lol yeah bro you ALMOST had me, i was like , except for the fact you totally missed the whole point of those articles, and the conclusion drawn from those articles. Did I ever try and prove that the Mutzaulite doctrine is logical?? (as you assert in your little “paraphrased” pre-condition) ABSOLUTELY NOT. IN FACT, it is beneficial to my argument that you do indeed acknowledge that they are heretical and it is indeed even MORE beneficial to my case that there’s a whole book out there “humbly refuting” the creationism of the Quran. Here let me help you understand WHY:
The central theme and message of all those quotes I pasted:
1) The Quran is compared to Christ, in terms of the eternal/infinite becoming temporal/finite.
Professor Yusuf K. Ibish, in an article entitled "The Muslim Lives by the Quran," writes:
It [the quran] is an expression of Divine Will. If you want to compare it with anything in Christianity, you must compare it with Christ Himself. Christ was an expression of the Divine among men, the revelation of the Divine Will.
Those who oppose are heretics, therefore there view is not valid in this argument. (i.e. the minority Muslim view that the Quran is created can be dismissed)
In his Ideals and Realities of Islam, Seyyed Hossain Nasr writes,
the Quran, being the Word of God therefore corresponds to Christ in Christianity and the form of this book, which like the contents is determined by the dictum in heaven, corresponds in a sense to the body of Christ. The form of the Quran is the Arabic language which religiously speaking is as inseparable from the Quran as the body of Christ is from Christ Himself.
Therefore the question I was raising from those passages was: If Orthodox Islamic theology asserts that within the Quran, the infinite and finite did indeed meet, since the Quran is eternal by nature while at the same time it is temporal - contained within the pages of a finite book. So logically speaking, why can't God's Word become a man?
So what I am trying to point out to you BRO, is that you cant assert that the divine-non-divine union is incompatible just as a square-circle, in the light of those passages which represent orthodox Islamic views – i.e. YOUR views -that assert the Quran is eternalword - the divine will was expressed through a temporal book (a creation), just as Christ is eternal word and divine will expressed through a temporal human (a creation). Because then my friend you would be contradicting your own doctrine.
The only reason I provided the latter articles concerning the Mutzallites was to show the readers that although there was a view asserting that the Quran was created – that this is heretical according to mainstream Islam, and that the view the Quran is eternal has not been challenged ever since that ordeal with the Mutzallites.
I can't even believe what I'm seeing here. How can you compare the Muslim belief in the Qur'an with the Christian belief in Jesus?
NO Muslim says that the Qur'an is a divine being to be worshipped. Our entire conversation is on how a being can't be both DIVINE and HUMAN and NOT how revelation can be both eternal and temporal. ANY faith has to deal with the idea of WHEN exactly were the words of divinely revealed scripture "eternalized"! In fact, other faiths only started to talk about it once Muslims brought it up.
I seriously hope for your own sake that you realize what you're doing here. You haven't addressed the whole point of our thread now, and refuse to continue until we talk about the Qur'an, which is ENTIRELY a different issue, and not only is it a different issue, it's something that Jews and Christians have to equally deal with.
So what I am trying to point out to you BRO, is that you cant assert that the divine-non-divine union is incompatible just as a square-circle, in the light of those passages which represent orthodox Islamic views – i.e. YOUR views -that assert the Quran is eternalword - the divine will was expressed through a temporal book (a creation), just as Christ is eternal word and divine will expressed through a temporal human (a creation). Because then my friend you would be contradicting your own doctrine.
and then you said this:
lol yeah bro you ALMOST had me, i was like , except for the fact you totally missed the whole point of those articles, and the conclusion drawn from those articles. Did I ever try and prove that the Mutzaulite doctrine is logical??
I hope you realize (it's obvious by now that you don't) that everything you're saying is STILL Mu'tazalite doctrine, bro. In fact one of the very things they tried to do was compare Jesus to the Qur'an (and anyone else's name written in the Qur'an), which tells me you either aren't sure what Mutazalite doctrine is, or you didn't read the book, or both.
Indeed, unless you want to continue arguing against the nature of Christ, which parallels the nature of your own Quran (as noted by the above orthodox Islamic scholars)??? Or else become a Mutzallite and in that case, I cant tell you that you believe in the eternal and tempral uniting, because as a Mutzallite you heretically believe that the Quran is created.
No, because the Qur'an is not both God and man. The Qur'an doesn't claim to have all the attributes of God and man nor that it pre-existed or eternally coexisted with God. And I'm not sure you know what you mean when you say that the Qur'an was "created". People who talk about the creation of the Qur'an are arguing whether its content was revealed temporarily on Earth, not whether it PRECEEDED or COEXISTED with God.
Providing me with a weblink, or sending me a file – that I can understand. Telling me to go out and buy a book? Sorry not acceptable - considering this is supposed to be an intelligible DISCUSSION (I admit that even providing a weblink is too much – however it was only a few pages long and if you had have asked me to paste the relevant themes/ideas and integrate them into the discussion – that I would’ve done). I could’ve referred you to plenty of books on the issue of the logic of God: Logic and the Nature of God (London: Macmillan, 1983); D. Brown, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986); R. Sturch, The Word and the Christ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), and R. Swinburne, The Christian God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
The fact I DIDN’T simply jump and say “hey read these - thats all i have to say to you”, is that:
1) Firstly I myself haven’t read them yet. So far on an issue which is discussed by Christian scholars using miles of ink, I’ve simply used my own head (which I believe has served my purpose well) – no resources, except that little insight from my friend who I was speaking on the phone at the time, due to the fact ive never needed to discuss such an issue at such length.
2) Secondly, that would be besides the whole point of a discussion. If I did happen to have read those books, I would simply discuss the main and relevant themes integrating them into the discussion - or copied and pasted chunks of paragraphs etc. if i thought they were 100% direct and relevant.
So bro 1) If you haven’t read this book yourself – you cant use it as the basis of your argument 2) If you had – then unless you suffer from amnesia or some other kind of terrible memory loss condition, then I would like you to answer the following question plainly using the main concepts and insight that the book gives you – “If Allah is all-knowing, why does he speak with un-certainty, and even absolute ignorance as those verses portray?”
No, to be honest with you I don't have the philosophical skills or understanding to paraphrase the most difficult book I've read, and even if I were to quote passages out of the text, there would be too much build-up of denying the entire premise of the Mu'tazalite for you to accept what was being said about the Qur'an. There's a reason the book is hundreds of pages long, it's so if you read it from cover to cover you can't open your mouth to reply afterwords. But judging from the way this thread has already gone, I'd start quoting some passages, then you'd quote some in reply, or deny that Ghazzali had addressed the issue, then eventually, yes, I would have to type out entire chapters for you so you wouldn't have to go to the library.
(if you’re that inept that you cannot integrate the concepts/ideas/refutations into a discussion as I have requested, then you can even type out or scan, whole pages of the book which you feel directly respond to this issue.)
I wouldn't call anyone inept if they can't juggle the concepts of a book that people teach courses on at University. And you know yourself that saying "type out everything you want to say out of the book" is basically halting this debate because I don't have the time or the familiarity with the text to do that. You're the second person to do this on the forum by the way, I suggest a book that answers questions asked, and people are just bewildered that they'd been asked to read a text instead of clicking on a link, so they ask me to type out the relevant passages. Nice. A cop out, but nice.
Peace, I look forward to clearing up the issue of whether your arguments contradict your own beliefs (which they apparantly do), so I can continue responding to the comments you’ve left me with in you’re previous post. GOOD LUCK
Haha, bro you've COMPLETELY evaded my questions and turned the thread into a debate about the Qur'an, which is already exhaustively written about and is not a fundamentally contested dogma as is the God-man. You're not fooling anyone bro, and I would have thought more of you if you simply said "I don't know, but read this book" instead of saying "until we deal with this, let's not discuss the subject of this thread".
The funny part is, the notion of the temporarily revealed scripture vs. scripture preserved with God is something that the Jews also have philosophized about, sparked by the Mutazalite and Ashari debates. It's not something specific to Islam, it's something that ANY religion claiming to have the word of God would deal with. I think the only reason you've never thought about it from a Christian perspective is because you believe you have a paraphrased version of God's word.
So not only is your "wait until we discuss this topic" a filibuster, it's a UNIVERSAL subject that any faith claiming to be divinely revealed has to deal with. You might as well have said "wait, let's discuss predestination vs. free will and THEN we'll get to the topic" or how about "prove that God exists logically, first".
The fact of the matter is, creationism of Scripture is a universal topic, while the idea of a God-man is unique to Christianity.
This was pretty arrogant bro, not only did you duck out of the debate, you also simultaneously claimed you DIDN'T think the Mutazalite doctrine was logical while asking me to resolve how it was (with the entire Jesus vs. Qur'an comparison). Seriously, who do you even think came up with that idea in the first place?
When I tell you to read a book, I mean it. It doesn't mean I'm inviting you to try to fake me out by saying "no no no, this isn't about Mutazalite doctrine" and then bam "but let's first discuss a major Mutazalite argument". Not cool, bro.
Peace