The Antichrist in Muhammad: God the Father

By Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq.
12/14/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

One would think that the beautiful revelation of God as Father, both in its general sense in Judaism and in its "unheard-of sense" in the Christianity, is something that would have been embraced by Muhammad had his ear been attuned to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ. It is one of the most lovely and comforting of truths. In fact, the exact opposite is to be found in Muhammad's supposed revelations.

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - "Our Father, who art in heaven," rolls off the lips of every Christian in the Lord's Prayer as if it were a quotidian dose of honey. The concept of God as Father is a revealed truth, and one which lends great intimacy and suavity to the Christian's relationship to God. It is, in fact, one of the central revelations of Jesus, and a centerpiece of the Gospel.

As revealed, the Fatherhood of God is twofold. First, it involves Jesus' unique relationship to God the Father as the eternally-begotten Son of God. Second, it involves our adoption as sons of God the Father, in other words, our participation by grace in Christ's own Sonship as "sons in the Son," fillii in filio. In this article we will deal with the first aspect. In a subsequent article, we will deal with the second.

Jesus' relationship with God the Father defined who he was, and is central to understanding the life of grace he promised to those who believed in him.

"I and the Father are one." (John 10:30) "[T]he Father is in me, and I in the Father." (John 10:38) "He who has seen me has seen the Father," he told the Apostle Philip. (John 14:9) To the Jews who questioned him, he stated tersely: "'I testify on my behalf and so does the Father who sent me.' They said to him, 'Where is your father?' Jesus answered, 'You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.'" (John 8:18) Jesus spoke of returning to "my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." (John 20:17). In his high priestly prayer, which is nothing but a prayer of intimacy with God the Father, Jesus prayed: "I pray not only for them [his disciples], but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me." (John 17:20-21).

It follows from the centrality of that revelation in Scripture that the doctrine of God's Fatherhood would be a defined dogma. And so it is. The Fatherhood of God relative to the eternally-begotten Son of God is found in the Nicene Creed, which refers to "one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth." It is the counterpart to the belief in "one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages."

The Catechism is succinct: "Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense (sensu inaudito): he is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father in relation to his only Son, who is eternally Son only in relation to his Father." (CCC �240)

While the notion of God as Father as a positive revelation of who God is in himself (ad intra) is not found expressly Judaism, the notion of God as Father as he relates to his people (ad extra) is not entirely foreign. True, the notion of God's fatherhood in the Old Testament is metaphorical, and, not except perhaps by implicit suggestion looking backwards from the Christian revelation, Trinitarian.

For example, we might point to Isaiah 63:16: "For you, O Lord, are our father (avinu), our redeemer, from everlasting is your name." "Is this way you repay the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?" (Deut. 32:6) God refers to Israel as his "firstborn son," which suggests that he sees himself in the position of Father. (Ex. 4:22) And this concept is touchingly repeated in Hosea 11:1, a scripture which the evangelist Matthew uses as a prophecy of Jesus: "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." (Cf. Matt. 2:15) It would not offend the sensibilities of the Jew to refer to Yahweh as "Father." Indeed, in many of their prayers, the Jews refer to God as "our Father," Avinu, for example in the prayer Avinu Malkeinu, "Our Father, Our King," the Jewish prayer recited to during services on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

One would think that the beautiful revelation of God as Father, both in its general sense in Judaism and in its "unheard-of sense" in the Christianity, is something that would have been embraced by Muhammad had his ear been attuned to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ. It is one of the most lovely and comforting of truths.

But that is not the case. In fact, the exact opposite is to be found in Muhammad's supposed revelations. Moved by the spirit of antichrist, Muhammad rejected virulently, and in no uncertain terms, the central revelation of Jesus Christ that God is "Father." Indeed, the rejection is so absolute, so emphatic, so uncompromising that one has to wonder whether Allah is God--as ...

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1 - 7 of 7 Comments

Jorge
5 months ago
Joseph.. I am afraid you have again misinterpreted what this article says, and what my comments are all about. I have never said that muslims are all "terrorists", "mass-murderers","rapists"thieves", "thugs"..so on and so forth....I said and i STAND FIRM in saying that muhammad was all of those things and many more, all unflatering and immoral.You says the Catholic faith stands against "irrationality, anger, hatred, prejudice and bigotry" and I agree. The problems is all of those attributes belong strongly to islam, NOT to radical secularism. You say you are using "reason" by claiming such nonsense? that "secularism" is threatening the christian faith??Are you out of your mind? In what planet is that happening? secularism is a direct creation/concession OF our christian faith("Give to Ceaser what belongs to Ceaser, and to God what belongs to God").who is "ranting and "raving"?Who is instilling irrational fear against a secondary opponnet(secularim)? You are Joseph!I also believe your intentions are "noble" and "good" and I give back your sentence that "Hell is full of people with good intentions".Islam has killed more than 300 million innocetn human beings and keeps killing, brutalising more than 2 billion pelople, without any one daring to stop this genocide. christians in particular are brutally killed by muslims every day, and secularists don't care at all..in this you are right..but secularists are not doing this for themselves..islam is!
Joseph
5 months ago
To Anthony Greenwell re latest comment by Jorge. I think the ranting hysteria of hatred and venom from Jorge rather proves my point. No one disputes Islam has an extremely dark side but are we really saying that 1.5 billion islamics are all crazy, Satan-inspired murderers, killers, paedophiles, rapists etc. etc.... The tone of your articles is playing to the lowest common denominator in people: hatred of the 'other', as Pope Benedict refers to it. It is playing to the forces of irrationality, anger, hatred, prejudice and bigotry. Are not these demonic forces? And as for my main point, it still stands: our main enemy in this period of history is secular-relativism which is sweeping not just the USA but all Western countries, and threatens to obliterate Christianity. We therefore need, as a matter of the greatest urgency, to promote the focusing of all our energies on our main enemy, and to do so in a constructive and positive manner. Encouraging or inciting people to rant and rave, on the other hand, is the very antithesis of the Cathollic Faith, a Faith that has Reason as its primary virtue. I do not doubt for one moment that your intention is noble and good. But as we know from the entire course of human history, the road to Hell is paved with good and noble intentions.
Jorge
5 months ago
Joseph..once again you construct a spaggety sauce made out of nonsense, creamed with fallacious shameless manipulations, distortions; you just useevery kind of shameless LIEs to try to hide the obvious-that islam is indeed, a religion PURE EVIL.It teaches mass-murder, rape, stealing, kidnapping infidels,ln torturing them and then demanding ransoms from their relatives....any dirty satanic trick you can possibly imagine muhammad, the founder of islam believed in it, practiced it and so did his false pet god allah.muslims , at the least pious devout ones, will turn violent, ruthless,terrorists,pedophiles, rapists,theives, thugs, deceptive, nasty..emulating their prophet by reading the quran, the suras, the hadeeths..they all say the same. Here is a taste of PURE ISLAM for you(the many final decisive versicles that ab-rogate the previous few nice ones):
Ishaq:297 “When the Apostle saw them he cried, ‘Allah, they called me a liar. Destroy them!!!

Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam [Koran 5:33]
Qur’an 8:12 “I shall terrorize the infidels. So wound their bodies and incapacitate them because they oppose Allah and His Apostle.”

(Tabari IX:69) “Killing disbelievers is a small matter to us.”

(Tabari VIII:141) “The battle cry of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah that night was: ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’

(Ishaq:489) “Do the bastards think that we are not their equal in fighting? We are men who think that there is no shame in killing.”

(Qur'an 5:33) "The punishment for those who wage war against Allah and His Prophet and perpetrate mischief [reject Islam or oppose its goals]
in the land, is to murder them, to hang them, to mutilate them, or banish them. Such is their disgrace. They will not escape the fire, suffering constantly."

“Allah is the best of schemers.” —Quran 3:54

“War is deceit.” —Muhammad; Hadith, Bukhari 52:268; Narrated Abu Huraira

Qu'ran: Unbelievers will be tormented forever with fire. When their skin
is burned off, a fresh skin will be provided. 56

Allah will bestow a vast reward on those who fight in religious
wars. 74

Believers fight for Allah; disbelievers fight for the devil. So
fight the minions of the devil. 76

Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you
find them. 89

If the unbelievers do not offer you peace, kill them wherever you
find them. Against such you are given clear warrant. 91 ( Offering
peace in Islam means surrendering,ie, converting to islam "peacefully" after receiving the "invitation" or by force, under the threat of violence and death, or accepting dhimminitude/slave condition but ONLY for jews and chrisitans.Islam condemns to utter destruction all the other religions by all means necessary).
JayKaye
5 months ago
This new article was a very nice addition to the one several months ago on the same topic. The doctrine created may have been Mohammad's attempt for notoriety, in mimicking the works of the Bible on his own, with his unaccounted for changes to scripture, in a take or dismiss like manner that created the Koran.

The acts of non-tolerance towards Christianity (and other faiths) are not condoned in any worldwide religion, except some of the Muslim sectors. While most others attempt to "convert", the Muslim communities attempt to wipe out the others. We here in the U.S. stand back and watch our government try to accommodate refuges into the U.S. and pump trillions of dollars into Muslim nations that laugh at our efforts and murder our people attempting to help them become democratic societies. When our governing authorities recognize that democracy does not work in Muslim society. Democracy is based on people living a "God fearing" existence. We find countries such as Iraq, Syria, or other Middle Easterners taking the cash we use to persuade them free of any demise, then to abuse and reconstruct their philosophy towards their own and differing peoples. Time and time again, we are bilked and lose our objective as a country, due to regime changes that were set-up through U.S. persuasions and lost hundreds of billions of dollars.

It is time the U.S. began fighting a new type of war against these misunderstood kingdoms. Maybe to sanction money and technology instead of trying to make allies could in turn cause at least some of these kingdoms to bend if to remain beneficiaries of our cultures advantages. The free handouts would stop and our deficit ($6 -800 million per second) would lessen. Within our boundaries, we need to keep the freedom to worship free, unless they begin preaching lawlessness we so often find coming from the Muslim sects that believe it. These are the elements that must be taken out of the "free" rights and to do so, at any cost, before further tragedy(s) fill the front-page news again. Only when they see not so much their own people, but their own regime losing progress and status, will they listen to our intent civilly and in an honest attempt to live in harmony with the West.
Joseph
5 months ago
Once again the substance of the argument is generally sound but too often betrayed by the tone - a tone that is needlessly emotive, at times oddly personal, and at other times gratuitously aggressive. Adopting this approach is tantamount to saying that every human being who does not accept Jesus as the Son of God is Antichrist. From the 16 year old who is simply passing through a phase of typical adolescent rebellion to the man who hasn't really ever thought about it one way or the other, to the reasoned and reasonable agnostic, to the fanatical islamic suicide bomber - all end up in the same category, all are subject to the full weight of this massive condemnation - for there is none greater in Christendom - regardless of the degree of their non-belief/rejection (and yes, there are degrees of rejection, just as there are degrees of acceptance). An approach of this sort lacks, above all, discernment, a key Catholic concept. It muddies the distinction between quantitative and qualitative differences, and seeks to explore and define profound truths using a sledgehammer instead of a surgeon's scalpel. ‘Antichrist’ is a term that should be used sparingly, reluctantly and with great humility. St. John certainly has every right to use it. So too could the Pope, if he so chose, in line with the Magisterium, and, I am sure, after long and great and heart-searching deliberation. As for the rest of us mere mortals, which of us is not in need, every day of our lives, of a healthy dose of humility?
Joel Richardson
5 months ago
Another excellent article sir. It should also be highlighted that the Qur'an, as a direct result of its deeply anti-Paternal view of God, forbids adoption. While it does encourage taking in the children of those whose parents were lost during jihad, it forbids those children to ever adopt the family name or share in the family inheritance. In fact, those children are even allowed to marry their "brothers or sisters". as if they were just like any other outsider.

"...Nor has He made your adopted sons your (biological) sons. Such is only the manner of speech by your mouths. But Allah tells the Truth, and He shows the right Way. Call them by (the names of) their fathers; that is juster in the sight of Allah..." - Surah 33:4-5
Kris
5 months ago
As quoted in the article, Mr. Lewis' comparison of 'shirk' to the sin against the Holy Spirit is illustrative of the many misrepresentations of Christian dogma by Islamists. To put these two alongside each other is a grave (if not intended) oversimplification.

The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit consists in impenitence which is the result of denying the very existence of sin - so you can't be forgiven a transgression you don't recognize; and you come to recognize it through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

And as for the blasphemy against Allah, it suffices one to be a Christian!

Apart from the absence of this clarification, congrats and thank you for the series!

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