Protestants have chosen five criterial bases
for comparing Qur’ân al-kerîm with todays
Gospels. On the first basis, i.e. trinity, they attribute the nonexistence of
belief in three hypostases, or three gods, (which are Father, Son, and the Holy
Spirit), in Qur’ân al-kerîm to the
deficiency of Qur’ân al-kerîm. They assert
that the doctrine of trinity was implied in the former heavenly books. After
admitting in some of their own publications that this solemn matter is vague in
the Taurah, they cannot forward any documents to prove their thesis, with the
exception of the Gospel of John, the Book of Acts and the epistles of the
Apostles. However, the books and epistles which they refer to as proofs are of
no value because they are not founded on dependable facts.
Before explaining the matter of trinity, it is
necessary to make some observations and explicatory remarks on Ishâ-i-Rabbânî.
As we have already mentioned earlier, Ishâ-i-Rabbânî (the Eucharist) is one of
the tenets of the Christian belief. Accordingly, since it is believed by
Christians that Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ is one of the three persons each of which
is a true god, Christians, so to say, unite with him by eating his flesh and
drinking his blood. Thus the sins they have committed are pardoned, they believe,
at the cost of sacrificing the Son of God [May Allâhu ta’âlâ protect us from
saying or believing so]. And they believe that when a priest breathes (a
certain prayer) on a piece of leavened or unleavened bread and on some wine,
the bread becomes the flesh of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ and the wine becomes his
blood.
They say that this fact is written in the
twenty-sixth and later verses of the twenty-sixth chapter of the Gospel of
Matthew, in the twenty-second and later verses of the fourteenth chapter of the
Gospel of Mark, in the nineteenth and later verses of the twenty-second chapter
of the Gospel of Luke. In fact, an event
that was carried out when Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ was alive is
narrated in these Gospels. Yet none of the Gospels contains any written account
of a commandment such as, “After me, always do the same and have your sins
pardoned by sacrificing me.” It is written in the nineteenth verse of the
twenty-second chapter of the Gospel of Luke: “this do in remembrance of me.”
But this does not mean to say, “Practice this as (an event of) deliverance from
sins” or “Make this a principle of belief.” Christians share and consume bread
and wine in churches. Thus, they believe, Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ is sacrificed,
eaten, and drunk. In the matter of bread and wine’s changing into flesh and
blood, which means the sacrifice of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’, there are various
interpretations among Christian churches. According to the creed held by some
of them, “Only bread and wine change into the body and blood of Îsâ
‘alaihis-salâm’ and eventually become Îsâ himself.”
When several thousand priests breathe on the
pieces of bread in their hands and consecrate them, at the same time, the
Christs thus made by all these priests are either different from one another or
the same as one another. Their being different runs counter to the Christian
cult. [For it means that many Christs, or gods (May Allâhu ta’âlâ protect us
from saying so), come into being.] Their being the same, on the other hand, is
contrary to the nature of matter. For the substance of each of them is
different from that of another. It is an apparent fact that one thing cannot be
at different places at the same moment. For this reason, the pieces of bread
breathed on and made sacred cannot be one Christ. This, in its turn, is
rejected by Christianity. For Christians believe in the existence of only one
Jesus.
When a priest divides a loaf of bread into
three pieces and gives each piece to a different person, either the Christs
that came into being by the changing of the bread is broken into pieces, or
each piece is an entire Christ. According to the first proposition, God is
broken into pieces. Believing in God’s being broken into pieces is not
compatible with any religion.
As for the second proposition; the bread has
already been changed to one Christ. Whence do the various Christs come when the
bread is broken into pieces? According to Christians’ belief, Îsâ
‘alaihis-salâm’ came to earth as the propitiation of people’s sins and
sacrificed himself. If the sacrifice of Ishâ-i-Rabbânî which priests are
practicing in churches today is the same as the sacrifice which was once being
performed on the cross by Jewry, then the first Ishâ-i-Rabbânî which was
performed when Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’
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was alive by making the Apostles eat bread and drink wine would
have been enough for the expiation of peoples’ sins. So the sacrificial
crucifixion of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ on a wooden cross by Jewry — as it is
believed so by Christians — would have been unnecessary. Nor would there be any
reason for priests to carry out [sacramental] ceremonies all over the world. It
is written at the end of the ninth chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews that
the self-sacrifice of Hadrat Îsâ for the expiation of peoples sins is an event
that happened only once.
[Ulfat ’Azîz as-Samed, one of the teaching
staff of Peshaver University, states as follows in the section (The Sources of
the Christian Doctrine) of his book titled A Comparative Study of Christianity and Islam, the third edition of which was published in 1399 [A.D. 1976] in
Pakistan:
“In the foregoing pages it has been shown that
the religion of Jesus had very little in common with Christianity as it
developed sometime after his passing away and as it is believed by the various
Christian churches. Jesus was a prophet, a man who conveyed and preached to his people the truth which
had been revealed to him through inspiration by God. He exhorted them to repent
and give up their evil ways. Jesus was a reformer and reviver of the true
religion of Moses and other Prophets, and not
the founder of a new faith. His was the religion of Sermon, and not of
Sacrament. He had come to show men the way to the Kingdom of Heaven, which they
could attain through the love of God and good deeds, and not to redeem them by
deliberately dying on the cross as vicarious sacrifice for their sins. After
his departure from this world, his immediate followers formed themselves into a
community called the Nazarenes. They lived in Jerusalem and chose James, the
brother of Jesus, as their head. The Nazarenes were undoubtedly faithful
followers of the religion of Jesus and believed in the single personality of
God and in Jesus as the Messenger of God. They strictly observed the Law of
Moses in all matters, as Jesus himself had instructed them to do.
“Jesus had come, as he had said, for the ‘lost
sheep of the house of Israel.’ The Jews who lived in Jerusalem were only a
small fraction of the total Israelite population of the world. There were large
Jewish colonies in lands surrounding Palestine. At the time of Jesus’ birth
Alexandria was a great centre of learning and culture. A large number of
religions and schools of philosophy flourished there. The Jews of the
dispersion had come under the influence of Greek philosophy and of Mystery
Cults, each with its
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own saviour-god. [After the short-lived Prophetic mission of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’, which had
lasted only three years, the Jews who believed in him increased in number.]
When the religion of Jesus spread to these Jews and many of them accepted him
as the promised Messiah, they interpreted him and his message in the light of
Greek philosophy and pagan cults. Thus, quite early in its history the religion
of Jesus began to undergo a transformation and several different versions of it
emerged. The first sign of change was a shift in emphasis from the teaching of
Jesus to an interest in his person, and the consequent attempt to glorify him.
Dr. Morton Scott Enslin, who is one of the greatest Christian scholars of our
time, writes in this connection:
‘An interest in the person of Jesus, a desire
to explain who he was and to interpret everything in terms of him, came
gradually to obscure the fact that he had never made such claims for himself,
but had been content to proclaim God’s purpose for the nation and to call it to
repentance. Thus Jesus became more and more one whose person was to be
understood and explained rather than one whose teaching was to be believed and
obeyed.’
“This tendency ultimately led to the
identification of Jesus with the Greek Logos, as this concept had been expounded by
the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo, and so the consequent deification of
Jesus. [We shall tell about Philo in the section “Proving the falsity of trinity by means of the statements
of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ ” of our book.] The writings of the
Church Fathers of this period are full of unedifying and, to the modern mind,
senseless controversies about the nature of Christ, his relation to God the
Father, and attempts to reconcile the Godhood of Jesus with the doctrine of
monotheism, on which Jesus had laid so much stress. The religion of Jesus and
of the Jerusalem community of his followers was nothing more than a reformed
sect of Judaism, but among the Jews of the dispersion and their Gentile neighbours,
who had neither seen Jesus nor had firsthand acquaintance with his teaching,
and who moreover lived in a totally different social and intellectual
environment, a new religion, absolutely different from the original faith of
Jesus, began to emerge. It is significant that those who claimed to believe in
Jesus were called Christians and their religion Christianity first of all at
Antioch towards the end of the first century. In the words of Dr. Morton Scott
Enslin:[1]
---------------------------------
[1] Morton
Scott Enslin, Christian Beginnings, Part II, p. 172.
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‘But the transfer from Jewish to Gentile soil
brought even more radical changes. Not only did the movement speedily become a
separate religion, distinct from Judaism, but, as its message was translated
into terms intelligible and appropriate to Gentile bearers it became gradually
more and more like the other cults with which it found itself in conflict. By
the middle of the second century — and probably much earlier — it had become
one of the Graeco Oriental cults, and like the others offered salvation to its
converts through its divine Lord.’[1]
“Perhaps the first and most important person
to cut off the religion of Jesus from Judaism and make it into ‘one of the
Graeco-Oriental cults’ was St Paul. This is what H.G. Wells writes about him:
‘Chief among the makers of Christian doctrine
was St Paul. He had never seen Jesus nor heard him preach. Paul’s name was
originally Saul, and he was conspicuous at first as an active persecutor of the
little band of disciples after the crucifixion. Then he was suddenly converted
to Christianity, and he changed his name to Paul. He was a man of great
intellectual vigour and deeply and passionately interested in the religious
movements of the time. He was well versed in Judaism and in the Mithraism and
Alexandrian religions of the day. He carried over many of their ideas and terms
of expression into Christianity. He did very little to enlarge or develop the
original teaching of Jesus, the teaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. But he
taught that Jesus was not only the promised Christ, the promised leader of the
Jews, but also that his death was a sacrifice, like the deaths of the ancient
sacrificial victims of the primordial civilizations for the redemption of
mankind.’[2]
“That the religion of St Paul was absolutely
different from the simple faith of Jesus is admitted by Dr Morton Scott Enslin:
‘It is today perfectly obvious that there is a
vast difference between the nature of the messages of Jesus and Paul. At times
this has led to unsparing condemnation of Paul and his associates who perverted
the simple gospel stream. The slogan, “Back to Jesus,” has simply meant “Away
from Paul.” But although many of the early Judaizers may well have shared this
feeling, their
---------------------------------
[1] Ibid
Part II, p. 187.
[2] H.G.
Wells, A Short History of the World (A Pelican Book), pp. 129-30
-184-
opposition was as futile as Canute’s[1] attempt to hold back the waves. To make it concrete: Had Jesus
been able to attend a Church service in Corinth in the year
“Paul not only brought about a final cleavage
between Jews and Christians by making Christianity into a mystery cult and
Jesus into a savior-god, but he also declared the Law of Moses to be a ‘curse,’
although Jesus had said:
‘Whosoever... shall break one of these least
commandments, and shall teach man so, he shall be called the least in the
kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be
called great in the kingdom of heaven’ [Matthew, 5-19]. There were bitter
controversies and charges and counter-charges between Paul and his associates
on the one hand and the Jerusalem community of the followers of Jesus on the
other. Faint echoes of these controversies can still be heard in the New
Testament. It was naturally the Pauline version of Christianity which proved
more popular among the Jews of the dispersion and the Gentiles, and spread
rapidly over large parts of the Roman Empire. Then with the destruction of the
Temple and the expulsion of the Jerusalem community of the followers of Jesus,
together with the Jews, from Jerusalem in
---------------------------------
[1] Canute (995?-1035), a Danish king of England whose followers thought that he could stop the sea rising by ordering it back, but he showed them that it was impossible. People sometimes mention Canute and the waves when they are talking about how impossible it is to stop something from happening.
[2] Morton
Scott Enslin, op. cit., Part II, p. 172.
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disciples of Jesus. This document refers to Jesus simply as a
great Prophet and righteous man.
Much of the text consists of polemics against St Paul, charging him with
heretically substituting Roman doctrines and customs for the authentic teaching
of Jesus and falsely proclaiming him to be God.
“The influence of the Greek philosophical
schools of Platonism, Stoicism and Gnosticism was an important factor in the
formulation of the Christian doctrine as Dr. Edwin Hathc has shown in his
admirable work The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity. But the decisive
influence was that of the Mystery Cults. There were several mystery cults in
the Roman world of those days, having many differences among them, but they
appear to have had at least four characteristics in common: (1) Every one of
them believed in a saviour-god, whose death was an atonement for the sins of
men and a means of salvation for those who believed in him, (2) All had some
purifactory rite of initiation through which the initiate had to pass. (3) All
were essentially mysteries of communion with the deity who, through a rite
involving a symbolic eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood, came into
union with his votaries. (4) All looked forward to the future life and secured
for the initiate a happy reception in the world beyond the grave.
[Encyclopedia Americana gives the following
information about the word (Sacrifice):
‘The ancient Greeks performed sacramental
rites called (thusiai) and (sphagia) in the name of the god of heaven, Olympus.
Thusiai was performed always during the day, preferably in the morning. Certain
parts of the animals sacrificed were burned on stakes on a rock called (Bomos).
The remaining parts were eaten by people that gathered around a tall rock. The
rite ended in music and dancing.
‘The sacrificial rite called Sphagia was
performed at night. The rock used for the burning of the meat in this rite was
called (eschara).
‘These Greek names of rites were expressed
only with the word (sacrifice) in Latin. And the word (Altars) was used for the
words (Bomos), the rock whereon the sacrifices were burned, and (eschara), the
rock around which people gathered and ate the sacrifices.’
On the other hand, in the sacrament called the
Eucharist, which is performed in the Christian religion, the rock used for
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putting the bread and wine on and gathering around is called
(Altar), too. And this sacrament, too, is accompanied by music. When the
consecrated bread is broken, (Christians believe), the sacrifice will have been
performed, and when it is dunked into the wine and eaten, one will have, so to
speak, united with God spiritually. Similarity between the Greek rites
(thusiai) and (sphagia) and the sacrament called the Eucharist is quite
obvious. We shall continue with this subject.] There can be no doubt about the
fact that it was as a result of the influence of the mystery cults that Jesus
was made into a saviour-god and his supposed death on the cross to be regarded
as propitiatory sacrifice which had given satisfaction to the outraged justice
of God, reconciled the angry God to sinful humanity and obtained salvation for
those who believe in him. The two most important Christian rites or sacraments
are Baptism and the Eucharist. The former is an initiatory rite by which a man
is purified of the orginal sin, transformed from the child of wrath into the
child of grace and initiated into the Christian fold. In the second of these
rites (the Eucharist or the Mass or the Holy Communion) the participant
supposedly eats the flesh and drinks the blood of Jesus Christ. The Roman
Catholic Church and also a few orthodox Protestant churches believe that the
elements (i.e. the consecrated bread and wine) are literally converted into the
flesh and blood of Christ (the doctrine of the tran-substantiation). The less
orthodox Protestant church consider this rite to be a symbolical eating of the
flesh and drinking of the blood of Jesus Christ, which brings the participant
into union with God. That Christianity had become and continues to be
essentialy a mystery cult, like so many others of that age, is frankly admitted
by Dr Morton Scott Enslin.
‘By the second century Christianity had become
one of these cults. Jesus was the divine Lord. He too had found the road to
heaven by his suffering and resurrection. He too had God for his father. He had
left behind the secret whereby men could achieve the goal with him. The convert
that was buried with Christ in baptism, was born again. That Christianity was
so regarded is perfectly clear from the pains Justin Martyr takes to prove that
these resemblances between Christianity and the other religions were all due to
the malignity of the demons. These wretched demons had read the Scriptures and
had realised, although imperfectly, what was destined to be. They trembled as
they saw their coming overthrow and realised their helplessness to prevent
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it. To salvage as much as possible and to delude men they hastily
concocted rites and ceremonies as near as possible to those they foresaw were
to be instituted. Thus they hoped that when Christ appeared and instituted his
worship men might be deluded into believing that the Christians were borrowing
from older pagan ceremonies and beliefs. To the modern student this explanation
of Justin may seem most naive; none the less, it is highly important as
incontrovertible evidence of the growing likeness of Christianity to the other
cults which made such an explanation essential.’[1]
“In his book The Origins of Religion, Lord Raglan
traces the origin of the mystery cults to what he regards as one of the
earliest rituals, a sort of restoration rite. In prehistoric times, he points
out, it was the custom in several communities to choose a young man as the
destined divine victim and to keep him with divine honours for a year. He was
treated as the most privileged guest of the whole community and all his wishes
were satisfied. At the end of the year, however, he was ritually slaughtered
and his flesh was eaten and blood drunk by some representative men of the
community to bring new life to all those on whose behalf this rite was
performed. Portions of the flesh and blood of the sacrificed man were also
scattered over the field to give it fertility and revive the world. In the
course of time the chosen sacrificial victim conspired with the priests to have
a substitute slaughtered in his place. He would abdicate for a short while, the
substitute would be compelled to take his place and be sacrificed. He would
then resume the place of honour, thus making himself a sort of permanent
privileged guest or ruler. Lord Raglan traces the ideas of kingship as well as
of godhood to this sacrificial victim. The divine sacrificial victim, who had
thus managed to become a permanent privileged guest of the community while his
substitutes were slaughtered year after year, was the first king as well as the
first living god. When later on his divinity came to be regarded as separate
from him, though residing in him, he began to be worshipped as the incarnation
of the invisible god, or as his son.
[Traditional narratives pertaining to ancient
heathen cultures and nations and fabling about their gods, semigods and heroes
are called mythology.] Lord Raglan believes that a myth is a story linked with
a religious rite. Rites come first and myths are invented later on to “explain”
the rites. Thus, following, this
---------------------------------
[1] Ibid,
Part 12, pp. 130-91.
-188-
restoration rite, several myths of saviour-gods were invented. By
their deaths and resurrection these saviour-gods brought new life and salvation
to those who believed in them. The most important ceremony connected with the
cult of the saviour-god was the symbolical eating of his flesh and drinking of
his blood, which was supposed to bring the partaker into union with the god. It
enshrined the memory of the times when the sacrificial victim, the prototype of
the saviour-god, was actually slaughtered and his flesh eaten and blood drunk.
“In the course of years the myth of the
saviour-god became fused with the myth of the sun-god, and thus every one of
them was believed to have been born at the time of Winter Solstice, which,
according to the old Julian calendar, was 25th of December (the Christmas of the Christians). Each one of the saviour-sungods met
violent death and came back to life at the time of Vernal Equinox (the Easter
of the Christians). Edward Carpenter has pointed out the similarities between
the myths of the various saviour-gods — Dionysus of the Greeks, Hercules of the
Romans, Mithras of the Persians. Osiris, Isis and Horus of Egypt, Baal of the
northern Semites, Tammuz of the Babylonians and Assyrians, etc. — and the story
of Jesus. About all or nearly all of them it was believed that —
(1) They were born on or very near the
Christmas day,
(2) They were born of virgin mothers,
(3) And in a cave or underground chamber,
(4) They led a life of toil for mankind,
(5) They were called by the names of
Light-Bringer, Healer, Mediator, Saviour and Deliverer,
(6) They were, however, vanquished by the
Powers of Darkness,
(7) They descended into Hell or the
underworld,
(8) They rose again from the dead, and became
pioneers of mankind to the heavenly world,
(9) They founded communion of saints and
churches to which the disciples were received by baptism,
(10) They were commemorated by Eucharistic
meals.[1]
“When Jesus was deified and made into a
saviour-god, all these features of these older saviour-gods were included in
his
---------------------------------
[1] Quoted by Ehwajah Kamaluddin in The Sources of Christianity, pp. 29-30.
-189-
story and in the religion which flourished under his name. So much
so that even the birthday of Jesus was fixed on 25th of December, more than
five centuries after he was born. According to Wallace K.Ferguson, Professor of
History, New York University:
‘Christian celebrations were designed to
replace pagan feasts and holidays. For example, the date of Christmas was set
on the birthday of Mithras (the unconquered Sun), which had long been a day of
joyous celebration in the pagan world. The assimilation by Christianity of so
much of popular belief and practice was in no small degree responsible for its
almost universal acceptance during this period, but it involved the sacrifice
of its early purity and simplicity.’[1]
“Lord Raglan, who has made a detailed study of
the stories of mythical heroes in another of his admirable books, The Hero, has
tabulated the typical incidents, which occur in the majority of stories, into
the following pattern:
(1) The hero’s mother is a royal virgin;
(2) His father is a king, and
(3) Often a near relative of his mother, but
(4) The circumstances of his conception are
unusual, and
(5) He is also reputed to be the Son of God.
(6) At birth an attempt is made, usually by
his father or his maternal grandfather, to kill him, but
(7) He is spirited away, and
(8) Reared by foster-parents in a far country.
(9) We are told nothing of his childhood, but
(10) On reaching manhood he returns or goes to
his future kingdom.
(11) After a victory over the king and/or a
giant, dragon, or wild beast,
(12) He marries a princess, often the daughter
of his predecessor, and
(13) Becomes a king.
(14) For a time he reigns uneventfully, and
(15) Prescribes laws, but
---------------------------------
[1] Wallace
K.Ferguson, A Survey of European Civilization, Part I, p. 112.
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(16) Later he loses favour with the gods
and/or his subjects, and
(17) Is driven from the throne and city, after
which
(18) He meets with a mysterious death,
(19) Often at the top of a hill.
(20) His children, if any, do not succeed him.
(21) His body is not buried, but nevertheless
(22) He has one or more holy sepulchres.[1]
“Out of these twenty-two points, Lord Raglan
informs us that Oedipus scores full marks, Theseus twenty points, Romulus
eighteen points, Heracles seventeen points, Prerseus eighteen points, Jason
fifteen points, Pelops thirteen points, Dionysus nineteen points, Apollo eleven
points, and Zeus fifteen points. The story of the Christian Jesus closely
conforms to the pattern and he scores fifteen points. His mother, Mary, is (1)
a virgin, and his father Joseph is (2) a descendant of the great king David,
and is (3) closely related to her; but (4) he is conceived by the Holy Ghost,
and so (5) he is regarded as the Son of God (6) Soon after his birth king Herod
makes an attempt to kill him, but (7) he is spirited away, and (8) reared by
Mary and foster father Joseph in the far-off country of Egypt. (9) We are told
nothing of his childhood in the Gospels, but (10) on reaching manhood he comes
out as a public preacher and finally enters Jerusalem riding on a colt and is
greeted by the crowd with the shout ‘Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh
in the name of the Lord’ (John, 12- 13). Earlier, before beginning his public
ministry, he had (11) gained victory over Satan. (18) He is crucified together
with two malefactors, and (19) on the top of a hill (called Calvary/Golgotha.
(21) Though he came back to life and ascended in his physical body to heaven to
sit at the right hand of God, yet (22) he has a holy sepulchre near Jerusalem.
“This leaves no doubt at all in our minds
regarding the sources of the Christian doctrine. [We shall give further
examples later on, i.e. in the section Proving the Falsity of Trinity by means of the Statements
of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’.] In the words of the well-known
philosopher and historian, Winwood Reade:
‘Christianity had conquered paganism, and
paganism had corrupted Christianity. The legends which belonged to Osiris and
Apollo had been applied to the life of Jesus. The single Deity of
---------------------------------
[1] Lord
Raglan, The Hero. pp. 178-79.
-191-
the Jews had been exchanged for the Trinity which the Egyptians
had invented and which Plato had idealised into a philosophic system, [and
which had existed in Brahminism, too]. The man who had said “Why callest thou
me good? There is none good but one, that is, God” had now himself been made a
god — or the third part of one.’[1]
“Gilbert Murray, the great Classical scholar,
thus sums up the similarities between the pagan and Christian beliefs, showing
Christianity’s indebtedness to the pagan religions and philosophies for the
most vital and essential features of its doctrine:
“The transition consisted largely in giving a
new name and history to some old objects of worship which already had had many
names and legends attached to it. Nay, more, in the metaphysical and theological
doctrines formulated in the Creeds, except where they were specially meant to
controvert the old system, he (the Levantine pagan) would at least recognise
for the most part ideas which he had heard discussed.
“He believed in God as a ‘Father’ and would
have no quarrel with a Christian as to the exact meaning of that metaphysical
term; the attribute ‘Almighty’ he accepted, though both Christian and pagan
theologians had the same difficulty in dealing with the implications of that
term and explaining how the All-Good and Almighty permitted evil. The average
Greek did not think of God as the ‘maker of heaven and earth’; the thought was
Hebrew or Babylonian, but was not strange to the Hellenistic world. The idea of
an only begotten Son of God was regular in the Orphic system, and that of a Son
of God by a mortal woman, conceived in some spiritual way, and born for the
saving of mankind, was at least as old as the fifth century B.C. In a simpler
and more natural form it was much earlier. That this Saviour ‘suffered and was
buried’ is common to the vegetation or year religions, with their dying and
suffering gods; and the idea had been sharpened and made more living both by
the thought of Plato’s ‘righteous man’ and by the various ‘kings of the poor’
who had risen and suffered in the slave revolts. That after the descent to
Hades he should arise to judge both the quick and the dead is a slight
modification of the ordinary Greek notion, according to which the Judges were
already seated at their work, but it may have come from the Saviour religions.
---------------------------------
[1] Winwood
Reade, The Martydom of Man, pp. 173-84.
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“The belief in God as a Trinity, or as One
substance with three ‘personae’ — the word simply means ‘masks’ or ‘dramatic
roles’[1] — is directly inherited from Greek speculation. The third person
was more usually feminine, the divine wisdom, or Providence, or the Mother of
the Son; the ‘Spirit’ or ‘Breath of God’ comes from the Hebrews. Belief in the
Holy Catholic Church was again not the pagan’s own belief, but it was the sort
of belief with which he was quite familiar. He accepted belief in some church
or community, be it that of Mithras or Hermes-Thoth or some familiar Healer. If
the ‘communion of the saints’ originally meant the sharing of all property
among the faithful, that practice was familiar in certain congregations; if it
meant, as is now generally understood, the existence of a certain fellowship or
community between those who are ‘pure’, whether dead, living, or divine, it was
an idea prevalent in Stoicism.”[2] Here we end our
quotations from the book of the Professor of Peshaver University.]
[As all these show, Christianity is not the
Nasranî (Nazarene) religion that was taught by Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ and which
was the continuation of the sharî’at of Műsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’. It is an
unreasonable and illogical religion, a mixture of idolatry lurking behind the
name of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’. Many Christian men of religion, professors,
scholars and scientists frankly write that such Christian ceremonies as Baptism
and the Eucharist did not exist in the Îsawî religion but were adopted later
from idolatry and inserted into it, and that Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’, who was a
human being and a Prophet, was divinized
afterwards. Instead of answering these writings and the questions directed
towards them by Islamic scholars, priests choose to seize and destroy these
books (containing such writings and questions), and publish books and
pamphlets, adding a number of new lies, errors and absurdities to the old lot.
And this shows us that by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Christianity
had gone entirely bankrupt, and it has been understood clearly that it is
empty, void.]
Two Jesuit priests went to the city of Kanton
for the first time in order to Christianize the Chinese people. [Jesuit is a
missionary society founded by Ignatius Loyola in 918 (A.D. 1512).] They asked
the governor of Kanton for permission to preach the
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[1] Medieval English, Old French, ‘Persone’, from Latin, ‘Persona’, which means ‘actor’s mask’, ‘character in play’.
[2] Gilbert
Murray Humanist Essays, pp. 134-135.
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Christian religion. The governor took no heed of them. But when
the Jesuits annoyed him by coming to him every day (and soliciting for
permission), he said at last, “I have to ask the Faghfűr [Emperor] of China for
permission for this. I shall let him know.” So he reported the matter to the
Emperor of China. The answer was: “Send them to me. I want to know what they
want.” Upon this he sent the Jesuits to Peking, the capital of China. This news
caused great alarm among the Buddhist priests. [They begged the Faghfűr to
expel the Jesuits from the country on the grounds that “These men are trying to
imbue our people with a new religion which emerged under the name Christianity.
These men do not recognize the Holy Buddha. They are going to misguide our
people.”] The Faghfűr said, “We must listen to them first. Then we will
decide.” He made an assembly of the eminent statesmen and clergy of the
country. Inviting the Jesuits, he told them to explain to the assembly what the
principles of the religion they wanted to promulgate were. Upon this the
Jesuits made the following discourse:
“God, the Creator of heaven and earth, is one.
Yet at the same time, He is three. God’s only Son and the Holy Ghost, too, are
a God each. This God created Adam and Eve and put them in Paradise. He gave
them all kinds of blessings. Only, He commanded them not to eat from a certain
tree. Somehow the Satan deceived Eve. And she, in her turn, deceiving Adam,
they disobeyed God’s command by eating fruit from the tree. Therefore God
deported them from Paradise and sent them to the world. Here they had children
and grandchildren. They were all sinful because they had been depraved by the sin
committed by their grandfather. This state lasted six thousand years.
Eventually God pitied human beings, yet He found no other way than sending His
own son for the expiation of their sin and immolating His only son as an
atonement of the sin. The Prophet we believe
in is Jesus the Son of God. There is a city called Jerusalem in a region called
Palestine to the west of Arabia. In Jerusalem there is a place called Jelîla
(Galilee), which has a village named Nâsira (Nazareth). One thousand years ago
there lived a girl named Maryam (Mary) in this village. This girl was betrothed
to her paternal first cousin, but she was a virgin yet. One day, as she was
alone, the Holy Ghost appeared and put the Son of God into her. That is, the
girl became pregnant, virgin as she was. [Then, as she and her fiance were on
their way to Jerusalem, she had a child in a stable in Beyt-i-lahm (Bethlehem).
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They placed the Son of God into the manger in the stable. The
monks in the east, who knew that he was born when they saw that a new star
suddenly emerged in the sky, set out for him with presents in their hands, and
at last they found him in this stable. They prostrated themselves in front of
him. The Son of God, called Jesus, preached to God’s creatures until he was thirty-three
years old. He said, ‘I am the Son of God. Believe in me. I came to save you.’
He displayed numerous miracles, such as resuscitating the dead, making the
blind see again, making the lame walk, curing the leprous, stopping sea-storms,
feeding ten-thousand people with two fish, changing water into wine, withering
a fig tree with one (hand) signal because it did not yield any fruit in winter,
and so forth. Yet very few people believed in him. Eventually, the treacherous
Jews betrayed him to the Romans, thus causing him to be crucified. However,
three days after dying on the cross, Christ resurrected and showed himself to
those who believed in him. Then he ascended to heaven and sat on the right hand
side of his Father. And his Father left all the matters of this world over to
him. And He Himself withdrew. This is the basis of the religion we are going to
preach. Those who believe in this shall go to Paradise in the hereafter, and
those who do not shall go to Hell.”
Listening to these words, the Chinese Emperor
said to the priests, “I shall ask you some questions. Answer these questions.”
Then he began asking his questions, “My first question is this: You say on the
one hand that God is one and on the other hand that He is three. This is as
nonsensical as saying that two and two make five. Explain this theory to me.”
The priests could not answer. They said, “This
is a secret that belongs exclusively to God. It is beyond the human
comprehension.” The Faghfűr (Emperor) said, “My second question is this: God is
the almighty creator of the earth, heaven, and all the universe, and yet, on
account of a sin committed by one person, He ascribes the blame on all his
progeny, who are completely unaware of the (sinful) deed (committed by their
forefather); is this possible? And why is it that He did not find any other way
than sacrificing His own son as an atonement for them? Is it worthy of His
Majesty? How will you answer this?” The priests, once again, could not answer. “This, too, is a secret peculiar to God,” they said. The Faghfűr
said, “And my third question: Jesus asked the fig tree to give fruit
prematurely, and then withered it because it would not give fruit. It is
impossible for a tree to give fruit out of season. Despite this
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fact, would it not be cruelty for Jesus to get angry with the tree
and wither it? Could a Prophet be cruel?”
The priests could not answer this, either.
Instead, they said, “These things are spiritual. They are God’s secrets. The
human mind cannot comprehend them.” Upon this, the Chinese Emperor said, “I
give you the permission (you want). Go and preach in any part of China.” When
they withdrew from the Emperor’s presence, the Emperor turned to those who were
present, and said, “I do not presume that anyone in China would be so stupid as
to believe in such absurdities. I therefore find nothing wrong in allowing
these men to preach these superstitions. I feel certain that, after listening
to them, our compatriots will see that there are such idiotic tribes over the
world and think even more favourably of their own faith.” In order to remind
the fact that the priests could not answer any of the questions, we have titled
our book Could Not
Answer.
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