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The Bible, the Qur’an, and the Abrogations
People who read the Qur’an find pairs of ayat (verses) like this:
Surely, those who believe and the Jews and the Christians and the Sabians – whichever party from among these truly believes in ALLAH and the Last Day and does good deeds, shall have their reward with their Lord, and no fear shall come upon then nor shall they grieve. (Sura 2:62).
O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends of each other. And whoso among you takes them for friends is indeed one of them. Verily ALLAH guides not the unjust people. (Sura 5:51).
How does one explain verses which seems to contradict each other in this way?
Although not all Muslims subscribe to it, the concept of the abrogations is probably the most widespread way of addressing the problem of verses in the Qur’an which contradict each other. They base this on the following:
Whatever message WE abrogate or cause to be forgotten, WE bring one better than that or the like thereof. Knowest thou not that ALLAH has the power to do all that HE wills? (2:106)
Although this might seem sensible to the Christian, it contradicts the entire Islamic concept of the Qur’an.
When we speak of the Bible as being the revealed Word of God, we understand that it was written over a long period of time with a number of human agents in the process:
“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.” (Hebrews 1:1-2)
We also understand that the Bible, although certainly inspired, was not mechanically dictated:
“For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).
As explained in Apologetics for the Rest of Us:
Although the scriptures are God breathed, they are not without the human agency of the men that God chose to transmit his inspired word to. The phrase “carried along” is the Greek pheromenoi, which is the same root word used in conjunction with the wind at the end of another verse: Fearing that they would run aground on the sandbars of Syrtis, they lowered the sea anchor and let the ship be driven along (Acts 27:17b). Thus, although the Holy Spirit carried the human writers of Scripture along, the New Testament denies the concept that God did all the work and merely used these writers as tools. (p. 22)
As mentioned earlier, the Islamic concept of the Qur’an’s inspiration is entirely different:
Nay, but it is a glorious Qur’an, In a well-guarded tablet. (85:21-22)
And, indeed, WE sent Messengers before thee, and WE gave them wives and children. And it is not possible for a Messenger to bring a Sign save by the command of ALLAH. For every term there is a divine decree. ALLAH effaces and establishes what HE wills, and with HIM is the source of all commandments. (13:38:39)
The term “source of all commandments” is literally translated “mother of the Book.” Islam teaches that the Qur’an is a perfect, earthly copy of the Mother of the Book in heaven with Allah. Human transmission has no place in this process.
But herein is the source of the difficulty. On the one hand, Muslims state that it is a perfect book, a copy of the eternal original with Allah. But if that is the case, and given the fact that it was set forth in such a short period of time, one would not expect the need for abrogation or change in its message. These changes are especially important since Islam is a religion where one’s eternity depends upon what one does in this life.
On the other hand, if we toss out the abrogations and take the statements at variance with each other at face value, then it is possible to see Allah depicted as very changeable in his expectations. If his expectations changed in such a short period of time, then how can we know that his expectations will not change again? Or have not changed again? Now the way out of this is to assume some kind of progressive revelation. But progressive revelation makes more sense in the context and especially the time frame that the Bible is written in, and is more compatible with the method of inspiration that the Bible claims. But with the Qur’an, given the claims made for its nature, there should be no “progressive revelation” there.
The problem of contradictory statements in the Qur’an-and we showed a good example of this at the beginning of this piece-cannot be solved. If we affirm the abrogations and say some verses nullify others, then the Islamic concept of the inspiration of the Qur’an is undermined. If we deny the abrogations, then Allah is depicted as rapidly changeable, which not only undermines representations of his character, but also undermines the idea that the Qur’an is a final revelation.
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Thoughts on Infant Baptism and the Nature of the Church
Both Fr. Greg and Abu Daoud have weighed in on this post, itself a follow-up to my reflections on the Orthodox view of the Eucharist. Let me respond to both and, in doing so, make some observations about these two important subjects.
To start with the end of Fr. Greg’s response: on a practical level, not all churches which practice believers’ baptism apply the concept of the age of accountability as rigidly as the one you described did. Pentecostal churches can be very flexible about this. I am a member of a local church that thinks nothing of baptising five and six year olds. Some of these children make more coherent declarations of faith than the adults! Some churches need to lighten up on this issue.
Getting back to the beginning, we really don’t know that the church baptised infants from the start. The evidence, in fact, leads in the opposite direction, at least in the first century and a half. We do know that infant baptism wasn’t the enforced norm until the end of the Western Roman Empire (don’t stick the knife in that our end collapsed first.) One major reason for this was the fact that people delayed baptism because of the severities of the penitential system. For some people, baptism represented their last rites! Probably the most illustrious example of this was the Emperor Constantine, who presided over the most important gathering in the history of the church (Nicea I) unbaptised! But he had spiritual advisors such as Eusebius of Caeserea, which shows that they don’t make bishops like they used to. (Ambrose of Milan was another example of an unbaptised person thrust into a high profile Christian position.)
But that gets to Abu Daoud’s point: the nature of baptism is tied to the nature of the church. And that’s where the problem is. The triumph of infant baptism as the enforced norm of the church came hand in hand with the lowering of the church’s standards as to what it expected out of its people. Once the penitential system fell down, the risk of baptising an infant relative to their subsequent conduct dropped as well. One of the thing that fuelled the whole monastic movement was that men and women desired a higher walk with God that was unavailable in normal parish and diocesan life. Although this also was driven by Late Roman social forces, if real life in Christ is that hard to find in a church, you’ve got problems. And I experienced some of those both in TEC and the RCC.
Believers’ baptism speaks of a higher standard for Christians. Since you brought up parental control over children, a good start would be for churches such as yours to give parents an open option regarding their children’s baptism. But a better way would be to lower the age at which children’s declaration of faith in Jesus Christ is accepted a valid in preparation for baptism.
Let me say that I am aware that real life produces results that don’t always go with the ideal. I had some fun on the very issue of baptism and salvation while writing this.
And now I can turn to Fr. Greg’s matter of ecclesiology. I dealt with that issue (from a RCC perspective, at least) a long time ago in my piece We May Not Be a Church After All. I’m fairly confident, however, that most of what I said applies to Orthodox churches as well. But I think I need to make some further exposition relative to how I view the history of the church, because I tend to formulate things historically rather than theologically.
There are basically two ideas of what the history of the church is about.
The RCC/Anglican/Orthodox view is that Jesus Christ founded one church with his Apostles, and their successors constitute the only true church. All the rest are schismatics. The tricky part comes in when the successors don’t agree. This can be interpreted as proof that these churches do in fact have the apostolic chrism, because the originals argued amongst themselves over who would be first as they do now.
The Protestant/Evangelical view is that Jesus Christ came to found a church based on his written Word and the body of believers’ faithful adherence to same. All the rest are lost as geese. The tricky part comes in that, since they deny their churches to be active redemptive agents, their assumption that everyone else are lost as geese cannot be automatically assumed.
I don’t really adhere to either school. IMHO, the apostolic succession churches were the “original plan,” so to speak. But their failure to effectively challenge their flocks to experience the radical transforming power of the risen Saviour–which is essential to eternal life–led to the raising up of other groups which would do the job. I describe this process in an Anglican/Evangelical context in Taming the Rowdies, but other examples can be found.
Finally, to answer Abu Daoud’s question about the definition of a sacrament, as I explained to my Pentecostal bretheren some time back, I still prefer the Prayer Book one: an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. But the differences between the two are minor. However, I have come to realise that the integrity of any sacramental system–and the grace derived therefrom–depends on prior volition. And that’s a major problem with infant baptism.
Fr. Greg mentioned that the arguments for infant baptism came after it was ensconced in the practice of the church. But this may be an example of a method that a Russian friend attributed to his own people: act first, think later. Perhaps this is one reason why they were herded into the Dniepr so willingly for their own first Orthodox baptism over one thousand years ago.
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Response to the Comments on “Reflections on an Orthodox View of the Eucharist”
My four-part series on this subject got a few comments, which will enable me to expand on some things that obviously weren’t clear in the first part.
First thing to note: I got no responses from my Pentecostal bretheren on this subject, after the considerable back and forth on this subject here. Sooner or later this will be an issue but, like everything else, Pentecostals have an entirely different dynamic in which doctrinal matters are discussed.
Let me first turn to two comments at Part II. First Abu Daoud:
I wonder if your judgment of the sacramental system is not too rigid. “God is bound to the sacraments, but he is not bound by them.” Hi grace can operate outside of their visible signs. Even in the Roman Catholic tradition there is a baptism of blood (martyrs who do not receive water baptism, but are still saved) and the baptism of desire, for those who do not KNOW that they should be baptized, but would desire the sacrament had they known.
And then there’s Father Greg:
But then, you write above: “John tells us that our new birth is via baptism. This is something I cannot agree with.”
However, as with the Eucharist, the New Testament does not support such an interpretation. In the New Testament, beginning with John 3:5 and including Titus 3:5, “new birth” or “regeneration” is always associated with baptism.
The more I think about this issue, the more it’s apparent that the trout in the milk of this issue is infant baptism.
Let’s consider Holy Communion. We agree that the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist validates many of the claims made for receiving the Holy Communion. On the flip side the consequences of unworthy reception are as strong of an argument against a purely symbolic Eucharist as one could want. As Pat Robertson pointed out last Sunday, people don’t die for unworthy reception of just a symbol.
In both cases, however, the benefits or curses of the sacrament are dependent upon the spiritual state of the recipient. Now the Roman Catholic would come back and say that this in turn is dependent upon proper reception of forgiveness in the sacrament of Penance. But that also is dependent upon valid contrition of the penitent (unless you’re Cardinal Richelieu, in which case only the fear of hell (attrition) is necessary.) So the proper spiritual state of the recipient is still important.
In the case of infant baptism, however, such a state is irrelevant, because the infant cannot make such a spiritual decision for him or herself. There have been many arguments advanced to try to fix this problem, from the “infant faith” business to shifting the responsibility to the godparents to the Augustinian solution of original sin. All of this doesn’t take away from the core problem with infant baptism: the infant makes no decision, so you end up on relying entirely on the efficacy of the sacrament for whatever infusion of grace (in this case, the inheriting of eternal life) comes with the sacrament.
Once you have this with one sacrament, you compromise the whole system. To directly address Abu Daoud’s remark, I don’t know of any responsible Catholic or Orthodox writer who would say that one could achieve eternal life solely on the reception of the sacraments, but on the operative level too many people are acting as if that is the case. If it works in infant baptism, why not everywhere else?
Eliminating infant baptism and only baptising people subsequent to a turning to God through Jesus Christ eliminates this problem. It sets up the same type of volition/sacrament pairing you have in the Holy Communion. It also solves the relationship between baptism and salvation which Fr. Greg rightly points out is inherent in the New Testament.
Ultimately people have to decide whether they are Christians or not. A church that ties that conscious decision to baptism makes a powerful statement with both.
As an aside, I should mention that the secular import of that decision is easier to see in some cultural settings than others. I’m primarily thinking of secular cultures, but Islamic ones also come to mind. That’s one reason why I lament the attitude that Evangelicals take towards Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic believers in the Middle East. Same believers have to make a serious decision to remain a Christian in a culture whose pressure to become Muslim increases all of the time. Evangelicals should take the time (as I did last weekend) to watch a Coptic priest like Father Zakaria lead Muslims to Christ on television.
But let me address Fr. Greg’s last comment:
“It is my prayer that this exposition will be enlightening, helping to patch a lacuna in the garment of Pentecost that has covered the world.”
Okay, but I have to ask: are we sure that the Lord’s Supper, as celebrated in the Church of God and in similar places, is in fact the same as that which is being celebrated in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches?
One of the purposes of this series is to move things forward to the point where the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is widely acknowledged by Pentecostal churches, at which point we can answer this question, if not in liturgy or perhaps in detailed theological explanation, in the affirmative.
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Rowan Williams and the Visions of Lourdes: One Accomplishment, One Legend, One Nightmare
I wanted to ignore this but couldn’t:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was today branded a ‘papal puppet’ after he became the first leader of the Church of England to accept visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes as historical fact.
He asserted that 18 visions of Our Lady allegedly experienced by Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 were true.
His words shocked millions of Protestants worldwide because they not only signified a break with Protestant teaching on the Virgin Mary but also Dr Williams’s personal acceptance of the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is explicitly linked to the apparitions.
After the CoE’s decision to ordain women bishops–which set their relations with Rome back considerably–his affirmation of all of this does accomplish one thing: it is his declaration that Affirming Catholicism is a competitor to the Roman and Anglo-Catholic varieties, not a complement. But he’s doubtless too addled to see it that way…
I’ll reproduce an earlier posting of mine of another gaffe of this, the Joe Biden of Anglican Primates:
The Archbishop of Canterbury says that the nativity story in the New Testament is ‘a legend’:
Dr Williams said: “Matthew’s gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told. It works quite well as legend.”
That’s more than one can say for Rowan Williams. He’s more of a nightmare than anything else these days, and his Advent letter doesn’t help matters.
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Photo of Henry Kissinger and Sarah Palin in New York After Their Meeting
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 