Christianity vs. Islam, a Triathlon: Round Three - The Problem of Evil
Concerning the problem of sin and evil, does Islam have a serious enough view of sin and evil to prescribe the right medicine in the right dose? Surprisingly, the devout Muslim does not believe that evil has infected us or the world in a primal sense. Although Muslims believe that Adam “sinned” when he disobeyed God in the garden, they also believe that Allah completely forgave him, and that sin and death did not enter the world as a result of a historic fall. As one Muslim theologian has stated, “Man is not born a sinner and the doctrine of the sinfulness of man has no basis in Islam” (Geisler and Saleeb, Answering Islam, Baker Books, 44). Another Muslim author concurs:
In the Islamic view, human beings are no more ‘fallen’ than they are ‘saved.’ Because they are not ‘fallen,’ they have no need of a savior. But because they are not ‘saved’ either, they need to do good works - and do them ethically - which alone will earn them the desired salvation…. Salvation is an improper term, since, to need ‘salvation,’ one must be in a predicament beyond hope of escaping from it. But men and women are not in that predicament (Ibid., 45).
Let’s pause for a moment and consider the kind of world Islam constructs.
According to Islam, it would seem our natural sense that evil is a parasitic and primal infestation of our world is not rational. Human beings are not by nature sinners or prone to do evil. They are born innocent and begin a lifetime of choosing between good works or evil deeds, which eventually will be weighed in the balance at the end of one’s life. Our goal is to know Allah’s will and to do it in our own strength. But this view of the world seems to render Islam a rather weak interpreter of the human condition as we experience it. In fact, it is difficult to see how Islam differs from many secular projects that emphasize humanistic Utopian approaches to human fulfillment. Because these projects are based on an unrealistic diagnosis of the primal nature and the extent of sin and evil, they fall short of an effective solution to the human predicament.
The Bible reveals that evil is an objective reality. We at once cower before it and rage against it. But Islam denies this reality. Neither man nor his world is subject to a curse. The world is what it is, and there is no hope for it. Our goal is to perform enough Islamic good works and rituals so that we might someday leave this world and enter the Islamic paradise of sensual pleasure. Allah has created the world, but remains detached from it. He is not a lover of the world, but is the Lord over it. The world reels under the weight of suffering and evil, yet Allah requires his servants to work out their own salvation in their own power. The revelation he has left us tells us all about him, but very little about the true nature of the mess in which we find ourselves and why we are in it. We must do our best to do his will, and lean into the blindness.
What does Christianity offer? For one, Christianity takes our sense of objective evil seriously, and acknowledges our historic failure to rid ourselves of sin and evil. The God of Christianity loves the world he has created and longs to rescue it from its hopelessness. He does not leave his creation alone, but engages with it intimately, offering real power to real people. In fact, God so loved the world, that he himself entered it in the form of a man in order to reveal his love in a very personal way. And it is again the Christian God’s trinitarian nature that enabled him and motivated him to accomplish this. Rather than trivialize evil or deny its true objective weight, God himself entered the travail of his creation in the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity.
God, in the person of Jesus Christ, not only stooped down to walk among us and to teach us the truth about our circumstances, but he also died on a cross, suffering the ultimate evil and bearing our sin on our behalf. And then he rose from the dead to conquer evil and death once and for all. Because of his death on the cross, forgiveness of sin is available. Because of his resurrection from the dead, freedom from sin, evil, and death is inevitable. The total eradication of sin, evil, and death, followed by the restoration of the created order according to God’s righteousness, is just a matter of time. Presently, the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of God’s eternal, internal community, remains active throughout the world making possible not only obedience to God's will, but also loving relationship with God as his children.
On the other hand, it is not surprising, considering the singular, non-communitarian nature of Allah, that he might not have the resources to move outside of himself to offer his crying creation a personal touch. Perhaps a state of timeless detachment is the best he can do. But the Christian God offers, not only redemption, but also relationship, and it is through this relationship that we experience spiritual potency once again. It is through this relationship that we can be internally transformed into people of virtue, actually victorious over sin and evil. Ultimately, we can have assurance that, even though we wrestle with evil today, someday it will be no more, and God’s creation will rejoice.
In summary, it appears that the God of Christianity has the right stuff necessary to carry all three events of our divine triathlon. This is a God we can trust. This is a God we can know. This is a God worth worshiping. This is the gold-medal God.
Blessings,
Arnie Gentile
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Categories: Christianity vs. Islam
Tags: Islam Evil Allah Sin Christianity Jesus Christ Christian Apologetics
Glory to the one, true, living God!
Thank you for this careful comparison.
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Interesting Enough... The God of Islam seems like a better choice after reading this.. if the trinitarian God "longs" to save us from this evil life, then that means that he also is limited in doing what he wants. Muslims believe that Christians believe in. Allah can do the exact same things but doesn't need to be a trinity. That is what makes Muslims believe that Christians are following a mistaken path. If humans were born sinners wouldn't that make God our enemy? Who God and angles have to fight until they are good? Islam emphasizes the Choice that humans have between good and evil. Christianity however condemns people to evil based on what this article is saying. Islam however acknowledges the evil but says that people are not just evil because of Adam.
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Hi, John, thanks for your comment. I respond in bold below.
Interesting Enough... The God of Islam seems like a better choice after reading this. If the trinitarian God "longs" to save us from this evil life, then that means that he also is limited in doing what he wants.
“Longing” makes one deficient only if one is lacking something. God lacks nothing. That he “longs” for the best interest of his creatures is just another way of communicating his compassion. He has not lost control of his creation or his creatures. But he has created humans with free will, and he allows them to choose between good and evil, between believing in and obeying God or following their own paths. The consequences of either choice are monumental. Jesus expressed longing when he wept over Jerusalem. Was that evidence of a diminished divinity? Certainly not. It was evidence of a rich divinity, tempered in eternity past through relationships with the other members of the Trinity. God can “long” for things and remain omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipresent. He has sovereignly chosen to perform his great work of salvation within a redemptive environment over which he has complete control. Someday, in his time, he will destroy evil and install a New Creation. In the mean time, he calls us to follow him in Christ.
Muslims believe that Christians believe in. Allah can do the exact same things but doesn't need to be a trinity. That is what makes Muslims believe that Christians are following a mistaken path.
If you have not already, I encourage you to go back to the first article in this series and read all three articles in order. My argument is based on an inference to the best explanation. Given the world as it is, which God is more likely to be the one in charge, the Christian trinitarian God or the Muslim monistic God. It is not about what Muslims or Christians believe their God can do. It is about examining the way the world is, and considering which hypothesis best fits the facts, the Christian God or Allah. Which God is more likely to have the ability and/or the motivation to create and redeem the world regardless of what we may claim?
If humans were born sinners wouldn't that make God our enemy? Who God and angles have to fight until they are good? Islam emphasizes the Choice that humans have between good and evil. Christianity however condemns people to evil based on what this article is saying. Islam however acknowledges the evil but says that people are not just evil because of Adam.
Again, we are arguing to the best explanation given the way the world is. God created Adam innocent. It is Adam who chose to rebel. Adam was punished for his own sin, and so are we. The fact that sin entered the world through Adam does not make the rest of us any less responsible for our behavior, attitudes, or thoughts. We do not inherit Adam’s guilt, but we do inherit sin’s consequences. To believe that we can save ourselves reveals an arrogance that pushes ourselves away from God. In a world created by God which man has soiled by his own sin, only God can be the judge. Even the smallest sin has infinite consequences because it is an offense against an infinite being. To think that we can save ourselves or that what we have done is not all that bad is the height of hubris not humility. The Christian God sent his only Son to suffer and die on our behalf because that is what it took for us to be saved, like it or not. Since Allah does not have a son, it doesn’t look like he has the credentials for the job.
The bottom line is that the Christian God is inherently relational. The God of Islam is not. Which is thus more likely to create a world bristling with community and interpersonal ethics? I make my case in all three articles in this series.
Blessings,
Arnie
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Thank you Arnie for your post,
unlike many Christian theological articles, it sounded like you had a pretty sincere intention to represent the Islamic view of the problem of evil, and that is admirable.
The Qur'an explains the problem of evil in a very frank and simple manner with just a couple verses, and leaves the rest up to human pondering.
From 4:78, we learn that everything is from God, good and bad. The next verse then can be interpreted that good is from God, and evil is from man. Then, a couple verses later (4:82), the Qur'an says that there is no contradiction inside of it.
What can be taken from this is that all existence and everything inside of it has a primary source: God. Nothing is inherently "evil", like natural disasters or other tragedies, but rather, evil only comes as a result of man's free will. Therefore, God allows evil to happen, but it only happens through man's choices.
Every person has a separate journey, and the difficulty of the journey is of no consequence, because it is ultimately how one chooses to live that journey within his or her limits that determines one's fate, and "your Lord wrongs no one" (Shabbir's translation, Qur'an 18:49).
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Sorry for the delay in my response. I have not been as active at my blog as I had been previously. It sounds to me that you are a very devoted follower of Allah, and I respect your devotion and integrity. Unfortunately, your comment does not address the question at hand, which is about the view of the world that has the best scope and power to sufficiently explain the world as we experience it. Much of what you say I agree with. For example, I agree with you that God created man with free will which man subsequently misused. However, your account suggests that man may still apply his will to extricate himself from the mess he has created. All of history demonstrates that man's attempts to do so have been abject failures. This is because, as the Bible teaches, sin and death entered the world by the sin of Adam, and, therefore, all men sin and all men die, because their hearts and bodies are so inclined.
As a follower of Islam, I assume that you believe in the Old Testament. Psalm 14:2-3 tells us that "The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one." This is why the Apostle Paul in desperation cries out "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" and then rejoices,"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 7:24-25, 8:1). Christ, who died and rose again from the dead, who ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father eternally interceding for us, he alone is our source of salvation, for man cannot save himself. This is the gospel, the good news, the only solution to the world as it really is.
Blessings,
Arnie
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