A prophet of God
Reply #20 - August 23, 2014, 09:46 PM
I think the conflict is artificial. The Qur'an calls Jesus "the Messiah" and recognizes his virgin birth, miraculous abilities, and status as a messenger of God and prophet with the 'injil,' a holy scripture.
But the Qur'an is schizophrenic as to *how* divine Jesus was; ultimately, it treats him as similar to Mohammed in the Muslim tradition, where you are technically not supposed to worship him (he was a messenger as other messengers), but on the other hand all his actions and words, even those not in the Qur'an, are divinely inspired (the Sunnah) or (in the older tradition) he is the righteously-guided ruler of the community who mediates/intercedes between God and humans. Thus he is effectively divine and miraculous, but also not the proper subject of worship, as the divinity simply came THROUGH him, and is not a part of him.
This, of course, is a common Christological position held by nontrinitarian Christians; in fact it is THE most common position that nontrinitarian Christians hold on Christology.
But if Jesus was not himself God, then how could he save mankind? By bringing the Gospel, the Injil holy book. And how does that save mankind? Because it consists of the core message of all true monotheism: Allah is the only God, the bodily resurrection will happen, and the Last Judgment is at hand, when the unbelievers will pay. This is how Jesus saved, by bringing this truth, and Jesus will preside over the Last Judgment (in Muslim tradition no less!!!) accordingly. That Jesus is the Messiah who will return to rule over the world in connection with the Last Judgment is again a hangover from early Islam's Christian foundations that the later Muslim tradition never quite succeeded in suppressing. Originally, I think that believers expected Jesus to return and the last judgment to begin when Mohammed conquered Jerusalem. When that unexpectedly did not happen (Mo died), there was speculation that perhaps one of Mo's *children*, or one of the *rulers* of the believers, would somehow bring this to happen. Abd al Malik doubtless thought of himself in this capacity, as Allah's representative (the caliph) who would usher in the end of days in connection with Jerusalem. Likewise the doctrine of the "Mahdi" probably came from this theological-historical development.
I repeat that an enormous part of why the Qur'an has been misunderstood is that the nature of Eastern Christianity and Judaic Christianity is simply not familiar to most people; they are only familiar with *Hellenic* Christianity, as expressed in the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Creed (formally adopted in 451, less than 200 years before Mohammed's death no less). There is an enormous history of "Lost Christianities," of which Mohammed's believers was essentially one.
Topic: A prophet of God