Has Your Bible Become A Quran?

blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings ^ | Fr. Stephen Freeman

[bad company]

Those who engage in debates on a regular basis know that the argument itself can easily shape the points involved. This is another way of saying that some debates should be avoided entirely since merely getting involved in them can be the road to ruin. There are a number of Christian scholars (particularly among the Orthodox) who think that the classical debates between Christians and Muslims during the Middle Ages had just such disastrous results for Christian thinking.

Now when engaging in religious debates it is all too easy to agree to things that might make for later problems. It is possible, for example, to agree to a comparison of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and the Book of the Quran. After all, Muslims have a holy book – Christians have a holy book. Why should we not debate whose holy book is better?

It is even possible to agree with the Muslim contention that Christians (and Jews) are “People of the Book.” Of course Muslims meant that Christians and Jews were people of an inferior book, but were somehow better than pagans. Again, it is possible, nevertheless, to let the matter ride and agree that Christians are “People of the Book.”

And it is also possible to give wide latitude to the Muslim claim that the most essential matter with regard to God is “Islam,” that is “submission.” After all, if God is the Lord of all creation, then how is submitting to Him, recognizing and accepting that He is God, not the most important thing?

But each of these proposals had disastrous results in the history of Christianity and may very well be the source of a number of modern distortions within the Christian faith.

Thus, at the outset I will state:

The Bible is not the Christian Holy Book. Christians (and Jews) are not People of the Book. Submission to God is not a proper way to describe the Christian faith Further, any and all of these claims, once accepted, lead to fundamental distortions of Christianity. An extreme way of saying this is that much of modern Christianity has been “Islamified.” Thinking critically about this is important – particularly in an era of renewed contact with Islam.

The Historical Debates

Most modern Christians are unaware of the contacts and debates between Christianity (particularly in the West) and Islam (particularly in Spain) during the Middle Ages. A great deal of the learning in early European Universities, especially in the model of scholasticism, owed much to the encounter with Islam scholasticism – this was especially so for the work with Aristotelean philosophy. Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars, such as Thomas Aquinas, Moses Maimonides, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), are foundational for Medieval thought. (Averroes is sometimes called the “Founding Father of Western secularism“). But the rationalist movement represented by these schools had lasting effects in the Christian West – not all for the best.

The notion of the Scripture as the Book whose place and authority in Christian life are similar to the Quran in Islamic life is one such idea. Islam has no Church – no one stands between the believer and Allah. There are communities, to be sure, but not in the necessary form of classical Christianity. The exaltation of the sovereignty of God and the working of the Divine Will (predestination) are hallmarks of Muslim thought. They eventually become hallmarks within certain forms of Christian scholasticism.

The Protestant Reformation is rightly described as a product of Christian scholasticism. Other historical forces shaped it, but it is worth noting that Luther, Calvin and their like were all “schoolmen.” Their ideas, particularly in Calvin, were largely absent prior to the Medieval dialogs with Islamic scholasticism. It is not that the Reformers borrowed directly from Islam – but that Islam contributed certain key notions that have, in time, become foundational for certain segments of contemporary Christianity.

The Bible is not the Christian Holy Book

As I have recently written, the Bible is properly seen as the Holy Scriptures, a collection of writings that span some 1500 years or more. They represent a variety of genres, address very different situations and understandings of God, and lastly (in the case of the New Testament) represent the internal documents of the primitive Christian community. Christians treat these books as inspired, though there are some books not included, or only included by some Christians, that are also recognized as having a case for inspiration.

The Christian Scriptures are books (particularly in the Old Testament) that have a unique history of interpretation. Christians and Jews, traditionally, do not read these books in the same manner. In such a sense, they do not possess an “objective” meaning. Indeed, Christian Fathers have recognized more than one meaning being present in the text.

The Christian community predates its own texts (the New Testament) and is not described as in any way having a foundation on the Scriptures – the Apostles and Prophets are described as the foundation of the Church. And though the Tradition does not describe the Scriptures as somehow inferior to the Church, neither do they consider the Scriptures to exist apart from the Church. They are the Church’s book.

In short, the place of the Scriptures within Christianity are utterly unlike the place of the Quran in Islam. Any confusion on this point is a distortion of the Scriptures.

We are not People of the Book

Christians are not baptized into the Bible. Jews were circumcised and made part of the Covenant people before ever a word of Scripture was written. God revealed Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob some hundreds of years before Moses ever wrote a line.

Christians may rightly see Islam as an ersatz version of Christianity – an attempt to create a rival to meet the peculiar needs and desires of the man, Muhammed. The Quran is Muhammed’s distorted idea of the role played by a “book” in the life of Christianity and Judaism. It is his attempt to create a rival. But this book, unlike any writing or utterance of a Biblical prophet, came with new claims. The Quran is what a misinformed desert preacher thought the Christian and Jewish holy books looked like. It is a poor substitute and a caricature of those writings. In this sense, the Quran is more akin to the Book of Mormon, a fabrication that tells what Upstate New York con-men thought an ancient religious book should look like. It tells us much about the mind of 19th century Upstate New York, but nothing about God. The Quran tells us about the perception of a 7th century Arabian merchant, but nothing about God.

It is thus a supreme religious irony that such a misperception should have changed how Christians saw their own sacred texts. But, it can be argued, this is indeed the case. The movement from authoritative Church to authoritative book that occurs over the 15th and 16th centuries (the Protestant Reformation), should not be considered apart from the dialog with Islam in the two or three centuries that preceded it. It is worth noting that scholasticism in the West was largely begun in Andalusian Islam. It was not a natural development from within. Scholasticism was ultimately rejected in the Christian East.

Martin Luther’s, “Hier, stehe ich!” (demanding that only a Scriptural argument would be an acceptable response to his position) would have been unimaginable four or five hundred years before. The “Bible” had not yet become a Christian Quran. Today, however, many Christians are indeed, “People of the Book.”

Christianity is not submission to God

On the face of it, denying that Christianity is submission to God seems ludicrous. Surely, if God is truly God, then submission to Him is the only proper response. But submission is not a word that passes the lips of Christ. His invitation to become a child of the Father is not a demand to submit to the Supreme Being. It is why there can be no conversion at the point of a sword in Christianity, and why conversions at the point of a sword have never ceased in Islam. (Such conversions have indeed occurred in Christian history – but have been later subjected to deep criticism and condemnation).

The question placed in Christian Baptism (Orthodox) is: “Do you unite yourself to Christ?” This is the language of union, reflecting St. Paul’s teaching that Baptism is union with the death and resurrection of Christ. The modern Evangelical phrase, “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” has more in common with Muslim submission. For there need be no union implied in the question – many who have become Christians under the guise of this question have no perception of union whatsoever.

Obedience to the gospel is, in critically important ways, not at all the same thing as submission. In proper Christian understanding, obedience is a cooperative action, a synergy between God and believer. As such, it is part of the eternal dance of union between Creator and created. Submission (particularly as taught in Islam) contains no synergy – it is the recognition of a force that can only move in one direction. It is the diminution of the human person, even its obliteration. Obedience, rightly understood, is an invitation into true Personhood – and, strangely, the beginning of true freedom.

Classical Christianity exalts the dignity of the human person and proclaims a gospel that unites humankind to God. The proclamation of Christ’s Lordship, though derived from Christian teaching, can easily become a distortion that takes on the submission demands of classical Islam. I have seen such a Christianity. It is not a pleasant place to dwell.

Contemporary Christianity needs to come to its historic senses and reexamine its various distortions of the gospel. Christ is not a cypher for Allah – they are nothing alike. The fullness of Christian distinctives is required in our present confrontation with Islam. The Bible is not the Christian Quran. It is nothing like it. Being able to articulate this is essential. Christians are the Body of Christ and not People of the Book. The absence of a true ecclesiology in contemporary Christianity is a hallmark of its Islamification. The call to relationship with God in Christ, true union in the Divine Life of the Triune God, must be rightly proclaimed and taught among Christians. We have centuries of unthinking to do if we are to reclaim the wholeness of the Christian faith and speak truth to error.

[boatbums]

No, I meant Martin Luther removed seven NEW TESTAMENT books (1-2-3 John, James, 1-2 Peter, Revelations) from his canon, but these NEW Testament “deuterocanonicals” were added back in.

Not sure where you are getting this information. I'm guessing again that you didn't read the links I provided? Luther didn't "remove" ANY books from his German translation of the Bible - not even the Apocryphal books. He did, however, question FOUR (not seven) New Testament books, though he did not remove them. From Luther and the Canon:

Certain books that did not express this were critically questioned by Luther: particularly James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation.[18] The editors of Luther’s Works explain,
“In terms of order, Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation come last in Luther’s New Testament because of his negative estimate of their apostolicity. In a catalogue of “The Books of the New Testament” which followed immediately upon his Preface to the New Testament… Luther regularly listed these four—without numbers—at the bottom of a list in which he named the other twenty-three books, in the order in which they still appear in English Bibles, and numbered them consecutively from 1–23… a procedure identical to that with which he also listed the books of the Apocrypha.”[19]

Sometimes it is said that in the actual printings of Luther’s New Testament these four books were printed last without page numbers. The citation above says it was a “list” without page numbers.[20] Also of importance to note is Luther did not treat the four questionable New Testament books in the exact same way as he did the Old Testament apocrypha. Luther critic Hartmann Grisar has explained, “…[Luther] simply excluded the so-called deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament from the list of sacred writings. In his edition they are grouped together at the end of the Old Testament under the title: ‘Apocrypha, i.e., books not to be regarded as equal to Holy Writ, but which are useful and good to read.’ …Luther’s New Testament is somewhat more conservative.”[21] Grisar dubs Luther “conservative” because Luther did not include such a heading before the New Testament books he questioned. Luther’s opinion on the apocrypha was solidified, whereas with the New Testament Luther uses caution.

Luther also found different levels of Christocentric clarity within the Old Testament. He observed that Genesis, Psalms, and Jonah spoke more to the apostolic standard, while the book of Esther did not.[22] The editors of Luther’s Works further explain the judgments contained in the prefaces:

"Luther’s prefaces… brought something new by means of which he revealed his understanding of the Scriptures, namely a set of value judgments and a ranking of the books into categories. For him the Gospel of John and the epistles of Paul as well as I Peter, rank as “the true kernel and marrow of all the books.” As books of secondary rank come Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. While Luther’s assigning of a standard of values to the New Testament books may have been simply an act of religious devotion, it proved to be also, as Holl readily points out, a pioneering step toward modern biblical scholarship. Luther’s prefaces are thus more than simply popular introductions for lay readers. They reveal a theological position of Christocentricity which inevitably affects his understanding of the New Testament canon.”[23]

Luther cannot be criticized for explicitly removing books from the canon of sacred Scripture. One can though disapprove of Luther’s critical questioning of particular New Testament books. Paul Althaus explains, “Luther did not intend to require anyone to accept his judgment, he only wanted to express his own feeling about these particular books.”[24] Althaus finds this to be apparent in Luther’s original prefaces of 1522, but even more so in his revisions of 1530. Lutheran writer Mark Bartling concurs: “Luther’s whole approach was one of only questioning, never rejecting. James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation are only questioned, they are never rejected.”[25] Roland Bainton notes,

“Luther treated Scripture with royal freedom, but not at a whim. There was a clear determinative principle that the word of God is the message of redemption through Christ Jesus our Lord without any merit on our part, and that we are saved solely through heartfelt acceptance in faith. Yet despite the recognition of levels within Scripture, Luther did not treat the book as a whole and shrank from demolishing the canon by excluding James and Esther. The pope, the councils and the Canon Law might go, but to tamper with the traditional selection of the holy writings was one step too much.”[26]

[Zionist Conspirator]

Here's a hint: quoting the "new testament" to prove chrstianity is no different than quoting the qur'an to prove islam or quoting the book of mormon to prove Mormonism.

... or quoting the Hebrew Bible to prove Judaism or some Noachide notion ...

Actually, one doesn't quote the Bible to "prove" Judaism. On the contrary, it is the Revelation at Sinai by G-d Himself that authorizes and "proves" the Bible.

The Jews are the only people who believe what they do because G-d personally told them to. Everyone else believes in everything (including G-d Himself) because their "bible" or their church tell them to.

I thought you and I had agreed to leave each other alone? You must really dislike me. I'll probably cry all night because of it.

[caww]

John 12:40

.." He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them"....

............................................................

Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch?

........................................................

.."Woe to you experts in the law, because 'you have taken

away the key to knowledge'..... You yourselves have not

entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."...Luke 11

...."Woe to you experts in the law, because 'you have taken away the key to knowledge'..... You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."...Luke 11

[dangus]

Oh, there are more dead people in loads of Catholic churches. And why shouldn’t there be? The sanctuary of a Church is a representation and foretaste of Heaven on Earth. So the churches proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven by jarring visitors with the message: “We don’t fear death. For we know something better lies beyond.” It’s designed to be shocking, but to proclaim the Christian hope in resurrection by doing so.

I’ll tell you something else: MOST churches include a body part of dead person right in the altar! Churches are named after the source of the relics they contain within. (So, no, a church named “Holy Cross” wouldn’t have a body part, but a piece of the cross. And no, Erasmus was a slanderous idiot: since the fragments typically only a fraction of a gram, you could tens of thousands of such relics throughout the world.)

And for another good measure: there are whole bodies of dead people in most major cathedrals and basilicas.

[dangus]

Where does God say, “bury the dead?” Did they dig up Lazarus? Did Jesus had to crawl his way out of a burial pit?

Sure, God said not to kneel down (well, bow) to idols, but an idol is an image of a god. If it’s not a god, it’s not an idol. Hence, he instructed the Israelites to bow before the seraph, because the seraph wasn’t a god. Neither are saints. And that’s why Catholics keep track of who is known to be a saint because they want to make sure that the people they ask to join them in supplication to God are in Heaven, not Hell. Not like Saint Brittney Spears, canonized by the Church of England when she was a spokesmodel for virginity, before she turned out to be a skank.

[x]

Actually, one doesn't quote the Bible to "prove" Judaism. On the contrary, it is the Revelation at Sinai by G-d Himself that authorizes and "proves" the Bible.

That is similar to what Christians say about Christianity (and maybe what Muslims say about Islam).

The Jews are the only people who believe what they do because G-d personally told them to. Everyone else believes in everything (including G-d Himself) because their "bible" or their church tell them to.

And how do you know that? Where you there? Did you see or hear the event yourself? Or did you read it in some "bible"?

Hundreds of years passed from the time these things were supposed to have happened until they were put into writing, and hundreds more years until they Scriptures took their final form. That is enough mediation -- enough distance between you and whatever you want to call G_d -- for any religion.

I thought you and I had agreed to leave each other alone?

I don't remember that. I may have agreed that there was no point in continuing a particular discussion, yet you go on posting your ... stuff. If you stopped, it would be a lot easier to ignore you.

I get it. You are looking for some rock-solid certain foundation for your beliefs from which you can attack everyone else's. Unfortunately you don't have it. You are as distant from the ultimate source as those you attack, and your belief is as much based on belief or faith as anyone else's. Maybe that's what scares you. That doesn't mean you and your beliefs are worse than anyone else's. But they aren't better, either.

[dangus]

I was careful the second time to word it that Luther removed them FROM THE CANON, lest anyone think I meant he didn’t publish them. As your own source notes (but oddly leaves out 2-3 John* and 2 Peter* ), he treated them the same way he treated the Old Testament dueterocanonicals, and defamed them in his commentary (”as epistle of straw” ... “certainly not a description of a the Christian God”)

Further, the context of his denunciations of these books must be made clear. The Catholic Church had pointed out to him where the doctrines such as purgatory, participation for the expiation for sins, the need for faith to be made manifest in work, etc., were located, utterly contradicting his assertion that they were not scriptural. THEN he responded by declaring that the books could not be scriptural. So saying he merely questioned them is a whitewash.

[jjotto]

Very good!

Exodus 24 records Moses’ writing. He recorded the experience of the Israelites to that time.

One of the reasons the received text (as written in the official scrolls before his death) is not chronological and varies a little in style is because of the inclusion of earlier writing in the received text.

The Torah was actually ‘written’ in two parts; one both immediately before and after Sinai, and the second (the complete one we have now) at the end of Moses’ life. In that second part, Moses clearly commands remembrance of the lessons he himself had taught for the previous 40 years.

There’s actually quite a lot of traditional Jewish commentary on this topic.

[dangus]

I left out the asterisk’s interpretation.

I had meant to acknowledge that I enumerated the books Luther left out incorrectly.

[Zionist Conspirator]

The Jews are the only people who believe what they do because G-d personally told them to. Everyone else believes in everything (including G-d Himself) because their "bible" or their church tell them to.

And how do you know that? Where you there? Did you see or hear the event yourself? Or did you read it in some "bible"?

I know it because the claim of Revelation at Sinai is the one and only self-vindicating claim in all of history. Why has no one else even made a claim of direct public national revelation? They haven't because they can't. The Jews do because they were there.

If you take a look earlier on this thread you will note jjotto's [courtesy ping] pointing out that the Jews were studying Torah under Moses for forty years before the first scrolls were written down. The chain of transmission from G-d to Moses down through the millenia to this very day is an iron fact of history.

I thought you and I had agreed to leave each other alone?

I don't remember that. I may have agreed that there was no point in continuing a particular discussion, yet you go on posting your ... stuff. If you stopped, it would be a lot easier to ignore you.

I remember it very well, but apparently you have decided to renege. Very well. Unfortunately, FR doesn't have an "ignore" feature.

If you find me so much more infuriating than anyone else on this forum, I invite you to just avoid all my posts from now on. I did not begin this current conversation; you did. Just pay no attention to my "nonsense" and your blood pressure will go down. I make it a rule not to initiate conversations with you. Surely you can do the same.

[CynicalBear]

>>And for another good measure: there are whole bodies of dead people in most major cathedrals and basilicas.<<

Pagans must have their "representations" aka idols.

[jjotto]

You are correct.

I just like to point out that everyone’s interpretation is ultimately based on tradition because otherwise there is no way to detect errors.

Without error-detection, every Joe Smith and David Koresh is just as likely to be as correct as the Pope or Billy Graham.

[metmom]

No, I meant Martin Luther removed seven NEW TESTAMENT books (1-2-3 John, James, 1-2 Peter, Revelations) from his canon, but these NEW Testament “deuterocanonicals” were added back in.

Can you provide us with a link showing us when and where that happened?

What about a link showing us the copy of the Bible that he put out that was missing those books?

[Zionist Conspirator]

You are correct.

I just like to point out that everyone’s interpretation is ultimately based on tradition because otherwise there is no way to detect errors.

Without error-detection, every Joe Smith and David Koresh is just as likely to be as correct as the Pope or Billy Graham.

Unfortunately, the official authoritative oral interpretive tradition of those chrstians who have one (Catholics, Orthodox, etc.) is radically at variance with the Oral Torah. And those chrstians who reject the Catholic/Orthodox oral tradition automatically put the Oral Torah in the same category, because they can never admit that every single verse of the Bible cannot be crystal clear to all (else how could anyone get "saved?").

In the days following the birth of higher criticism traditionalist chrstians have unfortunately adopted the critical view of the Hebrew Bible in order to "prove" it needs an authentic oral interpreter. This is something Jews have never had to do. I wish this were more noted than it is, but for some reason this seems to be a big deal only to me.

[x]

I know it because the claim of Revelation at Sinai is the one and only self-vindicating claim in all of history. Why has no one else even made a claim of direct public national revelation? They haven't because they can't. The Jews do because they were there.

And how do you know precisely what happened? Was there really a trumpet? Did the whole people hear it?

I guess the claim that it was a mass experience makes it unshakably true for you, but we only have the authority of Bible (or whatever it is you're calling it) itself to vouch for the fact that what happened was really that different and more authoritative than the other theophanies that have happened in recorded history.

Your reasoning is circular. You reject modern theories of scripture to assert something like the literal truth of the Bible and then use the truth that you come to through the Bible to reject those theories.

You're looking for certainty, claiming that what you believe is not based in faith but in certainty. Other people make similar claims. Yours isn't different in kind from theirs.

I remember it very well, but apparently you have decided to renege.

Last time it was "Let us part ways." Forgive me for not thinking this was your final sign off, especially since you responded to the post where I agreed with "parting ways."

[jjotto]

...traditionalist chrstians have unfortunately adopted the critical view of the Hebrew Bible in order to "prove" it needs an authentic oral interpreter...

I don't see the point there, except that a Christian document needs a Christian explanation, and to be considered Christian it needs to conform to a tradition of what "Christian" means.

[caww]

...”It takes it to a whole new (read: deeper) level”....

So much in true catholism is “buried” and then layers and layers of whatever gold and silver, art and literature, statues and relics, doctrines and traditions, rites and rituals they can create and build on top of that ruinous heap they will and do...and they've had centuries of doing just that to this day. It's like a gigantic landfill of garbage strung out over the ages...and every generation that follows the one before picks it up , slings the mess on it's back and carries it to the next. They've chosen to ignor...Jesus and the Fold moved on without them...........

[caww]

<<<<....Where does God say, “bury the dead?”....>>>>

You'll find it here..

[CynicalBear]

>>because they can never admit that every single verse of the Bible cannot be crystal clear to all (else how could anyone get "saved?").<<

Acts 16:30 And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? 31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

How tuff is that to understand?

[dangus]

>> What about a link showing us the copy of the Bible that he put out that was missing those books? <<

Read further in the thread. One of the Protestant apologists did so. (I actually got the books wrong; it was 3 John, 2 Peter, Revelations, James, Jude and Hebrews.)

>> What about a link showing us the copy of the Bible that he put out that was missing those books? <<

Also discussed. I meant left them out of the canon. He did include them in his publication ... in the exact same manner he published the OT deuerocanonicals.