Aslan's Islam: Kinder, Gentler, and Trickier

“No god but God” offers a sweeping, interpretive view of both the history and future of Islam. The book weaves rapidly from past to present and back again—from the cultural and religious background of pre-Islamic Arabia to the swelling currents of revolt that toppled the Shah and ushered in the age of theocracy in Iran. Aslan’s adroit writing style aside, the scorching pace and chronological zigzags make the reader feel like being caught in a time warp.

Positively, Aslan rejects the violent and misogynistic tendencies historically promulgated by many interpretive schools of Islam. He argues that Islam is marching forward and is now at the point of bridging a spiritual and intellectual divide in an evolutionary process that he asserts has strong parallels to the Protestant Reformation. While the differences between the Protestant Reformation and Aslan’s hoped-for reinvigoration of Islam are vast, the aspiration of peaceful progress is laudable enough.

Aslan’s blithe vision of Islam, in lockstep with democratic values, fully maturated and adapted to the modern world, is nonetheless premised on a severely anemic historiographic approach. There is slight treatment to painful issues such as dhimma, the essentially secondary status assigned to non-Muslim communities such as Jews and Christians in Muslim lands. Astonishingly, the author describes the special taxes required of these groups as “protection money,” a notion that smacks of Mafia-like extortion, and in any case completely ignores the hadith (traditions ascribed to Muhammad) in Sahih Muslim, Sahih Bukhari, and other Muslim commentators that contain openly derogatory references to non-Muslim groups and incitements to oppress and humiliate them. Aslan’s new vision of Islam may reject such widespread, systemic injustice. But his failure to address the indelicate historical realities leaves him open to the charge of trying to repaint the mural of history.

At times, the historical arguments reach the level of the ridiculous. Following a gratuitous note on Muhammad’s active libido, the prophet of Islam’s polygamy is temporalized and excused because as “Shaykh of the Ummah” (the new Muslim community in Medina) it was his “responsibility” to help hold the community together by the political expedient of multiple marriage. The Quran (33:50), however, reveals a different motivation. Muhammad could marry as “many” as he “desired”, cousins on his father’s side, mother’s side, “believing” women, and women whom he had attained as prisoners of war. If Muhammad’s many marriages were altruistic in nature, how could marrying slave girl prisoners benefit the community?

Aslan’s own smug Islamo-centric perspective seems to be lost on him. He parrots criticism in the popular press by condemning the “bigotry” of Christian preachers and pundits, some of whom have legitimate and not uncharitable concerns about the religious violence sanctioned by much (but not all) of Islamic jurisprudence and clergy. And in his opening pages, he caricatures a young missionary couple aiming to share the good news of Jesus Christ with Muslims.

Yet it is precisely this freedom to express unpopular political and religious viewpoints that is suppressed—sometimes violently—in most predominantly Muslim countries. Cast the blame where you will—supposedly misconstruing the concept of jihad, deviant Islamic jurists and commentators, sinister ayatollahs, or Western imperialism. But when the ethos of intolerance is so deeply embedded in the fabric of society, how are we to believe change can be realized? What are the mechanisms that will make renewal and adaptation possible? These are the real questions a book like “No god but God” raises. But Aslan flatly fails to give us answers.

Death by a Thousand Cuts: Rejecting the Absurdities, Contradictions, and Contentions of Witness Lee and the so-called “Local Church” Movement

Most people, quite naturally, would fear being struck by a sword more than a scalpel. But slice someone up with a scalpel a thousand times and you can still kill him. Death by a thousand little cuts, rather than death from a single blow, is death just the same.

Some cults seem to have perfected the art of theological “death by a thousand cuts.” Case in point: the Liites (that is, “Li-ites,” or followers of Chang-Shou Li), better known by their self-given title as “The Local Church.” The Local Church first made its appearance in the US in the 1960’s, when Chang-Shou Li (known by his disciples as “Witness Lee”) arrived in America and began to draw followers to himself. Among other peculiarities, The Local Church claimed to be the only legitimate expression of the church. All other denominations and sects are part of corrupt “dead Christianity” from which the “blind” who receive “sight” must separate themselves: “When we were in the denominations, we were blind. I do not believe that any dear Christians who have really received sight from the Lord could still remain in the denominations.... But when he receives his sight, he will swiftly leave the fold for the pasture, for the sunshine, for the fresh air [i.e, join The Local Church].” (Witness Lee, Christ Versus Religion LSM, 197,1 p.109-110). The exclusivist claims of the LC have now been relaxed ostensibly, and according to their website (http://localchurches.org/beliefs/index.html) Christians in other churches can now be saved. If that were the only “scalpel cut” inflicted by Li and his followers, then it wouldn’t be fatal.

But the surgical “cut to the heart”—and one of the reasons the LC is still a cult and not just a far-off-the-center fringe group—is their unorthodox view of the Trinity. Chang-Shou Li was what theologians call a modalist—someone who denies that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three Persons within one divine Being. Modalism affirms that God is one Person who has “temporary manifestations” as the Father, Son, or Spirit. You can think of the god of modalism as wearing different hats at different times. He puts on one hat and now he’s the Father. He takes that hat off, puts another one on, and now he’s the Son, and then, the Spirit, and so on. He changes titles, but doesn’t reveal himself as distinct Personalities. This heretical view of the Trinity has rightly been rejected since the days of the early church.

That Li was a modalist is clear. Among numerous other (literally) damning statements: “Therefore, it is clear: The Lord Jesus is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and He is the very God. He is also the Lord. He is the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the Mighty God, and the Lord.” (Witness Lee, The Clear Scriptural Revelation Concerning the Triune God, www.contendingforthefaith.org/responses/booklets/triune.html). What’s perplexing though is that there are actually orthodox expressions of the doctrine of the Trinity on the LC website, for instance: “The local church believes that God is the only one Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—co-existing equally from eternity to eternity (1 Tim. 2:5a, Matt. 28:19).” Nevertheless, despite repeated calls to do so from evangelical leaders, LC leadership stubbornly refuse to disavow the heretical teachings of their founder, Chang-Shou Li.

So which is it then? Is Jesus one of three Persons, or is Jesus and the Father and the Spirit all the same Person? Is the LC an orthodox church with a sound view of the Trinity, or a heretical church teaching modalism? The answer is both, and therefore, neither.

In fact—and this is what is so sinister about the movement—the LC today are neither modalists nor Trinitarians. They are “confusionists” who espouse two views that are mutually exclusive and irreconcilable with one another. The Godhead cannot be One Person and Three Persons. He is three Persons (biblical view) or one Person (modalist view). But both cannot be true. The philosophically savvy term of describing the LC view is deconstructionism, which posits that there are no integrated and consistent thought systems, only the illusion of unity that breaks down to absurdity and contradiction when examined closely. And that’s what LC doctrine does. It break down to meaningless babble and absurdity. Confused "God-talk" can neither save people, nor glorify God.

Add to all this the final “scalpel cut” of the LC church’s penchant for suing the pants off people who disagree with them (latest case: an $136 million dollar libel suit against Harvest House publishers who labeled the LC as a “cult”, a suit which the LC lost), and what the LC movement amounts to is theological “death by a thousand cuts”: on the one hand, diverting precious time and resources from the church to answer their clever obfuscations and legal tactics, and on the other, dragging precious souls with them down to hell.

Beware the scalpel.

Burning the Qur’an: If You Do It, Don’t Say the Bible Told You So. If You Don’t Do It, Make Sure You Do What the Bible Tells You to Do.

Pastor Mike offered some sound insights on the controversy over the planned Qur’an burning by a Florida church at the Compass staff meeting today. Like the shrewd steward of Luke 16, the “wise as a serpent” Christian today does well to weigh the impact of his actions on his audience: are unbelievers more likely or less likely to respond winsomely to the gospel as the result of such a radical action?

But some might beg to cite biblical precedent here. After all, the occult books burned by repentant former practitioners of black magic in Ephesus (Acts 19:18-20) were so many that their total value reached 50,000 pieces of silver. A lot of Ephesians, and no doubt some Ephesian occultists, eyed the smoke rising from that fire! So is there a biblical principal in view in the present Qur’an burning dilemma that would require such a dramatic public statement?

Simply stated, no. The burning of the Qur’an and the burning of the occult books in Acts 19 are worlds apart for several reasons. First, it should be pointed out that the new disciples in Ephesus were renouncing their own former religion, not denigrating that of others. While a public book burning by Muslim converts to Christianity would not be a great idea, it would certainly be a different case than that of Terry Jones (the spiritual leader of a group of people in sunny, mild, and conspicuously non-Muslim Florida) getting a hankering to burn the religious text of some other faith. Not that this would be our best advice either, but why doesn’t he burn a few hundred copies of Playboy or Hustler? They probably sell better down there than English copies of the Qur’an do. And I doubt even Jones would argue that laying pure eyes on the pages of the Qur’an would be as defiling as the latest smut turned out by Hefner and friends.

If you were inclined to “go biblical” in your arguments to support Qur’an burning, chances are you’ve already made a turn back. But just in case, going a bit further into the context of Acts 19 we see just how impossible it is to use this text as proof for this latest misguided endeavor.

The converts of Acts 19:18-20 were, as we mentioned, practitioners of the arcana mundi, or “black arts” in Latin, which were specifically proscribed and punishable by Roman law. So too was any mystery religion that was not a religio licita, that is, a religion officially recognized and tolerated by the state. Roman society disdained such superstitio, “superstitious beliefs”, and a number of public book burnings are gleefully recorded in the annals of the Roman historians Suetonius and Livy. Far from enraging the average civic-minded Ephesian, the book burning would most likely have been viewed as a welcome purge from society of superstitious unmentionables.

Not so with the cult of “Artemis of the Ephesians” (Acts 19:28) and her great temple, mentioned just a few verses later in the biblical account. A source of civic pride, the official cult of Artemis was one layer of the societal glue that bound Ephesians together. So careful were Paul and his companions not to cast unnecessary aspersions on the Artemis cult that later the town clerk could remark confidently that they were neither “sacrilegious” nor “blasphemers of our goddess.” (verse 37).

The Ephesian milieu was a complex mix of religion, social mores, and political pride—not unlike that of the Arab world today. The tides of Arab nationalism have waxed and waned over the centuries, but for many Arab Muslims, in particular, Muhammad will always be a rallying point. It was he who united the nomadic Arab desert tribes and began to form them into an impressive and dominating fighting force. The sayings of the Qur’an, which Islamic history attributes entirely to him, have served as a crystallizing and preservative force for the dialect of Arabic which has become standard across the Arab world. While not generally spoken by the masses, it is still largely understood, whether you’re a cosmopolitan socialite in Tangiers, Morocco, or a marsh Arab dwelling in tenement huts in Iraq. Though the analogy is crude, in some ways Muhammad was the founding father of the Arab national movement, just as George Washington was of that in America. Only, Muslims remember Muhammad as both a religious and secular figure, whereas Americans have long forgotten Washington’s deism, but still embrace his secularism and libertarianism.

In the end, the whole conversation seems like just another round in the endless cycle of foolhardy reactionism against Islam by Western evangelicals. We are too busy disobeying the Great Commission to actually do what Jesus tells us to do: Go to unbelievers (even Muslims). Preach a simple gospel with boldness and humility. And pray that people will be saved. Whether the next Florida pastor is too busy organizing sea-side treasure hunts for retirees or decides to go on a “burn crusade” against the world, we’ve missed the point.

Legalism By Any Other Name: A Review of the Book Holy Cow

There are essentially two goals of Hope Egan’s book: The first is to prove that an Old Testament kosher diet—that is, abstaining from meats such as pork and shellfish—generally leads to better personal fitness and health. For instance, she states (p. 32) that plant-eating animals (herbivores) absorb fewer toxins or poisons than meat-eating animals (carnivores) and that people will be healthier if they eat herbivorous animals allowed under the OT food laws. Although the validity of this and other health claims in the book are difficult to evaluate because Egan does not appear to cite any original research, my concern in this review is for the second, and really the main, emphasis of the book: to build the case that Christians today can be more pleasing to God if they keep the OT dietary laws. This is not stated as such, but seems implied throughout. For instance, after noting the importance of holiness in the life of believer and quoting Leviticus 11:45 (“…you shall be holy, for I am holy”), the author concludes (p. 25) that holiness is the “only reason” mentioned as to why God gave dietary laws to the Israelites in Leviticus 11.

Let’s begin with the positive. Egan’s book does contain biblically accurate statements about the relationship between the OT Law and getting yourself right with God (p. 19): “But Scripture itself—both the New Testament and the Old—tells us that following the Torah never led to salvation. Right standing with God has always come solely through faith in God’s promises.” While Egan (and the secondary author, Thomas Lancaster) clearly understand that no one can be made acceptable to God by following the Law, they err in their understanding of several key passages that discuss the nature of the OT law and how it relates to the Christian, and fail to mention central biblical texts that plainly acknowledge that the OT is no longer binding on the believer.

Although the finer points of how the New and Old Testaments relate together can sometimes appear puzzling, it is clear that the OT law is temporary, a fact that the OT itself announces: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:31-32, ESV). Like the prophet Jeremiah, the author of Hebrews recognizes that the laws and regulations of the old covenant (“covenant” is a more modern word for “testament”) have expired, and therefore no longer have validity. After quoting the Jeremiah passage above (Hebrews 8:8-12), and discussing the superiority of the new covenant, the author of Hebrews concludes that “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (verse 13).

Theologians have often divided the Law into its moral, civil (pertaining to governmental and civil administration), and ceremonial (e.g., sacrifices, offerings, feasts) aspects. The moral law, according to this view, is retained in the new covenant, while the civil and ceremonial laws are discarded. This appears logical, since many of the moral commands of the OT are repeated in the NT, but doesn’t seem to square exactly with the statement of the author of Hebrews that the old covenant itself (not just the civil and ceremonial laws) are as a whole now obsolete.

Perhaps a better model is to conceive of the old covenant as a passport that has expired and needs to be reissued (at least in the United States, passports cannot be renewed). Like an old passport, the old covenant also has expired and God’s covenant with mankind has been “reissued” in Christ. As the old passport served its purpose for travel while it was valid, the old covenant served its purpose in God’s plan for the Israelite nation. Now that God has issued a new and better passport—one that anyone in the world can have, and without an expiration date!—the old passport is no longer needed. True, the new covenant and the old both hold a certain moral outlook in common, just like the old passport and the new passport both allow you to travel. We would expect this since the same God issued both covenants.

Space will not permit a full discussion of other relevant texts, some of which are used as proof texts in the book, but I will briefly address the authors’ core misunderstanding of Jesus’ statement in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:17 that He has come not “to abolish the Law and the Prophets . . . but to fulfill them.” In the context, Jesus goes on to say that whoever breaks the “least” of the OT laws, and so teaches others, will be called “least” in the kingdom of heaven, whereas those who keep and teach them will be called great. For Egan, this means Christians are to keep the OT law dietary laws and perhaps the OT law in general (this point is not made totally clear), although she is willing to make exceptions for certain commandments, such as stoning adulterers, because this would conflict with civil laws today.

But what does it really mean for Jesus when he urges us to “keep” the commandments, and what does it mean to “fulfill” them? Reading on in Matthew 5, Jesus presents a number of vivid, clarifying examples. In verse 21, for instance, Jesus notes (“You have heard…”) that that the OT law does indeed forbid murder (Exodus 20:13), but condemning murder is not the point of the Law. Hatred is. No murder has ever take place without someone first hating someone else. Jesus penetrates to and condemns the motivation behind the action, an attitude of hatred toward others. God’s real concern is for a heart attitude of love and worship toward Him and others. “Keeping” the commandment not to “murder” as God truly intended it (“But I say to you…”, verse 22) requires a pure and righteous motivation for our actions. It requires us to love God and our neighbor, which is simpler to express than the OT law code but infinitely more difficult for fallen sinners to do without God’s grace!

In his dramatic conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus summarizes the requirements of the OT law: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12; ESV) The New Testament believer is “fulfilling” the Law—just as Jesus came to “fulfill” the Law—by loving his neighbor, because that is the true end and purpose of the Law. Jesus was announcing a new era in which the moral kernel of the Law is not only restated, but its demands are actually amplified forcefully.

So what was the primary purpose of the Law? The multiplied commandments of the OT law are necessary for God to demonstrate the utter futility of attempting to curry favor with Him on the basis of our works. The Law was the “tutor” or “guardian” that taught us about our own sinfulness and desperate need for a Savior (Galatians 3:232-26). Just like the child coming of age is no longer under a guardian, the NT believer who has received grace is no longer under the OT law.

In sum, Egan’s book tends to blur the line between law and grace, old covenant and new covenant. Its practical dietary recommendations may or may not be helpful, but its theological reasoning lays the dangerous groundwork of legalistic thinking.