The Authentic Holy Book: The Bible or the Qur’an part I

By Mike Robinson

Introduction

A crucial reason one should esteem Christianity over Islam is that the Bible predates the Qur’an by many hundreds of years and there is not one passage in the Qur’an that explicitly and plainly claims that the Bible is unreliable, changed or corrupted. There are numerous verses in the Qur’an that reckon the Bible as true and that it is the word of God. Islam’s holy book esteems the Bible as God’s word and the Bible was written before the Qur’an. Moreover, the two books disagree on God’s nature and the path of salvation. Clearly one should take the Bible over the Qur’an.

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1. The Bible ascribes a different nature for God, and a completely dissimilar way and means to salvation than Islam.

2. The Qur’an affirms the Bible (Muhammad directed Christians to follow the Bible they had in the seventh century in Qur’an verses: 2:40-42, 89,126; 3:3,71, 93; 4:47; 5:47-51, 69-72; 6:91; 7:157; 29:45,46; 35:31).

3. The Bible is correct on the nature of God and salvation, not the Qur’an.

Many Muslims will deny premise two and will refer you to some Quranic or Haddith passages that suggest the corruption and undependability of the Bible. Yet, in light of the affirmative verses, that suggestion appears to lead to incongruity.

Precious Promises

As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Peter 1:3-4).

Islam, along with every non-Christian religion, has one basic miscalculation in touching salvation: Its followers are trying to reach God, find God, and please God through their good works, sacraments, and rituals.

Christianity is God reaching down to man. Christianity claims that Christians have not found God, but that God found them. God decreed the directive for the Son of God to descend from Heaven to live and then die on the cross to pardon His people. Man-centered religion cringes at this thought. It insists that we try to be good enough to earn divine acceptance. It tries to put its followers on religious treadmills. Nonetheless, laboring to do those proper religious works and to clean up one’s soul is no real solution.

There are some who trouble you, and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed (Galatians 1:7-9).

Every false religion lacks the capacity to expiate one’s spiritual record of sin. Only Jesus can, that is why Jesus came to earth, to love and to die. Self-centered religion tries to conform and reform to earn salvation. Jesus Christ transforms through real forgiveness and empowerment by the Holy Spirit. False deities cannot provide complete forgiveness and eternal hope.

God is a Self-contained Being: Aseity

Some non-Christian systems (as the polytheistic religions and modern philosophical “personalisms”) posit personal gods of one kind or another, but those gods are not absolute in the sense of being self-contained. Other non-Christian systems accept absolute realties of various kinds, but those absolutes are not personal. Only in the biblical teaching are absoluteness and personality combined in the Supreme being.” [1]

First and foremost among the attributes, we, therefore, mention the independence or self-existence of God. … He is self-contained rationality.[2]

Allah leads astray whomsoever He wills (Sura 14:4).

Allah is the best of deceivers (Sura 3:54).

Yahweh is a “self-individuated Spirit.”[3] The Triune God is “self-contained fullness”[4] and “absolute personality.”[5] Christian theism assents to a deity who is self-contained and personal. Islam teaches that their deity changes his mind, deceives, and he can lie. Additionally, he lacks immutability, and thus is deficient of aseity. The biblical God has aseity. This means that God has self-existence, self-sufficiency, and He’s not dependent or contingent upon anyone or anything. The power of His being is within Himself. “God is self-sufficient or self-contained in his being.”[6]

Allah is not a personal being or a thing since he is “not like anything.” Thus he cannot be personal. Furthermore, he is inscrutably arbitrary in his decrees. In some ways the Islamic god seems fickle and capricious. This notion yields inconsistency and change; for Allah can do anything, including lie. He can deceive and mislead. He cannot ground changeless things for he is not bound to a nature. Changeless things, such as mathematics, logic, and moral law, exist and these require that which cannot change and cannot lie: the changeless biblical God.

The Sufficiency of the Triune God

The sovereign God is not someone who is beyond reach or beyond knowing.[7]

Van Til stressed the interlinking of God’s attributes in that the “immutability of God is involved in his aseity.” Since God is self-sufficient, He does not need to change like the Muslim deity. There must be a foundation, somewhere, that is unchanging and has aseity. Van Til illuminates this: “We must rather reason that unless God exists as ultimate, as self-subsistent, we could not know anything, we could not even reason that God does not exist, nor could we even ask a question about God.”[8] There must be a certain, absolute, self-sufficient, and unchanging basis for the intelligibility of our world: Yahweh. He must exist to account for the unchanging and transcendent laws of logic. Allah cannot supply the required pre-necessities for absolute and unchanging realities. Only the Lord God can. Even if Allah could account for the laws of logic, there is no basis for using such laws (since Allah is arbitrary and deceptive) to understand and interpret the world. Such laws simply would not apply. The true God alone has the ability and character to provide that which is necessary to make sense out of reality.

Van Til remarked that “God is absolute. He is autonomous.”[9] Man cannot be autonomous (not subject to the rule or authority of another) and the Muslim doctrine of Allah implies that Allah cannot be autonomous. For strict autonomy one must have true personality (Allah is not a person and lacks personality), aseity, self-rule, and supreme sovereignty which only the true God has.

God as Truth is Yahweh

That by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie. … This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast… (Hebrews 6:18-19).

For I am the LORD (Yahweh), I do not change (Malachi 3:6).

I know that that Yahweh, dissimilarity to Allah, provides all a priori essentials for the necessary epistemic elements utilized in all thoughts, knowledge, and achievements. The God of the Bible has genuine ontic attributes of omniscience, immutability, omnipotence as well as aseity (He has universal authority & reach) thus He has the ontological capacity (His nature) to be the ground for general principles, immutable laws, universal operational aspects of human thinking and understanding. In Christian theism God can be known (John 17:1-3; Romans 1). Moreover, a position that denies Yahweh as the epistemic (knowledge) foundation cannot be true, thus whatever evidence or proof one ascertains, must be discerned and processed with the rational equipment that arises from Christian theism and the worldview that is sourced by the Triune God.

The true God is the elemental requirement for knowledge, proof, evidence, and logic. He is the a priori truth condition for the intelligibility of reality. This is the case inasmuch as the immaterial, transcendent, and immutable Triune God supplies the necessary pre-environment for the use of immaterial, transcendent, universal, and immutable laws of logic utilized in all knowledge pursuits. Christian theism is the pre-essential truth condition for the grounding and understanding of knowledge. Christianity is true not only because it seems more probable than its antithesis, but because it supplies the basis for knowledge.

Muslims presuppose the rational necessities that the Christian worldview underwrites while they verbally deny it. What are the compulsory conditions that make thought possible? Yahweh supplies those truth conditions to establish the rational parquet for intelligibility. Van Til called this “method of implication into the truth of God a transcendental method. That is, we must seek to determine what presuppositions are necessary to any object of knowledge in order that it may be intelligible to us.”

Christian Theism and Salvation

As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us (Psalms 103:12).

Christianity supplies salvation certainty. The truth that Christ provides salvation freely and keeps those He saves is guaranteed. Through the cross, God removes the believer’s sins as far as the east is from the west. If one lived in San Diego and wanted to travel as far west as possible, where would he go? When he started out west he could land in Hawaii, but the Philippines are still west of that, from the Philippines he could go west to China, and from there France, and then further west to New York and back to San Diego. How far west must he travel to reach the east? It is immeasurable and infinite. And so are his transgressions removed as he trusts in Christ. His transgressions are infinitely eliminated by the infinite atonement through the cross. That is good news that the Muslim faith and all other religions cannot deliver.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness (Romans 4:5).

Allah loves not transgressors (Sura 2:190).

All people require a spiritual cleansing. Only Jesus Christ and His death on the cross can wash away all their sins. Jesus died and rose again. No one else has done that for sinners. Van Til presses: “If God was to continue communication with His creature, it was either to be by condemnation or by atonement.” God through His mercy provided a perfect and effectual atonement through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Believe on Him and you will be saved.

Allah loves not those who do wrong (Sura 3:57).

He loves not creatures ungrateful or wicked (Sura 2:276).

But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs, according to the hope of eternal life (Titus 3:4-7).

Access to God

The curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom. We have the access to our Father that no one else can have. We come to God’s throne spotless, redeemed. … In Him, we have become the righteousness of God.[10]

The Qur’an says, “To those who believe and do deeds of righteousness hath Allah promised forgiveness and a great reward” (Sura 5:9). Ask the Muslim if he is doing enough good deeds to receive salvation on Judgment Day. Remind him that his repentance must be perfectly sincere for the Qur’an says, “O ye who believe! Turn unto Allah in sincere repentance!” (66:8). Only if the man, who is sincere, may receive forgiveness. Without faith in Christ, how can one know that one is sincere enough to be forgiven of God? The real solution is Jesus who paid for our sins on the cross, once for all. Thus Christians are safe and filled with hope in Him and do not have to fret about doing enough good works to be accepted (Romans 4:5). Christians do good works for the sake of love and gratitude.

Jesus vs. Muhammad in the Qur’an

Considering that Islam claims that Muhammad is the last and greatest prophet, it appears inconsistent that the Qur’an asserts the following concerning Jesus Christ in contrast to Muhammad:

• Jesus was born of a virgin (Sura 19:16-35): not Muhammad.
• Jesus is a Spirit from God (Sura 4:171): not Muhammad.
• Jesus is the Word of God (Sura 4:171):  not Muhammad.
• Jesus was sinless (Sura 19:19):  not Muhammad.
• Jesus gave life to the dead (Sura 3:49 and 22:73):  not Muhammad.
• Jesus is coming back again as a sign of the hour of judgment (Sura 43:61):  not Muhammad.
• Jesus performed many miracles (Sura 3:49 and 100:110): not Muhammad (Sura 29:47-51).
• Jesus is the Messiah (Sura 4:171): not Muhammad.

There is something exceptional about Jesus Christ; even the Qur’an avows such. No other prophet or false prophet has His divine nature and accomplished what He did and taught what He taught (John 1:1, 10:30, 5:18, 8:24, 8:58, 20:28; 1 Timothy 3:16; Col. 1:16-17, 2:9; Matt. 22:42-45; Mark 14:64). Buddha, Joseph Smith, Krishna, Sun Yung Moon, and Muhammad never did what Jesus Christ did. Jesus died for our sins and rose again on the third day. He performed many miracles. He claimed to be God and demonstrated His deity.

Growth through Love and Truth

Jesus promised that His Church would grow from a small mustard seed to a worldwide movement and it has: from eleven followers to billions of Christians in every country in the world. The movement of Jesus, Christianity, grew large and fast by the power of love, truth, peace, and self-sacrifice. Islam generally grew by the sword. Muhammad and his followers killed many Jews, Christians, and Pagans as they plundered their towns. Islam advanced by the use of force: Christianity through love and hope.

Jesus is the Messiah: the Christ. We can examine a pre-Christian and pre-Islamic source (not the New Testament or the Qur’an) to find the definition of the Messiah: the Old Testament. It, including the Torah, proclaims, asserts, and implies that the Messiah would be God (Psalms 110; Isaiah 7:14, 9:6, 43:10-11; Genesis 1:26, 3:22; Zechariah 10:12,12:10; Daniel 7:13-14; etc.). Jesus is the Messiah (John 4), so Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah as well as God (also see Revelation 1:7-8; 22:7 and 13; Hebrews 1).

Jesus: The Truth

Prediction is hard, especially when it’s about the future (Yogi Berra).

The Qur’an instructs “Seek knowledge, in China, if necessary” (Sura 39:12). One should go where the evidence leads. There were 333 Prophecies about the coming Messiah written in the Old Testament before the birth of Christ. All these came true in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. No other religious leader or prophet ever had massive predictive material written about their life before their birth. Jesus had countless fulfilled predictions about His life to attest to His claims as the Son of God. His virgin birth was predicted several hundred years before He was born. Islam attempts to use about a half-dozen Scriptures in an attempt to verify Muhammad’s claims. The Mormons attempt to misinterpret five or six Scriptures for the same reason in regard to Joseph Smith. Jesus did not have five or six; He had hundreds of clear and unambiguous prophecies that predicted events in His life before they occurred, even hundreds of years before His birth.

If a claimant comes and announces that He’s a god or the way to God, he should provide some evidence. Jesus Christ came and provided a posteriori proof by fulfilling numerous predictions. Powerful evidence would be for a man to claim that he is from God, and before he arrived, there were preexisting documents written before he was born, which contained hundreds of details that were forecast about his future life. Later, these specific facts were fulfilled in his life. If a cache of predictive material is easy to produce, why hasn’t anyone else started a religion, which provided hundreds of fulfilled predictions to demonstrate divine prescience? The reason is obvious; no one has the ability but the True God.

The prophet Micah foretold that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem; Isaiah foretold the type of birth that He was to have (Isaiah 7:14); Psalms 22 predicted His death on the cross, as did Isaiah 53. The prophet Daniel, in chapter nine, predicted the day that Christ arrived in Jerusalem. Many more events, people, places, and times were prearranged by Yahweh and made known to men and documented before the events occurred. Christ’s coming: the place, date, type of events were predicted on copies of the Old Testament dated centuries before Christ arrived with extra-biblical sources verifying much of the details of His life and death. Noteworthy is the fact that Jesus could not prearrange the self-fulfilling of many of these prophecies unless He was the sovereign God.

Only Christ is Risen 

Frank Morrison, a lawyer, disdained Christianity so much that he set out to write a book disproving the resurrection of Christ. After months of research, digging, studying, reading, examining the evidence, he fell on his knees and trusted Jesus Christ as Lord. For the evidence, contrary to his stated goals, was overwhelming. He discovered that the proof for Christ was unassailable. He did write a book, titled Who Moved the Stone? and subtitled, The Book that Refused to be Written. Harvard law professor, Simon Greenleaf, wrote the text book on legal evidence, which was used for over a hundred years in American law schools. His tome taught the proper manner in which one ought to measure and discern evidence in court. Greenleaf was a skeptic and unremittingly blasted Christianity in his law classroom. One day, a student challenged him to investigate the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. He searched the evidence, examined it, investigated it, and became a Christian. The evidence for the Messiah was overwhelming to the expert on evidence. The founders of the multitudes of religions, once deceased, remain deceased, including Muhammad. Unlike any other, Jesus Christ rose from the grave.

Islam’s main motif for denying the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ is to claim that Jesus never died. Since he did not die, He never rose from the grave. That notion goes against all the eyewitness testimony. Even Christ’s contemporary enemies did not dispute His death.

Crucifixion and a Resurrection

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness … “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; Blessed is the man to whom the LORD shall not impute sin” (Romans 4)

The true and living God is just and righteous. Only through Christ’s death on the cross can mercy as well as justice be satisfied. An eternal Messiah paying the price for our sins against an eternal God is the only solution for sin and depravity.

A six-pointed star, a crescent moon, a lotus—symbol or other religious symbols suggest beauty and light. The symbol of Christianity is an instrument of death. It suggests hope.[11]

A simple framework to share with non-Christians is: Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude.

• Guilt: All men sin and are guilty before God.
• Grace: God extends His grace to men by sending His Son to die a vicarious death on the cross.
• Gratitude: The one who trusts in Christ is forgiven of all of his guilt and sin and now serves God out of gratitude for saving him.

Faithful witnessing to Muslims involves the believer heralding the judgment of the law on the lost, and then offering the grace of the gospel to those without Christ. An almighty sovereign God, full of awe and righteousness, is not what the world wants. But He is the God all people need. The Bible reveals that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). Christians should press God’s truth on the Muslim with compassion and patience. We are not to dazzle them with rhetoric or blast them with an uncaring scolding. One must with compassion warn them. We should sincerely care for the state of their souls through the graceful preaching of truth and the gospel.

Conclusion

The critical reader should honor Christianity over Islam since the Bible predates the Qur’an by many centuries and there are numerous passages in the Qur’an that proclaim that the Bible is the word of God. The Qur’an names the Bible as God’s word and the Bible was revealed prior to the Qur’an. Moreover, the two books disagree on the nature of God and the way of salvation. Undoubtedly one should believe the Bible over the Qur’an.

see my Apologetics eBook that uses a unique approach to refute Islam Christian Philosophy Critiques Islam: Christian Theism and Presuppositions Refute The Muslim Concept of Allah HERE

      1. Frame, Cornelius Van Til, p. 58.

       2.  Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, (P & R, Phillipsburg: NJ, 1974), p. 206.

       3. Ibid.,Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 233.

       4. Van Til, Defense of the Faith, p. 42.

       5. Ibid., p. 42.

       6. Van Til, Christian Apologetics, (P & R, Phillipsburg: NJ, 1976), p. 7.

       7. K. Scott Oliphint, The Battle Belongs to the Lord, (P & R, Phillipsburg: NJ, 2003), p. 161

       8. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, p. 102.

       9.  Van Til, Christian Apologetics, p. 7.

       10. Keith Green, Make My Life a Prayer, (Harvest House, Eugene: OR, 2001), p. 141

       11. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, (Harper, San Francisco: CA, 1993), p. 21.