Monday, March 16, 2020

Acts17apologetics looks for logos; Jesus is the kalima of Allah?

In answer to the video "David Wood Is the Word of Allah! (Just Ask Mohammed Hijab!)"


3:45"Allah gives you good news with a word/kalima from Him (of one) whose name is the Messiah, Isa son of Marium". 
Kalimatun, which means word or statement has a feminine designation. But what follows is in the masculine, making Jesus and word/statement 2 distinct entities. This is because Jesus is the product of the creative word, not the word itself 
4:171"The messiah, Jesus, son of Mary was none other than Allah's envoy and His statement/kalima, He casted it towards Mary including a life giving breath from Him (Allah)". 
It literally says Jesus, the human prophet, born of Mary, was a statement cast towards his mother. It does not say the intangible "pre-incarnate" Jesus was a word cast to Mary. This is what one with a hellenistic theological background would read into the verse. 

The precision of the verse does not end here. It does not say the word was cast inside of Mary, rather ila/towards Mary. For that "pre incarnate" Jesus to become flesh, it would have necessitated for it to enter Mary. So clearly, no human being was literally cast to Mary, and neither does it say it entered her. Simply, Allah cast his statement, His command to Mary. That statement allowed the miraculous process by which a particular human being came to existence. Jesus was not God's word, as denoted in 3:45 but became God's word. Exactly as Adam manifested the creative word of God. Or as the prophet Yahya/John was the manifestation of God's word, given the particular circumstances of his birth
3:39"Allah gives you the good news of Yahya verifying a word/kalima from Allah". 
Kalimatullah in these contexts is thus not some pre-existing entity seperate from God in an intangible shape before becoming physical. It is a command from God that allows a process by which certain physical entities come into being. Adam, Jesus or John did not pre-exist as intangible entities prior to manifesting God's word in physical form. 

Further, the word of God manifests in different ways in this world, not only physical. Kalimatullah is also used in the sense of God's promise 6:34,115,10:64,18:27 etc. Such divine word is a command that can never be reversed or altered once issued 13:41, it can be the promise of victory and assistance to the messengers and their followers 37:171-2 or the promise of chastisement to the rejecters 58:21 or again the promises of miracles or blessings whether in this life or the next. This is because, as repeatedly said in the Book, Allah's statement is truthful and He never breaks His promise
10:55,33:4,38:34"The truth then is and the truth do I speak" 39:20"Allah will not fail in (His promise)".

The association of the kalima of Allah with something also seems to imply truth. This is highly appropriate in light of the descriptions made of Jesus in the NT where he makes false prophecies. Only truth emanates from Allah and Jesus' association with the kalima makes him the embodiment of truth.

The particularities of Yahya/John and Jesus' births, do not make any of them different or special than other human beings in terms of their physical nature. Neither were these miraculous circumstances necessary to accomodate the false notions retrospectively applied to them. For example Jesus did not need to come from a virgin to circumvent human depravity, something Jesus never even spoke of. Neither did Jesus need to combine the immaterial/RUH of Allah, with the material/human mother so as to assume his dual human/divine nature. All humanity has exactly this same dual aspect as Jesus, without any of us being divine. Man has both a principal and a secondary nature. His secondary nature returns to dust and his essence is related to Allah. This is why the Quran attributes the spirit to Allah and the body to the earth 38:71-72.

The Quran leaves no room to the kind of conjecture trinitarians are known for when approaching their Bible, let alone the Quran. Christians feel comforted whenever they superficially approach the Quran and find these familiar Christological themes. They are sometimes bold enough to assume the Quran is confirming their doctrines. After all, none other than Jesus is referred to as God's word, His messiah or a RUH from Allah. But by doing so Christians are missing the consistent Quranic approach of taking up the major trinitarian themes and labels associated to Jesus, then recasts them in a monotheistic, unitarian perspective. It is the case with the kalima, just as with the RUH/spirit or the name "messiah". Jesus is not the literal nor metaphorical "son of God" but simply, the son of Mary as Christians themselves cannot deny. Similarly, Jesus is stripped from any intrinsic power as regards his ascension and ability to perform miracles.

Being the muhaymin/guardian of the previous scriptures and traditions, the Quran could not leave those themes unaddressed. And it does so in an impactful way, using them just as is done in Christian scriptures, while redifining them so as to deny their Christological background. That corrective function goes beyond these aforementioned pillars of Christology. In the Gospels' eschatology, the trinitarian godhead is at the forefront and Jesus is given the leading role of judgement by his "father" Matt25,26. In the Quran, no possible ambiguity exists as to Allah's supremacy on that day, whether in terms of glory, authority or judgement.

Jesus and John were mortals, made from exactly the same elements as other humans, and could not have come into existence without God's word 2:117"Be". The word symbolizes that nothing escapes His grasp in the chain of causality. He may use His command to initiate the chain by creating out of nothing, or He may us it to intervene in a pre-existing chain of causality so as to result in the outcome that He wills
3:59"Surely the likeness of Isa is with Allah as the likeness of Adam; He created him from dust, then said to him, "Be", and he was". 
This is an instance of Allah using His word to complete a process. Both Adam and Jesus came to completion through Allah's word. Prior to that completion Adam was fashionned from inorganic earthly elements, or as the Quran quotes Allah 
38:75"him whom I created with My own hands". 
All things were, and are created by Allah's direct involvement. Mankind is no different but because it is a specie with a special connection with its Creator, the Quran uses the image of Allah using His own hands doing so, as a metaphor of special care in fashioning and forming it. When that fashionning process reached physical completion, Adam was ready to receive the spirit from Allah 38:71-2. It is at that point that Allah "said to him, "Be", and he was". That command is what triggered all components within Adam, the physical and the spiritual to fuse and ignite, resulting in what is understood by a "human being"; a creature whose flesh and spirit function simultaneously and interdependantly. 

Without God's word, the mere entry of the spirit within the flesh would not cause this creature to function as a human being. One can finish building a robot, then place its batteries, but it will only function once the switch is turned on. God's word is the switch that ignites the human being, allowing its material and spiritual components to work together.

The process that preceded Allah's command was different in Jesus' case. Unlike Adam, he was not first fashionned from earthly substance, but through the RUH that entered the body of his mother so as to allow her to conceive. At some point during the development of the fetus, Allah's word was cast towards Mary. This was the trigger allowing the fusion of the RUH that had entered her prior, with the fetus, resulting in a creature whose flesh and spirit function together.

A question one might ask is why, if all human beings, including Adam and Jesus, were brought to completion through Allah's word, why did the Quran choose to parallel Adam specifically with Jesus in order to deny Jesus' divinity? Adam is the archetypical human being, made from the dust of the earth. No human being after Adam, endowed with the spirit of Allah, is closer to its original earthly substance than him. In the context of refuting Jesus' divinity, and stressing his humanity, no point of reference among any human being is more appropriate than the human who is closest to its wordly, earthly, humble origins than Adam. Further, the one who is alleged to be a god-man, is as helpless in the process of his completion than a human being made of dust. What kind of deity cannot come into existence in whatever shape and nature, without the intervention of a higher power?

The main idea behind the statement, "then said to him "Be" and he is", often used for God's creative action, is that Allah masters the laws of causality. The imperative form gives a sense of absolute control, contrary to the similar but softer Biblical "Let there be". Grammatically, the statement "kun fa yakun/be and he is" is an idiom. Its constituents, like the gender/tenses/persons remain unchanged regardless of the sentence in which the idiom is integrated. The present tense, although speaking of a past event, also serves as a literary device to involve the audience/reader, making him the spectator of the event as it is unfolding, as if the coming to existence is happening now, in front of him.

Jesus' miraculous conception is a sign not only he would be known by, but also his mother and the name "son of Mary" implies exactly that; she would jointly share this sign with him forever as both of their names will be mentionned together
23:50,21:91"and made her and her son a (single) sign for the worlds".
Jesus as well as his mother were chosen to be made jointly, "A" single sign of the power of the Maker and Creator over all things. So from a Quranic perspective, that miracle equally sets Mary and Jesus appart from humanity. Before discussing the implications of this sign, it is worthwile noting that by honoring Mary in such a way and joining her name to that of one of the most illustrous individuals to have walked the earth, God has defeated in His final revelation and until the resurrection, the slanderous talk of some among her contemporaries and those that followed, who wanted to put a stain on her and abase her. 

As regards the sign, it consists in demonstrating how the resurrection of bodies isnt a difficult task to God. We deem it impossible for a female to give life without the necessary biological process yet God did it, so just as He easily creates life in conditions we think are impossible then similarily He is able to bring the dead back to life even if the conditions make it unfeasable from our perspective. The rejection of the concept of resurrection by many Jews of the time adds to the relevancy of that miracle. 

One can even argue that Jesus was given the greatest evidence for resurrection among God's prophets who all equally stressed the importance of that tenet to their people. This is because Jesus is the only explicit case in the prophetic history where a human's birth did not result from mating. The Quran doesnt even state that Adam was born in such a way, ie that he was not the result of sexual reproduction, and although other miraculous births are recorded in the Quran, including around the time of Jesus as was the case for the prophet John/Yahya, they primarily served the purpose of a reward and were not meant to be disclosed and shared openly other than within the circle of the people concerned. Jesus' birth not only was different than all others in its prominence because as already said, intercourse between a man and a woman did not even precede it, but also because it was primarily meant as a sign for all of humanity.

 As a testimony to this, the Quran uses a linguistic subtelty, showing again and again how it uses words surgically in order to maximize the impact. There is a slight different wording between God's answer to Mary
3:47"Even so Allah creates what he pleases"
and to Zakariya
3:40"Even so does Allah whatsoever He pleases".
The nuance -creates vs does- lies in that the miracle of a child born of a virgin is definately more striking than a child born to a couple, even if barren. It must be kept in mind the Quran was recited in the form of speech, publicly and instantly as it came to the prophet, with no chance a re-editing and modifying, and the 2 verses are very closely located. How would one, let alone a known illiterate without any background in poetry or any form of oral eloquent speeches, instantly and naturally make such a distinction in a flowing discourse?


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