Vincent J. Curtis
27 Dec 2015
A discursive analysis of the
temptation of Jesus by the devil and of the revelations to Mohammed.
From the Gospel according to Luke, Ch 4:
5 And the devil took him up and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this
authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I
give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all
be yours.”
From
Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture at Regensburg:
I was reminded of all this recently, when I
read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue
carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the
erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on
the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.[1] It was presumably the emperor himself who
set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and
1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than
those of his Persian interlocutor.[2]
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that
was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his
command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself
so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith
through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the
nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is
not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to
God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead
someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly,
without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not
need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a
person with death...".[4]
Let us pull together the premises these passages offer, and combine them
later with premises from Natural Theology:
From Luke we learn that the devil offered Jesus all the authority and
the glory of all the kingdoms of the world that ever will be if only Jesus
worshipped him. The devil informed Jesus
that all the authority and glory of all the kingdoms of the world have been
delivered to him, and he could give it to whom he will.
From the passage quoted from Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg
lecture, our attention is brought to the observations of Emperor Manuel II
Paleologus, who complained that anything original to Mohammed was evil and
inhuman, citing in particular the spreading of the Islamic belief by the sword
and by threatening people with death if they did not convert to Islam.
From Natural Theology we learn that truth, being and the
good are three perspectives of the same thing, and that evil is
the privation of good. Since evil is the
privation of good, nothing can be completely evil for if it were completely
deprived of good, it would be completely deprived of being, and thus be
nothing. Therefore, since the devil
exists, he must have some good about him.
The devil cannot be completely evil.
He was created by God. Hence it
must be possible for there to be some good in the work of the devil.
It also follows from the equivalency of truth, being, and
the good that evil is the privation of truth.
Work that is evil is void of truth.
The truth of the devil is in his being.
What was the good in the devil’s temptation of Jesus? In the case of the temptation of Jesus, the
devil’s work proved that Jesus could resist the temptation of the devil even in
a time of great physical distress, having just fasted for 40 days and 40 nights
in the desert. He was thus ready for His
ministry, which was to culminate with his death on the cross.
We also learn from Natural Theology that God alone can work
miracles. Angels of themselves cannot
work true miracles; they can do extraordinary things, but only those that are
preternatural, not supernatural. A
miracle is defined as a “sensible” work, because the change which it implies
must be perceptible by the senses.
Often, God’s servants are intercessors or instruments.
According to Islamic history, an angel whispered to Mohammed
the sentences which ultimately became the Koran. No sensible apparitions or sounds of this
angel were ever seen or heard by others, except preternaturally by Mohammed. The angel, who called himself Gabriel, said
that he was from Allah and that the sentences being imparted to Mohammed were
those of Allah himself. Hence the Koran
is held to be a sacred thing in its own right since it contains the sentences
of Allah as said by Gabriel to Mohammed.
These sentences are in the high Arabic language of the 7th
century. (A Koran written in English is
not considered to be a sacred book by Islam since high Arabic of the 7th
century is the language in which Gabriel spoke to Mohammed, not English of the
21st.)
Mohammed and his followers got the idea that it was their
mission to bring the world into submission to Allah, the God they worshipped, and
jihad was to be the means if verbal persuasion failed. Famously, and as seeming proof of the favor
of Allah, jihad in the first few decades after the death of Mohammed was
shockingly successful in bringing territories under the dominion of Islam.
Recall from an earlier posting that Muslims reject the law
of non-contradiction, and of Hellenic reasoning in general. The possibility that “Gabriel” may not have
been who he said he was has never been seriously entertained by Muslims. A believer in philosophic realism would
observe that the prima facie evidence
is that, at best, the sentences in the Koran were those that Mohammed said Gabriel spoke. Hence there is no evidence beyond the
confidence that Mohammed had in the angel who spoke to him that the sentences
imparted by “Gabriel” to him were in fact the sentences of Allah.
Now, the devil is an angel, a fallen angel, but an angel
nevertheless; and therefore is capable of preternatural acts. From earlier postings we know that the Islamic
conception of Allah is of a being not capable of being the creator of the universe. Allah lacks aseity. Angels lack aseity. The devil offered Jesus
all the authority and glory of all the kingdoms of the world, claiming they had
been delivered to him and were his to give.
He would give these to Jesus if He but worshipped him. The Islamic mission is to dominate the world,
to cause the world to submit to Allah in the first instance and to worship
him. In the temporal realm, the benefit
of this political arrangement is that all the authority and glory of the world
belongs to Islam, and Muslims participate in this authority and glory. And thus there appears a parallel to the
devil’s offer to Jesus, as if the devil were attempting to reclaim through
Islam that which had been delivered to him and was his to give. (By his works ye shall know him.)
In the spiritual realm, life after death for a Muslim
consists in the satisfaction of carnal desires, the company of the 72 virgins
and all that. The Muslim afterlife is
one of eternal orgasm, pleasure of the body.
Carnal desires are those which human beings share with the lower
animals, and the satisfaction of illicit carnal desires are often said to be
the kind of temptation offered by the devil.
These are worldly temptations. On
the other hand, Christianity offers the beatific vision, the total satisfaction
of the intellect, the intellect being that aspect of human beings not in common
with the lower animals. The beatific
vision has no equivalence in this world.
The intellect is that part of the human soul that survives after death.
Natural Theology would question the need for Muslims to
bring the world under their domination in order to make the world submit to
Allah. If Allah wanted the submission of the world,
with his supernatural power to work miracles he could do it himself unaided and
without the need for violence and force and the shedding of the blood of his
creatures.
All this evidence seems to point to the devil himself doing
the whispering as “Gabriel,” and that Allah is in fact the devil. Muslims worship Allah, and it is their
project to seize the authority and glory of all the kingdoms of the world and
offer it to Allah. This is what the
Byzantine Emperor was driving at when he observed that whatever Mohammed
brought to the world that was new was evil and inhuman, and hence was not the
work of God.
Not everything the devil does is evil for complete evil
cannot exist. Thus to find some good in
Islam is not conclusive disproof that Islam is ultimately the work of the
devil.
A case is thus to be made that Islam is the work of the
devil, and the evidence is seen in the evil brought into the world by Islam as
well as in its aims. The aim of Islam is
parallel to what the devil offered Jesus, and the promise to Muslims for worshipping Allah and doing his work is
participation in the authority and glory of this
world.
It must be pointed out that the thesis that Islam is a work
of the devil and that Allah is in fact the devil is a minority view, for as
recently as 1964 in Lumen Gentium Pope
Paul VI held that Islam, being an Abrahamic religion, its conception of God was
close enough to the Christian that it could be said that Muslims and Christians
adored the one and merciful God. It is
widely held in Protestant theological circles, on the other hand, that Allah is
merely an idol. Idols are evil because
idols are void of truth, void of being, and therefore of the good. If Allah is the devil, Allah is not void of
being or of the truth of his being; and being a creature of God, Allah as the
devil must possess some good. The
Protestant conception of Allah may have missed something.
Nevertheless, in defense of the thesis offered above, Pope
Paul VI had many temporal, ecclesiastical and political reasons for offering
the opinion that Christians and Muslims worship the one and merciful God.
-30-
I am indebted to Mr. David French of National Review for his article of Dec 18, 2015, entitled
“Christians and Muslims Do Not Worship the Same God.” That interesting work suggested the study
presented above.
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