Sharing the Gospel with Muslims is not easy, but it is essential
Evangelizing Muslims is a notoriously difficult undertaking, particularly since Islam is also a missionary religion. Do not think that every Muslim you meet is out to convert you. But if the conversation runs to the topic of religion, be prepared to get some stiff debate. In its most basic form, Islam is a very rational religion, and it is not easy to counter some arguments on their own ground. Furthermore, most Muslims living in Western countries are trained to know why they do not believe in the Trinity or in Christ as God.
There are four basic points in Muslim apologetics. First, God is one. The Trinity constitutes thinly veiled polytheism, and it is blasphemous to think that God can have a Son. Second, Christ cannot be God. It is contradictory to think that any human being could be God. Third, the Bible is demonstrably full of errors whereas the Qur’an is a direct revelation from God, passed down in its original, pure form. Fourth, instead of holding on to such absurd beliefs, it makes sense to accept the very simple faith of Islam: submit to the one God and keep His commandments.
How should a Christian respond to such argumentation? First, let me emphasize as strongly as I can that Christians need to know the fundamentals of their own faith. The Muslim interpretation of the Trinity explains it as polytheism — Christians worshiping three gods. Christians should be able to respond, at a minimum, that they do not practice polytheism. Christianity is a monotheistic religion; Christians worship one God in three persons — never three gods. Ideally, Christians should be able to go on and explain roughly why this model was chosen to summarize the biblical picture of God, namely precisely in order to preserve belief in the essential unity of God.
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More likely than not, the Muslim will reply that the doctrine of the Trinity does not make rational sense (and, unfortunately, many Christians also think that the Trinity was designed as a test for Christians to believe something illogical). As a matter of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is a very reasonable model to make sense of the scriptural data. However, that point constitutes a totally different issue. Whether the doctrine of the Trinity is rational or not was not the original point. Even if the doctrine of the Trinity were irrational, that would not ipso facto make it polytheistic. So, even if Christians assert that they are monotheists, and the Muslim finds this assertion confusing, that fact would not automatically make the Christians polytheists. There is no intellectual criterion to the effect that all beliefs that are difficult to understand are, by default, polytheistic.
The same consideration applies to the Christian belief in the incarnation. Muslims charge that worshiping any human being as God is idolatry, which is true as far as it goes. But Christians do not worship a man as God. They say that God, the second person of the Trinity, joined himself inextricably to the man Jesus. Christians worship the God who is present along with the man in the one person of Christ. Since the fifth century — based on the definition of the Council of Chalcedon — the accepted understanding of Christ has been that he is one person with two natures, a human one and a divine one. Again, the question I am addressing here is not whether the doctrine is immediately comprehensible, but whether Christians commit idolatry in worshiping Christ. The actual teachings of Christianity do not promote idolatry.
A problem comes up along this line insofar as the Qur’an itself denies the Trinity and the incarnation. Consequently, if one intends for the conversation to continue, one needs to focus on what Christians actually believe, rather than focus on the falsehood of what the Muslim believes and what the Qur’an expresses concerning Christianity. The Muslim will recognize on his own that if you represent your beliefs correctly, then the Qur’an glaringly misrepresents your belief.
Still, the matter cannot rest there. The Muslim will invariably respond that even at its best the Christian understanding is a horrendous tour de force, cramming some highly unlikely considerations into pretty questionable contentions. How much simpler, how much more rational, to believe that there is only one God with no further differentiations and that the prophets were human beings and nothing more!
I have no problem conceding the force of that point. But simplicity can hardly be the sole or even the primary criterion for truth, and my thoughts alone cannot decide what reality must be like. For example, it would be easier to accept the much simpler world of Newtonian physics than all of the complexity of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. But scientists must bow to the realities they encounter, no matter how complex their theories must become in order to describe those realities. In the same way, thinkers in the field of religion cannot merely opt for the simplest doctrines. They must accept the realities that have been revealed by God and then express them as lucidly as possible so as to do justice to them. In short, Christians do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity or the status of Christ as the God-man because they are the simplest (How could they?), but because they express revealed reality.
The preceding consideration raises the question of where the authentic revelation of God is to be found. The Christian looks to the Bible; the Muslim claims superiority for the Qur’an. My point here is not to make a case for the inspiration of the Bible per se, but to identify a possible response to the Muslim disparagement of it. Muslims point to many supposed flaws in both Old and New Testaments, which they read about in the works of people (claiming to be Christians) who apply negative critical scholarship to the Bible. If so-called Christians do not believe that their book is flawless, why would anyone accept it as divine revelation or base their beliefs on it? Ancient manuscripts of the Bible display many different textual variations, and the Bible is said to contain many apparent contradictions. By contrast, Muslims assert that the Qur’an has been preserved in a form identical to its original version, and it is free from error.
In response to the issue of God’s preservation of the Bible, it can be pointed out that if someone had burned all textual variants of the Bible, as Uthman [ibn ʿAffān, the third caliph] burned Qur’an variants, then there would be a single version of the Bible as well. Furthermore, the very existence of so many variant readings allows us to recover what the original must have said with a great degree of confidence. By contrast, it is impossible to restore the Qur’an to what existed prior to Uthman, since we now have only one version of the Qur’an — the one Uthman wanted us to have. Recent discoveries have shown that there are actual textual variations in the Qur’an, even after Uthman’s attempt to eradicate them all.
Concerning the many alleged discrepancies in the Bible, Evangelical Christians must do their homework and focus on the problem passages with diligence and integrity. The Qur’an is essentially the product of one man. Its content spans a little more than twenty years within a single cultural context. By contrast, the Bible spans about 1,500 years in several different languages and highly divergent cultures. This fact makes it much more difficult to interpret and correlate biblical information correctly, a point sometimes missed by critics and defenders alike. Christians who want to defend the inerrancy of the Bible incur the liability of knowing both sides of the coin: the critics’ case as well as the data that support the believer’s case. Again, if a Muslim points to a possible problem passage in the Bible, the Christian needs to have studied the issues involved. Having said as much, I can hasten to add that as a matter of fact there is every good reason to believe that the Bible is not full of errors or contradictions. Adequate study has produced and will continue to produce reassuring results.
Needless to say, such religious discussions with a Muslim are never an end in themselves, either for the Christian or the Muslim. Both sides are concerned for the other’s salvation — for the Muslim by submitting to Allah, for the Christian by receiving Christ in faith. In that sense winning an intellectual debate is in itself fruitless for both. The Christian’s intent must be to show the Muslim 1. what the realities of the cross and salvation are and 2. that the realities are graciously provided by God to give us salvation.
Since Islam relies on an unattainable standard of perfection, it can never in the final analysis provide certain assurance of salvation. Christians are allowed to say that our salvation is assured, not because of our righteousness but because we can trust God to keep his promises (for example, John 1:12; 3:16). It is on the basis of Christ and His work alone that we can know for sure that we are saved. Christians must demonstrate this truth to Muslims through their lives as well as their words.
Originally published at the Worldview Bulletin Newsletter.
Dr. Winfried Corduan (PhD, Rice University) is professor emeritus of philosophy and religion at Taylor University, Upland, Indiana. He has led many undergraduate tours focusing on the lived religious traditions of various parts of the world. He is the author of several books, including Handmaid to Theology, Reasonable Faith: Basic Christian Apologetics, Neighboring Faiths, and A Tapestry of Faiths.
