The subject of ‘polemics’ is extremely controversial for many Christians who share the Gospel with Muslims. I was stirred to write this article after sharing Daniel Pipes recent article on Christian ministry to Muslims with a coworker who highlighted the following quote from Pipes which says, “Although some Christian spokesmen (Zakariya Botros, Jay Smith & David Wood) criticize Islam, this has limited utility in attracting Muslims.” Often, what Pipes calls ‘criticizing Islam’ is equated with the field of ‘polemics’. While ‘apologetics’ is largely accepted as biblical by Christians across the West because it focuses on ‘defending’ the truth of Christianity, ‘polemics’ is often debated because it not only seeks to defend the teachings of Christ, but ‘dismantle’ opposing religious ideologies and theology.
Personally, I am around more Christians on a regular basis who denounce polemics as a viable evangelistic option and some of these openly oppose the ministries of Jay Smith and David Wood. However, I was shocked to witness a pro-polemical scholar unintelligibly rip apart a pro-lifestyle evangelism scholar at last year’s Evangelical Theological Society’s conference on Islam. Many ‘anti-polemical’ Christians claim polemicists are unloving. On the other side, many Christians who endorse or who practice ‘polemics’ simply want the other side to understand and accept that polemics is not evil nor necessarily ‘unloving.’
This short article will explain why polemics is biblical and that is not antithetical to biblical love. I will also give two recent, personal examples of using both a polemical and relational evangelistic approach with Muslims here in the U.S.
POLEMICS IS BIBLICAL
For the Christian who says “there are no polemical approaches in the Bible,” I would encourage you to read the words of Jesus and Paul. Jesus did not just ‘apologetically’ defend the truth, he polemically dismantled false, Pharisee doctrine. Does the following statement from Jesus not sound polemical? : “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean (Matt 23:27). How does Jesus’ statement fit in with our 21st century, American Christian understanding of ‘love’ and ‘evangelism’? Would you boldly tell a non-Christian, “You are a hypocrite, claiming to be good when really, on the inside, you are dead and your evil thoughts and motivations are destroying your life” ?
What about Paul’s statement and actions toward Elymas the magician: “Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?”” (Acts 13:9-10). Does this not ‘sound’ unloving? Was the Holy Spirit unloving here? Would you be willing to tell a non-Christian that she is a ‘daughter of the devil’ and a slave to sin? We need to clarify what ‘love’ really is within our approaches to tell Muslims about Jesus.
POLEMICS IS NOT ANTITHETICAL TO LOVE
Is truth antithetical to love? To some Christians, Jay, David, and in the past, Karl Pfander, sound unloving in their Gospel ministries but I know that Jay and David have and will reach Muslims whom friendship/lifestyle evangelism ‘only’ proponents will probably never reach. Surely it is loving to give sinners the lifesaving message of Jesus Christ.
Polemics, debate, and constructive criticism is biblical and necessary at times. Indeed, polemics must correspond with ‘love’ and ‘gentleness’ as Peter says (1 Pet 3:15). The message Nabeel Qureshi left on his final ‘vlog’ before passing away really explains it all; there must be love, truth and love. This is always a delicate balance. I feel many Christians working with Muslims, as with the general understanding of evangelism today, have a cultured definition of ‘love’ which has no category for bold, polemical speaking of the truth. Love must be defined by our God who is bold and who polemically exposes darkness while giving the remedy of the light (Eph. 5:11).
Where will all our conceptions of ‘love’ toward the Imam (the pastor of the mosque) and Muslims lead in the end if we actually witness a move of God in our communities? Sure, we can have interfaith dialogues and friendship evangelistic encounters but what happens when Muslims stop being Muslims because of our witness and they start following Jesus Christ as Lord and denounce Islam? This will certainly strain our relationships with the local Muslim community and the Imam, but is this not the whole goal of our evangelistic ministries? We keep peace with all people ‘as much as it is possible’ but biblically, if some people are not getting mad at us, trying to chase us out of town, we may not be doing our job as evangelists and missionaries (see Acts 14 with Paul at Iconium and Lystra).
In a real way, as we follow Christ and call Muslims to repentance and faith in Jesus, we should be working ourselves in to a position of ‘dishonor’; at least in the eyes of some. As Jesus says after proclaiming the Gospel in his hometown of Nazareth, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household” (Mk 6:4). But even if God calls us to ‘shake off the dust of our feet’ for some, we are the fragrance of Christ to others to follow Christ (2 Cor. 2:15-17).
A SEMI-POLEMICAL APPROAOCH
The other week, I visited a Mediterranean restaurant that has a Mosque on one side and an Islamic primary school on the other. After relationally sharing the Gospel with the owner and a worker at the restaurant, I went outside and saw two Indian Muslim men getting in their car after namaz (prayer). I had been praying for boldness and I believe the Holy Spirit came upon me to call out to the men from the sidewalk. Here was the gist of the conversation:
I said, “Did you men just get through praying?”
The men said “Yes.”
I said, “Did you pray to Jesus?”
They said “No, Jesus is only a prophet.”
I said, “Actually, the Injeel says that Jesus IS God and not just a prophet. You should pray to Him.”
They said, “Tell me about the Trinity.”
Anytime I hear this, I hear a challenge. Certainly I wanted to answer the question but I answered with a challenge of my own so I said, “Tell me about how the teaching of tawhid, that Allah is one being and one person, corresponds with the Quran being eternal? If Allah is one being and one person (a monad) and it is shirk (the unforgiveable sin) for there to be another eternal entity dwelling alongside Allah, how is the relationship of Allah and the eternal Quran not shirk?”
They didn’t like me polemically pushing the ball back into their field so they went back to polemically pushing the ball into mine. They said, “First, you tell us about the Trinity.”
I said, “I certainly will but I want us to understand the relationship between tawhid and how Muslims have historically understood how Allah eternally coexists alongside the Quran. My understanding is that Muslim theologians could not theologically comprehend the relationship between Allah’s eternal nature and the eternalness of the Quran, so they said, ‘We don’t know but we affirm both.” Likewise, with the Trinity, we believe that God is one being and three persons. Being is distinct from person. We are all united universally as human-beings but we are all separate persons. The Bible teaches that both of these statements are true and so we affirm both; that God is one and three. There is a mystery here like there is in how Muslims understand how Allah’s tawhid relates to the eternal Quran in Islamic theology.”
They said, “The Bible has been corrupted.”
Really, if you are following the conversation, these Indian guys are going from one polemical statement to the next without any true interaction. I responded, “Can you prove that the Bible has been corrupted? Why do you believe this? May I give you a little booklet that explains why the Injeel has not been corrupted?”
They said, “No! We don’t want your booklet”
I said, “Ah, I see. You don’t even want to explore the truth.” Right then, about 15 Muslims exited the Mosque and I felt it wise to leave the conversation before starting a riot!
Was this wrong of me to have such a conversation? Was it unethical to polemically push back on Muslim beliefs? Was this the Holy Spirit at work or Thomas’ lack of love? If someone was eavesdropping or walking by, certainly he could have interpreted the conversation as ‘unloving’, maybe like some view Jay Smith’s responses to Muslims.
I realize this is subjective but I truly believe the Holy Spirit gave me boldness and the words to say. With all this said, I did, in fact, question my own motives afterward and asked God to show me if this conversation was wrong or ‘unloving’ (I also called my wife!). God gave me peace that it was appropriate and that through my inculturation of lifestyle evangelism as the ‘only loving’ evangelistic approach, I felt internally uncomfortable to the degree that I questioned whether the action was right.
There are times when we must push the ball back into the court of Muslims to have them consider their own doctrines and worldview. Could it be that we are limiting the Holy Spirit’s bold proclamation of the Gospel to Muslims and others through our worldly and limiting definition of ‘love’ which confines Gospel proclamation to the realm of defense (apologetics) which lacks an offensive approach (polemics)?
A RELATIONAL APPROACH
After leaving these two Indian Muslim men, I drove to meet my Turkish Muslim friend of several years at a restaurant nearby. After talking and catching up, I was able to share with him from John 14:6 about how Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” This was done in love and very relationally but the statement was very clear and I made sure he understood that Jesus is calling him to follow Him as God and if he does not, there is no paradise, no forgiveness, and there is no salvation outside the name of Jesus. Unfortunately, my friend reaffirmed the shahada, the Muslim confession of faith in my presence. Nevertheless, we are still friends and we will, Lord willing or as he says, inshallah, see each other again as we have for years. Additionally, I will, Lord willing, continue to call him to follow Jesus as the only God and Savior of humanity which will inevitably cause him to deny and abandon Islamic knowledge claims.
CONCLUSION
There is a season and time for everything and multiple approaches can and must be used in a variety of occasions. Most of the time and for most people, a relational approach to sharing the Gospel with Muslims is the best course of action. Such is the approach Crescent Project teaches and endorses with simple apologetics through its Bridges Study. This is the case in the workplace by the water fountain. No one wants to get fired but at the same time, being relational does not get Christians off the hook to be bold at work. Sometimes our fear of declaring the Gospel and the difficult sayings of Jesus is cloaked by our focus on not offending someone or the need to continue the relationship when the Holy Spirit is prompting us to speak the truth (see Sacred or Secular by Ambassador).
At other times, maybe on the street, in the marketplace, or in a personal conversation with your Muslim friend at your house or over the phone, polemics may be a viable option. Many Muslims are trained to polemically respond to Christians and Islam itself is a polemical religion as it makes polemical claims about Christianity throughout the Quran and Hadith (i.e. Jesus is not God, Jesus did not die on the cross, the Bible has been corrupted). When the two Indian Muslim men said, “Tell us about the Trinity,” they were not truly seeking to understand what the Bible teaches about the Trinity but only wanted to dismantle what I believe and try to make this claim seem logically inconsistent. When these men said, “The Bible has been corrupted,” this was not a sweet, apologetic, loving response to defend what they believed as Muslims; no, this was an offensive attack and a common statement every Muslim believes and recognizes as common knowledge.
While seeking to apologetically defend the truth of Christian teachings to Muslims, sometimes Christians need to push the ball back to the Muslim’s court by asking similar questions such as, “Is it possible that the Quranic manuscripts have been corrupted? How do you know that Muhammad was really a messenger/prophet when his name is only mentioned four times in the Quran? If Islam is a religion of peace, why is there so much violence in the Quran and Hadith, even in the life of Muhammad?” Certainly, these questions, and many others, must be asked in love and gentleness, but they must be asked. In real life and in most conversations both offense (polemics) and defense (apologetics) are intertwined in a Gospel conversation with Muslims as one shares the truth that Jesus is divine while questioning the legitimacy of Islamic claims.
Let us balance truth and love and not denounce polemics as unbiblical or unloving even when we ourselves may not practice this methodology often. If it is not your style, okay; but do not claim that polemics does not have a place in ministry to Muslims when it is biblical and not antithetical to love.
In the end, polemics helps Christians understand and explain what they believe as opposed to false claims of religious knowledge, particularly Islamic claims. Even if you do not plan to use polemics with your Muslim friends, you would do well to study polemics to help you better understand and articulate what you believe and what the Gospel truly is as opposed to what it is not. When polemics is used rightly, it is one more path God can and does use to bring Muslims out of the darkness into the light of Jesus Christ (read the story of Nabeel Qureshi).
MORE RESOURCES
For those who are interested in polemics and apologetics to Muslims, please consider the following resources:
- First ever Master of Arts in Polemics and Apologetics to Islam at Veritas International University
- Daniel Janosik’s book: The Guide to Answering Islam
- Pfander Films and Jay Smith
- CIRA International and Al-Fadi
Tmessick.com 