Islam, like Buddhism and Christianity, has an identifiable historical founder, about whom we know a great deal. Muhammad was born about the year AD 570 in the flourishing commercial city of Mecca. At the age of forty he began his prophetic ministry. In AD 622 he moved to Medina (Yathrib), where he died in AD 632.
The records show him as a man of infinite patience, who preached in Mecca for thirteen years and hardly made a convert. In his later years he showed himself a great leader of men. He gave to the warring Arab tribes unity, a simple creed (the Muslim creed consists only of the two clauses ‘I proclaim that there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the apostle of God‘), and a sense of destiny. For a thousand years the Christian world was threatened by their armies. Today the followers of Muhammad exercise great influence in the affairs of the world. Read more
Three great faiths had their origin in the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They are rigidly monotheistic, in that they declare that God is one, that there can be no other object of worship, and that there can be no other basis for the unity of all mankind.
The Jews declare every day, ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord.’ Read more
A hundred years ago evolution was much in the air. Everything was thought to be the result of long development. So it was taken that religion also must have developed; and as monotheism—belief in one God only — is the highest form of religion, this must have come very late in the history of mankind. Among the simpler races it was not expected we should find belief in one God; in fact, it was doubted whether there would be found any clear idea of God at all.
This idea was not altogether unreasonable. When a stranger tries to study the religion of a people he does not know, he first becomes aware of actions and ceremonies, some of which seem to him very strange. Read more
There have been many attempts to define religion, none of them entirely satisfactory. Perhaps it is easier to say what religion is not than what it is. A useful definition is this: religion is the refusal to believe that the universe can be adequately explained in purely three- dimensional terms. The three dimensions may be taken as the three conditions of our life — space, time and matter; or as the field of the physical sciences which deal with those things that can be counted, measured and weighed. A purely material view of things would naturally exclude the possibility of religion. Read more
An ancient objection, of ten raised, concerns the morality— or rather immorality! — of some parts of the Bible, usually certain Old Testament stories. Are they not vicious and ethically primitive? Things to bear in mind when looking at this question are as follows: Read more
Most of the areas of conflict lie in the narrative parts of the Bible — Genesis to Esther in the Old Testament, and the Gospels and Acts in the New. How should we read these? Although interpreted history is the central means of biblical revelation it is not the sole means. There are parts of the Bible where history is not an issue — poetry, wisdom, letters and so on. There are also portions of narrative itself which are not, or are not likely to be, intended as history. Read more
It is not always easy to handle problems in the Bible which are posed by modern knowledge. This is particularly so since difficulties usually reflect the larger problem of how to hold together differing attitudes to authority and knowledge. In modern thought we generally work ‘from below’ Read more
Another commonly-drawn consequence of belief in inspiration is the claim that the Bible is ‘inerrant’ or ‘infallible’. If we believe that God overruled and inspired the record of those events upon which faith depends, then it is right to suppose that such an account should be reliable. Clearly an inspired Bible is a reliable Bible. But does this reliability necessarily extend to every single detail? Read more
The Bible is one big book made up of many smaller books. As such, it shows both unity (’one’) and diversity (’many’). The unity of the Bible flows from its source in God. If God is ultimately responsible for it all, you would expect it to hold together. But the Bible’s unity can be seen on other levels too. One story—of creation, fall and redemption— runs throughout. Read more
The Bible is often called the ‘word of God‘. It is the way, above all others, that he uses to communicate with us — to get his thoughts and purposes into our minds. But how did books written by many different writers come to be God’s ‘word’? And can we be sure that we are properly understanding what God has revealed? Read more
