But whether by preoccupation, a stroke of intuition, a leading of the Holy Spirit, or unfamiliarity with the subject, David didn’t fight back. “Nabeel, have you read any books by Christians on the deity of Jesus?”
“No, but I’ve talked to a bunch of Christians about it.”
“Well, let’s do this. I’ll give you a book tomorrow, and you read it when you get a chance. Then we’ll talk.”
I was taken aback. David rarely turned down a tussle. “Why not talk now?”
“Because I need to study the stuff we missed in genetics.”
“And whose fault is that, David?”
“As much yours as anyone else’s, buddy!”
“Hey, you were the one who started the whole ‘suffix’ business!”
And so we bickered our way through the hour, neither studying genetics nor arguing theology. It was all for the best, though. My Islamic identity was so strongly forged as a reaction against the deity of Jesus that a discussion at this point invariably would have been counterproductive and divisive.
What was needed first was a small inroad, a route past the Islamic knee-jerk reaction against Jesus’ deity. The book David planned to give me would get me asking the right questions and start me on that path. It proved to offer significant headway, especially considering how small it was.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
JESUS CREATES CARPENTERS
I LOOKED DOWN AT THE BOOK David slid across the table toward me. The lunchtime din of the student union forced me to focus extra carefully, taken aback as I was by the book’s title and compact size. Furrowing my brow, I rifled through its pages before sending it back across the table. “I already know Jesus is more than a carpenter.”
David was in an exceptionally playful mood. Fridays had a way of doing that. “Yeah, but he’s way more than a carpenter. He actually creates carpenters.”
I smiled. “I know that’s what you say, but that’s not what the Bible says.”
“Yes it does. The Bible says that all carpenters were made through Jesus.”
“Come on, David, I’m serious.” I faked a frown for emphasis.
David’s smile grew. “So am I. What do you think it means when the Bible says, ‘All things came into being through Jesus’?”
“It says that?” The frown wasn’t fake anymore.
“Yup.”
“Not in the gospels, though. I need to see it in the gospels.”
“Last I checked, the . . .” he inserted an egregiously fake cough before loudly exclaiming, “GOSPEL OF JOHN,” he coughed again, “is a gospel.”
“That’s in John?”
“Yup.” He smiled, feigning innocence.
This ran counter to everything Muslim teachers taught about Jesus in the Bible. Was it possible that a gospel actually said Jesus was the Creator? Why hadn’t I heard this before? None of the Christians I had spoken with mentioned this, and I had challenged so many. Come to think of it, had anyone other than David told me this, I would not have believed him, assuming instead that he was fabricating things. But I knew David well, and he would not go that route with me. Maybe David was distorting something? I did not know, but I was intrigued.
David saw my gears turning and slid the book back toward me, but this time, dramatically, in slow motion. When I reached out to take it, he quickly pulled it back. “But you already know Jesus is more than a carpenter,” he said, still smiling.
I leaned forward and snatched the book away from David. “Quit gloating.”
Later that weekend, I flopped onto the ground in Abba’s study, examining the book more carefully. More Than a Carpenter was very compact, the size of my hand and only about one hundred pages.53 The author’s name was Josh McDowell, and I had seen his name before. Abba owned a book called The Islam Debate, a transcript of a 1981 dialogue between McDowell and celebrated Muslim apologist Ahmed Deedat. I had not yet read it because it was a full-size monograph and seemingly dealt with defending Islam. I was more concerned with defeating Christianity.
But here was a book on Christianity by Josh McDowell, a booklet really, so small it was begging me to read it. I dived in, checking all McDowell’s Bible references for accuracy. It is hard to believe, but despite having dozens of Bible verses memorized for the sake of refuting Christianity, this was my first time actually opening a Bible. All the Bible verses I had read before were in Muslim books.
I devoured McDowell’s book in a matter of hours. Most of it encouraged people to take Jesus and their faith seriously, but I already did that. The chapter that affected me most was chapter 2, “What Makes Jesus So Different?” Here, McDowell defended the claim that the New Testament presents Jesus as God. When I finished the book, I decided to revisit that chapter with a more critical eye.
I found many of McDowell’s arguments insufficient. There were alternate explanations he was not considering. For example, he quoted Matthew 16:16, where Peter exclaims that Jesus is “the Son of the living God,” in order to show that Jesus is divine. But I had been taught a counterargument early in childhood: many people are called sons of God in the Bible, such as Adam, Solomon, even unnamed strangers.54 The Bible actually teaches that we can become sons of God, even going so far as to say that humans are gods.55
Elsewhere, McDowell quoted Matthew and Luke to argue that Jesus had characteristics of God, like omnipotence, but none of his references were convincing for me.56 They all showed Jesus doing miracles, to be sure, but the Muslim explanation for Jesus’ miracles was simple: they were all done by God’s permission, not by any power intrinsic to Jesus. This is what the Quran said,57 and I had long before memorized Bible verses that showed Jesus’ works were actually from the Father and that he could do nothing without God.58 As a Muslim trained to counter Christianity, I found nothing new in most of McDowell’s statements, and I had long been adept at turning these arguments back at Christians.
But McDowell did succeed in convincing me that even if there were verses in John’s gospel that I could use to refute the deity of Jesus, there were others that painted Jesus in an undeniably divine light. For example, Jesus said, “all will honor the Son just as they honor the Father.”59 In addition, a disciple addressed Jesus as “God,” only to be praised by Jesus.60 I had not heard these quotations before, and they did not fit into my mindset. They could not. There was no way Jesus would say or allow these things, at least not the Jesus I knew.
I began processing these new verses, struggling to harmonize them with the contrasting verses I had memorized as a child. I paced across the study, wondering, “How does it all fit together? I know there are verses in the Quran that apparently contradict one another, but Abba or an imam can usually resolve them. Is there anyone in the jamaat who knows the Bible as they know the Quran?”
A thought that had been simmering in my mind since I started reading McDowell’s book suddenly came to a whistling boil. Like a man finally stepping back for the first time after inspecting a mosaic piece by piece, I realized I had missed the big picture:
The Bible and the Quran were nothing alike. Not in the slightest. Why was I trying to interpret them in the same way?
Muhammad dictated the contents of the Quran to his scribes over a period of twenty-three years. Only after his death was the Quran collected into a book. Verses that had been dictated years or decades apart are frequently found side by side in the Quran, often with no obvious connection. The result is that Muslims place relatively little weight on surrounding passages when trying to interpret sections of the Quran. For context, they turn instead to historical commentaries, hadith called asbab-an-nuzul.
So fractured are narratives in the Quran that only one story has a clear beginning, middle, and end: the story of Joseph. All the other stories pick up in the middle, or else they are never carried to their conclusions. It was no wonder I had to turn to my teachers in order to understand the Quran.
But as I read through the Bible in conjunction with McDowell’s book, I realized that the gospels were cohe
rent narratives, each serving as its own context. There was no need for any commentary in order to understand the gospels. Anyone can understand the Bible.
Asbab-an-nuzul: A body of Islamic literature purporting to detail the circumstances of specific Quranic revelations
Conversely, I could not just focus on individual verses to make a point about a gospel, as we often did with the Quran. I needed to read the whole gospel, understand the author’s intent and themes, and let the book speak for itself.
Armed with this new perspective, I decided to read the gospel of John from the beginning before trying to interpret it. I sat back down on the ground and opened Abba’s Bible to John 1.
What I found did not sit well with me.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”61
There it was. Full stop. I pored over these verses, reading them and rereading them. There was no other explanation. The verses were saying that God created the world by means of the Word, that the Word was coeternal with God, and that it was God Himself, yet in some sense separate from Him.
It was obvious that “the Word” was Jesus, not just because John’s gospel was ostensibly about Jesus but also because the Quran calls Jesus the “Word of God.”62 Besides, verse 14 left little doubt: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.” It had to be Jesus.
Incredulous, I put the Bible down and began pacing the room once more, assembling the pieces in my mind. This was John’s first chapter, his prologue. Like an introduction in modern books, it gives us the lens through which to read the rest of the book. It was as if John were saying, “As you read this gospel, keep in mind that Jesus is coeternal with the Father, His partner in creating the world.”
Here was the context I needed to resolve the tension in other parts of the gospel. Whatever difficulty I might have while reconciling verses, I had to keep John’s prologue in mind: Jesus is God.
As the inevitability grew in my mind, I stopped pacing and stared at the Bible, still open to John 1. I could not believe it. It simply could not be true. Jesus could not be God. There must be some other explanation, or else I was deceived. There must be some other explanation, or else my family and everyone I loved was caught in a lie.
If Jesus truly did claim to be God, then the Quran is wrong and Islam is a false religion.
There must be some other explanation. I did not yet know what that explanation was, but it had to be there. I had faith that it was there, and I did not doubt that Allah would show it to me.
I immediately went to our living room, where we offered our congregational prayers. I approached the prayer rug, raised my hands to my ears, recited “Allah-hu-akbar,” and offered Allah two rakaats of nafl prayer.
Nafl: Optional prayers designed to invoke the help of Allah or draw the worshiper closer to Him
I was ready to recommit myself to this battle, and I was invoking the help of Allah.
Chapter Thirty
THE DIVINE SON OF MAN
“JOHN DOESN’T COUNT.”
“I figured you’d say that.”
We were back in Webb Center, the same table where David had given me More Than a Carpenter. I had spent the weekend studying John’s gospel on the internet and praying avidly.
It was not that I was worried. Simply taking sides on these issues meant repeatedly reasserting my commitment to Islam, and I was becoming more devout because of it. Plus, I was convinced that Allah was rewarding my faith with answered prayers and arming me to fight against David’s position. I discovered mounds of arguments against the accuracy of John’s gospel. Having spent the past few days regrouping, I was prepared to redraw battle lines. Now I was bringing out the big guns.
“So why doesn’t it count?” David asked.
“It was the last gospel, written seventy years after Jesus. It looks nothing like the other gospels, which appeared much earlier.”
“But we went over this, Nabeel. John’s gospel was written by a disciple, or at least in the lifetime of disciples. What it says is trustworthy.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, David. Seventy years after Jesus is a decent amount of time. We can’t be sure that the disciples were still around that late. But there’s a bigger issue here: why does it look so different from the other gospels? Jesus doesn’t use a single parable in John, and he talks about himself a lot more frequently than in the Synoptics. Plus, there’s only one miracle that’s actually common to all four gospels.63 John seems to be telling us about his Jesus. A later Jesus. A different Jesus.”
“Where did you get this?” David’s tone betrayed a hint of fluster. That was truly rare, and I relished the vindication. I wasn’t just fighting for my pride, after all. I was fighting for my family and my faith.
Synoptics: A collective term for the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke
“A new search engine I found, ‘Google.’ ”
“No, I meant who are you quoting?” David pressed, his curiosity piqued. “Doesn’t sound like a Muslim.”
“It was a Christian scholar Shabir quoted in a debate. Bart Ehrman.”64
A look of understanding crossed David’s face. “Bart Ehrman is not a Christian.”
“Oh? I thought he was.” I smiled, savoring the moment. “He went to seminary.”
“Yeah, but later he left the faith.”
“I can see why!” I responded, half-jokingly. But only half.
“Okay, back to the deity of Jesus. Did you find nothing in McDowell’s book that was convincing?”
“Not outside John’s gospel.” I was not about to let John off the hook that quickly.
“Alright, how about this. I’ll look into John and get back to you. In the meantime, I’ll give you another book, and you let me know what you think.”
“Sounds good, but you’ve got to do better than More Than a Carpenter, David. Maybe pick something bigger next time?”
David laughed, “You asked for it!”
A couple days later, I was back on the floor of Abba’s study, staring at a golden tome. It was called The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, and though this book was also written by McDowell, it was in an entirely different class. It was eight hundred pages of lecture notes that McDowell had collected over his years researching Christian origins.
I was undaunted. My recent victory over David’s argument from the gospel of John had given me a newfound confidence. I was more certain than ever that Allah was on my side, that no arguments against Him would prevail, and that the deity of Jesus was an innovation relegated to later Christianity.
If Jesus truly claimed to be God, we could expect his claim to be found in the earliest gospel, not just the last one. I needed to see Jesus’ claim to deity found in the gospel of Mark. Without hesitation, I opened straight to the chapter on Jesus’ deity and got started.
As if McDowell had presciently read my mind, the very first piece of evidence that he offered was “Jesus’ own legal testimony concerning himself” in Mark’s gospel. When the high priest asked if he was the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus testified to the Sanhedrin: “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”65
Apart from the “I am,” I did not find this statement very clear, and I could not immediately see why McDowell would have chosen it as his primary argument. What did Jesus mean by this?
Whatever he meant, one thing was clear. The priests of the Sanhedrin thought he made a statement about his identity that they considered blasphemous, warranting execution. There was only one identity claim that deserved such a harsh penalty: claiming to be God. Claiming to be the Messiah was not enough.66 But what exactly did Jesus say in his reply to the Sanhedrin that made them think he was claiming to be God?
McDowell quoted a New Testament scholar, Craig Blombe
rg, who explained, “This reply combines allusions to Daniel 7:13 and Psalm 110:1. In this context, ‘Son of man’ means far more than a simple human being. Jesus is describing himself as the ‘one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven’ who ‘approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence’ and given authority and power over all humanity, leading to universal worship and everlasting dominion. This claim to be far more than a mere mortal is probably what elicited the verdict of blasphemy from the Jewish high court.”67
I was perplexed. Was Blomberg saying that the title “Son of Man” was a claim to be God? That was impossible.
I thought back to a khutba I heard at a mosque in Washington, D.C., where the imam stood at the head of the prayer hall, proclaiming, “Jesus repeatedly denied being God. He always called himself the Son of Man to drive the point home! He is a human. He never calls himself ‘the Son of God.’ That is why we know the few times he is called a ‘Son of God’ by others, it does not mean he is a literal son of God. Jesus is the Son of Man. He is human.”
Khutba: A sermon, usually the Muslim Sabbath sermons on Friday
Could it be that the term “Son of Man” actually meant something more?
I had to read Daniel 7 for myself. I grabbed Abba’s Bible off the shelf, looked up “Daniel” in the table of contents, and flipped to Daniel 7. There indeed, just as Blomberg had said, was a prophetic vision of one like a Son of Man who was worshiped for all eternity by men of every language. This Son of Man was given authority and sovereign power over an everlasting kingdom.
My mind raced. What could this mean? I recalled that Blomberg said Jesus’ response also referred to Psalm 110. Perhaps that could clarify things for me? I looked up Psalm 110 and read the first verse: “The LORD says to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ ”
But what did that mean? How does the LORD say something to the lord? Who is God inviting to sit at His right hand?
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity Page 16