Contra Islam: The Seventh Century Antichrist

In the Qur’an Jesus (Isa in Arabic) is both acknowledged and given some degree of respect as a prophet, but only as a prophet who lived before Muhammad.  Islam denies the core Christian knowledge and teaching of who Jesus is, and the salvation he gives to humanity.  Islam denies Jesus’ deity and consubstantiality with the Father.  Islam denies that Jesus is God in human flesh.  Thus, I use the term antichrist.  To understand Islam’s crucial error we must dive into what the Christian faith has always taught about Jesus.  For this understanding, let’s turn to the fourth Gospel.

St John the Apostle, Evangelist, and Theologian is the only Apostle to use the word antichrist in the New Testament.  In this posting I discuss how he uses this word, its meaning, and its application to the words of the Qur’an’s chapter (surah).  These Qur’anic verses are a critical and core source of Islamic false teachings about the Person and nature of Jesus Christ:

Say:  He is Allah, the one and only; Allah, the eternal, absolute; he begets not, nor is he begotten; and there is none like unto him (Qur’an 112: 1 – 4).

The Word Is God

Initially, let’s examine the term theologian as it applies to St John.  He is a theologian because he is first to articulate in written form the fact that Jesus is God.  This brings us to the first chapter of his Gospel.  The Greek text for St John 1: 1 – 2 is as follows:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρos τoν θεόν, κα θεoς ἦν ὁ λόγος.  οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρoς τoν θεόν.

(In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  This one was with God in the beginning.)

A bit of a grammatical deep dive is in order.  In the above Greek text we find two uses of the word God:  τoν θεόν (ton theon), which uses the definite article, τov (ton), and then θεoς (theos) which lacks the definite article (being anarticular).  With the first usage, the definite article, τoν, is used to distinguish toν θεόν from the anarticular θεoς.

What is all of this about, and why is this important?  While Greek uses definite articles, being “the” in English, the Greek language lacks an indefinite article, being “a” or “an” in English.  Let’s look at this English example.   Dolly is the dog.  Using the definite article, this means Dolly is one particular dog.  In English this sentence can be changed to Dolly is a dog.  The use of the indefinite article “a” gives a different meaning:  Dolly is one of an infinite number of dogs.  In extension of this example, since there is no indefinite article in Greek, I must reword the sentence to Dolly is dog, meaning Dolly is an animal that possesses the quality of being dog.  Thus, it would be incorrect to translate καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος as “and the Word was a god,” or one of many gods.  The proper way to translate καὶ θεoς ἦν ὁ λόγος is, “and the Word was God.”  With St John’s use of the anarticlular θεoς, this means ὁ λόγος (the Word) possesses the ontological quality of God, yet the Word is not τoν θεόν, the Father, the first Person of the Trinity.

St John is not done expressing further how the Word is God, and yet, is distinguished from the Father.  He completes this theological distiction with this complementary verse:  St John 1: 18,

 θεoν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε·  μονογενὴς θεoς ὁ ὢν εἰς τoν κόλπον τοῦ πατρoς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.

(No one has ever seen God:  God the Only Begotten who exists in the bosom of the Father made that one known.)

In this verse, St John further identifies the Word of verse one as the Only Begotten (Son) who knows the Father intimately, and makes the Father known to humanity.  (I refer you to St John 12: 45 where Jesus says, “The one who perceives me, perceives the one who sent me.”)

The Word Became Flesh

St John continues orthodox and catholic Christology by declaring that the Word (Logos) took on human flesh to demonstrate, in the most compelling way possible, the loving heart of his Father:

Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας· (St John 1: 14).

(And the Word became flesh and tabernacled with us, and we observed his glory, glory as the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.)

Taken together, the Apostle has made two profound theological assertions.  First, the one he calls both the Word and the Only Begotten (Son) is himself God, just as the Father is God.    Also, from St John 1: 1 – 2, 18, we see that the Father and the Son have a relational union of being which parallels Jesus’ words in St John 10: 30, “ἐγὼ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἕν ἐσμεν (I and the Father are one).”  Second, St John states that the second Person of the Trinity, the Word, the Only-begotten Son, took on human flesh.

Jesus Declares Himself to Be God

Elsewhere in his fourth Gospel, St John goes beyond his theological assertion, he also includes Jesus’ own words – words that declare he is God.  There are many examples in St John’s gospel, but only two verses will be examined.

The background and formative text for this part of the posting comes from Exodus 3: 14.  The Greek text of the Septuagint (LXX) is used to show the importance of Jesus’ words as recorded in Greek by St John.  Here, Moses has encountered God in the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai:

καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεος προς Μωυσῆν Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν· καὶ εἶπεν Οὕτως ἐρεiς τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ Ὁ ὢν ἀπέσταλκέν με προς ὑμᾶς.

(And God said to Moses, “I Am the Existing One.”  And he said, “Thus, you shall say to the sons of Israel, The Existing One sent me to you”).

God reveals his name to Moses:  Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν (I am the Existing One) .  The words Ἐγώ εἰμι (I am) are used by Jesus to declare that he is the same God now manifested in human flesh.

We are now ready to move to the eighth chapter of St John.  Here an adversarial debate takes place between Jesus and the Jewish authorities.  Two uses of Ἐγώ εἰμι by Jesus are examined.  The first is found in St John 8:24,

This is why I said to you that you shall die in your sins.  Unless you should believe that I am (Ἐγώ εἰμι) you shall die in you sins.

In his online essay “The ‘I am’ Sayings in John’s Gospel,” Phander Center for Apologetics & Polemics, 2024, Dr Pat Andrews helps us see the importance of this verse.  He directs us to Isaiah 43: 25 to clarify the significance of Jesus’ “I am” statement:

I, I am (Ἐγώ εἰμι) the one who washes away your lawlessness and I shall never remember them.

The contentious dialogue with the Jewish authorities intensifies, Jesus moves the conversation to the concluding two verses and climax of the eighth chapter:

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he might see my day, and he saw and was glad.”  Therefore, the Jews said to him, “You are not yet 50 years old, and you say you have seen Abraham?”  Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am (Ἐγώ εἰμι).”  Therefore, the Jews took up stones in order that might stone him.  But, Jesus hid himself and went out of the Temple passing through the midst of them, and thus [he] passed by [them] (St John 8: 56 – 59).

Commenting on these verses, Andrews notes,

The Jews’ reaction to 8:58 (stoning) clarifies that they understood Jesus as claiming deity – the name YHWH…Here is the ego eimi…and there is no ambiguity in its reference to Ex 3: 14.

Antichrist

St John the Apostle also defines the term antichrist for us.  We turn now to his first epistle, or letter:

Who is the liar, except the one who denies that Jesus is not the Christ?  This one is the antichrist, the one who is denying the Father and the Son.  Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father (1 St John 2: 22 – 23).

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.  By this you know the Spirit of God:  every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God.  This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world (1 St John 4: 1 – 3).

The Fathers of Nicea

Therefore, an antichrist is one who denies that Jesus is the Christ, that is, God in human flesh, and also one who denies the divine union of the Father and the Son which Jesus clearly proclaims in St John 10: 30, “I and the Father are one (ἐγὼ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἕν ἐσμεν).”  The Nicene Creed defines this shared being of deity, this consubstantiality (ὁμοούσιον), which the Father and the Son both possess.  I quote from the first few sentences of the Creed:

I believe in one God the Father Almighty creator of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen.  And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not created, of one essence (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father through whom all things were made.

Who, then, is the seventh century antichrist?  Is it the so-called prophet of Islam, Muhammed?  Perhaps, but the Islamic antichrist doctrine probably came from some other ancient source that predated the lifetime of Muhammad.  Presented again is this defining and damning text from the Qur’an:

Say:  He is Allah, the one and only; Allah, the eternal, absolute; he begets not, nor is he begotten; and there is none like unto him (Qur’an 112: 1 – 4).

By these four verses from the Qur’an, we see that Islam denies both the Son’s existence, and that of the Trinity.  With these verses, there is the implied denial of the Incarnation.  The defining criteria of antichrist are documented and applied to Islamic doctrine.

What, then, is the source of this passage?  Again, it is unlikely that it comes from Muhammed himself, since western critical scholars of Islam conclude that Muhammed was theologically informed by a very limited Abrahamic monotheism.  In his book Did Muhammad Exist, an Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins, (Revised ed., Nashville, Bombardier, 2021), Robert Spencer writes,

During the [years of early] conquest…the Islamic religion possessed only a rudimentary theology, which was probably even more basic among military units (p. 31).

Likely, their antichrist dogma comes from the early non-Nicene sects that were banished from Byzantine territories to Syria and Arabia.  Among them were Arians, followers of the deposed bishop Arius who falsely taught that Jesus was a created being – not God in human flesh.  Spencer writes about the Arians:

The Arians were by no means the first Christian group to view Christ as created.  The Jewish-Christian Ebionites viewed Jesus as the Messiah but not in any sense divine…the Christian substratum of the Qur’an reflects a Christology that views Christ as a created being (p. 234).

Spencer continues,

As the Islamic faith began to develop as a distinct religion, it decisively rejected this faith in Christ and reinterpreted the Qur’an to fit its developing new theology (p. 236).

From another source, Exploring Islam, A Christian Perspective on the Life of Muhammad and the Qur’an, (Alhambra, CA, Sebastian Press, 2022), author Lawrence R Farley gives this insight:

The question of whether or not Muhammad was a true prophet depends upon one’s assessment of his handling of the stories and montheistic message he received from his Jewish and Christian sources.  It is possible that his experience of listening to stories from Jews and Christians formed the matrix in which Allah spoke to him (p. 84).

The Qur’an’s “message” about Jesus Christ did not come from any true revelation, but was a simple reapplication of Arian and similar non-Nicene false Christologies, and thus, antichrist heresies.

The Apostolic teaching of St John

St John begins his first letter echoing the opening words of his Gospel’s first verses.  But, he also expands on its words by establishing his apostolic authority.  He declares that he was a witness of the Incarnate Word together with the other Apostles:

That which was from the beginning, which we heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we observed, and our hands have touched concerning the Word of Life.  The Life was manifested, and we have seen, and we testify, and we declare to you the Eternal Life, who was with the Father, and was manifested to us.  That which we have see and have heard, we declare to you, in order that you also might have fellowship with us.  And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.  And we write these things to you, in order that our joy might be made complete (1 St John 1: 1 – 4).

St John establishes that the Apostles saw, heard, and touched the Incarnate Word, the second Person of the Trinity who is the Only-begotten Son of God.  He was no phantom or illusion that the antichrists of St John’s day taught about Christ.

The lies of any antichrist are contrary to the Apostolic faith, and inconsistent with Apostolic fellowship, the life of faith in the Church, and salvation given by the Triune God.  Thus, St John gives us these words:

That which you heard from the beginning, let it abide in you.  If that which you heard from the beginning should abide in you, you also abide in the Son and in the Father.  And this is the promise which he declared to us, eternal life (1 St John 2: 24 – 25).

All of this was true in the days of St John, and all of this is equally true today for us alive in these troubling and dark days.  The teachings of antichrists are all around us:  Mormonism with its false prophet Joseph Smith, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Judaism, and of course Islam.  Yet, there are antichrists found in academia, government, entertainment, and business – any and all who deny the Apostolic Faith.  And, of course, one day there will be the final Antichrist who will deceive the nations.  St John gives us more:

They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them.  We are of God.  Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us.  By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error (1 St John 4: 5 – 6).

In Conclusion

This posting is to inform the faithful in Christ of our faith, and to make clear Islam’s doctrine regarding our Lord is of the spirit of antichrist.  Although it is popular for the uninformed to object by saying, “But, we worship the same God!”  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Allah is a false god, and Muhammad, if he existed as Muslims insist, is a false prophet.  Hence, Islam is a false religion – a religion of antichrist.

Let me state that we are not to bear ill will to our Muslim neighbors.  Rather, it should be every Christian’s prayer that Muslims come to faith in God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — the One True God.   And, thus, have the joy of fellowship with us who are of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith.

In Christ who alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,

Fr Irenaeus