GodLogicApologeticsvsJavad Hashmi

GodLogicApologetics said Quran 29:46 has Muslims say they believe in what was revealed to them and to Christians, and argued that the belief the Quran asks for in its own book must also apply to the Bible.

He read Quran 5:68, which tells the People of the Scripture to stand on the Torah and the Gospel, and argued that a Christian who observes those scriptures finds Jesus to be the divine Son who died and rose, which contradicts the Quran's denial of this.

He presented a conundrum: if Christians stand on their scriptures, Islam is false because it contradicts them, and if they do not, Islam is still false because the Quran tells them to stand on scriptures it calls true.

He argued that if the Bible was corrupted in transmission, the Quran is false for calling a false book true, and he cited textual variants and differing accounts, such as how Judas died.

He argued that Quran 10:94 treats earlier scripture as the standard of truth, so that if the Quran agrees with it the Quran is true, and if it does not, the Quran is false.

He cited Quran 5:47, which tells the People of the Gospel to judge by what God revealed in it, and argued that judging by the Gospel means judging the Quran to be false.

Citing the covenant with the prophets in Quran 3:81, he argued that a messenger is identified by confirming what earlier scriptures contain, so a Quran that does not match them shows Muhammad is not the messenger, and he said this is why he denies Muhammad as a prophet.

Hashmi argued that the Islamic dilemma offers only two options when a third exists, namely reinterpreting the Torah and Gospel, which he said is also the solution Christians use for the Christian dilemma.

He set out the Christian dilemma: the New Testament affirms the Old Testament, yet the Old Testament contradicts New Testament and Orthodox doctrines, and early figures such as Marcion noticed these discontinuities.

He listed discontinuities including the Trinity and the god-man, a covenant described as everlasting in the Hebrew Bible but obsolete in Hebrews, the perpetual Torah, differing views of atonement, sacrifice, circumcision, Sabbath, priesthood, and a messiah expected as a political figure.

He argued that the Proto-Orthodox Church read the Hebrew Bible allegorically, and that revelatory exegesis, an authoritative reinterpretation of earlier scripture through new revelation, is already found in the Hebrew Bible, as in Daniel's reading of Jeremiah.

He argued that the Gospel writers rewrote Mark, so the criticism of the Quran's use of earlier texts applies equally to them, and Muslims can therefore affirm the Torah and Gospel while holding that the Quran gives their divinely authorized interpretation.

He said the Quran's terms Torah and Gospel are polysemous: Torah mainly means divine law or the Mosaic proclamation including oral law, and Gospel mainly means Jesus' proclamation rather than the four written Gospels, which did not yet exist.

He said the Quran's word kitab primarily refers to celestial revelation and only secondarily to written texts, so the Quran's focus is on revelatory proclamation rather than physical books.

He argued that the Quran's word for confirms means fulfils, which includes modification: Jesus confirms the Torah in Quran 3:50 by making lawful some things that were forbidden, and the Quran confirms earlier revelation in the same sense.

Quoting Sinai, he said the Quran combines a claim to confirm earlier scripture with a claim to be its ultimate arbiter, and cited Quran 3:7 to argue that the clear verses (muhkam) should be used to understand the unclear verses of earlier scripture.

GodLogicApologetics argued that Polycarp, Irenaeus and Justin condemned Marcion as a heretic, and that someone who rejects the Old Testament and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John cannot be a Christian, so Marcion is not an example of Christian discontinuity.

Hashmi said that orthodoxy as a settled category emerged several centuries after Jesus, which is why scholars use the term proto-Orthodox, and that from an academic historical perspective he counts Marcion as a Christian.

GodLogicApologetics said orthodoxy means right belief, referring to the early tradition of what the first Christians held and passed on.

GodLogicApologetics argued that Christians face a similar dilemma, and that it is more acute for them because they accept the Hebrew Bible as scriptural canon, and he asked Hashmi to acknowledge this.

An audience member asked Hashmi whether he personally believes the scriptures were corrupted. Hashmi answered that he avoids the loaded term corrupted, that the texts had a history of modification from their original authors, and that historians do not hold the first five books to be by Moses.

An audience member asked why Muslims reject the Gospels because Jesus did not write them while accepting the Quran and Hadith although Muhammad wrote nothing, and what miracles show Allah is the God of the Bible. Hashmi said the argument applies to Hadith, that the Quran is an exception among historical scholars, that Allah is the Arabic word for God also used by Arab Christians, and that he does not believe in supernatural miracles.

An audience member asked how Hashmi interprets Mark 10:45, where Jesus gives his life as a ransom, in light of Quran 4:157. Hashmi said apologists misread Quran 10:94, and did not give a settled interpretation of Mark 10:45, saying he would not speak off the cuff.

GodLogicApologetics said he had answered Hashmi's questions directly, but he did not know Hashmi's position on what the Quran says about earlier scripture or on what the Injil is.

He cited Old Testament passages, including Deuteronomy 6:4 and 32, Isaiah 9:6, 2 Samuel 23:2-3, Genesis passages where Yahweh and the angel of the Lord appear, and Zechariah 12:10, to argue that the Hebrew Bible presents one God who is also Father, Son and Spirit, and said he did not need the New Testament for this.

He argued that Quran 2:85 asks whether believers accept part of scripture and reject the rest, and said that by relying on historical scholarship Hashmi accepts part of his scripture while rejecting other parts.

GodLogicApologetics concluded that the Christian dilemma is resolved in Jesus and that the Islamic dilemma was not addressed in the debate.