Galatians 2:21
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
New Living Translation
I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
English Standard Version
I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
Luke 1:6
New International Version
Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly.
New Living Translation
Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous in God’s eyes, careful to obey all of the Lord’s commandments and regulations.
English Standard Version
And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.
Categories: Bible
Blogging Theology 
The gospel of Jesus (as): Do everything for God, you can make it.
St. Paul’s Gospel: You can’t make it, God has to do everything for you.
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I think that the assumption behind this post is that the Bible and the Qur’an are the same kind of text; but this is not the case. Christians have never believed that the texts which comprise the Bible were dictated by God, as Muslims seem to believe the Qur’an was directly dictated by God to Muhammad. What we have in the New Testament is different authors attempting to grapple with the experience of the crucified and risen Christ. Each of the Gospels, and Paul, understand Christ slightly differently; they each represent different interpretations. I do not see that as a problem per se, as Christ is the Word of God, not the Bible; and just as there are different interpretations of Christ there are different interpretations of the Qur’an.
(P.S I am not a Christian; I am just playing devil’s advocate)
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Thanks for your thoughts Michael. I’m sure the devil would be pleased 😉
Actually, the Quran was not in my mind at all when I wrote the post. I was concerned to highlight the fact that the gospel according to Paul is at odds with other views expressed in the Bible. After all the Bible is really a library of books by different authors who mostly never met and mostly did not think they were writing Holy Scripture. Later on the Catholic Church decided which works would comprise the Christian Bible.
Your claim that ‘Christians have never believed that the texts which comprise the Bible were dictated by God’
…is not historically true. Many of the early Fathers believed the Bible was dictated by God through passive human secretaries. And some Bible books claim to be the actual words of God given to Jeremiah, Hosea, Isaiah and Jonah. So the Quranic view is certainly present within the bible. But Paul does not claim to be writing Scripture and in fact says his views are *not* from God but his own opinion see 1 Corinthians 7:12.
I see from your Facebook page that you had a 10 minutes conversation with Rowan Williams about Quranic Christology. Very interesting. Whence your interest in this subject?
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No, no, no, the assumption is that the word “righteous” has the same meaning in both contexts.
But as we all should know, the same word can carry different meanings dependent on the context and purpose of the writer. This happens across the 4 different languages I can speak and/or read, koine Greek being one of them.
But the devil doesn’t like inconvenient facts get in the way of a good polemic when trying to call suckers to Islam.
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Yes yes yes…
you must aware that Jesus said the devil is ‘the father of lies’ – so not sure I can believe anything you say.
Note: Paul claimed “if righteousness [δικαιοσύνη] could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
Yet Luke claimed ‘they were both righteous [δίκαιοι] before God [obviously their righteousness has nothing to do with Jesus dying for their sins], walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.’
Same Greek word in both sentences. In Judaism the word has the same general meaning ‘righteousness’ or ‘divine approval’ – see Strong’s Concordance
There are many folk in the OT who’re described as righteous, ie forgiven and acceptable to God.
Would you like a list?
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I note from your Facebook page that you had a 10 minutes conversation with Rowan Williams about Quranic Christology. Very interesting. Whence your interest in this subject?
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Paul,
Do you know NT Wright and the New Perspective?
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I don’t know him personally no. So tell me about your meeting with Lord Williams – and ill tell you about my meeting with him which lasted a lot longer than 10 minutes.
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I don’t know Rowan Williams. I’m not even British. Wrong person?
Anyway, are you familiar with the new perspective?
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oops my mistake – I was referring to Michael Lee above!
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