False Comparisons in Regard to Terry Jones
April 15, 2011
D. FROM SEATTLE writes:
Peter S. wrote a long essay, but salvation is not necessarily found in so many words. I will pick just a couple of paragraphs to which to respond.
Peter: “As for the meaning of such an act of desecration to Muslims, the burning of the Koran is not equivalent, in a Christian context, to the burning of the Bible, but rather to the immolation of Christ himself. As Christ is, in Christian understanding, the Word of God incarnate, so the Koran is, analogously in Muslim understanding, the Word of God inlibrate. In this regard, perhaps the most striking distinction between the Bible and the Koran is that God – and Christ as well – appears in the text of the former largely as a character – the First Person in the third person, as it were – while He appears in the text of the latter as author and narrator.”
I disagree that burning of the Koran is equivalent to immolation of Christ. Christ being the Word of God is not analogous to Koran being the word of god, for the simple reason that Christ is a person while Koran is not. Christ is the world-creating Word of God because through Him all things were made; God spoke and the world became, per Genesis 1:3 “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” John confirms this again in John 1:1-5. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Koran is the word of god in a literal meaning, as in god spoke and Mohammad remembered (he couldn’t take notes because he was illiterate). To claim that someone giving spoken instructions to a mortal is analogous to the creation of the world is ludicrous.
Peter: “For Catholic and Orthodox Christians, who accept and believe in the Real Presence, this act of desecration would be most closely equivalent to the desecration of the consecrated Eucharistic Host.”
No, as per above; Koran is not a person, while the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ. Destruction of a copy of the Koran is analogous to destruction of the tablets of the Ten Commandments, since both are laws given to men by a god or God, respectively. Moses himself destroyed the first set of tablets because he was angry at the people who had made the golden calf (Exodus 32:19). I am not trivializing the destruction of sacred books of any religion, just putting things in perspective.
As for Nostra Aetate, claiming “The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself…”; with all due respect, I see this as a diplomatic whitewash. Which god do Moslems adore? Certainly not Christian God, since they deny the divinity of Christ. (Examples from Koran: 4:171, 17:111, 19:35, 19:88-89, 19:92, 23:91.)
