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08-08-2006, 02:00 PM
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Assistant to the Regional Manager
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Muslims believe in Atonement
I was reviewing the Fifth Sura from the Qur'an, and thinking about what you wrote Seattle, namely that Jews and Muslims have no need for Atonement, knowing that Jews believed in the Yom Kippur, I also remembered the following.
A few verses from the fifth Sura al-Maida may help to shed light on the issue of Islamic interpretation of atonement: (Sura al-Maida 5: 45) Eye for eye and whose waives his right shall find atonement. (Sura al-Maida 5:13) Lend Allah a goodly loan and I will expiate your bad deeds and admit you to Paradise. (Sura al-Maida 5:89) Allah will not take you task for your empty oaths, but will do so for oaths taken in earnest. The expiation for that is to feed ten poor folk or free a slave. Whoever lacks means, let him fast three days. That is expiation for your sworn oaths. We ordained therein for them: "Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal." But if any one remits the retaliation by way of charity, it is an act of atonement for himself. And if any fail to judge by (the light of) what Allah hath revealed, they are (No better than) wrong-doers. Sura al-Maida 5:45 (Yusuf Ali's translation)The tentative inference from these texts is that almsgiving, the release of slaves and fasting are means of expiation. Muslims can never be sure whether such expiation covers particular sins, or whether expiation entitles them to enter Paradise. Perhaps Muhammad himself was in doubt as regards the efficacy of such casual expiation. Kiffaratudh-dhunub, atonement for sins, figures as a technical term in some writings. This consists of the four duties, prayer, fasting, alms and pilgrimage. Even the simple Confession, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Apostle," merits a measure of pardon according to the Hadith. What transpires from the foregoing is that atonement for Muslims has to do with good works, ritual or ethical and the balancing of existential accounts: The weighing on that day will be just. Those whose scales are heavy will prosper, those whose scales are light will suffer loss (Sura al Araf 7:8) The balance that day will be true (to nicety): those whose scale (of good) will be heavy, will prosper: Sura al Araf 7:8 (Yusuf Ali's translation)Expiation has its near synonym, fidyah or ransom (or substitute). A sick man, who misses out on some of his fast days pays a ransom by feeding the poor. A similar ransom is demanded from those who default on pilgrimage (Sura al-Baqarah 2:196). But no ransom avails for hypocrites and infidels on the great accounting day (Sura al-Hadid57:15). And complete the Hajj or 'umra in the service of Allah. But if ye are prevented (From completing it), send an offering for sacrifice, such as ye may find, and do not shave your heads until the offering reaches the place of sacrifice. And if any of you is ill, or has an ailment in his scalp, (Necessitating shaving), (He should) in compensation either fast, or feed the poor, or offer sacrifice; and when ye are in peaceful conditions (again), if any one wishes to continue the 'umra on to the hajj, He must make an offering, such as he can afford, but if he cannot afford it, He should fast three days during the hajj and seven days on his return, Making ten days in all. This is for those whose household is not in (the precincts of) the Sacred Mosque. And fear Allah, and know that Allah Is strict in punishment. Sura al-Baqarah 2:196 (Yusuf Ali's translation)Man provides his own ransom to make satisfaction for his own misdeeds, and then he hopes for the best. Man's destiny has become a matter of commercial transaction; man bargaining with Allah, as one might bargaining with Allah in an Arabian market, the Souk. Until the day reckoning, a sinner cannot tell whether his balance is sufficient to balance his sins. Isaiah evaluated human actions more realistically: Our works of righteousness are as filthy rags (Old Testament Isaiah 64:6). Having been made aware of his uncleanness, he had cried out, Woe is me. I am undone. All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. Isaiah 64:6 (NIV)This mercantile frame of mind leads to arithmetic ethical calculations. For example, Ibn abi Laila and a Syrian were traveling along a road when a porter passed by selling pomegranates. The Syrian took one and hid it in his sleeve. Abi Laila couldn't believe his eyes. A poor beggar passed them, and Syrian gave him the fruit he had stolen. The Syrian replied that the theft was one bad deed, while the good act of giving one would get the reward of ten. As a result, thief would have a greater reward than the non-thief. Another authority, Khashnam, assures us that one fornication is not as bad as 10,000 lies. This stress on the letter of the law led a Bedouin thief, who pulled goods out of a tent with along crooked camel stick, to explain, it was not I that stole but the stick.
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08-08-2006, 03:42 PM
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#2 |
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I wonder if part of what SeattleUte was saying has to do with the different translations involved. The fact is, English is the only language I know of where "atonement" means "atonement." The Hebrew words we translate as "day of atonement" is "Yom Kippur," which means "Day of COVERING"; the idea there being that our sins are being covered up. In spanish, the word used for "atonement" is "expiation," which appears to be the same as it is in Arabic (the two possibly being related in origin). Japanese uses a term which essentially means to be ransomed.
Anybody who knows a different language from a mission or otherwise, feel free to chip in what word was used to say "atonement." As I said, I am unaware of any language, save English, wherein "atonement" means "atonement." We get the word atonement from Tyndale, in what sounds like a Mormon urban legend but is nevertheless verified by history. In translating the bible, he came across the words that are most accurately translated "Day of Covering" and was wholly uninspired by the thought. He made up his own word instead, which one could do with much more ease than is possible today, by combinging the words "at" and "one", thus making the word "atonement" a word that connotes not only the expiation or covering of our sins, but also describes the process by which we are reconciled with God. It is significant that the gospel was restored in English. "Atonement," after all, with all of its reconciliatory concepts, is very much the watchword of this dispensation. We are simply calling upon all to come back unto Christ and be reconciled with Him.
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08-08-2006, 03:43 PM
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I once had a vigorous debate with the FARMS fellows on Fairboards over whether the Hellenization of Christianity was indispensible to the ultimate rise of the West, i.e., whether it was a good or a bad thing for us today, in fact, something that Mormons themselves should praise and lionize. (I sensed an obvious anti-Catholic subtext to their hostility toward the Hellenization of Christianity. This was one of Talmage's issues.) The FARMS boys had some trouble dealing with the demonstrable fact that it was Paul himself who Hellenized Christianity, the values arising form Christianity's Hellenization prompted those musty monks to preserve Socrates, Homer et al., and the New Testament itself was first written in Alexander's Greek. I was taken aback at how the demonization of Christianity's Hellenization was like an article of faith to them. Then I learned there are long turgid articles on the FAIR boards savaging Christianity's Hellenization. This was very illuminating and made me think that Harold Bloom probably is indeed a religious genius.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster |
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08-08-2006, 03:48 PM
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Interesting observation. It is undeniable that Paul did much to take Christianity, which was then little more than a sect of Judaism, and turn it into a religion embracing all members of the world. I look at Paul much the same way that I might look at David O. McKay or Spencer W. Kimball. They were free-thinking enough to see the standard definitions of who members of the church are and want to be and made drastic changes to that definition, globalizing Christ's church. That, and they were all apostles with the authority to make the changes. But I understand that point is being debated elsewhere?
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08-08-2006, 04:25 PM
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Assistant to the Regional Manager
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Quote:
Most of the European languages focus upon "expiation". German for example uses either die Busse or die Suehne, more of an "offering".
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08-08-2006, 04:51 PM
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#6 | |
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster |
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08-10-2006, 05:09 PM
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Your point also touches on a real sore spot in Christianity, and one that ALWAYS gets passed over by CES types and evangelicals: Paul was in the business of opposing other Christian missionaries--specifically "Judeizers,"--over the hold the Hebrew Law should have over Christians (and especially over male Christian converts who didn't want to be circumcised). His epistle to the Romans was written with these concerns in mind and cannot be completely reconciled with either the epistle of James or the Gospel according to Matthew (neither of which were written by their purported authors but which were held in high regard by James-focused sects of Christianity such as the Ebionites and the Nazareans). Paul did draw on Greek philosophy to reconcile the Law to Christianity and this point is obvious to anyone who has seriously studied the subject. I would suggest though, that some of the Hellenization of Christianity attributed to Paul isn't exactly deserved (whether for good or ill). Only seven of the epistles attributed to him in the NT were certainly written by him (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon--although they have been tinkered with by scribes), and several most assuredly were not (the epistle to the Hebrews, the pastoral epistles of Timothy 1 and 2 and Titus. The remaining epistles are in dispute). Quote:
Bloom deserves more attention than he gets and than I have given him. Good post, SU!
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"Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; " 1 Thess. 5:21 (NRSV) We all trust our own unorthodoxies. Last edited by Sleeping in EQ; 08-10-2006 at 05:18 PM. |
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08-10-2006, 08:15 PM
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For most of the past 2,000 years Christianity has represented a fusion of the Hebrew and Greek models for explaining the world. But these are odd bedfellows, despite their symbiotic relationship. For most of the past 2,000 years certain peoples and individuals have reacted with striking similarity to the Hellenistic element of Christianity. Jesus' brother James the Just was perhaps the first to reject the Hellenistic element; the Church divided but the Hellenized branch, wrought by Paul himself, prospered while James' branch died out, perhaps becuase it was fortified by Rome's state apparatus. Yes, Muhamed's and Joseph Smith's similar characterizations of the creeds they founded as respectively a return to the creed of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Isiah and Jesus, since corrupted by man, is no coincidence. Muhamed even described a sort of first vision involving the angel Gabriel strikingly reminiscent to Joseph's first vision. No, I don't think Joseph borrowed from Muhammed's experience; he may not have even known about it. But at a gut level he experienced a similar revulsion to a certain quality of ancient Christianity that motivated Muhammed. In the fifteenth century the Hellenistic element of Christianity, long nearly dormant except in a few isolated areas of Western Europe, mutated and began inexorably to dominate its host (query: why did the the Hellenistic element not die off as it did further east?). Martin Luther reacted with the same revulsion that James and Muhammed did to Paul's Christianity, and schism ensued. The trauma of the Reformation only increased the Hellenistic element's pace of cell division, hence growth of the part of our culture that it represented (a result of the Reformation unforeseen by Luther and that he would have considered most unfortunate had he lived long enough to appreciate what his movement accelarated); soon the Hellenistic element broke free of its host, and modern society was born. Joseph Smith and his successors in the Church followed in the footsteps of James the Just, Martin Luther and Muhammed, as did the founders of the American Protestant movement--they acted upon revulsion at Hellenism's permissiveness, elevation of the material and the flesh as objects of beauty, and critical inquiry about everything, including what is most "sacred." Militant Islam represents an extreme such reaction. Here is a quotation from Lawrence Wright's splendid new book "The Looming Tower" describing the ambivalence experienced by a Western educated and Western acculturated Muslim, who would go on to become the founder of modern militant Islam, as in 1948 he travelled to America from his homeland in Egypt to attend graduate school: "As he prayed in his stateroom, Sayyid Qutb was still uncertain of his own identity. Should he be 'normal' or 'special'? Should he resist temptations or indulge them? Should he hang on tightly to his Islamic beliefs or cast them aside for the materialism and sinfulness of the West? Like all pilgrims, he was making two journeys: one outward, into the larger world, and another inward, into his own soul. 'I have decided to be a true Muslim!' he resolved. But almost immediately he second-guessed himself. 'Am I being truthful or was that just a whim?'" What devout and wordly Mormon has not experienced similar soul searching, similar internal conflict? The foregoing is "The Great Apostasy" as re-written by SeattleUte.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster Last edited by SeattleUte; 08-10-2006 at 08:49 PM. |
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08-10-2006, 09:28 PM
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Assistant to the Regional Manager
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What makes you believe the aforementioned persons were revulted by permissiveness and critical thinking of matters sacred? I do agree that many LDS sources, especially older ones, exhibited an anti-Catholic view. In fact, I have seen that in some of my traditional protestant members of my extended family. I wonder what the origin of that bias was. Did the LDS view arise from the same source as that of the Protestants. I do not possess that bias, not because I claim any special sort of enlightenment, but because I simply appreciation for what the Church has made in terms of preservation of knowledge and contributions to society, past and present.
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08-10-2006, 09:46 PM
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#10 | ||
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster |
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