The human predicament: The Bible and the Qur’an compared

My previous articles looked at what the Bible and the Qur’an tell us, firstly about the character of God and his ways of working in the world (en May 2025, online version here), and then their respective diagnoses of what I called the world problematique, or what is the human predicament that Christianity – and Islam – purport to address (en October 2025, online version here).

The first article showed how the Bible’s rich revelatory structure provides the context for its presentation of a God who is actively involved within the warp and woof of human history. In contrast, the Qur’an’s limited historical timeframe and absence of any intergenerational connections, allows no scope for tracing God’s involvement in history.

I showed also how the theme of covenant as used in the two books sheds light on the character of the respective deities. In the Bible, God makes covenants in which he commits himself irrevocably to his chosen people, who respond in grateful obedience. In the Qur’an, God takes covenants from people as expressions of their duty to him.

Taken together, these perspectives showed that the ultimate purpose of the God of the Bible is to have and to hold a relationship of committed intimacy with his people. This is the outward expression of the mutual indwelling, or perichoresis, of the three persons of the intrinsically “pluri-personal” divine nature. In the Qur’an, any sense of God committing himself to anything, let alone to close relationship with his creatures, would be regarded as blasphemy (shirk), for God is intrinsically solitary in his absolute sovereignty with “no partners”.

The second article then compared the two books’ “take” on the change in mankind’s circumstances after the initial creation. The Bible’s diagnosis is that the “fall” radically disrupted the original intimate relationship between God and man. The result is that God is defamed; death enters the world; and mankind is morally incapacitated.

In the Qur’an, after Satan expresses jealousy of Adam’s original state of perfect knowledge, God allows Adam to “slip” to a lesser status in which moral instruction from prophets is needed. God is neither involved in, nor affected by the dispute. Death remains a natural phenomenon; and mankind remains morally competent.

These very different perspectives set the scene for what the “two great world religions” offer as God’s Remedy – or what religion’s job is. As before, my “rules of engagement” are to take at face value both the Bible’s and the Qur’an’s claims to be God’s sole, sufficient, verbally infallible revelation for all mankind in all ages. Their perspectives must therefore, by definition, be mutually exclusive. Moreover, if one gives us God’s mind, the other cannot be regarded as merely a “second best” contender. It must be regarded as Satanically, not divinely, inspired.

Although my own view is that the Bible’s answer is the correct one, I would again like to offer something from my own experience to help set the scene for judging the plausibility of the Bible’s and the Qur’an’s claims to be God’s Remedy.

In the mid 1990s I found myself involved in what was to become the longest-ever planning inquiry in Scottish legal history. It would take almost 11 years, 1994–2004, for the Scottish planning authorities, the Scottish Executive (as was), and finally the Scottish courts, to resolve the matter.

The subject was a proposed coastal “superquarry” on the island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. The essential issues were the balance between environmental impact and economic benefit. The planning inquiry itself began in October 1994 and ran through to March 1995. Both sides of the debate arrived in Stornoway “lawyered up” with QCs, legal aides, and experts in all the necessary technical fields. After cordial introductions and preliminary statements of case, many weeks were spent going into every imaginable detail of what could, should, might, or would happen were the project to proceed.

Finally, as the main session drew to a close, each side was called upon by the Reporter (inquiry Chair) to sum up their positions. The lead counsel for the opposing side went first, offering a lengthy and coherent-sounding account of all the issues as they perceived them. In essence this was that if the quarry project were allowed to proceed the ecology of the islands would be irremediably damaged. He ended with a passionate exhortation to the Reporter that to do anything other than find in their favour would be inconceivable. It was hard not to be impressed or even persuaded!

The proponent’s side was then invited to respond briefly before offering its own position. To this day I feel the impact of their Counsel’s opening words: “Madam Reporter, much has been asserted; nothing has been demonstrated!”

As I have already noted, the case was not resolved until 2004. And, although the finding of the planning inquiry itself found in favour of the proponents, the project would eventually be rejected. One of the reasons was that, in the political realm, the strength of assertion of a position carries legitimate weight with elected political authorities, and this is what eventually carried the day.

But what about theological issues? Should strength of assertion be a factor in determining what is true? For we certainly face very strong assertions from Muslims that the Qur’an is a legitimate, if not the only, valid world revelation from God. My own view is that, while winning religious argument in the public realm is likely to become increasingly important in coming years, there are significant differences between the theological and non-theological realms. Theology is the science of the mind of God, and it is mainly for this reason that I believe incisive theological critique of the religion of the Qur’an to be more important than politico-religious argumentation. God owns his truth and can and will “deconstruct” wrong theological ideas through accurate deployment of “his mind”.

It is with this perspective in mind that this article compares the Bible’s and the Qur’an’s remedies for the human predicament theologically.

God’s remedy in the Bible

“God’s Remedy” in the Bible involves his response to the effects of sin in three guises: as defamation of God’s honour; as the cause of death; and as the moral incapacitation of all descendants of Adam.

Sin as defamation of God’s honour. I have previously noted that Satan’s real aim in the temptation of Eve was to disrupt the beautiful relationship between God and the creatures made in his own image. Satan suggests that real life is not about relationship with God, but about human moral independence. The success of his ploy means that God’s “bride to be” dishonours her “husband to be” and defiles herself. God is placed in a seemingly impossible situation. What to do? Years later, Joseph would feel something of the same dilemma when confronted with the pregnancy of his bride to be. What to do? Should he “put her to shame”? Being a just man, it seems that Joseph was prepared to absorb some of the shame himself to protect Mary from total disgrace.

But what about God? Could he, as an infinitely just being, find a way of remedying his slighted honour yet protecting his betrothed from shame? The answer, of course is OH YES, HE CAN! But it would take the whole of the Bible’s 1,500 years of revelatory history to demonstrate what God does in fact do; because it was going to be so shocking as to beggar belief. God hints at the solution almost immediately: a descendant of the woman will “bruise Satan’s head”; but in doing so he would himself be wounded. Blood sacrifices would be instituted and observed for millennia to point to the very high cost of protecting God’s bride from disgrace. Leaders would emerge who would “model” God’s proposed remedy: David feeling forsaken by God; Isaiah prophesying about a future servant of God who would be punished for his people’s sins; a prophet (Hosea) being told to take a whoring wife to himself; the whole people of God experiencing exile among hellish pagan nations. All these prophetic intimations of God’s remedy would have flaws or limitations.

But then there was Jesus himself acting in the place of his people.

Most Christian readers will understand how Jesus as the Son of God and Son of Man lived and died to provide a perfect righteousness that would become the legal righteousness of all who receive it by faith. However, the deeper dilemma faced by God was not how the life and death of the promised Messiah can reconcile man to God. It was how the holy, uncreated God can be propitiously disposed towards those who have so defiled his honour! A less than divine saviour might have sufficed to reconcile man. But it is only because the One who suffered as a substitute for God’s bride was also God himself that full satisfaction for the defiled honour of God was made. But, and herein lies the glory of God’s Remedy: this satisfaction was offered in the very same human nature as the defiled “bride” herself.

God thus demonstrated that his honour is restored and that his bride had been rescued righteously.

Sin as the cause of death. The Bible says that death came into the world by sin. Before the advent of sin, death did not exist at all. It is an alien intrusion necessitated by the choices first of Satan, then of the ones he tempted, to sample life in God’s creation without the committed, favourable presence of God without which no creature can be complete – nor safe.

Satan’s assertion that death was a non-issue – “you shall not surely die” – was rapidly revealed for the desperate deceit that it was. The pleasantness of labour in Eden was replaced by frustration and hardship. The sweet fellowship with God in the cool of each evening would become the fear-based futility of knowing good and evil but to no certain end (aka “religion”). And this was only the foretaste of an infinite amplification of misery in an eternity with God as an enemy.

What can be done? For just as with the law of the Medes and the Persians, once a royal decree is sealed, it is irrevocable, even by the king who issued it. Likewise, the decree of death pronounced upon Adam and Eve was irrevocable. Can God get himself out of this conundrum? As always, the Bible’s answer is OH YES, HE CAN!

The Jews in the time of Esther would experience a similar predicament. Haman’s treacherous plot for a decree to kill all Jews was written and sealed in the king’s name and so could not be revoked! What to do? Good king Xerxes found a way. Another decree was prepared that would allow the Jews to destroy those who would destroy them.

God’s remedy for death in the Bible is similar – to raise up a champion to destroy death and its deceitful initiator, Satan. This theme, of champions being raised up to rescue God’s people from death and destruction, would be foreshadowed in many ways throughout the Old Testament history of the people of God: Moses and the destruction of the Egyptians at the Red Sea; the judges in the book of that name; the good kings of Israel-Judah: David, Solomon (initially), Hezekiah, Manasseh (latterly), and Josiah.

All these would be anticipations of Jesus, the true Champion who would come to “swallow up death forever” (Isa.25v8). In the New Testament we learn that he died so that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2v14-15).

And that Jesus was the one “who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light” (2Tim.1v10). In Jesus the condemned, death-prone nature of Adam “puts on immortality … and death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15v54). Jesus is therefore “crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2v9).

God then demonstrated that this was indeed his ultimate remedy for death by raising Jesus from the dead and, in him, all the chosen family of God.

Sin as moral incapacitation of human nature. A highly educated mullah once challenged me with the “chestnut” that a vicarious atonement leaves Christians free to sin, and that a supposedly divine remedy which cannot change human behaviour is flawed. Perhaps he sensed that a God who could not change people is no challenge for Islam: “Your God may well be able to do some impressive rituals, but he can’t transform people, can he?”

My response was OH YES, HE CAN! and pointed him to Romans chapter 6 which teaches that Christians are not only vicariously justified but also supernaturally united to Jesus Christ by the Spirit of God. For, in addition to a divine redeemer figure, the Old Testament Scriptures foreshadow a “divine enabler”. Amid Israel’s most painful moral failure – in their exile in Babylon – Ezekiel prophesied that God had a plan to deal with the moral incapacitation of God’s people: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezek. 36v27).

Jesus confirmed the necessity of Spirit-empowered regeneration in his response to Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3v5-7).

Sin as moral incapacitation is thus remedied by Spirit-enabled obedience – we call it progressive sanctification.

Moreover, this transformational work of the Spirit of God was not to be restricted to just one nation. Ezekiel also prophesied that the temple in Jerusalem was to be replaced by a temple made up of peoples of all nations; people in whom God would dwell by his Spirit: My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD [Yahweh] who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore. (Ezek. 24-28).

Of this temple the book of Revelation says: Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God … and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, … By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, … They will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations (Rev. 23v3, 4, 23, 24).

In this way God continues to demonstrate his remedy for mankind’s moral incapacitation to this day!

God’s Remedy in the Qur’an. In my October article I noted that in the Qur’an, “God’s Diagnosis” is that Adam’s fall from Eden was not a moral incident but a “slip” into a state of less than perfect knowledge. Allah was not affected. Death is still part of the natural order and a non-issue in religious terms. And mankind remains morally capable of pleasing God.

The “human predicament”, to which the message of the Qur’an is God’s remedy, is that mankind suffers from a partial knowledge deficit. Allah makes provision for this by sending his prophet to inform people about his true nature, and to warn against wrong notions of God. Supernatural intervention is not needed – nor would it be consistent with Allah’s non-involvement in history to engage with the created order.

The determinative test at the Day of Judgement (which is mentioned 78 times in the Qur’an) will be one’s acknowledgment that Allah is the only true God: Allah! There is no god but He: of a surety He will gather you together against the Day of Judgment, about which there is no doubt. And whose word can be truer than Allah’s? (Q4:87).

While good works are advocated and will be considered on the Day of Judgement, the Qur’an contains no codified moral law and so there is no standard against which they could be assessed. The touchstone of religious orthodoxy is simply to acknowledge Allah as God. Those with wrong views about God, especially Christians who believe in a God “with partners”, will be shamed.

Because the Qur’an has a very limited historical structure, there is no way to test its assertions about God against historical actions of God. It asserts, but cannot demonstrate, that all prophets before Mohammed, including Noah, Abraham, Moses, and even Jesus, were only authentic in as far as they offered the same advocacy of Allah in their days as Mohammed did in his.

The best I can offer as an assessment of God’s Remedy in the Qur’an is a brief review of the character of Allah based on my own study of the Qur’an .

The word Allah itself is the key to the Qur’an’s understanding of the character of God. It occurs almost 3,000 times in a text that is just 80% of the length of the New Testament.

Allah has the same Semitic root as the Hebrew el. As used in the Qur’an, Allah is the preferred name of God and means simply that God is the all-powerful, irresistible, supreme sovereign of the universe. There is no framework of covenantal commitment to a people to demonstrate a relational element in Allah’s sovereignty. Nor is there any equivalent of the Bible’s progression from el to the intrinsically personal Yahweh.

Some Muslims, uncomfortable with the implications of this conclusion, draw attention to the many moral epithets, or “beautiful names”, that are associated with Allah in the Qur’an. For example, rahman (mercy) occurs nearly 300 times and rahim (compassion) perhaps 150 times. At face value these imply that moral characteristics are intrinsic to Allah’s nature. But this conclusion is not universally held even among Qur’anic scholars. This is because an eternally existent goodness is suggestive of an eternal mutuality within the divine nature. This in turn speaks of relationship and would compromise Allah’s essential oneness – shirk.

Others point to the goodness of creation, which the Qur’an highlights in many beautiful ways, as evidence of Allah’s intrinsic goodness. But conservative theologians point out Allah’s essential nature must necessarily be independent of anything that is created. To characterise God by that which is less than God – in other words anything created – would be to diminish God. This, again, would be shirk.

Allah’s sovereignty is, above all, a solitary sovereignty; he is a God “with no partners”. The word partners, often as “no partners”, occurs at least 70 times in the Qur’an mostly in direct reference to God himself and, typically, expresses amazement that divine sovereignty could ever be thought of as something that could be shared: “Allah is He, (than) Whom there is no other god; — the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Source of Peace (and Perfection), the Guardian of Faith, the Preserver of Safety, the Exalted in Might, the Irresistible, the Supreme: Glory to Allah! (High is He) above the partners they attribute to Him.” (Q59:23).

Any hint of relationalness within Allah’s being is the Qur’an’s “unforgiveable sin”. “Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin most heinous indeed” (Q4:48).

All of this means that God’s Remedy in the Qur’an requires all mankind in all ages and all parts of the world to worship a deity who is both impersonal and non-moral.

Conclusion

The Bible’s view of God is that, although he is a being who transcends all that he has created, his nature is accurately pictured in human beings, particularly our penchant for lifelong, committed relationships as in marriage. Although of an infinitely superior order of existence than even the very best in our nature, God is in his very nature the archetypical lover. He is worthy of our worship simply for this. And this quite apart from demonstrating his love in his self-sacrificial actions to rescue his spouse!

THIS is God’s Remedy in the Bible!

In contrast, the Qur’an appears to be urging us to worship a being of an inferior order to the highest elements in the creation. Men and women are depicted as personal, relational beings capable of life-long marriage commitments. But Allah himself is impersonal and non-relational; a being for whom intimacy and commitment are anathema. The Qur’an rightly rails against worshipping that which is less than God. Yet in advocating the worship of a being that is conceptually less than humanity, it falls foul of its own definition of idolatry! And THIS is God’s Remedy in the Qur’an!