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In this episode, Trent reviews a debate between Christians and Muslims on the PBD podcast and shows how the Christians main argument against Islam left them vulnerable to Muslim objections.
Transcript:
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Today, I’m going to talk about what not to do when it comes to engaging Muslims in public dialogue. So actually, there’s two things you should not do. Number one, don’t get attached to this set behind me. I know it looks really spiffy. I’m here in San Diego filming for the Catholic Answers School of Apologetics, so the crew here graciously let me use the set to film one of the Counsel of Trent episodes. So number one, don’t get attached to this set. And number two, don’t not subscribe to the Counsel of Trent Podcast. In other words, you better make sure that you are subscribed to the channel so you don’t miss content we have on how to answer Islam, Protestantism, atheism, and better graciously defend the Catholic faith. And of course, please support us at trenthornpodcast.com.
All right, onto the subject that brings us together for today’s episode. At the end of September, there was a religious round table discussion on the PBD Podcast, hosted by Patrick Bet-David. The discussion basically turned into Christianity versus Islam. And the guests were two Muslims, Daniel Haqiqatjou, and Jake the Muslim Metaphysician. I’m worried I’m going to butcher Daniel’s name, so it’s Daniel and Jake, and then two Christians, Brother Rachid and Robert Spencer. Rachid is a convert from Islam to Christianity and Spencer is an author. He’s an interesting case actually because he used to be Catholic, but he’s now Eastern Orthodox.
First, let me say at the outset, I think the debaters were all relatively civil. I mean, there were some interruptions or some filibustering, but there’s nothing too extreme. The problem for the Christians is it felt like they were going after the wrong target in this discussion between Christianity and Islam. So at the beginning of the round table, the host, David, asked the Christians: What is their biggest difficulty with Islam? And here’s Robert Spencer’s answer.
Patrick Bet-David:
What is your biggest challenge in differences with the religion of Islam?
Robert Spencer:
Well, probably the main thing is the sanctification of violence and the idea that God will bless and even call upon the believers to commit acts of violence under circumstances, like Rachid here is an ex-Muslim. And so under Islamic law as it’s traditionally and classically formulated, he would be put to death.
Trent Horn:
When you focus on a side issue, you risk getting sidetracked. And I believe that’s what happened in this Christian Muslim debate on the PBD Podcast. It is fair to say, at minimum, there is a troubling connection between Islam and violence. Western liberals are always trying to whitewash this fact. One of my favorite examples of them doing this comes from a 2015 article at cnn.com called Religion’s Week from Hell. It describes an unusually busy week of religious terrorism in February of 2015. The article said, “Christians, Muslims and Jews alike all fell prey to assaults.” But six out of the seven incidents in the article were all perpetrated by Muslim groups like ISIS and Boko Haram. The article really should’ve been called Islam’s Week from Hell, but that doesn’t conform to the narrative, so you have to say it’s a problem with religion, not just Islam.
The only violence in that article involving a non-Muslim perpetrator was a shooting of three Muslims in North Carolina by an atheist. But investigators have said this was probably not about their faith, but it was a dispute between neighbors over a parking space fight, but back to the debate. I think Spencer set himself up for a tough dilemma in this debate from the Muslims by making Islam’s connection to violence his central problem with Islam, instead of something more fundamental, like that Islam is false. The argument seems to be that he’s making and Rachid are making, is that it’s wrong or even always wrong to commit violence against other religions or against people who used to follow your religion. Islam commits this kind of violence, so Islam is wrong.
Now in response to that, a Muslim apologist could, and in fact, the apologist in this episode, the Muslims in this round table, do this, they could point out that by this standard, Christianity is also wrong, since the church and the people of God used to do these things. Think about the violence committed between Catholics and Protestants, or even among Protestants, against the Anabaptists after the reformation, or how the church, during the Middle Ages, worked with the state to prosecute and even execute heretics. And the Bible describes the nation of Israel killing the men, women, and children of other tribes like the Canaanites, or giving the death penalty to those who lead others to worship false gods. So one of the Muslim apologists, he makes this very objection, and he puts it in a form of a dilemma.
Speaker 5:
Your God, Jesus, revealed at that specific time, as I just read the passage, and I can read you plenty more, where he says to kill babies in war. Is it okay to target infants in war and kill babies? Is that inherently immoral? You have two options. If you condemn it as inherently immoral, then the whole Bible’s gone because if you believe that those Bibles, that those verses in the Bible were revealed by God, then you’re saying that God is immoral. And on the other hand, if you say that it’s not inherently immoral, but God changed the law at this time, then most of your arguments lose the force that they have against Islam because you can no longer argue that it is inherently immoral to punish an apostate by death, and all of the other things that you want to tack on.
Trent Horn:
This is why I prefer to begin the discussion by refuting the foundations of Islam instead of going after a controversial secondary point like Islam’s propensity for violence. That’s because when you end up in the horns of this dilemma, there are different routes you can take to blunt its force. But most of them require a fair amount of explanation, which is difficult to do in a public dialogue. But if you had more time, here are the points that I would bring up.
First, the Muslim apologists are confusing unchanging divine revelation with changeable church laws. Consider the age of marriage. So Spencer and Rachid bring up the fact that Muhammad married a nine-year-old girl named Aisha. And they used this as evidence against Islam. But Daniel and Jake, the Muslim apologists, counter by pointing out how the church’s medieval Canon law allowed girls as young as 12 years old to marry. And this wasn’t changed until 1917. So this argument would also cut against Christianity as well.
Speaker 6:
And then finally, you have Canon law. You have the church tradition. So if Robert wants to denounce Canon law, because when you have Canon law, it has slavery, it has a marriage age of 12 years old in Canon law.
Trent Horn:
So these Muslim apologists seem to think Canon law is some kind of infallible law that comes from divine revelation. But a lot of Canon law involves ecclesiastical laws. And these can be changed for the good of the church. They are not a fixed set of infallible divine revelation. For example, Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is a divinely revealed dogma. It cannot change. But how we show reverence to Christ in the Eucharist can change. For example, the requirement for how long we abstain from food before receiving the Eucharist has changed in church history in Canon law. Traditionally, it was from midnight the night before, and so you couldn’t eat from midnight until you received the Eucharist the next day. And this made it difficult for some people to be able to receive the Eucharist. Say you got home late and it was after midnight and you hadn’t eaten yet, or you weren’t going to the Eucharist in the morning.
This created difficulty, so the church change it in the West in 1953 to three hours of abstaining, and then finally to one hour in 1964. So Canon law in most cases can change based on an awareness of what is best for the body of Christ. We see something similar in child labor laws. This is not a part of Canon law. But you see this as something in laws that relate to children. At one time, it may have been necessary for children to work so their families didn’t starve. But society has advanced enough so that’s no longer necessary. And governments should now focus their efforts on keeping children from being exploited.
A similar line of thought can be pursued with marriage, which is why the church increased the age of marriage from 12 to 14 in the 1917 Code of Canon Law. And it allows bishops conferences to set the age even higher based on their unique social circumstances. But crafting feasible marriage laws for society and working to improve them over time, that’s way different than an alleged prophet of God marrying a nine-year-old girl. The difference is starkly evident in Muslim apologists who treat marriage at puberty as some kind of unchanging divine revelation rather than a human law that can be amended based on social and moral progress. You can see this in debates where Muslim apologists admit that Islam would allow marriage with a girl who reaches puberty at any age, even if they have precocious puberty, and so they reach it when they’re very young children, like you see in this clip with Inspiring Philosophy.
Speaker 7:
Precocious puberty is.
Speaker 8:
Yes, I do.
Speaker 7:
Okay. What is it?
Speaker 8:
It means starting puberty unusually early, beyond averages.
Speaker 7:
Is there anything in Islam that prevents a man marrying a five-year-old that started precocious puberty?
Speaker 8:
No, marriage can happen … You can arrange a marriage even as an infant, but that doesn’t mean that sex is allowed.
Speaker 7:
Could a man have a marriage to a five-year-old consummated if she started precocious puberty?
Speaker 8:
If she starts showing signs of physical maturity, then yes, that’s permissible, as I stated.
Speaker 7:
How about age four?
Speaker 8:
If there are signs of … So this is something that becomes biologically impossible because precocious puberty-
Speaker 7:
I have a study that shows it goes as early as 11 months.
Trent Horn:
Now some Muslim apologists will also say, “But what about the Virgin Mary?” She was a teenage mother. God caused a teenager to become pregnant, and they’ll try to make this sound really bad in order to attack Christianity. But Catholicism through the doctrines of Mary’s perpetual virginity and her immaculate conception has a unique way to respond to this Muslim objection that other Protestants aren’t able to, so you can check out that video I did. Click the link in the description below.
Another point that needs to be made though related to the difference between the Quran and the Bible’s inspiration, we need to talk about. And Robert Spencer actually brought this point up, and I’m glad that he did. Muslims believe that the Quran, it’s not just divinely inspired. The Quran is the very word of God spoken to Muhammad, who simply remembered it and then recited it to other people who wrote it down. But Christians recognize the Bible is not a mere dictation of God’s voice. That wouldn’t explain passages where, as Robert Spencer notes, St. Paul wasn’t sure who he baptized. The Second Vatican Council says, “The human authors of scripture were true authors.” And as true authors, they wrote in accord with their particular world views, which were scientifically and even theologically undeveloped.
That’s why Pope Benedict XVI said that following God’s revelation through these human authors, he’s says this, “It must be remembered first and foremost that Biblical revelation is deeply rooted in history. God’s plan is manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly in successive stages and despite human resistance. God chose a people and patiently worked to guide and educate them.” So this is an important point to remember when Muslims will say, “How can you criticize Islam when you have these episodes in the Bible that include violence and harsh punishments that you criticize Islam for having?” So Christians have a different perspective on scripture. We’re able to say that harsh punishments for crimes like idolatry, they were necessary to protect Israel’s unique holiness and they reflected judicial standards of the time.
And medieval kingdoms implemented something similar. They had what we would consider to be overly harsh punishments because it was thought this was necessary to protect the social order of society. This was a time when church and state were highly interwoven, and so the crime of heresy was more on par with the crime of treason. But these laws did not represent God’s ideal. The catechism even says the following. It says, “In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protests from the pastors of the church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. In recent times, it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person.”
All right, here’s what we need to remember so far. Any critique of Muslim violence made by a Christian also has to take into account past descriptions of Christian violence, such as what was done during the Middle Ages in church history, or violence that is described in scripture that God apparently commands. Any reply that Christians are going to give I think is going to rely on development of doctrine. God did not command for violence to be a universal norm for the church. And Christians have developed their understanding of when violence is appropriate. At one time, this was tolerated for the harsh tribal life under the old covenant. And the church tolerated or implemented it for the more precarious social condition of the Middle Ages. But given modern circumstances, there is nothing that can justify these practices anymore. They are inadmissible, if you will.
But some Muslims still act like it’s the Middle Ages and promote death for infidels and apostates, as if it were God’s express command. Not all Muslims argue this, by the way. That’s another point that can be brought up here, even Muslims don’t agree on how this should be applied today. But you have, especially in the West, Muslim apologists who are very forthright about this and it needs to be answered. But Christians have a superior world view because we can apply God’s revelation to different social conditions and allow social doctrine to develop over time, so that we can more clearly see how God’s will is to be applied and how God wants us to live. Now once again, instead of going through all of this, I’d much rather in a discussion like this, go after the root of the issue. And I would just deny that the Quran has any divine authority whatsoever.
And so ultimately, what’s wrong with Muslim arguments based on alleged divine instructions to kill infidels and apostates is that there’s just no good evidence those instructions in the Quran actually have a divine origin. The Quran is roughly what we’d expect a person in medieval Arabia to come up with. Granted, you could say something similar about the Bible in many respects because God allowed the human authors to retain their ancient world views. Remember, God allowed them to be true authors. But there’s two differences here. One, as I said, God allowed the Biblical authors to be true authors, so the fact that it sounds like an ancient text makes sense because the human authors were allowed to retain their ancient world view. The Quran isn’t like that. The Quran is supposed to be just the purely spoken word of God itself, and so it can be judged differently than the Bible.
And number two, the Bible is corroborated by miracles, things like Christ’s resurrection and the authority of the church He established. What do we have to establish the authority of the Quran? The Quran’s authority simply comes from its own claims about itself, which are not that impressive, things like no one else could write something as beautiful as the Quran. Or there are things like later miracle stories that are not explicitly in the Quran that are supposed to validate Muhammad’s status as a prophet, things like the claim that Muhammad split the moon in half. You can check out my thoughts on the Quran and this other evidence for Islam in this reply that I made to the Muslim apologist, Sheikh Uthman. Click the description in the link below if you want more on all of that.
But if you go down this route, which is sort of where Spencer and Rachid were headed, you get another objection. If you go down the route saying, “Look, Islam and Christianity are different. Yes, Christianity has violence in the Old Testament and in church history, but Christians, we are able to develop our understanding of things like social doctrine and how it’s applied at different times,” well, you get another objection from Muslim apologists. They’ll say this.
Male:
He says that, oh, well, our religion adapts. Our religion changes. But that’s actually the problem, Patrick. When we’re talking about woke-ism, when we’re talking about if you can say that, oh, well, that’s … Old Testament is for those times. It’s not applicable now. Right? That’s the argument, the violence, the killing, the killing of blasphemers, that’s for old times. We’ve changed. But Muslims are not willing to change. I say, “Yeah, Muslims are willing to stand by revelation.” And so why, if you can get rid of the conquests and the violence and the punishment for [inaudible 00:18:09], why not just get rid of the prohibition of cross-dressing, the prohibition of homosexuality, the prohibition of drag queens? Why prohibit any of that? Maybe times are different. Maybe we need to adopt drag queen story hour in our church. Maybe we need to adopt all of these woke practices. Why not?
Trent Horn:
And I’ll admit, that is a very good question. That would require an entire episode for me to address. It’s an important question because we don’t want to fall into two easy extremes when it comes to these questions of either saying that nothing can ever develop or change. If you go down that route, well, that’s how people like Josiah Priest, he wrote an entire book in the 19th century called A Bible Defense of Slavery. If you take an overly rigid approach and say, “Nothing can change whatsoever,” if it was in the Bible, it’s okay, if it was in church history, that’s okay. That’s one easy, but faulty, approach.
The other extreme is to say, “Well, everything’s up for grabs.” If you do that, yeah, anything can develop. Anything can change. Well, you get liberal theologians who say that Jesus’ resurrection, it used to be bodily, but now the resurrection is just about having hope in hope and faith in faith. So we have the extremes, nothing can ever possibly change, if it was in the Bible and church history, it’s fine then, it’s fine now. Or everything can change, everything’s up for grabs. Two easy answers, but easy answers are rarely ever good answers. Instead, in order to address this issue, we have to take a more sophisticated approach and we have to explain that the Catholic Church, it has a framework for showing what teachings can develop and what teachings have been defined. The word infallibly defined, defined, comes from [foreign language 00:19:57], brought to an end. In this case, brought to an end through infallible teachings or definitions. For more on that, I would definitely recommend my colleague, Jimmy Akin’s book, Teaching With Authority.
Finally, I want to address a point the Muslim apologists made because in response to this, they said, “You know what, you shouldn’t be a Christian because everything about Christianity is development. Everything that makes Christianity unique doesn’t go back to the Bible. It was developed later.” They claim, for example, that the Trinity was not taught before the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century, and that other earlier church fathers like Justin Martyr were simply wrong about it. So they’ll say that Christian doctrine comes from speculative developments, not clear divine revelation.
Male:
But the reality is that your theology according to you on the Trinity is actually more correct than the person that you’re praying to. And I can go through a whole more list of on key doctrines like the doctrine of the incarnation, the atonement, and the Trinity itself, that the early church authorities like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and on and on, up until the fourth century, never preached the doctrine of the Trinity, sir. So when you make the claim that your message has been consistent without, well, we see in the very beginnings on the fundamental point of who God is, you did not have the same doctrine. It took to get to the fourth century, and that’s why Christianity, because at its very beginning was very comfortable with development.
Male:
Does this mean that Justin Martyr was a heretic? No, because he comes before that. This is … No. Yeah, he was wrong. Yeah, absolutely.
Male:
So when he said he had another God, he was wrong.
Male:
There’s only one God. [inaudible 00:21:43]. I know that Islam teaches that everybody else is a polytheist.
Male:
I think you are.
Male:
Well, we’re not.
Trent Horn:
All right. So how should we respond to this? First, Islam also has doctrinal development and division. Don’t let a Muslim apologist get away from that. One example of that would be the question of whether the Quran was created or uncreated. Muslims who say the Quran was created are accused of denying it’s God’s word because nothing in God can be created. But Muslims who say it’s uncreated, the Quran is uncreated, are accused of making the Quran something that is separate from God, but eternal, which would threaten Islam’s supposedly radical commitment to monotheism. And thankfully, the Christians on the panel brought up this point.
So when the Muslims point out that Christians develop in their theology and understanding of their faith, we can point to Islam and say, “That happens also.” Second, I need to answer their charge that the doctrine of the Trinity was not taught prior to the Council of Nicaea. Was there someone who explained the Trinity using the exact language of Nicaea before the council waws convened? No, there wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean the doctrine of the Trinity was not believed before Nicaea. The essence of the doctrine is that there is one God who exists as three distinct equal and eternal persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
At the end of the second century, Theophilus of Antioch uses the word Trinity to describe God, His wisdom, and His word. There is one God, but God reveals Himself through His word, Jesus, the Logos, and His wisdom, the wisdom of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. In the third century, Tertullian said the following, “For the unity is distributed in a Trinity, placed in order, the three are the Father, Son, and Spirit. They are three. However, not in condition, but in degree, not in being, but in form, not in power, but in kind, of one being.” Or you have St. Gregory the Wonder Worker, the third century. He wrote the following, “There is a perfect Trinity in glory and eternity and sovereignty. Neither divided nor estranged. More, for there is nothing either created or in servitude in the Trinity, nor anything super induced, as if at some former period, it was nonexistent, and at some later period, it was introduced. And thus, neither was the Son ever wanting to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son, but without variation and without change, the same Trinity abides ever.”
The problem is that this is a difficult doctrine, so it’s easily misunderstood. If you press these early explanations of the Trinity too hard, well, that can result in taking the descriptions too literally, and you end up with heresies like tritheism, three Gods, Modalism, where one god plays different modes, so one God, who is one person, but three different modes, or characters, or roles, even though the Trinity is one God, who is three persons, not one person taking on three modes. Or Arianism, one almighty God and two lesser Gods, so they’re not equal in divinity.
What we clearly see is an understanding of the most basic elements of the Trinity prior to Nicaea. There is one God and other people besides the Father are God. You can find this all throughout the New Testament and Saint Ignatius writing in the year 107, who calls Jesus our God. By the way, if you’re a Protestant watching this, I hope this will encourage you to be really careful about nitpicking the church fathers when it comes to Catholic doctrine because this opens you up to Muslim objections because if you start saying things like, “Oh, well, this Catholic doctrine, it’s not in the early church because this father, well, he doesn’t articulate it the way Rome articulates it today. Or when he says it, that doesn’t correspond to how Catholics use those words today.” What you’re doing will result in Muslims doing the same thing to the church fathers, pointing out that what they say is not just vaguely related to the Trinity. It can even seem to contradict the Trinity in the early fathers.
So during this time in the church’s history, we have to remember the fathers don’t have the theological framework to express certain doctrines properly. So in the early church, for example, it’s difficult to express Mary’s immaculate conception because the doctrine of original sin hadn’t been developed more until the time of Augustine. Similarly, with the Trinity, the fathers don’t have the theological frameworks from the time of Nicaea to articulate this, so you end up with people like Justin Martyr, who say things that sound anti-Trinitarian. At one point in his dialogue with Rabbi Trypho, Justin says this, “There is said to be another God and Lord subject to the maker of all things, who is also called an angel because he announces to men whatsoever the maker of all things.”
So this can make it sound like that Justin is talking about something like Tritheism or Bitheism, two divine beings. But in other parts of the dialogue, Justin Martyr is clear only one God exists. He says, “There will be no other God, oh, Trypho, nor was there from eternity any other existing, but he who made and disposed all this universe. Nor do we think that there is one God for us and another for you, but that He alone is God who led your fathers out from Egypt with a strong hand and a high arm.”
Justin appears to be defending Logos theology. He’s saying that God’s word is God. You could crudely call it another God in the same way that a thought and a mind are not the same thing, but they’re not separate beings or separate things that exist independently of one another. The Protestant theologian, Michael Bird, puts it this way, “The Son is not the Father, but the Father has always had a Son. The firstborn Logos of God is also God.” Justin’s analogies for Christ’s divinity, vis a vis, God the Father, are like a thought from a mind or a fire kindling fire. Jesus is begotten from the Father, not an excision of His essence. Jesus is distinct in number, but not in substance.
Eric Osborne sums it up, “The word is God’s firstborn, God Himself. God to Him in number, but one with Him in essence.” My last point would be that some Muslim apologists will say that the Trinity, it’s just too complicated. It’s too mysterious. It makes Christianity inferior to Islam, which is easy to understand, one God and one final prophet. But by the logic, atheism would be superior to Islam because the infinite uncreated God, well, that’s also difficult to understand. It raises puzzles about how God interacts with the world. How can God make something from nothing? How can He exist without being made of anything? There’s also puzzles too, when it comes to theism. Ultimately though, it’s better to struggle with a true world view that has difficulties than to accept an easily, more easily digestible false world view.
That’s why it’s better to accept theism over atheism and Christianity over Islam. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for watching. Hopefully we can settle the debate on Islam at some point here on the channel. But please continue supporting us to make that happen, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
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