Genesis 12: Bible Storying for Muslims: Dr. Cashin Lecture
Dr. David Cashin delivered a series of lectures on chronological Bible Storying for Muslims during a CIU course. Here, Cashin presents the third lesson on chronological bible storying of Genesis 12 with Muslims.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. David Cashin Lecture:
Welcome to lesson 7 of chronological bible storying for Muslims. We’re going to look today at the 3rd passage from the scriptures that we want to study with our Muslim friends as we seek to, introduce them to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and God’s plan of salvation through the scriptures and through history. Today, we’re going to deal with a subject that is very close to the Muslim’s heart. We’re going to look at the person of Abraham and, particularly, the promise that God makes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12 verses 1 through 3. Now, today’s lesson is really quite simple, because we’re really only trying to look at one single word and the word is blessing.
What does blessing mean? And, we’ll have a chance to look at that in, the book of Genesis chapter 12 verses 1 to 3, and then we’ll, look at some the ways that Muslims look at that word blessing and then we’ll describe what the biblical view of blessing is. The view that you really want to communicate to your Muslim friend. I’m also gonna give you some teaching beyond the scriptures here that look at why Muslims are not able to experience this kind of blessing as we’re going to describe it in Islam. Now these elements that I’m gonna teach towards the end are not for you to use in your biblical study with your Muslim friend.
It’s merely a way for you to get your own thinking reinforced about the fact that Muslims cannot experience this kind of blessing and I say they cannot not just from a biblical point of view. I’m saying it primarily from an Islamic point of view. The blessing that the bible is describing here is something that Islam says a Muslim cannot experience. Let’s begin then by looking at Genesis chapter 12 verses 1 to 3, and I’m just gonna quote a little bit of this looking at the promise that God makes to Abraham, and you know the story. God takes, Abraham aside, and he makes the following statement to him.
I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Now you can read, actually, in context the full three verses, from Genesis chapter 12. And then there’s basically only one question to be asked in this particular study. What is the nature of blessing?
What kind of blessing is it that God is promising to Abraham? Now, Muslims will have many ideas about this, many explanations of what blessing is. The word in Arabic for this is barakah, which is very related to the Hebrew word barikah, which is translated blessing in the Old Testament. However, there is a very significant difference here, because I don’t think the Arabic word barakah should be translated blessing, because it really means something very different than the biblical view of blessing. Let me show you what I mean.
When you ask your Muslim friend, what what is blessing? What do you think that is? He or she will think of barakah and they’ll think, well, it means power or influence or money or success, of one type or another, that I’m able to do well in my life, that I am influential, that I am, you know, someone that everyone looks up to. Oftentimes, it’s associated with the idea of life force. That is, my ability to have many children, specifically male children.
Is an example of barakah. I can remember this when my third son was born in Bangladesh exultant over this and and they said, wow. You have really been blessed of God because now you have 3 sons. My goodness. And, I know at the time I didn’t fully understand what Muslims meant by blessing, but I was disturbed by this idea.
Would I have been less blessed if I’d had a a daughter? Would I have been less blessed if I had less money than I did? Well, frankly, blessing isn’t really about power, influence, money, or the ability to have lots of children. Is it a cult power? Many amongst folk Muslims would believe that there is magical power that a person can obtain that enables one to be successful and that this is the barakah.
If I can touch certain objects, if I can, make certain location, then I will gain blessing and power from that location or from those occult objects that I get a hold of. Or maybe I need to protect myself from the evil eye so I buy a, tabeej which is an amulet holder that has Koranic verses in it and I’ll hang it around my neck or on my arm or I’ll put it around the the waist of my child and believe that somehow there’s power there. There’s blessing that would protect my child, but that’s that’s not what the Bible is talking about either. It’s not about worldly success. What is the main point of the barakah?
It’s simply this. Blessing in the Old Testament means covenantal relationship. Now here’s the here’s the really wonderful thing about Abraham from a Muslim perspective. Muslims, because they borrowed so much of their faith from Judaism and Christianity, maintains within the structure of their religion certain ideas that were really imported direct from Hebrew thinking, but they don’t understand what this really means. For instance, you notice on the screen here the word calilulah.
This is a title of Abraham. Abraham is the only prophet in the Quran who has the title Khalilullah, which means literally, the friend of God. Khalil is a friend. Allah is God, so the friend of God. And at this point, they actually understand something about what the buddakah, what the blessing is.
The blessing in Genesis chapter 12 is the covenantal love relationship with God and they understand that somehow Abraham had a special relationship with God. But what was the nature of it? They’re not really sure. Now, the reason why this is so important is because in Orthodox Islam, there is no place for experiencing God or for intimate personal relationship with God. Let me explain to you what I mean.
What does it mean to be the friend of God? Well, let me first explain that and then then we’ll talk about what Muslims think about relationship with God. First of all, to be a friend of God, and and this is what you would wanna describe for your Muslim friend from Genesis chapter 12, a friend of God is someone, who is chosen by God. That is to say that, at this point, when God speaks to Abraham, it’s God initiating. God God is the one who chooses Abraham at this point.
Abraham doesn’t choose God. There’s not even any indication that Abraham is searching for God at this point. God reaches out to him. You do not earn the relationship by works. Here’s the interesting thing.
If you ask the same question about Abraham that you asked about, Adam, how many laws did Abraham have? Well, frankly, at this point, Abraham had no law. He had no Sharia as Muslims would put it when the promise was given. So on what basis did he receive this promise? Wasn’t because he was keeping the law. Genesis 12
It was because God chose him to be his special friend. And this is something that Muslims, it’s very attractive to them. All Muslims long somehow to experience God, to have a relationship with God, but Islam denies them that possibility. We’ll look at that in a minute. Abraham was the friend of God chosen by God without the law.
By the way, the book of Romans gets more into this about the fact that Abraham was not saved by works. Also, notice here God speaks directly to Abraham and Abraham speaks directly back to him. He was not required to use a holy language or to pray formulaic prayers. He was able to talk to God face to face as a man would talk with his friend. By the way, the same thing is said about Moses later on in the book of Exodus.
To be able to address God directly as friend without having to go through holy magical, linguistic forms like the Arabic language or to utilize the formulaic prayers. You remember my example from Kazan, Russia where the woman had been praying the Fatiha in Arabic and the demons did not leave her son alone? That reality is that when you use formulaic prayers in a holy language you do not understand, you are manipulating God and that is not relationship. Abraham spoke directly with God from his heart. He required no holy language or formulaic prayers. Genesis 12
And thirdly, Abraham was expected to be a blessing to all the nations that they might know that same covenantal love relationship with God that had been lost at Eden. Basically, as God initiates this relationship with Abraham, he is attempting or beginning the process of recreating that covenantal love relationship through Abraham and it was meant to flow from him to all the nations of the earth. It was meant to be a blessing to all peoples, the blessing of a covenantal love relationship with God. Now, at this point, you’re essentially done with your study with your Muslim friend. All you although you can spend a lot of time talking over these issues.
What it means to know God. What it means to speak to him personally. What it means to have the knowledge that you are accepted in the beloved, not because you kept the law, law, but because of God’s grace shown to you. Alright? But having said this, I wanna take you through some things so that you understand why this is so, important and so attractive to Muslims.
And by the way, we do have an issue of what I would call Christo Muslims here in the West. This is particularly true of Westerners who’ve converted to Islam. You will occasionally run into Western converts to Islam who will say, oh, I have a personal relationship with God through Islam. And I even heard a a woman convert on, National Propaganda Radio, NPR, talking about excuse me. I know that’s National Pub Public Radio, but let’s just say they have a certain bias, don’t they? Genesis 12
Well, this lady was talking about how she had a personal relationship with God through Islam. Friends, this is rubbish. Most Western converts to Islam retain significant elements of their pre Islamic worldview. Why do they think they can have a personal relationship with God? Simple.
Because their older tradition of the Judeo Christian heritage had taught them that and Islam is now a thin veneer over that largely Judeo Christian heritage. If you talk to someone raised in the Muslim world in Saudi Arabia who spent their entire lives within Islam, who come out of the full Islamic tradition, they do not believe that you can have an intimate personal relationship with God. So, key in the idea of Western converts is that you can have a personal relationship with God. And I just wanna mention here, an example of how Muslims are working, that is orthodox Muslims, are working to purge this idea from the minds of Western converts. Ismail Farooqi, who is one of the great Islamic thinkers of the 20th century, in 1997 was speaking at a conference of over 500 western converts to Islam and his main two points in his message to those western converts were, number 1, you cannot have a personal relationship with God in Islam, and number 2, you cannot experience God in Islam.
Now, the reason he felt he needed to say that to 500 Western converts to Islam was exactly what I’ve said above. They were people who had a thin veneer of Islam over a largely Judeo Christian worldview, and so Ismail Farooqi needed to set them straight on what Islam is really, all about. By the way, I just use a little example from Bangladesh here. Bengali Muslims believe that Muhammad taught them the secrets of re reincarnation and yoga. I’ve met Muslims, telling me that this is the secret teaching of prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Genesis 12
And my reaction is to say, no. That has nothing to do with the teachings of Muhammad. You have simply syncretized your local worldview into Islam, but that’s not the real Islam, frankly. So, you may run into people like this. I wanna go beyond that to, introduce you to a quote on the nature of God in Islam.
Now, this is a very old quote. It’s a quote that comes from 18/63, from a writer by the name of, W. S. Paulgrave. It’s the best rendition of the nature of God in Islam that I have ever seen.
This fellow really helps you to understand the theology of Islam and why it is that you cannot have a personal relationship with God. By the way, if you wonder how I could know about Ismail Farooqi’s teaching, well, one of my friends was at that meeting 1997 in Cairo. And as he heard Ismail Farooqi teach on this, he suddenly had a light go on in his head and he said to himself, that’s why all my prayers are formulaic. They’re formulaic. They’re ritualistic for the very simple reason that I’m not really talking with God.
I’m not in a relationship with God. I’m simply going through the motions of what the input the the the mighty omnipotent Allah who’s out there way beyond any place where I can ever reach, is requiring me to do. It has nothing to do with personal relationship. Now, listen carefully as I read through, this quote on the nature of God in Islam from W. S. Genesis 12
Paulgrave. There is no God but God. Our words simply tantamount in English to the negation of any deity save one alone and thus much they certainly mean in Arabic, but they imply much more also. Their full sense is not only to deny absolutely and unreservedly all plurality, whether of nature or of person in the supreme being, not only to establish the unity of the unbegetting and unbegot in all its simple and uncommunicable oneness. But besides this, the words in Arabic imply that this one supreme being is also the only agent, the only force, the only act existing throughout the universe and leaves us and all beings, matter or spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity.
The soul power, the soul motor, movement, energy, and deed is God. The rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this one sentence, is summed up a system which I may be permitted to call the pantheism of force or of act, thus exclusively assigned to God who absorbs it all, exercises it all, and to whom alone it can be ascribed whether for preserving or for destroying, for relative evil or for equally relative good. I say relative because it is clear that in such a theology, no place is left for absolute good or evil, reason, or extravagance. All is abridged in the autocratical will of the one great agent as he wills it, inshallah, is a constantly recurring expression of the Quran.
His creatures, whatever they may be, that they are in him, by him, and from him only. All alike are tools of the one solitary force. But he himself, sterile in his inaccessible height, neither loving nor enjoying ought save his own and self measured decree without son, companion, or counselor, is no less barren for himself than for his creatures. His own barrenness and lone egoism in himself is the cause and rule of his indifferent and unregarding despotism. It should be clear to you as you reflect on this particular, description that it would be impossible to have a relationship with this God. Genesis 12
This is why trinity is so important to the Christian faith. Relationship is built into the very nature of who God is. He is father, son, and holy spirit. He is relationship. In Islam, God is a monad.
He is a singularity, a black hole, if you will, which is why as a Muslim, you cannot experience him, you cannot have a relationship with him. I hope that you are unabashedly Trinitarian in your viewpoint because it’s only in Trinity that we have the nature of relationship incorporated in the very nature of who God is, which is why as creatures made in his image, we are able to have relationship with him. We can experience him. We can have intimacy with our God. So what’s the main point of this lesson?
Blessing. The blessing is the covenantal love relationship with God. By the way, if you doubt any of the things I’ve said here, I give you the phone number of, doctor Soleiman bin Salih al Khizi who is the vice president of Medina University. Give him a call sometime and ask him, if it’s possible for a person to have a personal relationship with God to experience God within Islam, and you may get an earful about how that is a Biddah from a Muslim point of view. That is an innovation and utterly untrue. Genesis 12
Blessings on you as you encourage your Muslim friend to receive the blessing which Abraham, the Khalilullah, the friend of God, received.