The True Shahada- Defended - By Anthony Rogers

8/4/2019 The True Shahada- Defended - By Anthony Rogers

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The True Shahada: Defended

A Response to “The True Shahada Indeed” – Part One

By Anthony Rogers

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 Unlettered Muslim Apologist

Not content to merely conceal his own identity, my Muslim respondent, who gets my name

wrong no less than nine times, starts off his article with an attempt to prevent his fellow

Muslims from reading all of what I originally wrote, saying: “I would discourage readers toread his article…”, and judging from the quality of his reply, he appears to have followed his

own advice.

I‟m sure the reader can think of why Mr. Anonymous might want to dissuade his co -

religionists from reading my article – indeed, several crucial remarks of mine are not taken

into account in his “refutation” – but Mr. Anonymous attempts to mask the reason for his

censorious remarks with the following justification (i.e. rationalization): “I would discourage

readers to read his article rigged with mordant remarks and filthy invectives on Allah and

Mohammad, peace be upon him.” I take it that he is referring here to the fact that at the end

of my article I referred to Allah as an idol and to Muhammad as a worthless prophet. But

what else did my anonymous acquaintance expect me, a Christian, to conclude? Was heexpecting me to say: “ Ashadu an la illaha illa-llah, wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadun

rasullu-llah”? Not any more, I would imagine, than I expected him to say in truth, “This is

eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have

sent.”

The fact is, as I said in the article, these two declarations represent two fundamentally

different and irreconcilable positions, both of which logically entail the falsity of the other.

When the full implications of both confessions are brought out in relation to each other, it is

quite impossible for either one to result in anything less than what those in the opposing camp

would take to be disagreeable and even blasphemous. It is simply unavoidable: if Yahweh isGod, then Allah is not (which means he is an idol); if Christ is the only begotten Son of the

http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/rogers/true_shahada.html



http://donotsaytrinity.blog.co.in/2009/03/08/true-shahada-indeed/







Father, then Muhammad is a false prophet (which means his worth as a prophet is precisely

zero). The same holds when spoken from the standpoint of Muslims: If Allah is God, then

Yahweh is not (hence?); if Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, then Jesus is not the only

begotten Son of the Father (hence?). To hold either confession is to implicitly hold what is

blasphemous to adherents of the other. My remarks simply make that fact explicit, which is

the whole point of comparing and contrasting two views.

In fact, Mr. Anonymous unwittingly demonstrates my point by speaking of me throughout his

article as a “Christolator”, as if to say that the Jesus I (and two billion others) repose in is an

idol-god. Does Mr. Anonymous not think Christians would view this as a “filthy invective”?

He also calls my belief, and by logical extension the belief of all Christians, “blasphemy” and

“blasphemous”, not to mention that he mischaracterizes it as a form of pagan polytheism.

Does Mr. Anonymous not think that such words constitute something Christians would

perceive to be offensive to the truth and therefore reprehensible? Moreover, Anonymous also

goes out of his way to speak of the blessed apostle Paul as a “false prophet”, giving the most

limpid argument for this, as we will see, but what would a Muslim reply be if it didn‟t include

a “mordant remark” and attack on the apostle Paul? Now does all of this mean that Christiansshould not read his response? If we consistently apply Mr. Anonymous‟ stated principle, then

that is precisely what it means.

As fault-ridden as the aforementioned is as an excuse for trying to dissuade people from

reading the whole of what I originally wrote, nevertheless, I can‟t help but find myself

(somewhat) inclined to agree with Anonymous‟ artificial and otherwise self -serving stricture.

For if nothing can be read that contains “mordant remarks” and “filthy invectives”, then no

Christian should read the Qur‟an and, perhaps surprisingly, no Muslim should read it either.

After all, not only is the Qur‟an filled with assertions that contradict and impugn the Bible‟s

teaching about the true God, even using words that are hardly calculated to make Christians

feel warm and fuzzy all over, but it is also filled with “mordant remarks” and “filthy

invectives” directed at Muhammad by his non-Muslim contemporaries (calling him: a

possessed madman, S. 15:6, 23:70, 34:08, 34:46, 37:36, 44:14, 68:2, 51; a tale-bearer and

liar, S. 6:25, 8:31, 16:24, 23:83, 25:05, 27:68, 46:17, 68:15; 83:13; a forger and fabricator,

S. 10:38, 11:13, 35, 16:101, 25:04, 32:3, 34:08, 43, 42:24, 46:08, 52:33; a innovator, S.

46:09; a confused dreamer, S. 21:05; and a magician, sorcerer, and one enchanted, S.34:43, 38:4; etc.). If Mr. Anonymous‟ principle means that my article must be relegated to

the dust bin of history never to be read again, then the same goes for the Qur‟an, and this is a

price I would be none too pleased to pay.

Ask the Jews and the Christians

Next, after going on to provide his own truncated and jumbled up summary of what I argued,

suggesting that my primary aim was to prove the deity of Christ, which, though important,

was ancillary to the overall thrust my article, Mr. Anonymous sets the stage for his critique,

laying out the Muslim view of Christ in the following words:

In the house of Islam there are no clouds of conjectures and doubts hovering above the head

of this mighty “Son of Man” named Jesus, peace be upon him. For we read in Qur‟an:

“…Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) An apostle of God…‟ (THE HOLY

QURAN 4:171)



And

“The similitude of Jesus before God is as that of Adam; He created him from dust, then said

to him: “Be”: And he was.” (THE HOLY QURAN 3:59)

As the above comments remind us, Muslim apologists are often marked by a level of confidence that is not at all commensurate with the facts that are thought to warrant it. Here

we have a Muslim who is overshadowed by storm clouds (of conjecture) declaring in table-

pounding tones that the sky is clear.

Although it is perfectly legitimate to appeal to the Qur‟an to define the official Islamic

position on Christ – even though, let it be said, the Qur‟an actually lends itself to more than

one position – the above verses are poorly chosen examples to demonstrate that Muslims do

not labor under “clouds of conjectures”. Consider just a few points from the passages he

listed:

1. Surah 4:171

“…Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) An apostle of God…”

First, this portion of Surah 4:171 calls Jesus “the Messiah”, but the meaning of this title is

nowhere explained in the Qur‟an. The word and concept comes from the Jewish and

Christian Scriptures, and so without looking to them to explain the meaning of this title, one

is left with nothing but conjecture and doubt.

Second, though translated Jesus, the Arabic text calls Him „Isa, which is not correct. The

name Yeshua in Hebrew yields Yasou‟ in Arabic. Muhammad, possibly mistaking a Jewish

slur for Jesus as „Esau,‟ falsely conjectured that „Isa was/is Jesus‟ real name. (For more on

this, see: “Is „Isa the True Name of Jesus?”)

Third, the all important words “no more than” do not even appear in the Arabic text of this

verse; they are inserted into the English text to make it say what certain Muslims think it

should say; in other words, these words are “no more than” conjecture. Consider how some

other translations render the verse:

“The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was a messenger of GOD” – Khalifah

“Verily Christ Jesus the son of Mary [is] the apostle of God” – Sale

And so, as far as this verse goes, there is a great deal of conjecture, and if we drop the added

words, there is nothing that is said here about Jesus, apart from the fact that it gets His namewrong, that Christians would not agree with: “The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was a

messenger of God.” Of course Christians would point out that this is not all that can be said

of Jesus, and they might just as well point out in this connection that the Qur‟an also says

more about Him, even in this very passage, where Jesus is also called the “Word” of God and

a “Spirit proceeding from Him”.

http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Abualrub/true-name-isa.htm

http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Abualrub/true-name-isa.htm





“To Him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth: When He decreeth a matter,

He saith to it: „ Be’ , and it is.” (Surah 2:117)

“She said: „O m Lord! How shall I have a son when no man hath touched me?‟ He said:

„Even so: Allah createth what He willeth: when He hath decreed a Plan, He but saith to it,

‘Be’ , and it is!” (Surah 3:47)

“The similitude of Jesus before Allah is as that of Adam; He created him from dust, then said

to him: ‘Be’ : and he was.” (Surah 3:59)

“It is He who created the heavens and the earth in true (proportions): the day He saith, ‘ Be’ ,

behold! it is. His word is the truth.” (S. 6:73)

“For to anything which We have willed, We but say the word, ‘ Be’ , and it is.” (S. 16:40)

“It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him!

when He determines a matter, He only says to it, ‘ Be’ , and it is.” (S. 19:35)

“Verily, when He intends a thing, His Command is, ‘ Be’ , and it is!” (S. 36:82)

“It is He Who gives Life and Death; and when He decides upon an affair, He says to it, ‘ Be’ ,

and it is.” (Surah 40:68)

And the Word of YHWH said to Moses: "I am He who said unto the world 'Be!' and it was:

and who in the future shall say to it 'Be!' and it shall be." And He said: "Thus you shall say

to the children of Israel: 'I Am' has sent me to you." (Exodus 3:14, Jerusalem Targum)

Whereas the spirit of these words is in keeping with the Bible‟s description of God‟s creative

activity as found in various places (q.v. Genesis 1; Psalm 33:6; et. al.), the precise

phraseology bears greater and more striking resemblance to the above Targum. What is more,

the Jerusalem Targum also confirms something that was said above, yielding the following:

As the Word of God, Jesus is the one who spoke the world into existence, saying, “„Be‟, and

it was”; but as a human being, Jesus was also a product of the divine Word „Be,‟ by which

the Spirit prepared a body for Him, enabling Him to take the form of a man.

3. The Son of Man

As if he wanted to make an already bad case worse, my unknown Muslim assailant evenrefers to Jesus as “this mighty „Son of Man,‟” another title that is lifted from the Bible,

though it isn‟t used in the Qur‟an. All the more then do we have to turn to the Scriptures in

order to understand the meaning of this phrase; otherwise we are left with nothing but“clouds of conjectures”. When we do turn to the Scripture to get an idea of what this title

means, we end up with a description that is as far from the Muslim conception of Jesus as one

could imagine, but since the Qur‟an doesn‟t use this title, we may let Mr. Anonymous off the

hook here.

Although there can be little doubt that the author(s) of the Qur‟an often spoke in a fashion

that denigrated Jesus, as Muslims do to this day, saying things that would reduce him to the

level of a mere creature, the fact is that the Qur‟an‟s author (and/or redactors), who picked upwords and phrases from Jews and Christians like a dog picks up fleas – that is, without



understanding their full import – also spoke of Jesus in ways that revealed His divinity. If one

looks to the Qur‟an alone, its descriptions of Jesus leave room for a great deal of conjecture;

when one turns to the Scriptures to illuminate their meaning, the deity of Christ shines

through and drives the clouds away.

Confirming What Came Before In the Law and the Gospel

Confident that he has established the Muslim view of Jesus from the Qur‟an, and for the sake

of argument we may pretend that he has, for no part of my argument even turned on this

issue, Mr. Anonymous goes on to say the following:

But the Christolator says, NO – “Jesus is God” discrediting the Last Testament. So, we show

to them from their so called „Word of God‟. (Reader would soon read my upcoming article

proving logically that Bible, as a whole cannot be an inspired word of God)

At this point of time let me make it absolutely clear that when I witness Biblical verses to

Christians I do so because they mistake it to be the Word of God. I do not. I do not considerBiblical verses, I use, to be any type of “Left over Islamic proof text.” As Anthony wrote:

“…many Muslims believe that John 17:3 is a left over Islamic proof -text found in otherwise

corrupted book.” (Emphasis mine)

Our proof text is Quran – Quran is our “Alpha and Omega”; the final authority. We only use

Biblical verse because it helps us extricate millions of Christians carrying heavy yokes of

associating partners to God – Almighty; POLYTHEISM.

Recognizing the inconsistency of Muslims who appeal to the Bible to prove their view over

against Christianity, since this would commit them to accepting the authority of the selected

passages even after they have been disabused of their false interpretations (or else be exposed

for arbitrariness as I pointed out in the article), he proceeds to give a wholesale rejection of

the Bible. Note how sweeping his denunciations are: the Bible “as a whole cannot be an

inspired word of God”; “I do not consider verses, I use, to be any type of „Left over Islamic

proof text‟”; and, 3) “we only use Biblical verses because it helps us…”, not because it is

“our proof text”.

Of course, even if this was his position and did account for why Mr. Anonymous, as a

Muslim, appeals to the Bible, this wouldn‟t account for the way many other Muslims,

Muslims of repute, view and use select Biblical passages. Notwithstanding this, the fact is

that Mr. Anonymous is simply being disingenuous here, shifting his ground momentarily inorder to disentangle himself from the problem I raised. This can be seen by looking at just

one of the many verses Muslims uniformly believe to be a prediction of their prophet in the

Old Testament: Deuteronomy 18. If what my anonymous acquaintance said above were true,

then he wouldn‟t be able to claim that the Bible contains predictions for Muhammad, not in

Deuteronomy 18, not in John 16, not anywhere, contrary to the Qur‟an, various Hadith, and

the uniform example of Muslim scholars and dawagandists. In spite of this, Mr. Anonymous

exposes this little expedient for what it is in an article where he makes a foolhardy attempt to

refute Christian apologist David Wood, saying:

“…no sooner did Moses, peace be upon him, a revered figure of the Bible, prophesied

Mohammad‟s prophet hood in Deuteronomy 18:18 than David, a Christian polemic,sought to refute Moses, peace be upon Moses.” (Deuteronomy Dissection).

http://donotsaytrinity.blog.co.in/2008/10/18/deuteronomy-dissection/






As this quote shows, Mr. Anonymous dances from pillar to post, affirming certain passages

of the Bible when it is convenient, but denying any and all passages when it isn‟t. For

Muslims like Anonymous, the authority and evidential value of something is determined by

whether or not it agrees with their conclusion: if it supports their view, it is authoritative; if it

doesn‟t, then it isn‟t. And so, far from escaping the charge of arbitrariness, Anonymous ends

up giving us a prime example of it. He shows that when Muslims like himself say they submitto the authority of God, what they mean as showed by their practice is that they submit to

whatever happens to strike their fancy, but that isn‟t any submission worthy of the name.

Finally, as for Mr. Anonymous‟ claim that Christians are polytheists, not only does he not try

to prove this scurrilous accusation in his response, but the Christian confession of

monotheism was firmly established long before Muhammad was even around to: call upon

“the high flying cranes” (* / *); kiss a sacred stone (*); advocate the eternal coexistence of a

womb (*), a book (*), a throne (*), and other things with his god; or swear and take oaths by

what are nothing but created things, such as the heavens (S. 86:1), the stars (S.81:15), the sun

(S. 91:1-2), the moon (S. 74:32), the wind (S. 51:1), the mountains (S. 52:1), the angels (S.

77:5), and even Muhammad (S. 15:72); et cetera. (* / *) In light of such facts as these, it ismore than a little bit counter-productive to (baselessly) accuse others of polytheism. (As an

aside, the foregoing appears to account for why Muhammad has Allah deny being the third of

three, for the thirtieth of thirty would appear to be more like it. And that is a conservative

estimate.)

Preliminary Conclusion

In order not to weary the reader, I will break it off here for now. In Part Two, which really

gets to the heart of the issue, I will look at Mr. Anonymous attempt to prove that John 17:3

does not contradict Islamic teaching, and in Part Three and Four I will address his claim that

John 17:3 does not teach deity of Christ.

Given how badly he has argued so far, it might be hard to imagine that it can get any worse.

But if his shoddy handling of his own Qur‟an is any indication, then rest assured his handling

of the Holy Bible is far worse and just as easily refuted.

http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/satanic_verses.htm


http://www.answering-islam.org/Index/S/satanic_verses.html



http://www.answering-islam.org/Muhammad/Inconsistent/stone_kissing.html



http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/shamoun/allah_wombs.html



http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/eternal_quran.htm



http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/shamoun/allah_throne.html



http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/allahs_oaths.htm


http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/allah_swearing_by_idols.htm














A Reply to “The True Shahada Indeed” – Part Two

By Anthony Rogers

In part one I responded to several matters, a number of which were of incidental or

introductory relevance, which can be found in an unknown Muslim‟s critique of my article –

“The True Shahada.” In this second installment of my response I will begin to address the

more substantial issues that my article was concerned to convey and that my anonymous

interlocutor ineptly tried to refute.

The reader should recall that in comparing John 17:3 to Islam‟s Shahada in my original

article, part of what I aimed to show is that the former is not a legitimate text for Muslims to

appeal to when seeking confirmation in the Bible for Islam for at least two major reasons: 1)

it does not teach a distinctively Islamic version of unitarianism; and 2) it does not teach

unitarianism at all, for it teaches the absolute deity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It is

with respect to Mr. Anonymous comments on the first reason that this second part of my

response is concerned.

John 17:3, the Fatherhood of God, and Tawhid

In response to my observation that even if one were to grant that John 17:3 teaches some kind

of unitarianism it would certainly not be Islamic in nature, for the text speaks of the Father as

God, something altogether foreign to Islam, Mr. Anonymous said the following:

“To begin with, Muslims do not try to prove “Unitarian – Islamic version of monotheism”.They but strive to prove “Tawheed”. There is a difference of chalk and cheese between the

two. The difference between these two concepts are beyond the scope of this refutation.”

I could venture a guess as to what Anonymous thinks he is referring to here, but since he

didn‟t defend or even so much as bother to explain what he means, this attempt to avoid the

problem may simply be dismissed in the same way it was offered, by saying: “it is beyond the

scope of this refutation.”1

Not content to leave the matter there with his non-answer, which is entirely understandable,

for no one could really be content with such a reply, he shows just how desperate he is to

bring his Shahada into conformity with John 17:3.

Then, this witty fabrication of a misconception to score cheap points over Muslims can be

debunked by the fact that Muslims do not abhor the word “Father” per say given the

knowledge of Jewish parlance and vernacular, that is, the way the Israelites used the word

“Father.”

“Do you thus deal with the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father, who

bought you?” (THE OPEN BIBLE, DEUTERONOMY 32:6, NKJV). Emphasis mine.

“Doubtless You are out Father,..” (THE OPEN BIBLE, ISAIAH 63:16, NKJV). Emphasis

mine.

http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/rogers/true_shahada_defended1.html




http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/rogers/true_shahada_defended2.html#fn_1








“Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?”(THE OPEN BIBLE, MALACHI

2:10, NKJV). Emphasis mine.

Conclusively then, the Jews never used the word “Father” with its literal import whenever

referring to God. It was just a part of their living language that for some out of other reason

they preferred calling God as “Father”. In this sense Muslims have no prob lems at all withthe word – “Father”.

The first thing to observe here is Mr. Anonymous‟ hasty generalization. On the basis of three

passages of the Old Testament, Mr. Anonymous asserts that the Jews never used the word

Father with its literal import when referring to God. This simplistic (and false) observation

also ignores the possibility that the concept of fatherhood could be indicated in other ways

besides using the word “Father”.

Although Christians do not believe that God is literally a father in the crude way presented in

the Qur‟an, where divine fatherhood implies a consort, copulation, and possibly even

cohabitation with a female deity, one of the signal proofs that the author(s) of the Qur‟ancouldn‟t escape thinking in terms of pagan categories,2 the fact is that the word Father is used

for God in the Old Testament in more than just the narrow metaphorical sense that Mr.

Anonymous‟ three carefully (craftily?) selected passages indicate. For example, Psalm 2 uses

the word “Father” for God in relation to the Messiah (vs. 7),3 and it is clear from the whole

Psalm that the Messiah is more than just an ordinary human being, for He is the Heir of all

things and the kings and rulers of the earth are commanded to worship Him (vss. 10-12). As

for another example, the concept is clearly present in the Old Testament book of Proverbs

where mention is made of God‟s “Son,” which term is simply the correlative of “Father”:

Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who

has wrapped the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What

is His name or His son's name? Surely you know! (Proverbs 30:4)

As these (and other) passages indicate, God is literally a Father, though in an eternal and

spiritual rather than a temporal and carnal sense. But all of this is really neither here northere, for not only does the Qur‟an never refer to God as Father, whether literally or

metaphorically, but it explicitly rules out any notion of God as Father, even in the

metaphorical sense Mr. Anonymous is willing to allow for in order to try to rescue the claim

that John 17:3 comports with the teaching of Islam:

“(Both) the Jews and the Christians say: “We are sons of Allah, and his beloved.” Say: “Whythen doth He punish you for your sins? Nay, ye are but men, - of the men he hath created: He

forgiveth whom He pleaseth, and He punisheth whom He pleaseth: and to Allah belongeth

the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all that is between: and unto Him is the final

goal (of all)” (Surah 5:18)

In light of this, it is interesting to point out that the same person who accuses Christians of

being polytheists, the same person who charges Christians with committing shirk, actually

exposes himself to this very charge in the process of trying to make John 17:3 some kind of

support for Islam and its Shahada. (And this shows up the wisdom of remaining anonymous.

Not only does such a maneuver protect Mr. Anonymous from the stigma of refutation; it also

saves him from being “rocked” to sleep by his co-religionists.)











In his discussion of “Tawheed al-Asmaa was-Sifaat (maintaining the unity of Allah‟s name

and attributes),” Dr. Zakir Naik says:

Allah must be referred to without giving Him any new names or attributes. For example

Allah may not be given the name Al-Ghaadib (the Angry One), despite the fact that He has

said that He gets angry, because neither Allah nor His messenger have used this name.(“Concept of God in Islam”)

Accordingly, calling Allah “Father” is to call him something he is not reported to have called

himself and is not called by Muhammad. This is contrary to Tawhid, according to Islamic

authorities; this is shirk, pure and simple. What is more, this is not only enough to land him at

the bottom of a pile of rocks here; it is enough to prevent him from entering paradise

hereafter.

Narrated Abu Uthman: I heard from Sad, the first man who has thrown an arrow in Allah's

Cause, and from Abu Bakra who jumped over the wall of the Ta'if Fort along with a few

persons and came to the Prophet. They both said, "We heard the Prophet saying, " If somebody claims to be the son of somebody other than his father knowingly, he will be

denied Paradise (i.e. he will not enter Paradise)." (Bukhari, 5:59:616)

Narrated Abu Dhar: The Prophet said, "If somebody claims to be the son of any other than

his real father knowingly, he but disbelieves in Allah, and if somebody claims to belong to

some folk to whom he does not belong, let such a person take his place in the (Hell) Fire."

(Bukhari, 4:56:711)

Narrated Wathila bin Al-Asqa: Allah's Apostle said, "Verily, one of the worst lies is to claim

falsely to be the son of someone other than one's real father, or to claim to have had a dream

one has not had, or to attribute to me what I have not said." (Bukhari, 4:56:712)

It is reported on the authority of Sa'd b. Abi Waqqas: Both of my ears heard the Messenger of

Allah saying this: He who claimed the fatherhood of anyone else besides his real father

knowingly (committed a great sin); Paradise is forbidden to him. Abu Bakra asserted that he

too heard it from the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him ). (Muslim, 1:120)

Sa'd and Abu Bakra each one of them said: My ears heard and my hearing preserved it that

Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) observed: He who claimed for another one his

fatherhood besides his own father knowingly that he was not his father-to him Paradise is

forbidden. (Muslim, 1:121)

If it is wrong to call someone our earthly father when they are not, then a fortiori it is wrong

for a Muslim to call Allah father when he is not. Since Mr. Anonymous knows that the

Qur‟an does not call Allah the father of anyone – not of Jesus in a transcendent sense, not of

gods and goddesses in a pagan sense, and not of anyone in any sense, including Mr.

Anonymous, and he still calls him father anyway, then according to the above Hadith, he will

be forbidden to enter paradise. If Mr. Anonymous really believes what he has said above, and

if he has the courage to stand by his convictions, then let him go down to his local mosque

and call upon Allah as father. Let him pray like Jesus, the Son of God, “Father, the hour has

come, glorify me…” (John 17:1) Let him cry out like Christians, who have been redeemed

and adopted through Christ, and who therefore have the right to say, “Abba, Father.”

http://www.islam101.com/tauheed/conceptofGod.htm



http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/059.sbt.html#005.059.616









http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/001.smt.html#001.0120














(Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6) Let him do this in the presence of everyone; let him do it

loudly, clearly, and boldly. Then let him duck for cover and bolt for the nearest exit.

If all of the foregoing – the non-answer, the hasty generalization, the simplistic and false

observation, contradicting his own Qur‟an, and violating the terms of Tawhid – is not

enough to show just how thin the ground is beneath Anonymous‟ feet, then the followingshould serve as a jack-hammer, revealing the fiery-chasm over which he walks.

Having said that Muslims have no problem using the word “father” for God in a metaphorical

sense, which we just saw is patently false, at least according to the Qur‟an and the systematic

understanding of Tawhid that has been hammered out by Muslim authorities, Anonymous

goes on to say:

However what a Muslim seriously repels is the LITERAL understanding and usage of this

blasphemous word “Father” when used for ALLAH (John 3:16 abuses ALLAH with the

same. Kindly read John 3:16 in conjunction with Quran 19:88). This kind of rendering is

anathematized in Islam and we will continue to eschew it.

Unbelievably, in an attempt to prove that John 17, where Jesus, the Son, calls God His

Father, is not contrary to the Islamic conception of God, Mr. Anonymous points to a verse in

the same Gospel, recorded by the same author, and spoken by the same Jesus, which affirms

the special, unique, eternal, and transcendent father-son relationship that exists between the

first and second persons of the Trinity, as an example of what Muslims deny. If this is the

kind of fatherhood that Muslims anathematize, then it is proof positive that my first and

second contention are true: 1) John 17:3, in context, does not teach any kind of Islamic

unitarianism, all specious, undefined, unproven distinctions between Islam and Tawhid

notwithstanding, and 2) it teaches that Jesus is the divine Son of God. After all, it is just this

special use of the terms “Father” and “Son,” which anonymous eschewed as blasphemous,

that is found in John 17 and throughout John‟s Gospel. Consider the following points:

1) The prologue that introduces the Gospel narrative, that which the narrative is designed to

draw out, and the thesis statement at the end, that which tells us the express purpose of the

author in composing this work, have as their starting and end point to declare and prove that

Jesus is the one and only divine Son of God. Everything in between is written with this in

mind.

The Prologue: “In the beginning was the Word [i.e. Jesus], and the Word was with God, and

the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen hisglory, glory as of the only Son from the Father , full of grace and truth…. No one has ever

seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known..…” (ESV,

John 1:1, 14, 18)

The Thesis Statement: “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of

the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may

believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing you may have life in His

name.” (John 20:30-31)

The idea that John 17:3, a verse stuck smack-dab in the middle of John‟s Gospel, a Gospel

that was written to prove that Jesus is the unique Son of God, was actually written to proveTawhid, where Tawhid is taken as a denial that God is the Father and Jesus is His unique



Son, stretches credulity beyond the breaking point. These two “book -ends”, the prologue and

the thesis statement, qualify everything in between.

2) Over and over again in the Gospel of John God is referred to in relation to Jesus as “the

Father” (1:14, 18,; 3:35; 4:53; 5:19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 36, 37, 45; 6:27, 37, 44, 45, 46, 57,

65; 8:16, 18, 27, 28; 10:15, 17, 30, 32, 36, 38; 12:26, 49, 50; 13:1, 3: 14:6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,13, 16, 24, 26, 28, 31; 15:16, 26; 16:3, 10, 15, 17, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32; 18:11; 20:17, 21) or

“My Father” (2:16; 5:17, 18 (“His own Father”), 43; 6:32, 40; 8:19, 38, 49, 54; 10:18, 25, 29,

37; 14:2, 7, 20, 21, 23; 15:1, 8, 10, 15, 23, 24; 20:17 ) and, in cases where Jesus directly

addresses God, simply as “Father” (11:41; 12:27, 28; 17:1, 5, 21, 25). It was this practice of

Jesus that so irked the Jewish religious leaders; not because Jesus said God had a divine Son,

which we saw the Old Testament itself teaches, but because Jesus, standing before them as a

man, claimed to be the Son.

“For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not

only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father , making Himself

equal with God .” (John 5:18)

“I and the Father are one." The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered

them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning

Me?" The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy;

and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God ." (John 10:30)

3) Finally, one of the ways John points up the uniqueness of Jesus in his Gospel is by

exclusively using the word “Son” (Gr. huios) for Jesus in relation to God the Father, the same

word that Jesus uses twice in the immediate context of John 17:3 (i.e. verse 1). Though as the

rest of the New Testament writings bear out, there is a sense in which others can be called

“sons” of God – having been created and redeemed through Jesus Christ, God‟s true Son, and

having the Spirit of His Son, the Spirit of adoption, poured out upon them – when the apostleJohn speaks of others as God‟s “children” (e.g. 1:12; 11:52), he uses a different Greek word

altogether (Gr. teknon). Even when the rest of the New Testament is considered, believers are

only referred to as “sons of God” in the plural, never is anyone exclusively singled out as the

Son of God in this way.

In granting that this is the sense of fatherhood that Muslims deny to God, Mr. Anonymous

has also conceded that John 17:3, in context, is altogether opposed to the religion of Islam.

And so if I might quote Mr. Anonymous from another place in his article where the confident

declaration is most certainly out of place: “I need not write a word any more to his childish„article,‟” for this observation by itself is enough to end all debate.

Nevertheless, since Mr. Anonymous doesn‟t know to quit while he is behind, then I will be

magnanimous and continue my response.

Having said that it is okay to call Allah a father of believers, especially for informed Muslims

like himself, Mr. Anonymous tries to go on and explain why rank and file Muslims do not

and are safe not to do so:

Furthermore, because many may not be acquainted with Jewish colloquism added with the

problem of variations of connotations of words with generations; Muslims play safe not touse the word “Father” to refer to ALLAH. Anyway, it does not make sense for a Muslim to



use a vulnerable word when 099 attributive names are readily available in Quran. Let us take

an example to close this argument. Now – a - days people generally call Nature as “Mother

Nature”. Now if, somebody, Anthony Roger in particular, starts to understand it literally (!)

then, I think, he should immediately consult a psychologist.

That‟s right, ninety-nine attributive names are used for Allah in the Qur‟an and “father” is notone of them. But this means, as we saw above, it is not only “safe” for Muslims not to call

Allah “father”, but it is not safe for them to do otherwise. The fact that the Qur‟an explicitly

repudiates that Allah is a father is the real reason the term is not and should not be used by

Muslims; the fact that it is a (allegedly) “vulnerable” word has nothing to do with it. In fact,

many of the words and phrases of the Qur‟an were used by pagans with a different

connotation before Islam, such as “Rabb”, “Ar -Rahman”, and even the name “Allah”, but

that didn‟t stop Muhammad from incorporating these names into the Qur‟an. All Muhammad

had to do if he was really a recipient of divine revelation is cleanse the word “father” of its

pagan connotations and associations, just like he is assumed to have done in the case of other

words. Moreover, all of Islam‟s religious rites were picked up from pagans like crumbs off a

table, such as circling the Kaaba, throwing rocks at the Devil, and kissing the black stone, andyet we are told to believe that these are now okay because they were sanctified by Allah

through Muhammad. Why didn‟t Muhammad do the same for a word like “father”, which

Anonymous said was legitimately used by the Jews before him?

One reason Muhammad likely did not do the same thing in the case of the name “father” is

readily available to us if we look in the very direction Mr. Anonymous points when

dismissing the true fatherhood of God, suggesting by way of analogy that it is due to some

underlying psychological quirk that calls for therapy that anyone would take it literally, as he

says is the case if one takes a phrase like “Mother Nature” literally.

Now I doubt very much that Mr. Anonymous wants to hear a psychological assessment of all

this, but since he brought it up, let him consider the following in light of the fact that

Muhammad‟s father died before he was born, that his grandfather died when he was only

eight, just two years after his mother died, and that he lived with his uncle from that time

forward, and all of it in a religious context where Allah was spoken of as a father who had

daughters but not sons.

Before coming directly to the point, a little bit of background is in order. From the Christian

standpoint, it is not surprising that a significant number of history‟s most prominent atheists

(and/or deists) either lost or were otherwise maltreated and neglected by their fathers in

childhood, as for example Bertrand Russell, David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, AlbertCamus, Jean Paul Sartre, Arthur Schopenhauer, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire,

H.G. Wells, Jean Meslier, Jean d‟alembert, Ludwig Freuerbach, Baron d‟Holbach, and

Samuel Butler. Given the empirical observation that so many atheists had such experiences in

their formative years, it is hard to avoid the possibility that they were significantly

conditioned by this. A thesis along these lines has been argued, for example, by Paul C. Vitz,

Ph.D. (Stanford University, 1962), a professor of psychology at New York University, who

explains it in the following way:

….I will develop an undeveloped thesis of Freud himself. In his essay on Leonardo da Vinci,

Freud remarks that “psychoanalysis, which has taught us the intimate connection between the

father complex and belief in God, has shown us that the personal god is logically nothing but



an exalted father, and daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious

belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down.”

….Freud makes the simple and easily understandable claim that once a child or youth is

disappointed in or loses respect for his earthly father, belief in a heavenly father becomes

impossible. That a child‟s psychological representation of his father is intimately connectedto his understanding of God was assumed by Freud and has been rather well developed by a

number of psychologists, especially psychoanalysts. In other words, an atheist‟s

disappointment in and resentment of his own father unconsciously justifies his rejection of

God.

There are, of course, many ways a father can lose his authority or seriously disappoint his

child: he can be absent through death or abandonment; he can be present but obviously weak,

cowardly, and unworthy of respect, even if he is otherwise pleasant or “nice”; or he can be

present but physically, sexually, or psychologically abusive. I will call these proposed

determinants of atheism, taken together, the “defective father” hypothesis and will seek

evidence for it in the lives of prominent atheists…”4

No doubt at this point Mr. Anonymous is chomping at the bit, only too ready to blurt out:

“But Muhammad was not an atheist; he affirmed belief in God.” This bring s us to the way

Vitz concludes his study, providing the following trenchant and most applicable insight, as

even Anonymous should be constrained to see:

A Question that can easily be raised with respect to our psychologically-based hypothesis is,

where were all the atheists prior to the eighteenth century? After all, there have been plenty

of defective fathers throughout history; and yet the rejection of God as a clear intellectual and

ideological position emerged in Western culture only a few centuries ago. How does one

account for this? Obviously, the interpersonal psychology of the family, though a major

contributor to atheism, is far from a complete explanation of the phenomenon. There also

must exist important cultural forces and supports before an explicit atheism can emerge. It is

not that the psychology outlined in this book did not exist in earlier centuries, but it would

have been expressed in a different way when the culture was not ripe for atheism. So the

question is: how was the psychology of the defective father expressed before the emergence

of systematic unbelief? Presumably there were many ways to express such a psychology; for

example, hostility to and cynicism about fathers and authority figures, such as the King, God,

and high-ranking churchmen. Many forms of satire and parody allow the expression of the

same attitudes. Likewise, participation in revolts, rebellions, heresies , and many other social

expressions of this underlying mentality have long been available.

5

The tragic fact of the death and consequent absence of the most significant males in

Muhammad‟s life, his grandfather, and above all his father, and that in his formative years,

could hardly have failed to leave its mark upon Muhammad, even as Muhammad did not fail

to leave just such a mark on Islam. Without the grace of God and a true revelation from Him,

the effects that this necessarily would have had on Muhammad had to seek some kind of

outlet. Since Muhammad‟s culture was not congenial to the irreligious route now so readily

available in Western society, Muhammad took the heretical path instead, and the Muslim

world has been fatherless ever since.6

Given the above, it is not surprising from a psychological standpoint that Muhammadcouldn‟t conceive of God in this most wonderful and endearing way, the way of the prophets,














the apostles, Old Testament Jewish believers, New Testament believers, and above all the

Lord Jesus Christ. So, although I certainly do not take the phrase “Mother Nature” literally, I

do unashamedly and confidently confess, along with my believing brothers and sisters in the

present and throughout all ages, “God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and

Jesus Christ His only Son”, and would say, with all due respect, if anyone was in need of

psychological help, it was Anonymous‟ self -proclaimed prophet.

For all that, I would still be willing to consult a psychologist myself, provided Mr.

Anonymous agrees to consult his Imam and local Umma about the egregious departures from

the Qur‟an and Sunnah that he found it necessary to make in order to defend Islam. I am sure

I will be eminently more content than he is under such circumstances, and while I am

reclining on a plush couch telling my newfound therapist friend how great the Lord Jesus is, I

will be thinking of Mr. Anonymous laying down his earthly life in a bed of rocks, only to be

denied hereafter the cushioned couches of Jannah.

Of course, my deepest desire for Mr. Anonymous is that he would avoid such a terrible end,

but in order to do so, he must turn from his paternally-challenged idol, which can‟t father himinto eternal life anymore than it could have fathered him into existence in the first place; he

must come to know the Father in and by the Son, for it is in the Son and by the Son that we

have the right to be called children of God (John 1:12); he must see that God so loved the

world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but

have everlasting life (John 3:16); he must confess that “This is eternal life, that they may

know you [Father, vs. 1], the only true God, and Jesus Christ [the Son, vs. 1] whom you have

sent.” (John 17:3).

Conclusion

In conclusion, it has been shown that John 17:3 is not a confirmation of anything distinctively

Islamic, and that it actually rules out a main distinctive: the fatherlessness of God. In Part

Three I will directly look at the positive evidence I gave for why John 17:3 teaches the deity

of Christ and look at what Mr. Anonymous had to say about it. As it is, we already have one

powerful line of evidence that Anonymous is wrong on this score, for as the Son of God in

the unique, eternal, essential, and transcendent sense set forth in the Gospel of John, Jesus is

one with the Father, the only true God.

Footnotes1 I honestly don‟t know what Anonymous means by saying it is beyond the scope of his

refutation to make his position at this point clear and to offer evidence for it. If a response of

this sort is not within the scope of his refutation, then what is? Furthermore, his article

appears on his own website where he has the editorial license to do whatever he pleases. Who

told him he had to limit his article in such a way as not to explain any and all relevant

distinctions that could ostensibly help his case? The way Mr. Anonymous offers this point

makes it look like nothing more than an attempt to appear profound, all the while hoping that

no one will call his bluff. Well, I have; now let Mr. Anonymous spell out his point and give

me the pleasure of refuting it along with the rest of what he has written.

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2 The point here is that the authors of the Qur‟an could not hear any mention of things like

divine paternity (i.e. the fatherhood) or filiation (i.e. sonship) without interpreting them in the

sense that the pagans intended by such words.3 Although this Psalm is speaking in the first instance of Christ as God‟s Son in a royal sense,

officially corronated at the time of His resurrection from the dead, it is predicated on the truth

of Christ‟s eternal divinity or divine Sonship: “For to which of the angels did He [God] ever say, "You are My Son, today I have begotten You"? (Hebrews 1:5) And we might just as well

ask, “To which angel or king did God ever promise absolute rule over the entire world? Or,

“Which king or ruler did God ever command people to worship?” The answer of the Bible is

no one, for only God could exercise universal dominion and only God is to be worshipped.

This isn‟t to be confused and neither is it tr umped by the fact that Muhammad portrays Allah

as actually commanding the angels to worship Adam, for the Bible teaches no such thing.4 Paul C. Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism (Dallas, Texas: Spence

Publishing Company, 1999), p. 15-165 Vitz, Ibid ., p. 139-140.

6 The effects of this are seen in a great many ways throughout the Islamic world, at a familial,

cultural, and national level.


A Reply to “The True Shahada Indeed” – Part Three

By Anthony Rogers

This is the third installment of my response to an anonymous Muslim‟s critique of my

article, the True Shahada. Picking up Anonymous‟ critique where I left off in part two, the

following will show that John 17:3 supports the undiminished deity of Christ contrary to Mr.

Anonymous‟ self -styled rebuttal and contrary to Islam‟s Shahada. Thus it will be

demonstrated once again that this passage is of no help to Muslims no matter how anxious

they are to establish some kind of revelatory precedent for their religion, one that goes back

beyond a mottled version of seventh century paganism, sectarian, apocryphal, and Gnostic

“Christianities”, and post-messianic Talmudic Judaism, to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and

New Testaments.

Fuzzy-Wuzzy Wuz A Muzzy

Before coming to Anonymous‟ critique of what I said in favor of the deity of Christ, a couple

of issues remain to be dealt with: first, Mr. Anonymous‟ fuzzy logic applied to his equally

fuzzy idea of the Trinity; and second, his overzealous and entirely bogus claim that I

“admitted” that Jesus is not God Almighty.

As for Anonymous fuzzy logic, he didn‟t like the illustration I gave for the fallacy committed

by Muslims like himself who argue against the deity of Christ from John 17:3, saying that my

illustration broke up the original construction.





























But quite apart from the illustration that I chose to try and make the point easier to apprehend,

it should be transparently obvious to anyone with even a modicum of understanding of logic

and of the Trinity that the Muslim argument against Christ‟s deity at this point rests on

argumentation that is fallacious. The argument goes like this:

The Father is the only true God; Jesus is not the Father;

Therefore, Jesus is not the only true God .

To infer such a conclusion from the above premises is fallacious because it assumes that

Jesus is not one with the Father, which begs the question against the Christian understandingof the Trinity, and flatly contradicts what Jesus said in John 10:30: “I and the Father are one.”

In other words, inferring the above conclusion from the stated premises fails to take into

account the unique features of Trinitarian ontology or the fact that the Father and the Son are

distinct persons but not different gods or beings. In other words, although Jesus is not the

person of the Father, they are one in essence, and thus both can be the only true God.

Given a Trinitarian metaphysic the only legitimate way the deity of Christ could be ruled out

is if the text said, “The Father alone is the only true God.” It was this that I aimed to br ing out

with the illustration I chose, where not the word “only” used to modify the predicate term of

the major premise, but the word “alone” used to restrict what is predicated to the person of

the Father, is what is all important. [In my article I pointed out that some Muslims, for

example Shabir Ally, seem to be at least intuitively aware of this, for they inadvertently add

the word “alone” when quoting this passage: “Jesus too confirmed that the Father alone is the

only true God.” Underline mine. See here.]

As for the second point, Anonymous said:

Roger admitted that Jesus is not God – Almighty:

Next, he wrote that Muslim claim on John 17:3 would have held if the text would have read

that only the Father is God. Here are his own confessions: “Things would be different if the

text said “only Father is God”, or “the Father alone is the only true God”, but it does not.”

Ironically, Anthony Roger has himself admitted that the only true God is Father (!). To prove

it, all I would do is to re – produce for you his own words: ““…. The first claim is

immediately undermined by the fact that the one whom Jesus calls “the only true God” is the

Father (John 17:1-2)”

What say? Who is the ONLY TRUE GOD?, according to Bible, Muslim exegesis AND

Anthony Roger‟s own words – The Only True God is Father.

Now, that it has been established that the Only True God is Father and consequently Jesus,

peace be upon him, is not God; I need not write a word any more to his childish „article‟.

Here Mr. Anonymous sets out to show that I admitted that Jesus is not God Almighty, but

somewhere along the way he appears to have lost track of his claim – in which case he should

try looking in the last place he remembers seeing it – for instead of demonstrating such an

admission, i.e. showing that I deny the absolute deity of the Lord Jesus, he quotes meaffirming that “The only true God is the Father”. Of course, to be fair, although it still would

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not qualify as an outright admission, Anonymous does think that by quoting me to the effect

that the only true God is the Father he is showing that I acknowledged the very thing that I

granted would definitively prove – by way of a logical inference, not by way of admission –

that Jesus is not God. However, instead of showing that I said that the only true God is the

Father alone, which is the criteria I actually offered, he quotes me saying that the only true

God is the Father, something entirely consistent with classical Trinitarian monotheism, i.e.that the only true God is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God in three

persons. It is also entirely consistent with the Johannine corpus, which calls the Father the

only true God, as it does here in John 17:3, and the Son the only true God, as it does in 1 John

5:20.

And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may

know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the

true God and eternal life.1

In fact, I even quoted the above passage at the end of my article though one would not know

this from reading Mr. Anonymous‟ response, for he completely skirts the passage since it isobviously not helpful to his case.

Interestingly, if I did want to deny the deity of Jesus, the Son of God, then all I would have to

do is deny the very thing Mr. Anonymous quotes me affirming, namely, that “the only true

God is the Father”; after all, if God is not the Father, then neither can Jesus be the divine Son

of the Father. And so, Anonymous has it backwards; affirming the deity of the Father is an

implicit affirmation of the deity of Christ, the Son; you simply can‟t have a divine Father

without a divine Son or a divine Son without a divine Father. To put it in a language that

Anonymous should recognize, if I wanted to deny the divinity of the Lord Jesus, then all I

would have to do is say that God does not beget and neither is he begotten,2 he is simply an

eternally lonely, non-relational, undifferentiated monad, as in Islam, but this I most certainly

did not do. Thus, when all is said and done, Mr. Anonymous‟ confident boast that he can

show that I admitted that Jesus is not God, which he pretentiously said puts an end to all

argument, isn‟t worth the price of “admission”.

Since I would hate to send Mr. Anonymous away empty handed at this point, even though I

personally feel robbed after being promised a show-stopping argument, there is a lovely

parting gift that he can take with him. Since Anonymous wanted to find an admission so

badly that he imputed something to me that I didn‟t say (and that isn‟t entailed or inferable

from what I said), let him look no further than his own words where he admitted that,

according to “Muslim exegesis,” the passage teaches that “The only true God is father”. Nowthat is an admission. Here is what follows: since the only true God is the Father, and since

Muslims anathematize divine paternity in this sense, as Mr. Anonymous also previously

admitted, then according to the Bible, Christian exegesis, and Anonymous‟ own words, Allah

is not the only true God.

The Deity of Christ: Lessons on Context

At this point, after congratulating himself for a well-fought victory, which shows that he has

persuaded at least one person with his poor arguments, Anonymous begins to attack the

positive evidence which I put forward to show that John 17:3 underscores the deity of Christ. Not surprisingly, he gets off to a bad start (and finishes just as strong), saying: “Nevertheless,

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let me further clean his misconceptions so that he may be extricated from the mire or “Shirk”

– associating god to God – Almighty.” Yet, since I didn‟t argue, and since Christians don‟t

believe, that there is another god in addition to God Almighty, it is a colossal waste of time

and a straw man for Mr. Anonymous to attack – or should I say, “clean”? – such a notion.

Mr. Anonymous appears to believe that simply asserting that Christians believe Christ to be

God means that they are guilty of shirk, i.e. believing in another god in addition to the Father.But this is polytheism, not Trinitarianism. Christians believe that Jesus is one with the Father

in His essential nature, not that He is a second god in addition to God Almighty.

Things don‟t get any better when Anonymous proceeds from there to try and refute my

appeal to 1 John 2:23 and John 5:23, passages I referred to in order to buttress the observation

that John 17:3 speaks of the Father and the Son relating to one another in such a way as to

belie any claim that Jesus is anything other than divine. Aside from the fact that John 17:3 is

speaking of the Father and the Son, a fact that in itself speaks volumes, and which I wrote at

some length about already in part two of this rebuttal series, the passage tells us that eternal

life is a result of knowing the Father and the Son, indicating that you can‟t have one without

the other, and that eternal life, a divine gift, flows from both. The two passages justmentioned serve as further confirmation of this understanding, and also show something of

the consistency of this idea in the apostolic writings, at least those of the apostle John.

1 John 2:23

In response to the first passage, 1 John 2:23 – “Whoever denies the Son does not have the

Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23) – Anonymous said:

The Refutation: Well, there can be at least two fold refutations. They are as follows:-

A1. Biblical context of 1 John 2:23. Kindly read the verse preceding 1 John 2:23, i.e., verse

22, to know that anybody denying the “Messiah ship” of Jesus, peace be upon him is to be

considered as an enemy of Messiah (Christ), peace be upon him, “Who, then is the liar? It is

anyone who says that Jesus is not the Messiah. Such a person is the enemy of Christ – he

rejects both the Father and Son.”(TEV) Various points needs to be immediately noted here.

Firstly, denying Messiah ship of Son is the rejection of Father. Secondly, why is the denial of

Messiah ship of Son tantamount to gainsaying Father! Why? It is because it was God‟s

(Father) eternal plan to crown Jesus, peace be upon him, with the exclusive title of Messiah

and to send him in the world. Remember Messiah (Jesus), peace be upon him, was send in

this world by Father “… I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent me”

(John 5:30, NKJV)(Emphasis Added) And again, “Then I heard a loud voice in heavensaying, “Now God‟s salvation has come! Now God has shown his power as King! Now his

Messiah has shown his authority!” (REVELATION 12:10)(Emphasis Mine) Conclusively

denying Jesus, peace be upon him, got to be denial of Father who dispatched Jesus, peace be

upon him, on this earth. OR, if this is not the explanation for the combined denial of Father

and Son, then, you would have to agree with me that Father was also Messiah!

In saying that this verse is referring in context to anyone who rejects the Messiahship of the

Son, Mr. Anonymous missed the point and some rather obvious rejoinders:

First, in the name of following the context Mr. Anonymous fails to follow the flow of

thought, for according to John anyone who denies that Jesus is the Messiah is denying theSon, and anyone who denies the Son is denying the Father. It is because a denial that Jesus is



the Messiah is a denial of the Son, that a denial that Jesus is the Messiah is tantamount to a

denial of the Father. In other words, Sonship is the crucial, all-determinative link between the

two. The connection is simple enough:

To deny that Jesus is the Messiah → is to deny the Son

To deny the Son → is to deny the Father.

Second, as I pointed out before, Mr. Anonymous does not believe in “the Son”; indeed, he

rejects such a notion as a blasphemous misconception that needs to be “cleaned”.

Accordingly, Mr. Anonymous cannot claim to believe in “the messiahship of the Son”, and,

therefore, “is to be considered as an enemy of Messiah (Christ), peace be upon him.”

Third, as I also pointed out before, Mr. Anonymous doesn‟t have a clue what the true import

of the word “Messiah” is, and so, when he acts as if he affirms “the messiahship of the Son”,

his words ring hollow. (Note: the point here is not that Anonymous does not know what the

mere word means, i.e. anointed one, but that He doesn‟t have any clue what the concept of the Messiah is, or why Jesus is uniquely singled out, even in his own Qur‟an, as the Messiah,

for his completely detailed Qur‟an never tells him.)

When Anonymous goes on to say that a denial of Jesus is a denial of the Father because the

Father is the one who appointed and sent Jesus as the Messiah, he blithely overlooks: 1) who

it was that the Father appointed; 2) the sense in which He was sent; and 3) the purpose for

which He was sent.

1) The fact is, according to the book of First John, it was Jesus, variously designated as “the

life”, “the eternal life”, and “the Word of Life” (1 John 1:1-2), as well as “His Son” (1 John

1:3, 7; 3:23; 4:10; 5:9, 10, 11, 20), “His only Son” (1 John 4:9), “the Son” (1 John 1:24; 4:14;

5:12), and “the Son of God” (1 John 2:8; 4:15; 5:5, 10, 12, 13, 20), who was appointed to be

the Messiah.

2) Furthermore, the sense in which John speaks of Jesus being “manifested” (1 John 1:2), or

“sent” (1 John 4:10, 14), or “appearing” (1 John 2:5, 8), or having “come” (1 John 4:2; 5:20),

is from heaven where he existed “with the Father” (1 John 1:2) “from the beginning” (1 John

1:1, 13, 14), which reflects the first several verses of the opening prologue of John‟s Gospel

(John 1:1-3), and also the divine title – “the Beginning and the End” – indiscriminately

applied by the apostle John to the Father (Revelation 21:6) and the Son (Revelation 22:13) in

the book of Revelation.

3) Finally, the reason that Jesus was sent as the Messiah, and the task that He, as the Messiah,

was given to perform, was: “To be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:14), to be “the

propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2), “to take away sin” (1 John 3:5), to be “our Advocatewith the Father” (1 John 2:1), “to destroy the Devil‟s works” (1 John 3:8), and to give us

“eternal life” (1 John 2:25; 5:11-12).

1 John 4:9-10 may be cited as representative of the teaching of 1 John:

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the

world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but thathe loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10).



From all of this I think it is painfully obvious that, Mr. Anonymous‟ protestations to the

contrary, when the apostle John said that to deny Jesus is to deny the Father, it wasn‟t

because Jesus was just a specially chosen man who would be given such entertaining talents

as talking from infancy or making clay birds come to life. It is more than evident that

according to John‟s first epistle, the reason a denial of Jesus the Messiah is a denial of the

Father is because Jesus is the Father‟s Son and Word, who was set apart and sent fromheaven to be the Messiah, the Savior of the world. In fact, this is precisely what we read in

the context of John 17:1-5, which should be cited again so Mr. Anonymous has no excuse for

not seeing the connection the next time around. According to John 17:1-5: 1) Jesus is the Son

(and God is His Father); 2) Jesus was sent from heaven (where he existed before time); and

3) Jesus was sent to be the Christ (the Son of God come in the flesh to accomplish the work

of redemption and give eternal life to God‟s people):

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, "Father, the

hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him

authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is

eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Iglorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now,

Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world

existed.

Amusingly, after showing us he didn‟t know anything about the immediate or broader context

of 1 John 2:23, even though he is the one who brought it up, he continues with the following:

As we have just seen how ignorantly and misconceptually Anthony Roger had tried to

conjoin Father and Son using 1 John 2:23 out of context. Similarly, I may ignorantly conjoin

Allah and Mohammad, peace be upon him, there by deifying Mohammad, peace be upon

him. Let me (mis) use, The Holy Quran 4:80, which states:

“He who obey The Apostle, obeys God” (Emphasis Mine)

And,

“The desert Arabs say, “We believe.” Say, “Ye have no faith; but ye(only) say, „We have

submitted Out wills to God, For not yet has Faith entered your hearts.‟ But if ye obey God

and His Apostle…” (The Holy Quran 49:14)(Emphasis Mine)

Now read this, have your ever heard a Muslim using the aforementioned Quranic verses toconjoin Mohammad, peace be upon him, and Allah. Obeying Apostle is obeying Allah not

because Apostle is Allah but because the Apostle does nothing but what is commissioned to

him by God – Almighty, similarly, rejecting Son is in effect rejecting Father because the Son,

also, does not seek his will but the will of his Father who send him. Make sense?

Apart from the wildly false and ill-founded claim that my argument was a-contextual, these

remarks point up once again one of the likely reasons why Anonymous didn‟t want his co-

religionists or the people who visit his “petty blog” (note: his words; not mine)3 to read my

article, for I already addressed myself to this very point. After saying that the relationship

between the Father and the Son, evidenced by the very metaphors used to speak of their

relationship, i.e. “Father” and “Son”, and underscored by the fact that eternal life consists in asaving, intimate knowledge of both, bespeaks the deity of Christ, I said:







This kind of close association between the Father and the Son [where the Father and the Son

are not only defined in terms of the other, i.e. “Father” and “Son”, where the two are said to

be so inseparable that you can‟t have one without the other, and where an intimate knowledge

and communion with both is said to be the precondition and essence of eternal life - AR] is

tantamount to the sin of shirk in Islamic theology (were it not true), and if it is not, then

nothing is.

A number of Muslims seem to recognize this pattern of thought when they refuse to confess

the second half of their own creed, i.e., the words pertaining to Muhammad. This was alluded

to earlier as one of the perennial disputes between the main body of Muslims and a smaller

but growing and vocal group of Muslims known as Submitters who follow the teachings of

Rashad Khalifa.3 These Muslims recognize that to associate Muhammad too closely with

Allah, as most Muslims seem to do in practice when they repeatedly recite and intensely

chant their Shahada, is to run perilously close to making a deity out of Muhammad. They

may not call Muhammad God by name, but here the old adage applies: actions speak louder

than words. Indeed, outright fetishism for Muhammad is not unknown in the Islamic world

and the seeds for it are found right here, not to mention many other places in Islamicteaching.

Furthermore, the very passages Mr. Anonymous cited above, tending as they do in the same

direction, also lead to shirk, not only according to Christians and what might be considered

an aberrant Muslim group like the Submitters, but according to the logic of orthodox

Muslims themselves, for not only does the latter passage use the Arabic word WA, the

conjunction of partnership – “Allah AND his Apostle” – but they both elevate Muhammad to

a position of absolute authority, a position where absolute submission is due to Muhammad

in addition to God, rather than the position of a mere messenger who communicates God‟s

commands.

Even if the above observation is a hurdle Muslims can leap without any pangs of conscience,

something that tells us more about their ability and willingness to rationalize problematic

notions than it tells us about the internal coherence of their view of Tawhid, it is not at all

something that Christians could find palatable, for our submission is to God only.4

As it appears from the above, the one time in his article where Anonymous admits that he is

“misusing” the Qur‟an happens to be one of the few times where he actually gets it right. The

notion of Muhammad encapsulated in the Shahada where his name is joined to God‟s as the

ultimate expression of faith, and which comes to fuller expression in the Qur‟an and Sunnah

where Muslims are required to yield Muhammad absolute submission and are to slavishlyimitate his every action or inaction, with certain limited exceptions of course, such as those

that belonged to the perks of prophethood, an observation that really only strengthens the

point being made, is far less consistent with monotheism than anything any pagan ever

dreamed up in his wildest imagination.

John 5:23

In reference to the other passage I provided to draw out the point, John 5:23 – which tells us

that all must honor the Son “even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son

does not honor the Father who sent Him” (John 5:23) – Mr. Anonymous said: “There can

again be atleast 2 easy refutation for this gibberish argument…” But if there really are “twoeasy refutations for this gibberish argument” of mine, then Mr. Anonymous should have

http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/rogers/true_shahada.html#fn_3










provided them, as he said he was going to, for surely the two that follow can‟t be what he was

speaking of since they do nothing of the sort.

Here is his first response:

A2. „G‟od was send by God: If read carefully then the author of John 5:23 conceded to end of verse with “…Father who sent Him.” So, Jesus, peace be upon him, was an ambassador, a

chosen man. So, by disgracing Jesus – the sent man one would be discrediting the one who

has sent Jesus, namely, Father! It does not prove that Father and Son are the same; but it does

prove the contrary that Father and Son are not the same.

Here Mr. Anonymous argues that Jesus and the Father are not “the same” because the Father

sent Jesus as His ambassador. But unless Anonymous is assuming Modalism here, an anti-

Trinitarian view that says the Father and the Son are one and the same person, which of

course would make his point irrelevant, then his reasoning is at best ambiguous, for it is

possible for God to send any number of different kinds of individuals as His ambassador all

the way from someone who is “[no more than] a messenger of God” to someone who is His“Word” and “Son”. The bare fact that someone is sent doesn‟t tell us whether he or she is the

former, the latter, or something else altogether. Unfortunately for Anonymous, Jesus doesn‟t

just tell us that He was sent by God, He tells us that He was sent by His Father (John 5:17-

18), that He can do whatever His Father does (John 5:19-22), and that all judgment has been

given into His hands (5:23ff.), all of which shows the essential unity of the Father and the

Son.

It is more than an understatement, then, to say that Jesus is worthy of honor merely because

He was sent by God, ignoring as it does that it wasn‟t just some guy found in a cave that the

Father chose and sent, for no mere creature could claim to be God‟s Son by nature; no mere

creature could do whatever the Father does; and no mere creature could possibly say that He

is worthy of equal honor with the Father. Only someone who is already God‟s Son by nature

could be given the right to exercise absolute power and authority. (Note: It is because Jesus

humbled Himself and submitted to the Father in all things for the sake of our redemption that

the right to exercise His divine abilities and prerogatives needed to be conferred upon Him.

Jesus did not exercise His divine abilities or prerogatives apart from the Father‟s will, see

Philippians 2:5ff.)

It was Christ‟s claim to be God‟s Son, confirmed by the miracle preceding it (John 5:1-16),

and defended in the discourse following it (summarized above), that provoked the Jews to

charge Jesus with being guilty, in their estimation, of “blasphemy” and “shirk”, which theysought to “cleanse” Him of.

So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. Jesus said

to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." For this

reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he

was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:17-18)

Explaining this verse, commentator William Hendriksen says:

In addition to his stand with respect to the Sabbath it was his claim of being equal with God

that nailed Christ to the cross. When the Jewish authorities heard Jesus call God “my (own)Father,” they did not do what many moderns have done. They did not try to tone down the



character of Christ‟s sonship. They immediately understood that Jesus claimed for himself

deity in the highest possible sense of that term. That claim was either the most wicked

blasphemy, to be punished with death; or else, it was the most glorious truth, to be accepted

by faith. The very character of the sign which Jesus had just now performed should have

caused these religious leaders to adopt the latter alternative. Instead, they chose the former.”5

Indeed, Mr. Anonymous has chosen the former as well, believing neither Christ‟s words, nor

the signs that He gave in confirmation of them, and in doing so he shows that his position is

the same as Christ‟s first century enemies, not that of Christ, the apostles, or of Chris tians

today who are also charged with blasphemy for saying that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of

the living God.

This brings us, finally, to Anonymous‟ second answer to my “gibberish argument” to see if

he has anything better to offer:

B2. In this version of refutation let us read verse 22 along with verse 23: “For the Father

judges no one but has committed all judgement to the Son, that all should honor the Son justas they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent

Him” (JOHN 5:22-23, NKJV) To paraphrase the above 2 verses, it says: God has authorized

(does someone “co-equal” needs an authorization!?!) or has commissioned Jesus, peace be

upon him, with all judgments so that people may respect him for his lofty judgments – the

judgments which he ultimately receives from God – Almighty. THEN, verse 23 comes and

states that dishonoring Jesus, peace be upon him, is in turn dishonoring Father; Does this

prove to be equal to God? Certainly, not in the remotest sense of it. But it does elicit the

impotency of Jesus, peace be upon him, to take divine judgments.

Anonymous‟ parenthetical question about whether someone who is co-equal to another needs

authorization has been answered above, and so it only remains here to point out that the

purpose of the Father in committing all judgment to the Son was not so that people wouldsimply “respect him for his lofty judgments,” and the very fact that Anonymous has to resort

to using such weasel words shows that He is not comfortable with the full measure of what

the verse is saying. Contrary to Anonymous, Jesus isn‟t simply to be honored in the same

way or to the same degree as other creatures sent by God are to be honored, or even to a

degree that is slightly or even significantly greater than other creatures but which still falls

short of the honor that is due to God; instead, Jesus says that He is to be honored “just as” the

Father is honored. The honor given to the Father is inestimably greater than simply respect, at

least in Christianity; accordingly, the honor due to Jesus is greater than just to respect Him.

The view that Anonymous holds would be slightly more believable if only a certain group of

people were required to honor the Son (a limited number of people over whom such

judgments held sway), and if only a certain circumscribed right to judge was given to Jesus

(one that fell short of the final judgment of God Almighty, where all men will be raised up

and when all men throughout history, from Adam to the last person born, will be judged for

every thought, word, and deed, a feat that requires nothing short of omniscience). Yet, as it is,

the text requires all men to honor the Son, and it says that all judgment has been committed

to the Son; and, thus, the right of universal judgment that was given to him was not for the

purpose that people would “make no distinction” between Jesus and any or all other persons

who are worthy of respect, but so that all men would honor Jesus just as they honor the

Father.






All men should honor the Father because He will hold them accountable on the final day; and

since the Father doesn‟t judge anyone independently of Christ, but has committed all

judgment to the Son, the same honor that is due to the Father is to be given to Jesus. Those

who refuse to do so do not honor the Father, for the honor that is to be given to both is one

and the same, and the reason both are to be honored is one and the same: The Father and the

Son are one in power, glory, and judgment.

Conclusion

Several matters pertaining to the deity of Christ and other issues that Anonymous brought up

remain to be dealt with (such as the prophethood of Muhammad and apostleship of Paul). If

the Lord is willing, I will take them all up and answer them in the fourth and final rebuttal in

this series.

For now we have seen that the only way Anonymous can circumvent what is found in my

article is by taking refuge in his ignorance of logic, the Christian view of the Trinity,contextual exegesis, and even in an inability to follow out the teachings of his religion to

where they consistently lead: the deification of Muhammad.

Footnotes

1 The word translated “This [is]” in some versions is a pronoun that refers to a person and is

better translated as “this one”. Furthermore, according to the usual rules of Greek grammar

and syntax, the pronoun “this one” refers back to the nearest antecedent, which in this case is

Jesus. This understanding is confirmed in the context of the epistle by the fact that “this one”

is called “the true God and eternal life,” a title used for Jesus in the opening prologue of the

epistle: “…the eternal life that was with the Father.”

2 Of course what the Qur‟an repudiates in these words is not what the Bible is actually talking

about. In fact, I am not aware of any place in the Qur‟an where Christian beliefs about the

Trinity or Trinitarian relations in the Godhead are accurately described (see here and here).

But since Muslims typically take these verses to rule out the Trinity, their interpretation can

be granted at this point for the sake of argument.

On a related note, when the Bible speaks of Jesus as “the only begotten”, it does not meanthat He was either created or made, and much less does it mean that He was procreated

through a physical union between God and a black-eyed companion; in fact, the actual Greek

word underlying the traditional translation of “only begotten” is monogenes, which literally

means “unique” or “one of a kind”. This word serves to further confirm that Jesus relates to

the Father in a way that no one else does. For more on this, see here.

It should also be mentioned that even when the older derivation was assumed, Christians

never took the word in a creative or procreative sense. This is clear from many places, not the

least of which is the Nicene Creed, which says: “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-

begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light,

very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whomall things were made.”

http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/rogers/true_shahada_defended3.html#_ednref1




http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/quran_trinity.htm



http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/shamoun/rebuttals/dirks/islam_christiandoctrine.html



http://www.answering-islam.org/Dictionary/begotten.html










3 This is how Mr. Anonymous (aka: “Question Mark”, as he calls himself) referred to his own

blog at this forum.

4 For more on this issue, see the following articles by Sam Shamoun: here and here, as well

as Sam‟s refutation of Sami Zaatari here and here.

5 William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to John, Two Volumes in One

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007 [1953]), p. 196.

© Answering Islam, 1999 - 2011. All rights reserved.



http://www.islamlife.com/religion2/forum?func=view&catid=14&id=1641#1641





http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/serve_besides_allah1.htm






http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/shamoun/rebuttals/zaatari/tauhid1.html
















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The True Shahada- Defended - By Anthony Rogers

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