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Islam's Response To Concept Of Christian Salvation?
Christian believe, if I am correct, that God is Just and because He is Just, He can not simply forgive man’s sins, something has to be offered in order for justice to be completed. Instead man must fulfill His law (Torah) to find forgiveness which is the price of atonement but since man is failing and continues to be sinful instead of fulfilling the Law, God sent Jesus to redeem humanity because one’s own effort aren’t enough. Now only by having faith in this sacrifice that Jesus died for our sins, can one find salvation and the Law of Torah has been replaced by this “substitutional atonement”.
How would one go about responding to this? And would be nice to see what Ghamidi Sahab has said if anything.
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8 Replies
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Islam's Response To Concept Of Christian Salvation?
updated 2 years, 8 months ago
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8
Replies
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Quran has clearly provided it’s criteria for salvation in verse 2:62. Please see the following for details:
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That is what we believe. I’m referring to what Christian believe, they think that Muslims and their salvation criteria is false.
I.e no sacrifice, no forgiveness. Only faith can save you, not good deeds because God’s Kingdom is too great to be earned through one’s own efforts etc.
So the question is not, what is our salvation criteria but rather how do you respond to criticism of our salvation criteria by Christians? They think that Jesus’ sacrifice is the only way, no other way.
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What’s their source?
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Should I start listing all the references from the Bible or do you want me to explain the origin of the concept?
Generally their thought process goes like this:
1. Original sin from Adam gives human ability to sin. (Later God wipes out people on earth through Noah flood because sin was out of control) (That’s in the book of Genesis)
2. God gives Torah so people can atone for sins, giving example of burnt sacrifices as “imperfect” way to atone sins until Jesus comes. (That can be found in Torah, especially in Book of Exodus if I’m not wrong, with the whole sacrifice offering).
3. Jesus fulfilled the Law as explained in this article:
“In His fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, Jesus obtained our eternal salvation. No more were priests required to offer sacrifices and enter the holy place (Hebrews 10:8–14). Jesus has done that for us, once and for all. By grace through faith, we are made right with God: “He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).”
https://www.gotquestions.org/abolish-fulfill-law.html
4. Therefore man can’t fulfill Law, so through new covenant i.e faith in Jesus’ sacrifice, one can find salvation because actions don’t work.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Conclusion is that Christian believe that Muslims are misguided if they think they will obtain salvation without this new covenant of Jesus dying for their sins. Because God’s justice is too perfect and everyone without Jesus will fall under burden of their sins.
Here is another article explaining this:
“This is analogous to our sin situation. We have all strayed from God’s laws (Romans 3:23), and are therefore guilty before Him, deserving death (Romans 6:23a). God has to punish evil because He is just (Psalm 9:7-8, Psalm 9:16, Psalm 11:16). If He did not punish us, He wouldn’t be a just judge, just as the judge in the illustration above wouldn’t be just if he had let the fine go unpaid. So God must punish us. However, God is also loving (1 John 4:8, 1 John 4:16) and therefore desires not to punish us for our crimes. Just like the judge in the above illustration, God stepped down from His throne, taking on human flesh (John 1:14, Philippians 2:5-8), and was punished in our place. He accrued the penalty to Himself by being crucified.”
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This is all derivative and there’s no explicit source in the scripture which actually mentions this concept as a tenet of belief. It’s mostly the concept of salvation and moulding of the verses to fit into this concept. While Quran on the other hand explicitly mentions the criteria of salvation. It is not a matter of one logic versus another, because first the concept needs to be established explicitly from their authentic sources. Although the logic is flawed too.
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Well I was hoping to hear the flaw in the logic (because Christians always assume that their concepts are established from their sources so such a response won’t be satisfactory for them i.e concept not being established from their authentic sources).
It seems there is a trend of Christians rejecting Islam because it doesn’t ensure salvation, that work-based salvation is too uncertain for them and that man will always fail due to sin so Jesus’ sacrifice needed to counteract the problem of God demanding justice/price for sins.
Highlighting the flaw in this argument might be helpful.
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Following article discusses the concepts of Original Sin, Holy Trinity, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Atonement in the light of Bible and History:
http://www.monthly-renaissance.com/issue/content.aspx?id=597
I think the critique on beliefs based on holy scriptures should be limited to pointing out misinterpretaions of the relevant verses. Through this discourse, there is still a chance that other party might reconsider those verses when one points out the context and meaning of certain verses that were originally misinterpreted. Giving counter logic to a belief standing solely on logic itself gives rise to more logic and more to counter it. Ofcourse this is my personal opinion. But I am sure someone else will be able to point out what you’re looking for.
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It is a good article and close to what I was looking for but I think it doesn’t give a complete counter-argument for Atonement concept of Christian. We need a counter-argument in my opinion because Christian usually argue that there is nothing wrong with their concept of God demanding a sacrifice for sins, that sacrifice being Jesus and all of this being needed for our salvation etc and that it is Muslims who are in danger of having no way of surviving God’s Wrathful Justice in the Hereafter.
Also issue regarding scripture and logic is this.
First of all, I don’t think the New Testament is that authentic. Many scholars have to come to agree that there is no eyewitness account within the Gospels and rest of the NT falls apart because it relies on the Gospels being authentic. This means only logic is left for Christians, since scripture authenticity fails and the article you quoted also first criticizes the authenticity of Bible before criticizing Christian doctrine. So again, we are left with Christian logic and that is what they usually attack Islam with.
Secondly, Christians do have some ammo like this which they use to justify the Atonement doctrine:
‘For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God: being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;’ (Romans 3:23-25)
This is usually why I am not comfortable arguing on basis of scripture because Christians do accept Paul’s writing as proof for their belief (even if it has no basis in Old Testament nor Gospels).
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