The Caners Get It Right

   Despite Ergun Caner’s “Calvinists are worse than Muslims” statement (which he has yet to withdraw, modify, or apologize for), the following article, which contains an article from Emir Caner found in the Baptist Press, is an important read. The pressure to see Allah and Jehovah as merely two different names for the same God is great, especially in the missionary field. I would argue the very unbiblical “number oriented” mindset that fills many churches today is partly to blame for this pressure. In any case, the Caners are correct: Allah is not Jehovah.
   [Just one note: I would clarify in Emir Caner’s article the reference to Surah 3:78, which reads, “There is among them a section who distort the Book with their tongues: (As they read) you would think it is a part of the Book, but it is no part of the Book; and they say, “That is from Allah,” but it is not from Allah: It is they who tell a lie a gainst Allah, and (well) they know it!” [Yusuf Ali Translation]. I think it can be argued fairly successfully that the Qur’an as a whole, even granting a unitary authorship, does not argue for the corruption of the Christian or Jewish Scriptures. Later generations of Muslims, of course, have taken it to mean this, not because the text demands it, but because the contradiction between the Old and New Testaments and the Qur’an is so clear and obvious. So it is best to emphasize that the text is understood by later geneations to mean the Old Testament has been corrupted, though all the text says is that some read it in a distorted manner.]