JESUS IMBROGLIO REVISITED
By Babatunde Jose
The 1991 Gulf War, codenamed Operation Desert Storm is a watershed in the history of the Arab world and its afterburner and attendant consequences are still being felt. But it is not the first desert storm. A storm has been raging in the ‘desert’ for more than 2000 years over a prophet of God called Jesus.
Disputes concerning the nature of Jesus have deluged the earth with the blood of millions of people since his birth: From the persecution of his followers to the adoption of his creed by the Roman Emperor Constantine as state religion, followed in time by the altercation with Islam and the crusades, the Great Schism, the Reformation, and the Inquisition, to present day animus between his followers and the followers of Islam.
Whole libraries have been devoted to academic discourse on the nature and mission of the man who his followers have elevated to a position of divinity and co-equal with God: A concept that was never contemplated during the lifetime of the man but was surreptitiously made into a creed three hundred years after his demise.
Even the concept of Trinity is not mentioned or enunciated in the Bible: The Platonic term trias, meaning three, was Latinized as trinitas, which gave us the English word trinity which is neither biblical nor Christian.
What then is the Islamic standpoint regarding the personality of the Prince of Peace – Jesus?
Muslims believe that Jesus (Eesa) was one of the mightiest messengers of God; that he was the Christ and that he was born miraculously. The miracles of Jesus are the supernatural deeds attributed to him in Christian and Islamic texts majority of them faith healings, exorcisms, resurrection, control over nature and forgiveness of sins.
However, in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus refuses to give a miraculous sign to prove his authority: “. . . and said unto them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it. Matthew 12:39
Notwithstanding, no Muslim is a Muslim if he does not believe in Jesus!”
Islam, however, takes great exception to the concept of the ‘Sonship’ of God and the deification of Christ: Islam teaches the existence of a PERFECT God, meaning there is no sharer in His Nature and His Attributes: See (Quran, 112:1-4). This then is the point of departure.
As regards the sons of God, no prophet can claim exclusivity of that phrase as there are tons of ‘sons’ in the Bible: The Bible contains 2541 instances. Though John 3:18 mentioned “the only begotten Son of God”; Psalms, 2:7, says ” I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” This reference is to David which makes the ‘begotten son’ doctrine untenable as there are other instances of such references.
As for the deification of Christ and his divinity Deuteronomy 6:4 (which is the Shema recited by every Jew each morning: “Shama Israelu Adonai Ila Hayno Adna Ikhad”- Deuteronomy 6:4,) echoes Quran 112.
Note in Mark 12:28-34 how Jesus and a Jewish scribe he encountered understood this text: “And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him; which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, ‘The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord. . . . . ..” Mark 12:28-34. Jesus said, ‘The Lord our God’.
There are many instances in the Holy Bible that corroborate the notion of one God and the messengership of Jesus. For, a messenger is defined as ‘he that is sent’; hear John: John 17:3 — “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
The oneness of God received emphasis in the following verses: Deuteronomy 32:39; 2 Samuel 7:22; 1 Kings 8:60; 2 KINGS 5:15; 2 Kings 19:15; 1 Chronicles 17:20; Nehemiah 9:6; Isaiah 43:10,11; Isaiah 46:9; Hosea 13:4 and also in Joel 2:27. Ephesians 4:6; 1 Timothy 1:17; And many other places.
We could call Jesus many things, even as in 1 Timothy 2:5 where it is said: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Yes! As a mediator between man and God; but not God! For, as James 2:19 says: Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
Two reasons have been advanced to prove that Jesus is God, according to them; Jesus is God because HE SHARES THE NATURE OF GOD, and HE IS IN EVERY WAY LIKE GOD.
Numerous verses from the Bible prove that Jesus neither SHARED THE NATURE OF GOD, nor is he IN EVERY WAY LIKE GOD. They negate the very concept of God in both its etymological and spiritual sense. God said in Isaiah 42:8 “I am the Lord, that is my name; I will not give my glory to another”.
And the ultimate contradiction was when Jesus (God) was asked about the ‘Hour’, he said: “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” (Mark, 13:32)
The ultimate profanity and blasphemy: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth.” (Acts 8:32).
This definitely cannot be the God we worship and pray to five times daily and whose praise we sing in churches all over the world every Sunday.
There is no iota of doubt; the primitive man is higher in his concept of God the Almighty than the millions of civilized men and women of both East and West who strut the world today.
The whole discourse is centered and premised on an erroneous and fallacious conception of God. It is a noxious notion of an anthropomorphic conception of God. God has become the creation of man in the image of ma.
No doubt, the discourse is a continuation of pre-biblical age, borrowed from the Sumerian/Babylonian conception of God as an extraterrestrial. It is this that informed the various references in the bible to the Nephilim.
The first mention of “sons of God” in the Hebrew Bible occurs at Genesis 6:1–4. Yet we know from inference that Almighty God is Spirit and, in His usual glorified state, is invisible to the human eye (Colossians 1:15; 1 Timothy 1:17; Hebrews 11:27). That partly explains why John said, “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18). God is spirit – His nature is not flesh and blood.
Though Jesus is mentioned by name in twenty-five places in the Holy Quran, he is also addressed with respect as “the word of God”, as “the spirit of God”, as a “sign of God”, and numerous other epithets of honor spread over fifteen different chapters.
After a description of the high position which Jesus occupies as a prophet, the jury is out to repudiate the dogma that he was God, or the son of God, or anything more than man. If it is said that he was born without a human father, so also was Adam. Indeed, Adam was born without either a human father or mother. Eve his wife, was ‘manufactured’ from the ribs of Adam without a father or a mother. Finally, there was “Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God… Without father, without mother, without descent, having NEITHER BEGINNING of days, NOR END of life…” Hebrews 7:1-3. Here is a candidate for Divinity itself, for only God Almighty could possess these qualities. Adam had a beginning (in the garden), Jesus had a beginning (in the stable); Adam had an end and so had Jesus “and he gave up the ghost”. But where is Melchisedec?
The greatness of Jesus arose from the divine command of Allah ‘KUN’-“Be”: for after that he was – more than dust – a great spiritual leader and teacher.”
Barka Juma’at and Best Wishes for a Merry Christmas!
Babatunde Jose
