Hi to My New Friend

I’m glad we could meet last evening and start our conversation about Jesus and Muhammad. You asked a question last evening that didn’t really get an answer—the question of why Christians haven’t given Muhammad an honored role among the prophets, while (I think you imply) that Muslims honor all the prophets who brought the same message Muhammad brought.

This was a good, honest question, and I believe we should give you our own honest answer as best we can.

Presently there has about 1500 years of discussion on this topic between Muslims and Christians, and the question itself could be a topic of someone’s PhD dissertation; however, I’ll try to give a brief answer from my own perspective. I suggest there are three major things that have created a problem for Christians with regard to Muhammad.

1. The historical problem

The historical problem has to do with Jesus’ death and resurrection. When Muslims read the Koran, they say that according to the Koran, Jesus did not die. For Christians the eyewitness and documentary evidence that Jesus did die is so overwhelming that the thesis about his ascension to God without dying has been an insurmountable obstacle to faith in the Koran.  Also, early Christian faith spread by specifically telling the story of Jesus’ resurrection three days after his crucifixion.  Jesus’ resurrection is confirmation to Christians of God’s power over death and provides a concrete reason for belief in the final resurrection. This is probably the most important barrier for Christians to fully accept the Koran and its prophet.

2. The revelational problem

Muslims insist that all the prophets brought the same identical message. Each prophet reconfirmed what other prophets had spoken. One might describe the prophetic office as one and the same level road upon which each prophet traveled at a different time in history. That is how I understand the Muslim belief, but you can correct me if I am wrong.

Christians see the prophetic office to be more like a stairway. On that stairway each prophet stands upon one stair step, with succeeding prophets not only confirming the previous prophet’s message, but also providing new understanding that takes the knowledge of God another step higher. Jesus, then, stands at the highest level at the right hand of God. There is no higher that one can go. This is the second barrier I observe.

3. The theological problem

Moses said that if any prophets came after him who provided a directly contradictory message from what Moses taught, that this prophet should not be accepted. Christians see the death and resurrection of Jesus to be the fulfillment of what all the previous prophets announced would happen. If in fact, the message of Mohammad says that Jesus did not die, then according to Moses’ teaching, Mohammad should be rejected on that basis.

According to the New Testament, Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the world. Standing at the top of the upward path (stairway) to God, Jesus introduces Allah as Abu. No longer need we think of God as one would think of a great emperor far away in his palace, sending down edicts through his imperial couriers, the prophets, but rather coming down himself to bring us up to live in his house. In order to make us fit for living in his house, he cleanses us from our sins so we will not defile his holy dwelling with even the smallest of sins. In the New Testament Jesus is presented not as merely a prophet courier of messages, but rather as the Savior Prime Minister of God who opens the gates of the heavenly city to all who ask to be cleansed of their sins by faith in the death of Christ, and seek to live holy lives for him.

The theological problem for Christians is not the issue of how many Gods there are, but the issue of what the one God actually is like and what God has done. I believe that these three barriers are the essential barriers that Christians have found impossible to cross when it comes to faith in the Koran and the Koranic messenger, Mohammad, despite Christian appreciation for the good character of Mohammad, and the benefits of Islamic civilization in its early centuries of political, social, and educational experimentation.

If these three barriers can be overcome or bridged somehow, then you will surely begin making Muslims out of all of us.