The Qur'an and the Cross

Nothing in the Qur'an suggests its author had even the slightest knowledge of the New Testament centrality of God's redeeming act in Christ on the cross. The author knew nothing of Paul's epistle to the Romans or the book of Hebrews and their in-depth case for and teaching about the Messiah's redeeming death. The author seems blissfully unaware of the evidentiary mountain that substantiates the crucifixion. And yet with a fee seconds of oral recitation, the Qur'an places itself, and all who would believe in it, in the direct opposition not only to the Injil (Gospel) but also everything history says on the subject. The question must be asked: Who, truly, is following mere conjecture here? Those who were eyewitnesses on the Hill of the Skull outside Jerusalem? Or the author of the Qur'an, more than half a millennium later?

Why not the Qur'an

When we encounter unclear and uncertain Qur'anic texts, we often can turn to the hadith for at least the interpretation ascribed to the first few generations after Muhammad. As far as we can tell, for at least two hundred years after Muhammad, no Muslim could  anything he ever said or did that was relevant to Surah 4:157. It has no meaningful presence in the hadith. On other texts where the Qur'an an directly contradicts the Bible, we can find lots of commentary in that literature, but for this key and central ayah we find nothing. It is as if this ayah appeared out of nowhere and plopped itself down in the middle of this Surah and made itself at home.

What about our New Testament? First, the Byzantine text is not that bad, and what we have in medieval MSS in general adds material to what we already have in the Alexandrian witnesses. The autographic wording can still usually be found in it. Further, out of the 400,000 or so variants we have among the Greek witnesses, the standard Byzantine text disagrees with the Nestle text in only 6577 places. Second, although many of the variants here are very important, not one changes any cardinal belief if the Christian faith. Third, we have many early MSS. For example we have three times more NT MSS within the first 200 years than we have in 2000 years for the average classical author. Further, we have more than 100 MSS of the NT within 300 years of its completion, while the average classical author has none within 300 years.

Isolation

A second position, extremely popular among theologians and scientists for much of the twentieth century, conceives of the proper (if not actual) relationship of science to religion as one of isolation. According to this view, science and religion never conflict so long as each is properly conducted. Of course, any conception of science and religion that effectively makes conflict impossible will in all likelihood preclude fruitful interaction as well, hence the appropriateness of the term "isolation" as a name for this view.

Fitting into the Pattern

It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn't. If I knock out my pipe I alter the position of great many atoms: in the long run, and to an infinitesimal degree, of all the atoms there are. Nature digests or assimilates this event with perfect ease and harmonises it in a twinkling with all other events. It is one more bit of raw material for the laws to apply to, and they apply. I have simply thrown one event into the general cataract if events and it finds itself at home there and conforms to all other events. If God annihilated or creates or deflects this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. We see every day physical nature is not in the least incommodes by the daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological nature. If events come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary process of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern #CSLewis

Dunford Picked As Next Marine Commandant | Military.com

Dunford Picked As Next Marine Commandant | Military.com

The Glory of God

The glory of God also means his supreme importance. The Hebrew word for "glory" is kabad, which means "weight" - literally God's weightiness. Fortunately, we have an English word that has the same way - it is word matter. Matter means "as opposed to the immaterial, something solid, something substantial," but it can also mean "importance." And therefore, when the Bible says that God is glorious, more than anything else or anyone else. And if anything matters to you more than God, you are not acknowledging his glory. You are giving glory to something else.

All Good Masters Are Servants

The question we want to ask about Man's 'central' position in this drama is really on a level with the disciples' question, ' Which of them was the greatest?' It is the sort of question which God does not answer. If from Man's point of view the re-creation of non-human and even inanimate Nature appears a mere by-product of his own redemption, then equally from remote, non-human point of view Man's redemption may seem merely the preliminary to this more widely diffused springtime, and the very permission of Man's fall may be supposed to have had that larger end in view. Both attitudes will be right if they will consent to drop the words mere and merely. Where a God who is totally purposive and totally foreseeing acts upon a Nature which is totally interlocked, there can be no accidents or loose ends, nothing whatever of which we can safely use the word merely. Nothing is 'merely a by-product' of anything else. All results are intended from the first. What is subservient from one point if view is the main purpose from another. No thing or event us first ir highest in a sense which forbids it to be also last and lowest. The partner who bows to Man in one movement of the dance receives Man's references in another. To be high or central means to abdicate continually: to be low means to be raised: all good masters are servants: God washes the feet of men.