Fahad Tasleem – WHAT IS SALVATION A Dialogue Rick Mattson Rice University
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Our format tonight will be each speaker will get about 15 to 20
minutes to give their presentation as to what their faith tradition
says about the topic of salvation. And then we will have 20 minutes
of dialogue where each speaker can interact with one another and
respond to what they briefly stated. Then we will open it up
for 20 minutes of q&a until AHA and I will be sifting through
those questions. As Rick and Fahad dialogue with one another after
that, we will have a time of closing. And so with that being
said, we would like to introduce our first speaker.
Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim, in the name of God, the benefits in the
merciful, All praise is due to the Prophet Muhammad, peace and
blessings be upon him. And all of the prophets, including Jesus,
Moses, John, the Baptists, Abraham, Isaac, and all the great
prophets. So tonight's topic, I think, is very, very interesting.
And I wanted to start off just in this in this mindset, because a
lot of times when you come to a particular setting like this, you
kind of come with a mindset to say, I'm going to go root for my
team. And so certain epithets come to mind, like what is, you know,
the Christian understanding of salvation, and what is the Islamic
understanding of salvation. But tonight, what I'd like us to do is
try our utmost best. And I know, you know, obviously, we come from
a wide range of, you know, psycho spiritual, emotive states, with
backgrounds and families and things like that. And it may be,
it's gonna, it's gonna be a challenge, but try to put those
epithets aside for a second, and look at the concepts of salvation
as objectively as possible. And I think there's three tools that we
can, we can kind of use to judge the concept of salvation itself.
One of those is to say, is the concept of salvation? Is it
rationally clear and logical? That's number one. Number two, is
it spiritually meaningful? And number three, is it intuitively
sound? Now, one of the things is that when we have these
conversations,
you know, from the Quran, we are always always told to start with
those things that are similar. So the thing that I like to start
with, and it makes sense to start here, before I dive right into the
concept of salvation, is the concept of God. And I think
that's, I think we can start with a point of agreement. And a point
of agreement is that a, all of us are Christians and Muslims, we
believe in God. So that's a good starting point. But even beyond
that, I think we can agree that our conceptualization of God is
that God is maximally loving and maximally forgiving. And I'm
hoping that we can we can come to terms with that. Now, that being
said, I wanted to put forth a kind of a deductive scenario, and then
use this concept of salvation, Islam. And juxtapose that with a
convert at the salvation of concept, salvation, Christianity,
and kind of put it to the test. So the deductive format that I want
to look at, excuse me, is that premise so you know, deductions
have typically two premises and a conclusion. So premise number one,
that for God to be maximally loving, he has to be maximally
forgiving. I don't think there's any sort of disagreement here. I
think that's pretty acceptable. It's the second one that's gonna
be contentious. And so bear with me, we spoke about commonalities,
but obviously, there's going to be differences as well. So premise
number two, the biblical God is not maximally forgiving.
Therefore, the biblical God is not maximally loving. Now, that being
the case, that being the deductive setup that I have, premise B is
what's the, what's the controversy? Or what's
controversial here? So let's now take a look at salvation and see,
how do we substantiate premise B. And we can start right at the
beginning. And that being the story of Adam. Now again, as a
commonality, both of our traditions believed in the Prophet
Adam, we believe that he was in paradise that he sinned. Now, of
course, when you look at the biblical narration, the narrative
in the Bible, and you look at the Quranic narration, you find that
there are certain differences, and maybe someone would say that those
differences are indeed significant, who ate from the
tree? What was you know, what was going on exactly? The serpent
versus the devil, and so on, so forth. But the key point that I
wanted to make in terms of this, the story of Adam, is this. When
we look at the Christian understanding, we find that Adam
sins and the story ends, and of course, then Adam is cast down on
the earth.
As a punishment. Now, of course, one of the good things is that I
have Rick here. So if there's anything that I'm saying that's
incorrect, he's going to correct me. So that from my understanding
is what the main stream Christianity or mainline
Christianity has, or the biblical narrative narrative teaches. Now,
when we juxtapose that with the Quranic narrative, we see that the
story doesn't just end with Adam and Eve sinning. In fact, at the
end of the story, what happens is, is that God teaches Adam, how to
ask for forgiveness for tilaka, Adam O'Meara be he kalimat, God
gives Adam the the words of how to ask for forgiveness. And so Adam
then asks God for forgiveness, oh, God, forgive me, I wronged myself,
and so on and so forth. For dava Ali, and then God says, and so we
forgave him. What's really interesting is the Arabic word
here daba, which means to turn to lovingly turn to Adam, even though
he's faltered, even though he sinned, and forgive him in the who
who want to wobble Rahim Indeed, God is the one that's ever
turning, ever accepting of the repentance, and the Most Merciful.
So right at the right at the onset, we see that there's this
understanding of the Adamic paradigm. So one aspect is was
Adam sent to earth as a punishment from the Islamic worldview from
the Islamic paradigm, indeed, he wasn't. Because we know this,
because when God speaks to the angels, he tells them the plan
ahead of time, he says, I'm going to create this human being, and
I'm going to send them to Earth. This is before we're even talking
about Adam.
So that Adamic paradigm or that Adamic prototype archetype rather,
you find that is what is tied to the Human Project. In other words,
and this is where we come into the Islamic con concept of salvation.
In other words, that the human project is such that when the
human being slips and sins, it is not a concept that is tied to
something outside of the human being, or to a specific event. But
it is a direct relationship with the divine, that the person with
their heart and their soul and just says, oh, Allah, Oh, God,
forgive me. And there's a direct divine connection. And that's it.
There's no nothing that comes in between that. And of course, when
we speak about the concept of salvation, it leads us to
understand what is the purpose of life in and of itself, because
from an Islamic paradigm, the purpose of life, you know, to put
it very simply, is to worship God. But what does that term mean?
Worship in the Islamic paradigm, is to love God, to the maximum as
much as you can, is to know God, and to obey God. And every human,
what you'll find is that every human worships something. In fact,
there's a very famous author, Martin lings, he said, man cannot
not worship, there is something that you love the most. And that
could be yourself, there is something that you want to know
the most could be yourself, it could be, you know, something
else, some topic, some concepts of ideology, whatever it might be,
and there's something that you're going to obey the most, from an
Islamic paradigm, those concepts are that that love, that
obedience, that knowledge to know should be at its highest point
when it comes to God. And that is the very purpose and drive and
meaning of life.
So we have this understanding. And by the way, when we say that it's
it's the concept of worship has to do with loving God as much as you
can to the highest state, highest possible as as much as you can,
and submitting to God and obeying God, you have to have both of
them.
Because you can imagine now a father who loves his child, but
that father is not worshiping his child, you don't call it worship,
at least in the Islamic paradigm. Now, conversely, you can imagine a
tyrannical king, and his subjects may submit to Him, they may obey
Him. But that isn't worship either. It's only when you couple
this, the highest state of love, coupled with the highest state of
obedience, and the highest state of knowing that's what is known as
worship from the Islamic paradigm. And you find this in the Adamic
archetype that's presented right at the get go, in terms of the
story of Adam. And so to put it very simply, the process of
salvation is that when a person slips, they ask God for
forgiveness, and God forgives him there's a direct relationship with
the divine. Now, let me come back to what I had mentioned a few
minutes ago, and that was sorry, one second.
And that was the deduction that I put forward the deductive or
Given that put forward and that was just to repeat it. I said
premise number one is that for God to be maximally loving, he has to
be maximally forgiving. When I said that I don't think that's
something that we would that's contentious premise be I said that
the biblical God is not maximally forgiving. Conclusion or rather,
the what we find from that is that therefore, the biblical God is not
maximally loving. So that being the case, why is B true now that
we've understood the concept of salvation from an Islamic
paradigm, I'm saying that B is true, because what we find from
the Christian paradigm to the best of my understanding, is that God's
love is rooted in suffering, because God's forgiveness of
humanity is outside of the the connection between the human and
the divine directly. It is based on an event that happened in a
certain epoch of time, the entire forgiveness of humanity is
something that's outside of that loving relationship between the
person and the divine. It's like it's a third party transaction,
right? And so, is it maximally loving, maximally forgiving? For
God, who we understand to be maximally loving and maximally
forgiving? Isn't maximally forgiving for God, to put up this
barrier, in a sense, and have it be based on an event that's
outside of the direct human connection between the human and
the divine? That's number one. Number two, and this is where I
wanted to juxtapose the idea of that God forgave Adam.
Now, this is vital in understanding the difference. Why?
Because from that conception of God forgiving Adam, we understand
the Islamic understanding of human anthropology. I don't mean what
you study in school, the sign the science of anthropology, I mean,
what is the constitution of the human being, from an Islamic
paradigm, the human being, is born in what is known in Islamic
parlance, as upon the fitrah. What we can translate in a way or
explain in a way to mean the original normative disposition.
And that disposition that you start with is not one of sin and
evil, but it's one of good.
So it starts off from a position of goodness, not a position of
evil and sin. So moving from there, is it maximally is it? Is
it a idea? Is there an idea of maximal love for God to create
human beings that are inherently sinful? Because it's as if you're
starting from already having a distance between yourself and God?
Or does it make more sense? Is it more rationally clear and logical
when we have we our conception of God being maximally loving and
maximally forgiving, forgiving, to have human beings start in a state
of goodness? Now, I mentioned this concept of being rationally clear
and logical. But I also wanted to touch upon this idea of being
spiritually meaningful, because when we understand spiritual
meaningful, what we have to understand is that if we have the
Christian understanding of salvation and sin, and that human
beings are born in an original sin, and then inherently sinful,
are we saying that? Does that human sin, does that limit? God's
forgiveness? In other words, is sin greater than God?
And that's something that I like to think about, because you see
from the Islamic paradigm, and this is what you hear all the
time, right? So when you turn on the TV, and they show like crazy
Muslims on TV, and what do they say? Well, what, what, right,
that's what they're saying. What does that mean, though, that God
is the greatest, there's nothing greater than God. There's, there's
no sin that's greater than God. And so when we understand who God
is from an Islamic paradigm, we have to understand that God has
attributes all of the attributes of God that we understand, are
maximally perfect. He's maximally perfect in his love maximally
perfect in his mercy, maximally perfect in his justice, and so on
and so forth. And as such, he's maximally perfect in his
attributes and names, and that that does not and that means that
the he has no deficiencies. And so he is not deficient in any way
whatsoever. And so when we, if the idea is that there's a sin that's
greater than a law than God, are we saying that there is a realm a
domain where God's omnipotence doesn't reach? Is there a sin
that's greater than God and from an Islamic paradigm, we would say
no, in fact, the Quran mentions this over and over
over again. When God from our perspective says, Oh My servants
who have wronged yourself, law suck no to morality, law do not.
Do not despair, from the mercy of God. That He forgives all sin.
Jamia is the word that's used there, He forgives all sins.
There's no sin that's greater. Now there's one other aspect when I
wanted to speak about the concept of spiritual meaningfulness, and
that has to do with the idea of there being an event that covers
all of the sins in the set. And here, what I'm specifically
speaking about, is the idea of God sending His Son to die for the
sins of humanity. Now, this particular concept, we have to ask
it when a person that's 18 minutes, two minutes, okay, that
when a person when they hold fast to this idea, are we saying that
no matter what a person does, that they can enter paradise? Because
if that's the case, that as long as you have this belief in that
particular event, and that it happened in the way that it
happened, we're spoiled, we're told that that's how it happened.
We're supposed to believe in that as long as you believe in that,
you know, in the in, in, in the words of the great polymath and
the erudite scholar, we can say, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, who said,
it doesn't matter what you do, because then how does it matter if
it doesn't have any concept of reward or punishment? Doesn't that
render human action in terms of morals meaningless? So I'll go
ahead and stop there. I had a few more points, but I think time
might be up. So I look forward to
Rick's comments. And I thank you for your time.
I'm thankful to be back with Fahad. I met him two years ago, we
had a good time. You know, we spent lunch together and a little
bit more a couple of years ago weren't able to do that this time.
And I met to us MA and his family and MSA was so cordial to me here
two years ago. Really appreciate that. And then you know, we're all
suffering under COVID here. So thanks for inviting me. It's good
to see you, sir.
In the Bible, in John chapter three in the New Testament, a man
named Nicodemus comes to Jesus he comes under cover of night, he
seems a little bit embarrassed, perhaps that he would be visiting
Jesus and a few have seen the new series, the chosen. Nicodemus is
one of the main characters there. He's a leader of the Jerusalem
Council. And he says to Jesus, well, I can see that you're from
God, no one could do the science that you've been doing unless he
was a teacher from God. And then Jesus replies, very, truly I say
to you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they're born again.
Nicodemus, he's on a different wavelength. He goes, born again,
I'm old, I'm not going to enter my mother's womb. How is that
possible?
But Jesus was talking about a spiritual rebirth. So at the
center of the concept of Christian salvation, at least from our
experience, is this idea of rebirth in Jesus, and that's what
happened to me when I was a teenager. And I was traveling
around the country with my brothers, we had a family band,
and we were playing in nightclubs.
When I returned from that in southern Minnesota, small town,
America, Marshall, Minnesota, I was very empty inside but because
I wanted to be a teen idol and a rock star, and it wasn't working
out.
And some friends from high school came along and share the message
of Christ with me.
And I resisted for about six months, I was doing life my way
and I had my pride I didn't want to listen to them and I couldn't
deny their lives had changed. Amazingly from high school from
maybe self centered to other centered and God centered. I was
quite impressed with that. And so I to
kind of came face to face with Jesus and had this born again
experience. That's what Christian salvation was for me. Now we find
later on in the New Testament Nicodemus, he does seem to move
forward and become a follower of Jesus. And that's, that's what
it's like to do experience that salvation as a Christian and I
remember we share that message with about a dozen other of our
friends in high school. We had this little revival in Marshall
and many others came to faith now in small town America,
In southern Minnesota, I didn't know a single Muslim. And really
it wasn't till I got out into the Twin Cities, Minneapolis, St.
Paul, that I began to meet Muslims hanging out with Muslims. I was an
associate chaplain at Macalester College for a while and there was
a Muslim Chaplain there. I got to know her, and we just had some
rich conversations. And these are relationships that I treasure. And
I feel like I'm learning something more about the universe and about
God, maybe in some ways I hadn't thought of and that doesn't mean
we have to agree right for HOD to be friends and and respectful and
learn from each other.
Well, salvation now from more God's perspective and scripture,
there's a simple side of it. And then maybe a little bit more
complexity that the simplicity of the gospel is simply repentance
and faith. In a sense, maybe in a fairly abstract way, we would have
some commonality with our Muslim friends, repentance and faith. So
when Jesus comes on the scene, again, in the New Testament, in
Mark chapter one, he says, The kingdom of God is here, repent and
believe in the gospel.
In Isaiah, chapter six, back in the Old Testaments, 700 years
before the time of Jesus, I say it has this vision of God. And when
Isaiah sees the holiness and the grand doer, and the beauty of God,
his response is repentance. And so one of the main ideas one of the
doctrines in Christian theology is that whenever you're in the
presence, when you enter the presence of a holy God, what you
want to do is repent, that's the appropriate response, and then
place your faith in God and by faith. It doesn't just mean Right
belief, it's not just the intellect, it's not just a grasp
of the doctrine. It's trust.
And it's loving God, I was affirming some of what Fahad said
about that. So you transfer your trust away from yourself to Jesus,
and you trust him to provide salvation and to give it to you
as a gift, and then you have a heart change, not just a behavior
change.
The behavior follows the heart, but the heart is transformed.
Sometimes Christian theologians call it regeneration, God by His
Spirit enters the heart and turns the heart, away from the self away
from self absorption away from the sins of the world. And in this
world, not perfectly, follow me around for day, you'll see it's
not a perfect process. But ultimately, it is perfect one day
in heaven. And there's a kind of gradualism as we get there. And
that's the transformation. That's the regeneration of the heart away
from the self and toward others, and toward serving God. So that's
a kind of simple perspective on salvation from the Scripture. And
then if you want to do a little bit more theological digging, you
probably want to start off with God as being loving and just
fully loving and fully just and he creates the world out of nothing,
as a theatre, for His glory, and his granular and his beauty. And
then he creates man and woman in His image. And being in God's
image. That means that they have personality, they have creativity,
they have wisdom, they have responsibility to rule over the
earth, in God's stead, with God as their ruler, they rule over the
earth in a benevolent way. And it's man and woman. Now, think
about this idea of woman in ancient cosmology being created in
the image of God. Probably not a lot of other creation stories
would give woman that status that the Bible gives to her right off
the bat. And so they are created to be part of the family of God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Humanity is invited into that
relationship, but they fell away from God. For Han talked a bit
about that from the Quranic perspective. You can read about it
in Genesis one and two, there's a parallel story with some
differences. And by the time we get to Genesis, chapter three, the
divorce is complete.
God created the world good, and He created man and woman. Good, and
then they wrecked it.
They decided that they could live their life better by themselves
than they could with God. And so the divorce was complete, and then
the whole world was tainted, and marred and contaminated with their
sin. And so we inherit that, which seems kind of unfair in one sense,
but then every time we commit a sin ourselves, we participate in
this
Divorce that is taking place from God. Well, God is unsatisfied with
this divorce. He's unsatisfied with this arrangement. So he does
something about it, the very first thing he creates Israel, Abraham
and the nation of Israel to be a kind of prototype of the salvation
that's yet to come. And so he gives them His law. And he sets up
for them a sacrificial system. That's instructive in the moment
for what's to come in the future.
So what's instructive in the moment is that God says, I'm not
just going to
hand wave, one wave your sin, there's going to be a process of
atonement and redemption for your sin. We're going to walk through
something here. And so you see the Israelites setting up altars
throughout the Old Testament and sacrificing animals, because sin
is meaningful. sin has consequences. And God is saying,
We're going to walk through those consequences. And that's how
forgiveness is going to be achieved.
I come from a town where George Floyd was murdered. That was 20
minutes from my house.
Guess what the community demanded when George Floyd was murdered
justice, not just forgiveness, justice. That's what the community
demanded. Now, what if the state would have said, well, Derek
Chavez, we just forgive you.
Because we are a loving and forgiving state, the community
would have been in uproar. The community demands justice. And we
Christians believe that that's a, an instinct that has been put in
our hearts by God. And so the justice then, is a sacrifice of
animals in the Old Testament, which foreshadows the sacrifice
then of Jesus, it's just as in the New Testament, instead of using
you and I being punished for our sins, Jesus is punished. That's
Christian salvation, and so on. We trust in that salvation that is
given to us as a gift, we can't earn it. It's never about our
merit, the gap is too wide. We'll never do enough to close the gap.
That's Christian theology right there. And so we receive it as a
gift. And then our works. And our goodness and kindness and service
to God and community flows out from salvation. It doesn't earn us
salvation. That would be from my understanding FOD can correct me
that would be a big difference between Christianity and Islam,
that good works come after salvation, not leading up to or
bringing salvation Jesus then is in the New Testament is called the
Lamb of God. Well, why would we call the lamb because in the Old
Testament lambs were sacrificed, but they had to be sacrificed over
and over and over in the New Testament, then you have a
finality, the final, the one and only sacrifice, which comes
flowing out of the Old Testament and all those sacrifices, and then
is the combination or consummation of all those sacrifices, never to
be sacrificed again. And so God gets involved with us, he comes
down and becomes one of us and takes on the sin for himself. He
takes responsibility for the creation, He takes responsibility
in a sense for our sin. He gets involved, he's near he's close by
100 talked about personal God. And I would agree with that, and I'll
tell you how personal God gets like he comes down and gets his
feet dirty, and gets his fingernails dirty, and he walks
with us in a sacrifice for our sins. St. Paul, writing in
Ephesians, two eight through 10 says For it is by grace, you have
been saved through faith. And this is not from yourself, you didn't
earn it. It's the gift of God not by works so that no one can boast.
For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do so then we must serve, we
must love and we must care because we're created an image of God and
He's restored us back to that image. And then Christian theology
takes it a step further. It's not just individual salvation. It's
the reconciliation and the renewal of all the universe. The world is
fallen, it was created good, but it's fallen. And at the end of our
age, Christ will come back and He will draw all things to himself.
In the Gospel. The Book of Romans in the New Testament says the
creation longs for that time of redemption. It yearns for it. The
salvation of humanity then becomes extends out into creation, and all
things in the world. All of reality will be redeemed through
the Lord Jesus. Thank you
We're gonna give Rick and for hot about 15 minutes or so to interact
with one another Ask questions clarify.
Wow,
I need I need five hours with you not 15 minutes. That's why I was
telling Nick here. I was like, Dude, we gotta make the program
longer. I know, I just lost him. 15 minutes? I don't know, I just
feel like we have a lot to talk about. Sure, already talked about
bringing him up to Minnesota. And we'll do three hours of this. So
you're all invited? Summary? Okay. You want to be there in the
summer? That was my condition. By the way. I don't mind coming. But
I'm not coming in the winter. I'm sorry. Yes. Yeah. Could you talk a
little bit more about the process of sacrifice and redemption as an
extrinsic or external process? And not being direct? I think I
getting what you're saying by that. Seems to me, it is pretty
direct because God gets so involved in it, but want to give
you a chance to explain that a little more. So alright, so sort
of restate that question. I'm not sure if I understood what your
how, how is it indirect and extrinsic and external to the
process of forgiveness? I think that's what you were saying. The
idea of suffering and sacrifice, even from the Christian worldview.
Yes, I see. Okay. So my bad All right. Okay. So the reason I was
saying that is because one of the aspects within the Islamic
paradigm is that, that asking God for forgiveness, and God forgiving
you, is a direct relationship. It's just you and God directly.
It's not contingent upon the specific event of God sending His
Son, and then his son dying, which has a whole host of other kind of,
I would say, philosophical,
you know, underpinnings to it, right? So when I said that, it's
kind of external, it's based upon that event that you that is
contingent upon you accepting that event as well, if I'm not
mistaken. So it's the acceptance of the event, it's, you know, and
the event itself. And then in addition to that, I would say that
that initial distance between God and man, when a person is born
intrinsically, in a state of sin, you already have a distance. So
God is already setting a distance, as opposed to having the human
being born in a state of goodness, where that closeness is there. And
it's direct. And it's a very simple process. When a human being
slips, they simply with their heart and their soul, and their
you know, and then they have that regret, say, God, please forgive
me, we all slip. And so that direct relationship, I think, is
very pronounced. And it's it's at the center of the Islamic idea of
salvation. One of the things that appeals to me about Islam is its
directness, and its simplicity.
I think you're right, Christian salvation. Forgiveness is more
complicated than that. So we're born into sin. And then we need to
trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ and across, I
wouldn't say that from a Christian perspective.
It is revealed to us that way, we didn't invent or create the
theology of sacrifice. But I do think it harmonizes with our
experience, as I mentioned, in the George Floyd
example, that there needs to be a process something has to be paid
for a tone for, and I think that matches up with human experience
of justice in our society. If, you know, if the state just forgave
George Floyd,
the people would be up in arms. And I'm not saying the state is
maximally loving and maximally forgiving. Well, that would be
application though. Right? Yeah. Like if we said the state was
Yeah, maximally loving and actually forgiving, then, then,
you know, it's there might be a bit of a difference there, though.
Yeah.
Well, but I guess I'm suggesting that God has planted within our
hearts given us His instinct that something needs to be done about
sin. More than just a word of forgiveness, that, to me that, I
would say from a Christian theological perspective. It's,
it's too easy. Really. It's
yeah, I can't think of a good way to put that But
something needs to be done about sin. And what God has revealed in
Christianity is that there has to be a process to deal with this.
Okay. So I think this this leads to a really interesting point. And
then that would be and I get a lot of trouble for this question. It's
okay. You should have asked me anything you want. I don't care.
The login time with everyone. Okay. So the question is, simply
put, why? Why did some
They need to happen about the sin. Because if we're saying that this
is knocking against the justice of God, I understand that. But let's
put it this way when when you are talking about George Floyd and
obviously, I think there's there's a bit of a difference between the
people and then the people aren't maximally forgiving. So I think
there may be a, there may be a difference there. But from another
perspective in the Islamic paradigm, when we talk about God's
punishment, and God's forgiveness, and I think it's a really
important point, by the way, we have these concepts of promises.
And we have this concept of promises. And there's two types.
There's one that's known as a one in the Arabic language and the one
that's known as white. A word is a punt is a promise of reward.
And a worried is a promise of punishment. So now the thing is,
we ask the question, If God breaks a wide a promise of punishment, is
that unjust? So we would say it's not right to make to elucidate the
point. Imagine my son, he, he comes, you know, he tells me he
says, Look, you know, we're starting the semester High School,
and I tell him, Look, if you get straight A's, I will buy you a
car. He's not here. hamdulillah All Praise be to God. No one, I'm
taking me up on that, right. But now, if I, if he gets straight
A's, and I tell him that psych, like, that would be unjust,
because now I've broken a promise of reward. But now let's change
the scenario. Now I tell him, if you get less than a C, you will be
grounded for the entire summer. And he comes to me with all A's
and one C at like, let's say, I don't know, instead of 79. Right?
And he comes to me, he says, Baba, you know, I tried my hardest, I'm
really sorry. And can you just can you just, you know, forgive me? So
you know what? I know, this is what I said. But I'm going to
forgive you. We wouldn't consider that unjust. Right? So I think
this concept gets a bit.
I think it's clear within the Islamic paradigm, that just
because someone does not fulfill a promise of punishment, doesn't
render that person as someone who's unjust. Whereas from the
Christian paradigm, as far as I know, it's basically based on this
idea that a sin was done, and something necessarily has to be
paid back for that sin. And I think this is where the where the
differences necessary, because God set it up that way.
And I can't know or delve into the deep motivations of the Divine.
I don't want to be in a position on college campuses to just be
playing the Mystery Card too quickly about God, you know, like,
well, I don't know. So you just play. It's a mystery. Especially
if you're around atheists. They hate that.
Yeah, tell me about it. Yeah. Hey, pal, we gotta come.
Especially in the suffering stuff. Yeah, that's true. Are you saying
God has a wisdom, my suffering, you upload the wisdom card, and
just like, you taught me something about that two years ago. But I
would say that at some point, it's legitimate in theology to say,
well, there's, God is infinite. I'm finite. God is completely all
wise. I'm not there. And so if I'm expected to understand why exactly
God's set it up in a certain way to have a redemptive and atonement
process. I don't know why he did that. But he did. And insofar as
he did, it seems to harmonize with our basic instincts about what
justice is, let's just say the community of Minneapolis really
was maximally forgiving.
It's a bit difficult, because, again, human beings, by
definition, will not have those attributes of Maxim. Yeah, this is
a right yeah, this is a this is a hypothetical.
And they were maximally forgiving, and they just forgave Derek Chavez
for killing George George Floyd.
And let's just say Minneapolis was the one community in the country
that was maximally forgiving. I think the rest of the world that
was watching would be outraged that Derek Chavez got off for
murdering George Floyd, there must be a punishment, there must be
atonement, someone must pay the price for this murder. And I
believe that's the instinct that God has placed in us as people who
are created in the image of God. So why exactly he set it up that
way? I don't know that I can be expected to know that. But that
seems to be how he revealed it. So go ahead. No, I was gonna say if I
could push back on that. Yeah, go ahead and see if you would make
it would make sense. If we assume that the one who's right what's
taken is the one that's actually doing the forgiving but
Here, it wasn't the people's rights that were taken, he killed
George Floyd. Right. Now, if George Floyd came, he has the
right to forgive him. Right? Obviously, that's again, really
stretching, you know, that's okay, that's alive. And he says You're
forgiven. Right? Sorry. That's okay. So he so I think it's it's I
don't know if the analogy really fits when we compare the analogy
to God, because again, our conceptual conceptualization of
the names and attributes of God is that God is maximally loving and
maximally forgiving. So to be able to draw an analogy, you're always
going to be stuck somewhere, right? Like I said,
it then it knocks against the idea of the concept of forgiveness
itself, if that makes sense. So let's move on. That's a good good
exchange, and I think we're probably at an impasse. Okay. So
you mentioned something. And actually, I think you just
mentioned that it was that some things we we can't know, per se,
and maybe maybe, and so what I would ask is the concept of like,
let's just take the concept of what we were just talking about.
I'm assuming that's a scriptural pre assumption, right? In our
conversation, in the sense that that's how God chose to do it.
Yes. And we know that by way of Scripture, yes. Is there a way
that we understand that extra scriptural meaning outside of
Scripture? Or is is it only that because the Bible says so that's
why we have to accept it?
Well, the Bible says so because on the authority of Jesus, so when
Jesus arrives on the scene, he looks back on the Old Testament,
and he is the one who declares it to be the word of God, it's His
scripture. So I take the authority of the Old Testament on the
authority of Jesus. And then the authority then of the New
Testament, is his commissioning of the disciples, the apostles, the
early church, to remember his teachings and to write them down.
So if the Bible then is taken on the authority of Jesus, and if
Jesus is God incarnate comes to when we need to listen to him. So
there's a huge question here. The $63,000 question is, what is the
identity of Jesus? According to the Quran, if I understand he's a
messenger of God, but he's not God incarnate, that would be a
blasphemy. So in Christian theology, he's actually God
incarnate, and that is what authenticates the, the, the Bible,
the scriptures. And so if God comes and declares, there's a
certain process of redemption, a certain process of forgiveness,
and he's told us that in person, and he's taken the trouble, one
might say, to come down and become a man and the God man, we say, in
Christian theology, then we need to listen to him. So I think your
question was we do we just hold to this because the Bible says, sell,
that makes it sound a little bit flimsy from our perspective, like,
well, what good is our religious book? It's no different than your
religious book, and why not look at the Book of Mormon, if we're
just looking at religious books, I guess I'm saying we've God came
down here, and and declared himself, then that gives authority
to what the Bible teaches. And then the Bible says Sal has a
little bit more weight behind it than if it was just another
religious book. Okay. So I guess just as a follow up, one of the
things that I was trying to be careful was in my presentation,
and you meant I mentioned kind of those three points in terms of not
those three are not not the deductive argument isn't what I'm
talking about. But I mean, in other words, that when we look at
the concept of salvation, one of the things we want to do is ask,
is it rationally sound and logical? Number one, is it
spiritually meaningful? And is it intuitively sound? And so one of
the things I didn't do was to say, let's now look at it had doesn't
have scriptural validation. And I did it on purpose, because, again,
we could say it has scriptural validation, but then one of the
conversations that we probably need to have when I come up to
Minnesota in the summer, is what is that scriptural validation? But
so my question, I guess, was more in terms of, if we have to hold
that question in abeyance, is there another epistemic tool that
we can use to see which concept of salvation is actually true? Right.
So I won't necessarily I won't necessarily go to the Quran in
terms of substantiating obviously the information in terms of how do
we know that but as a process? I would, I would, I would, I would
say that it actually is a clear process in terms of a person's a
rationally, being clear and logical. It has spiritual
meaningfulness, and it's intuitively sound and what I meant
by that was,
if we juxtapose the concept of like, Original Sin with the
concept of the fitrah so we said that every human is born in a
state of goodness. I
think intuitively, we kind of see that, right? Like when a newborn
child went, when you see a newborn child, you know, it doesn't come
out and you don't look at and say, oh, yeah, look at that little
sinful rat, right? That's not, you know, generally you look at it,
look at that innocent child if something happened to it, or if
someone was malicious towards his child and did something no harm
it. Your natural, intuitive senses? No, it's born innocent,
pure and good. So that the time for me or the both of us both,
man, Minnesota, maybe we can you can take you could take another
minute or determine Yeah, I want to I would like Rick to I don't
wanna take the time with rixo. Go ahead. Sorry, I'm a little worried
about judging the precepts of God by the standards by human
standards.
But to take your question in its best light, and to give you my
friend the benefit of the doubt, if we're saying other some maybe
sub points here to the main point of scriptural authority on this,
is there some way to observe empirically what the Scripture
teaches? Then well, let's walk in the room and look at the baby. And
I would agree with you that, you know, cute, and I've got a couple
of new ones now are
my grandkids and proud of them, but it doesn't take long before
they're getting in trouble.
So then, I guess, then we'd be in the position of saying, Well, what
counts? How do we define sin here? How do we define separation from
God? Kind of from our intuitive standards? And again, I'm a little
worried about my intuitive standards, do I trust those to be
giving me reliable information about what God has revealed over
here? And and maybe some extent we can? So maybe I'm with you on that
a little bit? Yeah. So then, maybe we'd have to go case by case and
so that I might point kind of to the macro human history, and, you
know, all the junk that's happened in human history and wars and
violence, and, and everything, and some of it unfortunately, caused
by our respective religions.
Now, to me, that's empirical evidence for the deeply rooted
sinfulness of the human race. So I but I think maybe Fahad, we would
maybe get into a question about how do you interpret those acts,
in light of the original premise, your original premise that there
are good, but now doing some bad things in my original premise that
they're bad and doing the things that's come natural to them? You
know, a comparison of those two things might be fruitful for us.
All right. That's the first one. All right. Well, thank you both
for the discussions. Now, we're gonna go ahead and take some of
these audience questions. Okay, so the first one that I wanted to ask
was, what does each religion say about salvation for non believers
or non adherence to the religion? So you both can take this? Okay.
So one of the things that we understand is that, when we talk
about non believers, and we talk about the concept of religion
itself, I think, you know, and I speak about this quite a bit is
that when we cast Islam to be a religion, and I think, by the way,
I think Rick might actually agree with this as well, is that when we
put it in the box of religion, we're kind of putting certain
boundaries on it. So I actually prefer when we talk about Islam,
we talk about it as a worldview or as a paradigm, because then you've
taken an out of the secular box to say, it's either this or this,
when you take it out of this box, understand that every single human
being has a worldview, you cannot be worldview less, just like you
can not speak a language or you can't not look in a direction. You
have to, you have to have lenses by which you look at reality. And
so if we're asking, what are the lenses by which you look at
reality? And are all the lenses accepted by God, good or bad? Say
no, there are lenses that are acceptable by God, which are
rooted in the natural, intuitive state of the human being we talked
about the fitrah, that God exists, and God is the only one worthy of
worship. That is, you know, that that is that is testified to by
all the prophets, we would say that they came with the same
message. God is one and the only one worthy of worship as we had
defined worship earlier. And that is the natural base state the
original normative disposition. When you move away from that
original normative disposition, then yeah, that would not be
acceptable, because it's not true. Right. So the interesting thing
that we say is that it's not necessary that someone has to be
exposed to Islam, as we understand it today with the Prophet Muhammad
peace be upon him. You can imagine someone being on some island and
they're just in that original state of believing in God, loving
God and worshiping God. And we would call that person a Muslim,
because they haven't had exposure to what the truth is from
Revelation, let's say, but if they died in that state
In that natural, original normative disposition in that sort
of state of goodness, then that person will not be devoid of the
mercy of God. However, if they go beyond and start establishing
partners with God to say that God, for instance, became a human
being, so now you're limiting the omnipotence and power of God,
because God and humans are limited, God is not. Or vice
versa, you do a type of, you know, you say that a human being became
God, the opposite of that. Those are both things that are
problematic, and what are known in the Islamic paradigm as ship. And
ship is something that God does not forgive. Of course, if a
person repents from that and dies in that state, then God does
forgive it. But if a person dies, that state, they're under the
threat of the punishment of God. Now, let me qualify that by saying
I can say x individual person is going to * forever. Because at
the end of the day, one of the attributes of God is that He is
maximally perfect. And as justice I don't know, me as a person, all
of your emotive, psycho spiritual, you know, cultural social
background that puts you in the position that you're in today,
only God knows that. So yes, the maximum I can say is that you are
under the threat of the punishment of God. If you find yourself from
in that type of distance state that you've interpreted, you know,
you've made that your identity by being that distance from God. So
that would be a significant difference. For Christians, at
least one thing that you said that we do believe God has partners, in
a sense, maybe not in the way some people think, but belief in
Trinity then, I think, would put Christians in from an Islamic
perspective, under the condemnation of God. And I think
it's just good to recognize some of our differences. Yeah, if only
you were right.
Right?
Well, it's good to talk these things out. When I was in college,
I lived with a bunch of Muslims. And man, they were straightforward
with me, they didn't dance around like some of the Western cultural
Christians. And I appreciated that because then you had frank
discussions, and you kind of knew where you stood. So that was, that
was a good experience for me. And I appreciate honestly. So like
about Texas, we're just straight up man, we, you know, we don't
beat around the bush. Yeah, it was what it is Minnesota Nice. We're a
little more indirect. You guys are Canadians, I think, yeah, like
Canadians are super, super nice. conservative Christian theologians
would say that if you haven't responded to the call of God in
your life, that you're under the threat of condemnation, under the
threat of *. And everyone has a chance, in one way or another to
respond to that call of God. Part of it is through the grandeur and
the beauty of nature, we see the glory of God through nature, and
even if you don't name the name of God, or name, the name of Jesus,
if you don't respond to the
goodness of God and creation, then you could be under condemnation.
So that's kind of the conservative part of, of Christian theologians,
and then maybe a little bit more. I know liberal isn't quite the
right word, because that has other connotations. But a little bit
more progressive than that conservative would say, Well, God
is just and looks at the heart condition of each person. And
if a person responds to the amount of light that they've been given,
and if they respond positively to that light, then they will be
saved. So if you've been given a small amount of light, and you
respond positively to that light, then God takes that into account
like you're on an island, you're in a remote place, never heard of
Jesus, then if you respond to that light, then you're forgiven. If
you're in a culture in a place where you have a lot of light,
where you've heard the good news over and over and have rejected
it, then that not be good for you. Then you go to a place that the
Bible calls *, which in its essence, in Christian theology, is
the absence of God. popular conceptions are, you know, devils
and pitchforks and, and flames of fire and who knows what else it
could be. But minimally, it's the absence of God, heaven being the
presence of God, but starts now and goes into eternity. *, then
the absence of God, which begins now, and then is maximized into
eternity, and you find yourself in * then I think if we look at a
cover to cover perspective of this in Scripture, * then is a dark
and lonely place where the gift of community and the Divine Presence
is missing. All right, thank you both. The next question is, is
there any assurance of salvation in either Islam or Christianity
and Christianity you have the assurance of salvation because God
has declared that if you trust Christ as your Savior, place your
faith and your
Love in Him, you will be saved. Well, do we take God at His Word?
Yes. Is his word solid and reliable? Yes. So Christians then
would have what we call assurance of salvation.
So within the Islamic paradigm,
it's not guaranteed in the sense like it is within the Christian
paradigm. And I think that, you know, when we look at that, from a
paradigmatic perspective, like I said, like the concept of religion
itself becomes a bit problematic.
I think that actually testifies to the, as I was mentioning earlier,
the maximal loving kindness of God, right, that is maximally
loving. How so? Well, because one concept is if you accept Jesus,
Your sins are forgiven, and you're guaranteed paradise, right? Now,
there's a couple of issues with this. Did Jesus come to die for
the sins of humanity? If we say yes, is what I believe a sin? If
it is, did Jesus not die for me? So this leads to a bit of a
quagmire? So is anyone then going to *? Because all the sins have
been paid for? And if they haven't been paid for, then that means
that God's love is partial, if that makes sense. So are we saying
that God's love is partial, right? Or are we saying something else?
Right? Are we saying that no, God's love is impartial, and
therefore, everyone's going to paradise? I think that becomes a
bit of an interesting thing to think about. Second thing in from
the concept of spiritual meaningfulness, when a person
already knows that they're going to Paradise, then what is the
moral valuation that a person has? In other words, it renders moral
duties meaningless? If there's no concept of reward and punishment?
How do you differentiate the levels between let's say, Hitler
and Moses? In other words, they're all at one level. Now, the problem
is, is that if you say everyone is, you know, is part of a loving,
you know, this the concept of love, everyone is loved equally,
then, in fact, nobody is loved. Right? Because if there's no
differentiation, there's no gradations of that love. You know,
it's like,
like I told my like, you know, my wife always is shocked that my
favorite movie is The Incredibles. You guys know what that is? They
are incredible, right? So. So in that movie, if you remember the
bad guy, who was a kid, he grows up, and he has a statement, and he
says, And what he's trying to do is he gives he wants to give
everyone superpowers. And he says, Everyone, I want to make everyone
super, because if everyone's super, nobody's super. Right? So
if everyone is at the same level of love, than is that really
maximally loving, right? That's kind of the question that we want
to kind of, you know, ask if we, if we take that to its logical
conclusion. So
I would say from a Christian perspective, God loves everyone,
equally. In fact, he loves them enough to respect their choice to
turn away from Him. So if I'm a father in a household, and I've
got several kids, and I say to them, Hey, if you stay part of the
family here, and share in the family, community, and the family
resources you're going to be taken care of. And I love you all
equally. Now. If you choose to reject my offer, I still love you
equally.
And I'm telling you that if you live out in the streets, and if
you leave the family live in the streets life is, I mean, that's
going to be a divorce from our family, but I love you so much
that I will respect your freewill choice to leave the family. And so
the love is equal, but the choices on the part of the human beings
are different. And then for those who stay around.
They show love to the family to the parents, to me not to earn
their salvation. I've already granted that to them. But they do
it out of love. And so as a Christian, then why do I serve? If
I'm already saved? Why serve? Why not just go out and party? Because
salvation for the Christian is a relationship. And it's a loving
relationship with my heavenly father in the LORD Jesus Christ.
And so a serving then, and is an act of love, relational love
toward God. If you remember I mentioned that concept of being
maximally forgiving and maximally loving, so one necessitates the
other of course, and so now that's the case from the Islamic
paradigm. We say that God's mercy is not limited in fact, is not
whether you're no believer, you have God's mercy and if you're
unbeliever you don't, in fact, every single second we're exposed
It's in God's mercy, right. And I think we'd all agree, the fact
that we can breathe right now is just a manifestation of God's
mercy. So no one is outside of the mercy of God. But if we say that
there's no gradations, because in Islamic tradition, we have
different words for love different words for mercy, which has
gradations within it to say, like, you know that love isn't just one
monolith, but rather it has its stages. Again, what I would push
back on is to say, if there is no difference, what is the
motivation, that that meaningfulness of a deed or doing
righteous deeds, it's kind of stripped away? In fact, the Quran
mentions of Ananda alone Muslim in California, do you mean, are you
going to say that the people who submit to God are equal to the
criminals Malecon gay for the moon? What how is it that you
judge like, what's the matter with you? Like Nobody judges like that?
So what I would, you know, that's kind of where I was going with
that, is that if the love is, you know, just one monolith. And
there's no gradations in that love. That becomes a bit
problematic from an Islamic No. I guess I just want to grow in my
relationship with Christ. And that means doing the things that
pleases Him. So you'd have a gradation, even in my own life of
going from someone who loves God somewhat at a certain age. And the
more I serve Him, the more I love him, the more I pray, the more he
gives me blessings, the more that relationship grows. And so it's
not just a monolithic static love, it's a relationship. And when my
kids do that, to me, it's so pleasing to Me, and I assume
pleasing to them as well. Alright, so we're going to enter these last
two questions. So one is going to be a direct question for fun one
will be a direct for. So okay, so the first question is, in Islam,
is salvation contingent on doing more good than bad? Is this
debated in Islam?
That is an excellent question.
So one of the things is, this leads to an interesting question,
that is, do we enter Paradise by the mercy of God? Or do we enter
paradise just by earning paradise? And in fact, there was a narration
where the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said, None of your
actions alone will save you. Right? And so one of the
companions said, Not even you, or messenger of God, he said, not
even me, unless God envelops me with his mercy. So from one
perspective, we understand that we do not enter Paradise, without the
mercy of God, it is contingent upon the mercy of God. But then
you might ask, well, doesn't that bring up the same issue of why do
good? Why do good works? And the thing is, is that while we
understand, while it's contingent upon the mercy of God, the mercy
of God is predicated upon doing good works. What do I mean? You
see, God is merciful in the sense that whatever deed a person does,
he magnifies that deed. So for instance, if a person intends to
do a good deed, they're written as if they already did it. And if the
person does the actually goes through and does the deed, he's
written as if he did it 10, given the reward of 10 to 700 times, so
it's not just a one to one deed, and you know, reward because if
that was the case, no one went into paradise you wouldn't. How
could you like one of the pious people within the Islamic paradigm
said, How can I be grateful to God enough, when the very act of
thanking God deserves gratitude to God? In other words, I say thank
you, that's all because I have a tongue with his voice that I can
now articulate Thank you, which deserves a thank you ad infinitum.
So you can never reached that state. It's only by the mercy of
God that you can do deeds while you progress on your on your
journey to God, because of the Mercy that's part of those deeds.
And because the reward is way more than just the deed itself. And I
give other examples of that. But so do we enter Paradise by the
mercy of God? Yes. But that is that is predicated upon a person
doing deeds. So I
think we'd have a lot of overlap on that for Rick, if we deserve
God's punishment for our sins, and Jesus takes our punishment, then
is God the Father pouring out His punishment on Jesus the Son and is
this cosmic? What do they call it?
Child abuse. There we go. Yeah, I've heard that argument.
I liked the sensitivity.
You know, I like the instinct that while something isn't right here,
I think I want to get back and say, Do we have the right to take
a cultural value and impose it on God?
And I would say, No, it goes the other way around if God chooses to
send his son and if the Son voluntarily comes and we find that
in the Gospel of John, that the Son volunteers for duty here
This is not a conscription. This, this soldier signed up for duty,
and came and allowed himself to be sacrificed for the sins of the
world out of love. And so one of the most famous verses in the New
Testament, God so loved the world that He gave His only son. And
then later on, I think it's in John 10. Jesus says that he's
willing and able and wanting to make this sacrifice. So if he was
unwilling, that would be a different story, then maybe this
cultural critique of God would hold a little more Wait, even
holding God to His own standards. But in fact, the standards of God
are that he decided to do it this way. And I don't think the
cultural critique then works against God. Thank you so much for
engaging tonight. And thank you