Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!news From: goer@midway.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam Subject: Re: Muslim/Christian Message-ID: <1990Aug30.021227.2345@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu> Date: 30 Aug 90 02:12:27 GMT Sender: news@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu Organization: California Institute of Technology Lines: 109 Approved: bes@tybalt.caltech.edu [Moderator's note: this article is approved because a portion of it is directly relevant to Islam. All replies must remain relevant to Islam to be approved. -Behnam] In article R. I. Beekun writes: > >Since there is no original text of the Bible available, and since the Bible >(as we know it today) was not compiled until the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., >and since Paul (who was Saul) never even knew Jesus during Jesus's (PBUH) stay >on earth, it is hard to argue that the Bible is God's Word, and therefore >incorruptible. I hate to see this sort of thing in an *Islamic* newsgroup, and I hate even more to respond. But it is important that Muslims understand what it is that Christians believe before they attempt to criticize or refute them. First of all, in the modern Protestant tradition there is much controversy about what "God's Word" is. Most now feel that the notion of verbal inspira- tion is primitive, and that in all ages God has accommodated his Truth to the languages and ideas of the peoples to whom he revealed himself. Differ- ences in textual and canonical traditions are nothing more than varied under- standings and receptions of God. Most modern Protestants do not understand the need for verbal inspiration that many religious traditions display. Catholics traditionally have valued the authority of the Church more than the authority of written revelation. The written revelation is indeed im- portant, but the Church and its traditions are the filter through which written revelation is viewed. One of the great points of controversy be- tween Catholics and Protestants in the 1500 and 1600s was over the text of the Bible. Catholics, like Muslims, pointed out that the original text was unrecoverable. This served as a basis for arguing that scripture could not, of itself, be the final spiritual authority. Catholics, traditionally, have no problem with the idea of an uncertain biblical text. The only Christians who traditionally believe in the importance of perfect preservation of the text of the Bible are very conservative Protestants. My point is that, when a Muslim criticizes a Christian for having a Bible whose text is uncertain, most Christians will either look puzzled, or else will place the Muslims with fundamentalist Christians, as a group of hopelessly primitive ideologues. I say this not to anger any Muslims. It is important to know how you are perceived by the people you criticize. It is also important, when engaging in polemics, to know what it is your opponents actually be- lieve. The bottom line is that many Christians simply don't understand the theological necessity of a perfectly preserved text. This belief must be justified before going on to criticize Christians for their ephemeral sacred text. >The Qur'an is different. People memorized and wrote down the quranic >revelations as they were revealed. The complete version of the Quran was >compiled soon after the Prophet's (PBUH) death. There is only one version >of the Qur'an, and it had not changed for 1400 years. Can you make >the same assetion with respect to the Bible? In fact, the GOOD NEWS bible >recently changed the words of the bible into "modern terminology", and >removed "sexist" and "anti-semitic" references. Is this version of >the bible the correct one or is the King James version the correct one? This also indicates a misunderstanding, and needs to be corrected. In many Christian camps, revelation is seen as a progressive thing. God is infinite, and no human language or set of cultural concepts can fully grasp his essence. The idea of the Good News Bible is to accommodate an older revelation to a new language and culture. To many Christians, the very act of reading an old text, written in an old language, com- posed in a different cultural environment involves such interpretations. Again, I say this not to criticize Muslims, but merely to try to inform Muslims about how Christians view revelation. Some Christians would agree that the Good News Bible goes too far. Many like it a lot. Some might argue that it doesn't go far enough. The point is, though, that few question the right of this or that group to try to put an ancient revelation into languages and cultural terms more appropriate for the modern world. I might also add that many Christians believe that the notion of a per- fectly memorized Quran a myth. No one's memory is perfect, so they would say, and the assertion that the Quranic revelations were memorized and written down, and then preserved perfectly, is an impossibility. They psychological need to believe in such a fantasy, so they would say, is again the apparent Muslim need to think that God can somehow communi- cate with human beings directly, in a non time-bound fashion. This is an idea most Christian groups would *not* accept. They only ones who still think this way are the fundamentalists. Muslims who argue along these lines are therefore, inevitably, lumped together with the Bakers, and the Bible-pounding creationists who are in such dreadful disrepute among the majority of educated Christians. I would recomment that, in polemics such as the one I am responding to, Muslims concentrate on justifying why they believe what they do, and not on knocking over supposed Christian beliefs. More often than not, I find that arguments against this or that belief misrepresent Chris- tians, and that they therefore cannot draw any support. Concentrate, instead, on why Muslims believe in an infallible revelation. Justify the notion that human memory and penmanship could have accomplished this feat. Concentrate also on why Christians err in thinking that a verbally inspired and perfectly preserved revelation is NOT neceses- sary. There is nothing wrong with debating great topics like the nature of God, the nature of revelation, and the validity of various religious traditions. What I am trying to caution agains here is that Muslims - one of the world's great religions - not make themselves appear like Bible-pounding fundamentalist Christians. It may seem like folly and insanity to identify the two, but this is exactly what many Muslims lead Christians to do by their style of argumentation. -Richard