AP

            Prophets play a very significant role in both Islam and Christianity. The claims of Islam are not mild in this regard. Modern Islam almost invariably asserts that there were about 124,000 prophets, and that they were sinless and infallible. Christianity does not provide us with a specific number of prophets, but tells us far more about those it does mention. In the Christian Scriptures, prophets are infallible but not sinless.

Let us first look at the Islamic claim that the prophets were all sinless. It is difficult to avoid the view that this interpretation seems to be a later contention, for the Qur’an itself makes no such claim. Adam was a prophet, in the Islamic view, but he sinned. The Qur’an says that in Surah 2 (The Cow): ‘Then the Shaitan (Satan) made them slip therefrom (the Paradise), and got them out from that in which they were. We said: “Get you down, all, with enmity between yourselves. On earth will be a dwelling place for you and an enjoyment for a time.”‘ (2:36; 7:24) So sin and fighting are a result of Adam’s sin. Also, death came into the world: ‘He said: “Therein you shall live, and therein you shall die, and from it you shall be brought out (i.e. resurrected).”‘ (7:25) We live as fallen sinners in God’s world. Surah 16 (The Bees) says: ‘And if Allah were to seize mankind for their wrong-doing, He would not leave on it (the earth) a single moving creature’ (16:61). Outside the Qur’an, Sahîh Al-Bukhâri reports Moses arguing with Adam and blaming him: ‘O Adam! You are our father who disappointed us and turned us out of Paradise’.[1]

According to the Qur’an, even the prophet Abraham said of God: ‘And who, I hope, will forgive me my faults on the Day of Recompense’ (The Poets, 26:82). In Surah 28, Moses asks God to forgive him (The Narration, 28:16). David repented, and received forgiveness according to Surah 38:24-25. And Muhammad himself is told in Surah 47: ‘So know, O Muhammad, none has the right to be worshipped but Allah, and ask forgiveness for your (singular) sin, and also for believing men and believing women’ (The Fighting, 47:19). Sahîh Al-Bukhâri also records Muhammad frequently praying that the Lord would forgive his sins.[2] Yet Islam in the modern age maintains that the prophets were sinless, or at most, guilty of some minor mistakes.

Now, for comparison, let us turn to the biblical prophets and apostles. King David, for example, was anointed by God as ‘the sweet psalmist of Israel’. As he looked back over his life, he asserted: ‘The Spirit of the LORD speaks by me; his word is on my tongue.’ (2 Sam.23:1-2) Jesus Himself confirms this when He points out that David uttered the prophecy of Psalm 110:1 ‘in the Holy Spirit’ (Matt.12:36). Yet David was hardly sinless. The most infamous blot on his life – but not the only one – occurred when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and contrived to have her husband, Uriah, killed in battle (2 Sam.11-12). In summary: as a prophet, David was completely trustworthy in his transmission of the revelation granted to him, but he was not always exemplary in his walk before God.

Isaiah too identified his words with those of God. Isaiah spoke what he saw (Isa.1:1) for the LORD had spoken to him (Isa.1:2). Therefore, the language of the prophet is consistently something like ‘the LORD said to me’ (e.g. Isa.8:1). This formula is found over 400 times in the Old Testament, so it is something we should find difficult to miss. The Old Testament prophets were not recording their best thoughts on a good day, but the very word of God. Yet, to go back to Isaiah, this did not coinhere with a claim to sinlessness. There is no such claim. Either at his initial call, or, more likely, soon after it, Isaiah was given a vision of seraphim in the temple, each proclaiming: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’ (Isa.6:3)

Amidst the shaking of the building and the smoke which filled it, Isaiah was shattered: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!’ (Isa.6:5) In the very place where Isaiah was gifted to serve the Lord – his mouth – he was overcome by an awareness of his own sin, and that no man can see God and live (Ex.33:20). What follows is not a divine reassurance that Isaiah was deep down quite an acceptable fellow, but a kind of sacrament where a burning coal from the altar was applied to his lips. Then there was a declaration: ‘your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’ (Isa.6:6-7)

            There is a similar pattern in the book of Jeremiah. His book is said to be ‘the words of Jeremiah’ (Jer.1:1), but the prophet also says that ‘the word of the LORD came to me’ (Jer.1:4). Later, when Jeremiah was banned from going to the house of the LORD, his secretary, Baruch, was sent to read a scroll to King Jehoiakim. The king, however, had no more intention of submitting to God’s revealed truth than most of our present-day civil authorities. The scroll is described as containing ‘the words of the LORD’ (Jer.36:8) and ‘the words of Jeremiah’ (Jer.36:10). The Bible in its entirety has human authors and a Divine Author.

            Yet it cannot be said that Jeremiah was sinless, any more than Isaiah was. At one stage the opposition to his message became so overwhelming to him that he uttered a most extraordinary curse, which can only be compared to that of Job in Job 3. Jeremiah cursed the day of his birth, and also the man who told his father that he had become the father of a baby boy. Jeremiah thought that the poor man deserved to be obliterated like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen.18-19) because he did not kill baby Jeremiah in the womb (Jer.20:14-18). We ought to be moved to sympathy for Jeremiah, but his wild outburst can hardly be excused.

            The New Testament tells us the same message: the apostles were infallible but not sinless. The apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church: ‘And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God’ (1 Thess.2:13). To the Corinthians, Paul was not suggesting debating points: ‘If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.’ (1 Cor.14:37) Yet this is the same man who proclaimed that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost’ (1 Tim.1:15). He does not even say that he was the foremost of sinners before his conversion, but with far greater self-awareness, he is the foremost of sinners.

            This leaves us with last example to consider – that of Jonah. The Qur’an refers to many prophets but says little about them. Jonah is barely an exception. A truncated narrative is indeed found in the Qur’an, and for clarity will be quoted in full:

And, verily Jonah was one of the Messengers. When he ran to the laden ship: Then he (agreed to) cast lots, and he was among the losers. Then a (big) fish swallowed him as he had done an act worthy of blame. Had he not been of them who glorify Allah. He would have indeed remained inside the belly of the fish till the Day of Resurrection. But we cast him forth on the naked shore while he was sick, And We caused a plant of gourd to grow over him. And sent him to a hundred thousand people or even more. And they believed; so We gave them enjoyment for a while. (‘Those Ranged in Ranks’, 37:139-148)

The details are rather sparse, and the chronology not altogether clear, but the main problem for the Muslim is that it demolishes the case for prophetic sinlessness and infallibility.

            The Qur’anic account only makes sense if the biblical account is known. When Jonah ran to a laden ship, he was attempting to flee God (Jon.1). It was a case of rank disobedience, not a matter of accidentally boarding the wrong ship. And the plant which sheltered Jonah from the hot wind and sun was part of God’s rebuking of him for being more concerned with his own comfort than with the destinies of human beings with immortal souls (Jonah 4). Jonah’s message was true, but it is a message which on the surface deals with two main issues: first, the forgiveness of Gentile pagans who turned to the true God; and secondly, God’s chastisement of a rebellious but true prophet who took a long time to learn what Yahweh was teaching him. Jonah was infallible but not sinless.

            If the prophets were indeed sinless, then the Qur’an creaks with its own contradictions. In contrast, the Bible tells of prophetic and apostolic infallibility all coming from the mouths of prophets and apostles who themselves were in need of a Saviour. Amazing grace! The whole Bible heralds the message that there is but one sinless Saviour of sinners – Jesus the Messiah.

[1] The Translation of the Meaning of Sahîh Al-Bukhâri, trans. by Muhammad Muhsin Khan, Darussalam, 2015, vol.8, no. 6614 (p.325).

[2] The Translation of the Meaning of Sahîh Al-Bukhâri, trans. by Muhammad Muhsin Khan, Darussalam, 2015, vol.8, no. 6398 (p.224).

– Peter Barnes