightly around her head, covering everything except her face. My first reaction was, “Phew, how do you look ‘lustfully’ at a woman’s hair?” In a Christian society, the hair is the glory of a woman (1 Cor. 11:15). We don’t normally expect Western men to fantasize over a woman’s hair; and hair is a legitimate ornament for a woman, as far as the Bible is concerned. Deviations, of course, have existed in every culture, but are they so common in the Western societies as to warrant such strict dress-code? What made this Muslim girl have such strange views about modesty?

Her views are not informed by the norms of the Western society but by the tenets of her Muslim worldview. According to the teaching of the Muslim religious teachers, a woman is a sexual object from her hair to her feet, and every part of her body is an occasion for seduction. Westerners usually believe that the burqas and the yashmaks of the Muslim women have some religious significance – something like the head coverings Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 11. They don’t. The only significance of Muslim clothing for women is the avoidance of sexual seduction by the woman. Burqas are not a religious symbol; they are a protective barrier, protecting both men and women from the male sexual lust.

Read More

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.

-------------------

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.

Missing Quotes

Many years ago when I was in a position to avail myself of an excpetionally large theological library, one that well exceeded my own personal library of 4,000 plus books, I took a great many notes, some of which I failed to include all the information for. For example, I have a number of references written down on points of interest from the Babylonian Talmud, but I did not copy out the relevant quotes. I have seen portions of the Talmud online, but not the portions relevant to the references I have. Similarly, I also wrote out some quotes, but failed to copy down the references. To get to the point, I wonder if anyone out there who reads this blog has access to the Babylonian Talmud and could look up a couple of things for me. I have seen that the Babylonian Talmud is now available on CD-Rom and do plan to avail myself of it at my nearest convenience, but since I don't know when that will be anyone who has easy access to it now could be a blessing to me if they would look up the references I have. Please let me know. Thanks.

Some Miscellaneous Quotes on Islam From Various Christian Confessions of Faith

"To pray for the propagation of the gospel and kindgom of Christ to all nations; for the conversion of the Jews, the fulness of the Gentiles, the fall of Antichrist, and the hastening of the second coming of our Lord; for the deliverance of the distressed churches abroad from the tyranny of the antichristian faction, and from the cruel oppressions and blasphemies of the Turk [i.e. Muslims];...(The Directory for the Publick Worship of God: Agreed Upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, With the Assistance of Commissioners from the Church of Scotland, As a Part of the Covenanted Uiformity in Religion Betwixt the Churches of Christ in the Kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland)

"Our Churches, with common consent, do teach that the decree of the Council of Nicaea concerning the Unity of the Divine Essence and concerning the Three Persons, is true and to be believed without any doubting; that is to say, there is one Divine Essence which is called and which is God: eternal, without body, without parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible; and yet there are three Persons, of the same essence and power, who also are coeternal, the Father the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And the term "person" they use as the Fathers have used it, to signify, not a part or quality in another, but that which subsists of itself.

They condemn all heresies which have sprung up against this article, as the Manichaeans, who assumed two principles, one Good and the other Evil- also the Valentinians, Arians, Eunomians, Mohammedans, and all such. They condemn also the Samosatenes, old and new, who, contending that there is but one Person, sophistically and impiously argue that the Word and the Holy Ghost are not distinct Persons, but that "Word" signifies a spoken word, and "Spirit" signifies motion created in things." (Augsburg Confession, Article I: Of God)

"HERESIES. Therefore we condemn the [unbelieving] Jews and Mohammedans, and all those who blaspheme that sacred and adorable Trinity. We also condemn all heresies and heretics who teach that the Son and Holy Spirit are God in name only, and also that there is something created and subservient, or subordinate to another in the Trinity, and that their is something unequal in it, a greater or a less, something corporeal or corporeally conceived, something different with respect to character or will, something mixed or solitary, as if the Son and Holy Spirit were the affections and properties of one God the Father, as the Monarchians, Novatians, Praxeas, Patripassians, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Aetius, Macedonius, Anthropomorphites, Arius, and such like, have thought." (The Second Helvetic Confession, Ch. III - OF God, His Unity and Trinity)

"This doctrine of the Holy Trinity hath always been defended and maintained by the true Church, since the times of the Apostles to this very day, against the Jews, Mohammedans, and some false Christians and heretics, as Marcion, Manes, Praxeas, Sabellius, Samosatenus, Arius, and such like, who have been justly condemned by the orthodox fathers." (The Belgic Confession, Art. IX.)

A Blunder in the Qur'an

Okay, so the following is not really about a blunder in the Qur'an. It is about a blunder in my copy of Yusuf Ali's The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an: New Edition with Revised Translation, Commentary and Newly Compiled Comprehensive Index (amana publications).

I've read and referred to YA's translation (among others) a lot over the years, but I only recently noticed that my copy has a numbering error in Surah 6. After properly enumerating verses 1-120 it suddenly skips to 140. At first I thought a camel might have snuck in and ate some of the verses - either that or my dog did it, proving that she really will eat anything, however distatsteful it might be - but after picking up a copy of Muhammad Asad's translation which was close at hand, I discovered they were all there and were only wrongly numbered.

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.

The Prophet and the Prophets - Appendix I

The following is an appendix to the below series of articles on Deuteronomy 18:

Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part I
Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part II
--------------------

Appendix I: The Prophet and the Prophets

In its grammatical-historical context, Deuteronomy 18 doesn’t directly predict the coming of one specific individual, at least not in the way that many people surmise.

Whereas Deuteronomy 18 speaks of a “prophet”, singular, the grammatical-contextual usage, in full harmony with the exigencies of Israel’s historical situation, indicates that the word is being used in a collective or distributive rather than in a simple sense, and therefore points not to just one person but to many prophets or an entire order of prophets. In other words, the prophecy/promise of Deuteronomy 18 is about the prophetic office, and is, at least initially, as will be shown, fulfilled in the case of Joshua, Moses’ immediate successor, as well as the long train of Hebrew prophets that God would raise up after him, from Samuel to John the Baptist.

---------------------

The rest of this article can be read here at Answering Islam. Comments on the article may be left in the comments section of this blog.

Help Get Sam Shamoun a Laptop

Please help get Sam a laptop for Christmas. For more information on this, go here.

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.

-----------------

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.)

--------------

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.

---------------------

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…”

---------------------

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.