Short, Sharp and Shocking
by Abu Daoud
Normally when I'm talking with M's I take an irenic approach, but I have also learned that sometimes you meet someone who wants to talk about religion with you but from a combative point of view. This happened the other day and I felt in my spirit that I should take a short, sharp, and shocking approach (I learned this from an Egyptian pastor). One can hope that something you say will stick in the person's head and over time lead to a genuine openness and questioning attitude. John the Baptist and Jesus used this approach quite often when they were talking with the self-righteous folks of their day.
Sitting in his shop this man started off with what he thought were the weaknesses of our faith. I had pulled up the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) on his computer, in Arabic, and told him to read it, which he did not want to do. And then he pointed out how our book is translated, while his book is the same all over the world (in Arabic). Time for some apologetic judo-using his argument against him: Yes, I said, praise be to God that our book is translatable and people in any place can read it in their own language and pray to him in their own language, whereas his deity understood only Arabic. "You speak Arabic and another language, I speak three languages, and yet your god only hears prayers in Arabic." I responded (kindly, by the way).
Read the rest at VirtueOnline.
4 comments:
Christ is Born!
Praise God for your boldness!
A number of questions come to my mind
1. With regards to the claim that there are "4 witnesses", which modern biblical scholar believes that the gospels were by eye witnesses?
Harvard Scholar Allen D. Callahan states
:
''''It's now consensus in the New Testament scholarship to some extent [that]... in the gospels we're dealing with theologians, people who are reflecting theologically on Jesus already. And there's all indication that what we now refer to as theological reflection was there at the very beginning of things...
they don't claim to be eye witness accounts of his life. I don't think that the people who are responsible for those documents were staying up at night worried about those kinds of things.
'''
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/gospels.html
2. You believe God became a man and was a baby??
I suggest you watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzidiE4_VXU
With regards to the Trinity, it is not just Muslims and Jews who are confused in this regards.
The Catholic Encyclopedia states
'''All theologians admit that the doctrine of the Trinity is of the number of these. Indeed, of all revealed truths this is the most impenetrable to reason. Hence, to declare this to be no mystery would be a virtual denial of the canon in question. '''
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm
The Oxford Companion to the Bible Edited by Bruce M. Metzger & Michael D. Coogan on page 782-783
says that
'''Because the Trinity is such an important part of later Chiristian doctrine, it is striking that the term does not appear in the New Testament. Likewise, the developed concept of thee coequal partners in the Dohead found in later creedal formulations cannot be clearly detected within the confines of the canon. Later believers systemized the diverse references to God, Jesus, and the Spirit found in the New Testament in order to fight against heretical tendencies of how the three are related''''
I am more than willing to accept the Trinity if someone can convince me that
A) It can be demonstrated to be true
B) That it is what Jesus (PBUH) taught.
As always, my book references can be seen at google books
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