Sermon of the Week: James White on Islam

This past week I listened to apologist James White's 5 part series from The 2011 Bunyan Conference at Grace Reformed Baptist Church, near Houston, TX on the subject of Islam.  Though I do not agree with White on his views of the text of Scripture, I was helped by his presentation.

White makes the point that text criticism is a major issue in apologetics with Islam, since they hold that Christian Scriptures are corrupted.  It irks White that Muslims draw on secular NT critics--like Ehrman--to make their points.  The problem is that they might draw just as well from evangelical text critics--like Dan Wallace--who have embraced "reasoned eclecticism."  How might holding to a providentially preserved traditional text change the dynamics in dialogue with Muslims?  White makes the point that the stabilization and standardization of the Koranic text (though there are still variants which orthodox Muslims ignore) came through civil enforcement.  This makes the persistence of a consistent traditional text of Christian Scripture all the more amazing since it did not come from civil enforcement and appeared across geographical borders.  In other words it simply came from churches which acknowledged it by their practice to be the authentic, preserved Word of God.

White takes on plenty of other issues.  I think the best is his argument that the Koran does not understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity but confuses it with tri-theism.  Worth listening.

JTR