i was digging through my library the other day and i came across this dusty old uh booklet a concise
reply to christianity a muslim view by g miller g miller of course is dr gary miller who became
a professor of mathematics he was from canada trump university of toronto i can find very very
little online now uh of contemporary stuff about him no contemporary videos of him for example
uh i can't find any youtube footage of him or anything on wikipedia um so he seems
to have gone deliberately under uh under the radar perhaps to avoid publicity i don't know
but for a while in the 1970s 1980s he was very high profile indeed he worked with sheikh ahmed
uh and he did numerous videos many of which are still viewable on youtube forensically examining
christianity and talking about the quran particularly the truth of the crown the the
miraculous nature of the revelation um but this concise little booklet really shows his genius i
think his brilliance total brilliance in analyzing christianity its weaknesses its achilles heel
and uh and rebutting the classic muslim uh missionary tactics against muslims um i'd love
to read the whole thing but it's uh it's quite long it is very concise uh you know every sentence
is meaningful and impactful i think so i'll just read a few bits of it just to give you a flavor
um and i don't know this could ever be republished it certainly deserves to be uh he writes at
the beginning christians and muslims who learn something of one another's religion find that a
crucial issue is the nature of jesus the majority of christians deify jesus while muslims say that
he was no more than a prophet of god a faultless human being the doctrine of the trinity avows
three distinct co-equals our god in particular jesus said to be god the son or the son of god
as the muslim questions details of this theology the christian characteristically forms a common
explanation for our differences he complains that muslims do not understand the trinity that we are
actually accusing christians of tritheism and other heresies so the muslim seeks clarification
of the teaching and asks every term how could that be so for example we insist that the term son of
god cannot have a literal interpretation sonship and divine nature would be necessary attributes
of such an actuality but these are incompatible the first describes a recipient of life while the
second describes one who has received life from no one these are mutually exclusive requirements then
to be a son is to be less than divine and to be divine is to be no one's son
as a discussion proceeds it is the christian who will eventually take refuge in the response
these are things that cannot be understood his assessment of the muslims problem becomes his
own confession the christian explanation becomes self-defeating so there is a change of tactic he
complains that the muslim refuses to accept what cannot be understood but the modified
approach is the diversion now the concepts of verification and understanding are confused
to illustrate chemical reactions may be verified but the atom is not thereby understood
facts are catalogued but not always explained this distinction is the key to our concise reply
it is the muslim who must redirect the discussion our primary issue is more basic than resolving the
incongruities of trinitarian doctrine rather than ask how the trinity can be so we should ask
why it must be so we ask why must jesus be divine can we verify the necessity of this belief
a few centuries ago european philosophies philosophers commonly felt that a conjecture
was proven if it could be shown to be equivalent to an assertion made by aristotle as the greek
philosopher unfortunately such an approach stopped short of challenging aristotle
and discovering truth similarly resting the trinitarian case of what people have said about
jesus stop short of establishing the integrity of the authorities and the truth of the matter our
purpose here is no more than the illustration that belief in the trinity can only be based
on church authority in other words the catholic position many christians admit that this is the
case while others insist that the teaching was elaborated by jesus himself let them produce their
proof is the repeated admonition of the quran that is provide the documentation that jesus himself
claimed unqualified deity quran 21 24 unless this evidence can be produced authorities are subject
to challenge then the christian may not evade the muslims questions concerning understanding
the christian will have no justification for maintaining an illogical position unless he
is content to rely on the opinions of men if he will probe no deeper than this then christian the
christian muslim dialogue is finished the record the bible record of sayings credited to jesus
is quite meager after allowance for duplication in our four gospel accounts these sayings could
be printed in two columns of the newspaper none of this handful of texts is an explicit claim
to deity all quotations are implicit that is they require interpretation
we are told what jesus said and then told what he meant this is classic i always get this you know
jesus said x i said yes and then they tell me what it means but of course that's the point of dispute
so our methodology he says takes an obvious form it is not our intention or obligation to
reinterpret the bible we are satisfied to merely verify that christian interpretations
are insufficient ambiguous or impossible and then he gives an example of insufficient evidence
the virgin birth of jesus and the miracles he demonstrated are cited by some christians as
proof of his divinity the insufficiently of the premise is obvious we need to only read
the biblical account of adam's creation in genesis without father or mother and the accounts of the
miracles associated with the prophet elisha in two kings chapters four five and six in the case of
these two men no christian asserts their divinity yet each has a qualification in common with jesus
some maintain that jesus was god because the hebrew scriptures predicted his coming
the inadequacy here is only slightly less apparent the hebrew scriptures also are
cited as predicting the role of john the baptist malachi 4. these three arguments are mentioned to
show that the ready claims of christians betray as selective or forgetful recall of scripture
they know the fact of virgin birth as well as they know the account of adam's origins
yet they interpret the first and overlook the second now to pursue our case directly
does the bible quote jesus as claiming equality with god the bible texts bible texts are produced
to show that jesus used the terms son of man son of god messiah and savior but each of these terms
is applied to other individuals in the bible ezekiel was addressed as son of man in ezekiel
chapter 3. jesus himself speaks of peacemakers as sons of god matthew 5 9. cyrus the persian
king emperor is called messiah at isaiah 45 verse 1 the duplicity of translators is manifest here
for they inevitably render only the meaning of the word messiah which is anointed in other words
they don't use the word messiah they use just the meaning when where other bible verses seem
to refer to jesus they prefer to transliterate messiah or the greek equivalent christ in this
way they hope to give the impression that there is only one messiah but of course in the bible there
are lots and lots of messiahs as for savior the word is applied to other than jesus 2 kings 13 5.
christians choose to cite the 43rd chapter of isaiah as proof that there is only one savior
again translators have tried to obscure the fact that god is the only savior in the in the same
ultimate sense that he is our only nourisher and protector though men also have these assigned
tasks by over specifying this pronouncement in isaiah they hope to have us believe that
god equals savior and jesus equals savior therefore jesus equals god the conspiracy of
modern translation is easily demonstrated the king james bible 1611 is everywhere available
compare it to a more recent translation say the new american bible of this century
in the earlier version we find 2 kings 13 5 contains the word savior but in newer versions
the synonymous word deliverer has been substituted in fact saviors plural will be found in obadiah 21
and nehemiah 9 27 here again by substituting a different word the connotation of divinity
tied to the word savior has been guarded in modern versions by less than honest translation
uh now i could go on this this is just packed full of uh amazing accurate cogent
forensically searingly logical argument which is very very rare and that's why i maintain uh that
he was a genius i'd love to read the whole thing out but it'll probably take an hour uh to to do
and uh limitations of youtube would not allow that i think so um if anyone knows what is happening
with dr gary miller today it would be wonderful to hear but um here's one of the the great geniuses
of muslim apologetics and i just wish there were more like him today until next time