Questions for Muslims to think about

In my opinion, one of the most effective passages in the Bible to begin with when in evangelism with Muslims, is Mark 7:1-23.  (especially Mark 7:14-23)

After He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, “Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man.  [ If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”] When he had left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples questioned Him about the parable. And He *said to them, “Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him,  because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?” (Thus He declared all foods clean.)  And He was saying, “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.  For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries,  deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.  All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.” Mark 7:14-23

I would like to see a debate with Muslims that takes Mark 7:1-23 and explores:

1.  Can external religious ritual washings (using physical water) cleanse the internal heart/soul from sin?

2.  What is the root of human sin?

3.  Where do sinful actions come from?  

use also Jeremiah 17:9 and Genesis 6:5 and Jeremiah 13:23

4.  Did we get sinful hearts and guilt from Adam?

5.  Why do human beings always die?  

Genesis 2:17

Genesis 3:1-8

Romans 5:12

Romans 3:23

Sam Shamoun believes that the texts of Islam actually do teach the doctrine of original sin (or something very close to it.) 

Muslim scholars would likely disagree with his analysis, using Qur'an, Surah 30:30.  Surah number 30 is called "Romans".  

فَأَقِمْ وَجْهَكَ لِلدِّينِ حَنِيفًا ۚ فِطْرَتَ اللَّهِ الَّتِي فَطَرَ النَّاسَ عَلَيْهَا ۚ لَا تَبْدِيلَ لِخَلْقِ اللَّهِ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ الدِّينُ الْقَيِّمُ وَلَٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ النَّاسِ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ

Sahih International

"So direct your face toward the religion, inclining to truth. [Adhere to] the fitrah of Allah upon which He has created [all] people. No change should there be in the creation of Allah . That is the correct religion, but most of the people do not know."

Yusuf Ali translation:

" So set thou thy face steadily and truly to the Faith: (establish) Allah´s handiwork according to the pattern on which He has made mankind: no change (let there be) in the work (wrought) by Allah: that is the standard Religion: but most among mankind understand not."'  See Surah 30 in Yusuf Ali translation.

This on-line translation is different than my own book copy of Yusuf Ali's translation of the Qur'an, so I assume that the translation committee has made an updated translation.  My older Qur'an/book says, "nature, being upright" for Fitrah.  The word "pattern" appears to be the new way they are translating Fitrah.  

see other English Translations of Surah 30:30.

There are two different Arabic words that are translated as "religion" - حنیفا (Hanifeh - usually understood as "original monotheism" (of Abraham).  In Islamic history, the people before Islam started who were searching for the true religion of Abraham, were known as the "Hanifeh".

The second one is "deen" (or Al-Deen", the religion, الدین ).

"fitrah" فطرت  is also translated as "upright nature" or "nature".  

But, Sam makes a good case for this, for some kind of teaching similar to the Christian doctrine of original sin, that is in the Islamic texts.  

6.  How do Muslims deal with the weight of all that evidence from both the Qur'an and Hadith?

7.  How do Muslims explain this issue, without avoiding all those texts that Sam has provided, both from Hadith sources and the Qur'an? 

In Catholic theological anthropology, human nature is not selfish or sinful; human nature is good

Here's an entry that was provoked by a recent Called To Communion statement: "In Catholic theological anthropology, human nature is not selfish or sinful; human nature is good." Such a statement shouldn't be taken lightly. What exactly is meant? Are the CTC folks espousing Pelagianism?  Scott Hahn's Catholic Bible Dictionary does an adequate job of fleshing out this type of Romanist statement:

The phrase "Adam lost for himself and all succeeding generations the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace" should jump out immediately. Note the explanation given by A.A. Hodge:

17. What is the Romish doctrine with respect to thedona naturalia , and thedona supernaturalia ?

1st. They hold that God endowed man at his creation with the dona naturalia, that is, with all the natural constitutional powers and faculties of body and soul without sin, in perfect innocence. There was no vice or defect in either body or soul.

2nd. God duly attempered all these powers to one another, placing the lower in due subordination to the higher. This harmony of powers was called Justicia —natural righteousness.

3rd. There was, however, in the very nature of things, a natural tendency in the lower appetites and passions to rebel against the authority of the higher powers of reason and conscience. This tendency is not sin in itself; but becomes sin only when it is consented to by the will, and passes into voluntary action. This is concupiscence(a strong desire); not sin, but the fuel and occasion of sin.

4th. To prevent this natural tendency to disorder from the rebellion of the lower elements of the human constitution against the higher, God granted man the additional gift of the dona superanaturalia, or gifts extra constitutional. This is original righteousness, which was a foreign gift superadded to his constitution, by means of which his natural powers duly attempered are kept in due subjection and order. Some of their theologians held that these supernatural gifts were bestowed upon man immediately upon his creation, at the same time with his natural powers. The more prevalent and consistent view, however, is that it was given subsequently as a reward for the proper use of his natural powers see Moehler’s “Symbolism,” pp. 117, 118.

5th. Both the “justicia,” and the “dona supernaturalia ” were accidental or superadded properties of human nature, and were lost by the fall.

18. How does this doctrine modify their view as to original sin and the moral character of that concupiscence which remains in the regenerate?

They hold that man lost at the fall only the superadded gifts of “original righteousness” ( dona supernaturalia), while the proper nature of man itself, the dona naturalia, comprising all his constitutional faculties of reason, conscience, free will (in which they include “moral ability”), remain intact. Thus they make the effect of the fall upon man’s moral nature purely negative. The Reformers defined it “the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of the whole nature.”

Hence, also, they hold that concupiscence, or the tendency to rebellion of the lower against the higher powers remaining in the regenerate, being natural and incidental to the very constitution of human nature, is not of the nature of sin.

Luther wrote on the scholastic distinction between the naturalia (which remained after the Fall), and the donum superadditum of grace (which was withdrawn and had to be restored by God):

The scholastic statement that “the natural powers are unimpaired” is a horrible blasphemy, though it is even more horrible when they say the same about demons. If the natural powers are unimpaired, what need is there of Christ? If by nature man has good will; if he has true understanding to which, as they say, the will can naturally conform itself; what is it, then, that was lost in Paradise through sin and that had to be restored through the Son of God alone? Yet in our day, men who seem to be masters of theology defend the statement that the natural powers are unimpaired, that is, that the will is good. Even though through malice it occasionally wills and thinks something besides what is right and good, they attribute this to the malice of men, not to the will as it is in itself. The mind must be fortified against these dangerous opinions, lest the knowledge of grace be obscured; this cannot remain sound and right if we believe this way about the nature of man. Nor can this scholastic teaching be tolerated in the church: that man can keep the Law according to the substance of the act, but not according to the intention of Him who commanded it, since according to His intention not only the work is required, but also a disposition in the heart which is called grace. This would be just like saying that a man who is sound in hands and feet can properly do his job, except that he is hindered by not being dressed in black or white clothes. In exactly the same way they say that God requires something beyond the Decalog and is not satisfied when someone keeps the Decalog, but requires a right disposition as well. All these monstrosities have arisen from the fact that they do not rightly know the nature of sin. I have listed them to show the great difference between our sound doctrine and the monstrous and deceptive doctrine of the pope.[LW 12:308]

The scholastics argue that original righteousness was not a part of man’s nature but, like some adornment, was added to man as a gift, as when someone places a wreath on a pretty girl. The wreath is certainly not a part of the virgin’s nature; it is something apart from her nature. It came from outside and can be removed again without any injury to her nature. Therefore they maintain about man and about demons that although they have lost their original righteousness, their natural endowments have nevertheless remained pure, just as they were created in the beginning. But this idea must be shunned like poison, for it minimizes original sin.

Let us rather maintain that righteousness was not a gift which came from without, separate from man’s nature, but that it was truly part of his nature, so that it was Adam’s nature to love God, to believe God, to know God, etc. These things were just as natural for Adam as it is natural for the eyes to receive light. But because you may correctly say that nature has been damaged if you render an eye defective by inflicting a wound, so, after man has fallen from righteousness into sin, it is correct and truthful to say that our natural endowments are not perfect but are corrupted by sin. For just as it is the nature of the eye to see, so it was the nature of reason and will in Adam to know God, to trust God, and to fear God. Since it is a fact that this has now been lost, who is so foolish as to say that our natural endowments are still perfect? And yet nothing was more common and received more general acceptance in the schools than this thesis. But how much more foolish it is to make this assertion about the demons, about whom Christ says that they did not stand in the truth (John 8:44) and whom we know to be the bitterest enemies of Christ and of the church!

Therefore the perfect natural endowments in man were the knowledge of God, faith, fear, etc. These Satan has corrupted through sin; just as leprosy poisons the flesh, so the will and reason have become depraved through sin, and man not only does not love God any longer but flees from Him, hates Him, and desires to be and live without Him. [LW 1:164-165]

A figure of original sin

CrimsonCatholic has made some interesting statements regarding original sin (OS) here. I appreciate his conversation b/c it is allowing me to work out a better understanding of the issue.

I don't see any authority elsewhere in Scripture for the proposition that someone who has not committed actual sin was punished by damnation, so it seems to be a matter of speculative reasoning.

In one sense, you're right that the case where some guy was born with original sin but never sinned HIMSELF in life and came to be judged either yea or nay by God has come up in Scripture.
OTOH, does not Rom 5 have explicit statements regarding his guilt? I don't see you dealing with Rom 5 at all in this comment, though I've pointed it out as important a couple of times and stated some initial points in a previous comment in the same thread.

You say that Jesus suffers by substitution or by being a sin offering,

We might be missing each other here.
Jesus suffers because He's the substitute for the elect. He suffers really, physically, spiritually, etc. Hopefully that clears up any confusion.

The entire idea of a substitution or a sin offering is a metaphor; it is not literal, because the person who actually committed the sin is not being punished.

I am sorry, but this is a strange thing to say.
Substitution is not literal b/c the guy for whom the substitute is provided doesn't suffer? Isn't that the point of substitution? Why would the recipient of the benefit of substitution suffer? Why would that change anything about the nature of the suffering of the substitute?

they would entail Jesus being punished for actual sin, which is clearly absurd by both reason and Scripture, since He never actually sinned

Agreed that He never sinned.
But He suffered for **MY** actual sin and the actual sins of all.

Hence, the passages cannot be literal and must be figurative.

Leaving aside that I deny the premises above, if it must be figurative, what is it a figure of? What is the greater reality to which it points, as all symbols do?

To put any sort of actual evil within the nature would make God its author, which is impossible.

Actual evil within the SIN nature (that's to clarify)? Why would God be the author of that? Sin was performed by a fallen angel and then a human. It's a corruption of God-given goodness, not created by Him. Romans 7 (as I also mentioned earlier) describes how it's the "law within my members", struggling against the Spirit-controlled "law of my mind".

The only places in the Scripture which describe men as "guilty" or "sinful" or "condemned" are clearly analogical and not literal.

I'm questioning your arrival at that, so I guess we go there.
Besides, I'll reiterate that you're not even interacting with Rom 5 here.

Jesus doesn't literally become sinful,

You're just repeating a rebuttal to a point that I don't make.
He literally becomes a sin OFFERING. A literal substitute. The Lamb of God.

He doesn't literally suffer punishment, and He is not literally judged.

OK, so He doesn't *literally* die on the cross.
His passion and death is not *literally* painful. They're figurative.
Is our forgiveness of sin based on His non-literal death therefore non-literal as well?

there cannot be any changes in the relationship between them (the Son is eternally begotten by the Father, eternally loved by the Father, etc).

Fine and dandy, but the persons of the Trinity DO different things throughout history. The Holy Spirit now indwells all believers as opposed to what He did in the OT. The Spirit gave spectacular sign gifts to the church, which He didn't do before, and He's not doing the same thing in the same way right now. The Son became incarnate in real space and time. The Son died on the Cross. The Son now, and for eternity in the future, has and will have a physical body.

the Father judging the Son as a sinner

As a sin *offering*. This changes your entire point.

There is no question of wrath or judgment of the Son

I'd say the question is whether the PUNISHMENT for sin, the wrath of God, comes UPON Christ.
1 Pet 2:24 - He bore our sins
Heb 13:13 - bearing the disgrace He bore
Heb 9:28 - Christ bears the sins of many
John 3:36 - the wrath of God abides on the guy who doesn't believe, but somehow not on Jesus, Who substitutes in place of the sinner who does believe?
Same thing in Rom 2:5, Rom 3:5, Rom 4:15, Rom 5:8-10, Eph 2:2-5, Eph 5:6, Col 3:6, 1 Thess 1:10, 1 Thess 2:15-17, etc.

Rhology: Was the Cross God's Plan B?
Certainly, in the sense that evil is never intended directly but only accidentally and conditionally.

Wow. May I ask *when* God's hand and purpose predestined Christ's passion and crucifixion to occur? From eternity past? Or right after the fall?

Supralapsarian Calvinists deny this

And so do I.

There is no evidence to the contrary

Except Rom 5 et al.

The GHM derives its validity from the truths of natural reason, so using any conclusion of the GHM to deny natural reason is irrational.

This is a side note, as we both acknowledge. That said, I wasn't contrasting the GHM with "reason". I was contrasting it with heavy-handed and clumsy uses of the expression "literal interpretation".

But it's an insult to God to say that He is asking you to deny what is known by the same natural reason that He gave you.

For the sake of argument, I grant that here. But when one has good reason (ie, divine revelation DIRECTLY speaking to the topic) to think A and human "reason" says B, one has to go A. There's a reason why 1 Cor 1-3 was written.


And for the grand finale, I'll just put these words of CrimsonCatholic here in boldface. Or should I say baldface?

To put it another way, you don't need the Bible to do what God gave you a brain today. If you make reason dependent on the Bible, then you spurn God's greatest gift to man, the one on which the Bible itself depends.

Peace,

Zwingli's Denial Of original Sin

I meant to get to this a while back- the shocking information brought forth by a Roman Catholic apologist that the Protestant Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli appears to have denied the doctrine of “original sin”. Doing any sort of research into the writings of Zwingli is difficult, simply because only a small portion of his writings are available- probably because Zwingli simply wasn’t as popular, nor as good of a writer (or theologian) as Luther and the other Reformers.
Like the other Reformers, Zwingli staunchly proclaimed God’s grace. Zwingli proclaimed that salvation is the consequence of God’s election, and that election is “in Christ”. In other words, Christ’s life and death secured the salvation of His people.

Zwingli was similar to Luther in that he strongly opposed free will. His writing against free will actually appeared before Luther’s magnum opus, Bondage Of The Will. Opposing the Latin Vulgate translation of Genesis 8:21, Zwingli stated that the thoughts of the heart are evil- not that they tend toward evil. By “tending”some extracted the notion of “free will” from the text. Zwingli definitely saw man as enslaved to sin, being able to do nothing to achieve salvation.
Zwingli held the descendants of Adam are born spiritually dead because of Adam’s disobedience. Because of spiritual death, all the sons of Adam are powerless to do good any works. In order to do any good works, God’s gift of faith must first be given to a person. Zwingli says, “The source of works must be faith. If faith is present, the work is acceptable to God. If not, then whatever we do is full of perfidity and not only not acceptable to God but an abomination to Him” [Zwingli, An Exposition of The Faith, found in: Zwingli and Bullinger: The Library of Christian Classics, Volume XXIV (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953), 270]. Zwingli is not saying that works done in a state of grace merit salvation. Rather, those who are saved by Christ’s righteousness imputed to them are those who demonstrate their faith by good works.

He also held to the traditional distinction between original sin and actual sin. Zwingli held that the disease in us as a result of Adam’s sin can be described as spiritual death, powerlessness to secure salvation, and self love. The actual sin that flows from this are the actual transgressions men do.

Zwingli was an ardent supporter of infant baptism, but not the Roman Catholic doctrine of infant baptism. He argued infant baptism must be understood as a “covenant sign,” not the cleansing away of original sin. Then came the Anabaptists who denied infant baptism, so when he debated them, he argued for the covenant sign and not that baptism washes away original sin.

In his argumentation, he explained original sin “...is a defect which of itself is not sinful in the one who has it” and “it cannot damn him, whatever the theologians say, until out of this defect he does something against the law of God. But he does not do anything against the law, until he knows the law” [Zwingli cited by W.P. Stephens, Zwingli: An Introduction To His Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 74]. In other words, infant baptism has no effect on original sin. While it is present in infants, baptism does nothing to erase it, simply because it doesn’t damn the child until that child actually does something sinful.

Melanchthon and Luther saw Zwingli’s view as a Pelagian for espousing this- and for actually allowing the possibility of that which he so vigorously opposed, free will. Zwingli thus got himself into a theological jam. Stephens notes that Zwingli struggled to provide a coherent answer:

“[Zwingli] gave a varied response to the question whether original sin damns us. We are sinners as we are descendants of a sinner. However, if we are sinners, we are enemies of God and therefore damned. But Zwingli qualifies this apparently clear statement by reference to Jacob who was beloved of God before he was born, so that original sin could not have damned him. He supports this with reference to the covenant with Abraham’s seed in Gen. 17:7, which includes the children of Christian parents. ‘If therefore, he promises that he will be a god to Abraham’s seed, that seed cannot have been damned because of original guilt.’ Besides these arguments which relate to election Zwingli also developed an argument relating to Christ’s work as making good the evil done by Adam, a point made in relation to Rom. 5:19-21. Zwingli applied this to the children of Christian parents, but held back from applying it to the whole human race” [Ibid, 74].

Stephens goes on to point out that Zwingli’s “mature position” was that original sin can do nothing but lead to actual sin. Only those who trust in Christ will not be damned. In other words, original sin will do nothing but eventually damn.

So what can be concluded of Zwingli’s “denial of original sin”? Technically, Zwingli did not deny original sin, but actually at points in his writing denied that the guilt of original sin could damn without an action. In other words, Zwingli held a contradiction, that is mankind is born with original sin, but that sin doesn’t damn until it surfaces and commits an infraction. Also it can be said that Zwingli vacillated on this point as his biographer above points out: “[Zwingli] gave a varied response to the question whether original sin damns us. We are sinners as we are descendants of a sinner. However, if we are sinners, we are enemies of God and therefore damned.” But even while at times affirming that original sin damns, his assertions lead to even more troubling theological points- that the elect are free from the damnation of original sin (even though he does admit that until the gift of faith is given, men remain in sin).

His biographer Rev. G.W. Bromiley points out, “…Zwingli failed to work out any fully developed or coherent theology of baptism. But with his definition of baptism as a covenant sign he did indicate the lines along which much profitable work was to be done by the later Reformed theologians” [Zwingli and Bullinger: The Library of Christian Classics, Volume XXIV, 270]. My own opinion would be that Luther and Melanchthon were correct in finding some Pelagianism in Zwingli’s working out original sin and actual sin. On the other hand, Zwingli’s denial of the Roman Catholic use of baptism to wash away original sin was a worthy endeavor, as was his work on linking baptism and covenant.