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5. What the Angels Said About Christ and Adam
In my next step I studied the passages in the Koran, in which angels spoke about Christ and about Adam. I again first present each case separately. Here is what the angels said about Christ:
45 (It was) when the angels said: “O Mary! Truly Allah evangelizes you with a Word ( kalimatun ) from him(self ), whose name (ismuhu) is Christ ‘Isa, the Son of Mary, esteemed ( wajeeh ) in this world and in the hereafter , one of those brought near (to Allah ). 46 And he will speak to the people in earliest infancy (mahd) and in maturity. And (he is) one of the good ones (as-saaliheena).” (Sura Al 'Imran 3:45-46)
٤٥ إِذْ قَالَتِ الْمَلاَئِكَةُ يَا مَرْيَمُ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُبَشِّرُكِ بِكَلِمَة مِنْه اسْمُهُ الْمَسِيحُ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ وَجِيها فِي الدُّنْيَا وَالآخِرَة وَمِن الْمُقَرَّبِين ٤٦ وَيُكَلِّمُ النَّاسَ فِي الْمَهْدِ وَكَهْلاً وَمِنَ الصَّالِحِينَ (سُورَة آل عِمْرَان ٣ : ٤٥ و ٤٦)
In this passage I noticed the following revelations about Christ:
1. The angels addressed Mary with Allah's good tidings. The content of this evangelization from Allah or good tidings from him is that she will become the mother of a unique person, whose name is Christ 'Isa, the Son of Mary. The first thing that is unique about him is that his name (ismuhu) is “a Word (kalimatun) from Allah”. The Arabic original of this verse in the Koran makes clear that this is the meaning of Allah's evangelism to Mary conveyed to her by the angels. For the Arabic word “kalimatun” is a feminine word, while the Arabic expression “ismuhu” is a masculine expression. If it were the word from Allah, and not Christ himself, that would be called Christ 'Isa, the Son of Mary, then the Arabic in this verse would have to be not “bi-kalimatin minhu ismu' hu ” but rather “bi-kalimatin minhu ismu' haa ” (by having the expression ismuhaa in the feminine instead of ismuhu in the masculine).This is however not the case, therefore I concluded that the person of Christ himself is here described as a Word from Allah. Since a Word from Allah comes out of the heart of Allah, and is something divine, therefore I became convinced that Christ here is described as being divine.
2. In addition the angels in announcing the good tidings of Allah to Mary continue with the following description of her son, Christ: He would be esteemed in this world. This meant for me that he would be without sin, like Allah.
3. Not only this, but the angels announced Allah's good tidings, that Christ would be esteemed in the hereafter, i.e. after the Day of Resurrection. For me this meant that Christ would be the intercessor (shafee') of mankind on the Day of Judgment, which is clearly a task of high esteem.
4. Finally I noticed that Christ was described in this evangelization to Mary from Allah through the angels as being “one of those brought near (to Allah)” (min al-muqarrabeena). This means that Allah allows Christ to come to and live near himself. In addition the Arabic expression “min al-muqarrabeena” is connected to the Arabic word “qareeb”, which means “a relative”. This for me indicated that Christ in living near Allah, was something like a “relative” of Allah.
Next I turned my attention to what the angels said about ADAM:
And (it was) when your Lord said to the angels: “Truly, I am creating a successor (khalifa) on earth.” They said: “Will you set on it someone, who brings ruin in it and sheds blood , while we (angels) extol your praise and sanctify unto you?” He said: “I know what you do not know.” (Sura al-Baqara 2:30)
وَإِذْ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلْمَلاَئِكَةِ إِنِّي جَاعِلٌ فِي الأَرْضِ خَلِيفَةً قَالُوا أَتَجْعَلُ فِيهَا مَن يُفْسِد فِيهَا وَيَسْفِك الدِّمَاء َوَنَحْنُ نُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِكَ وَنُقَدِّسُ لَكَ قَالَ إِنِّي أَعْلَمُ مَا لاَ تَعْلَمُونَ (سُورَة الْبَقَرَة ٢ : ٣٠)'''
Here I noted the following teaching of the Koran about Adam:
Before Allah even started creating the first human being, the angels objected by predicting that Adam and his descendants will all have a common bad characteristic. This nature of Adam, is not good, because it involves ruining, what Allah has created on earth (yufsidu feehaa) and it brings the shedding of blood of the living beings that Allah created. The Arabic expression “yufsidu” (brings ruin) means that Adam will bring fasaad (ruin, corruption and evil). This means that the character of the earth as created by Allah, which was good, would be changed by Adam and his descendants into its opposite, namely into something bad. Also the shedding of blood here is also seen as something bad, because it brings suffering and death to the living beings, which Allah created to live. Since this was to be what Adam and his descendants will bring on earth, the angels indirectly reproached Allah for not creating a being that is good like the angels, who sing the praises of Allah and worship him.
When I compared these words of the angels in the Koran about Christ with other words of the angels about Adam I again discovered deep differences between Christ and Adam. Here they are:
DIFFERENCE 13 : About Christ the angels said to Mary, “Allah evangelizes you (Mary) with a Word from him (Allah), whose name is Christ 'Isa, the Son of Mary.” But about Adam the angels said to Allah, “Will you (Allah) set on it (the earth) someone (Adam), who brings ruin in it and sheds blood?” In this Christ and Adam are deeply different, because the angels announced totally different, even opposing things about Christ and Adam:
DIFFERENCE 14 : Christ is a word from Allah, which has the power to bring good, while Adam brings ruin and corruption to the good, which Allah created with his word. In this Christ and Adam are not only different, but they are the opposite of each other.
DIFFERENCE 15 : The angels said to Mary that Christ is to be “esteemed in the world”, i.e. without sin, like Allah, but about Adam the angels nowhere in the Koran said that he is to be esteemed in the world, because he sinned and was therefore removed from heavenly Paradise down to earth. In this Christ and Adam are again very different.
DIFFERENCE 16 : Also the angels added to Mary that Christ is to be “esteemed in the Hereafter”, i.e. he is to be the intercessor of mankind on the Day of Judgment, while about Adam the angels in the Koran never said that he is to be esteemed in the Hereafter, for Adam will play no role on the Day of Judgment. Here Christ and Adam are again fundamentally different from each other.
DIFFERENCE 17 : The angels said to Mary that Christ is “one of those brought near (to Allah)”, while about Adam the angels nowhere in the Koran said that he would be brought near to Allah. Rather the Koran teaches that he was sent away from Allah by having to drop down from heavenly Paradise to earth. Here Christ and Adam again are quite different, even the opposite of each other.
DIFFERENCE 18 : By being brought near to Allah (min al-muqarrabeena), Christ is indirectly described as being a relative (qareeb) of Allah, while Adam is nowhere ever in the Koran described as having such a relationship to Allah. This again marks a mutually excluding contrast between Christ and Adam in the Koran.
My original shock from what the Koran teaches about Adam and Christ when comparing what Allah said to Christ and to Adam, was not abated after this next step in my studies, which I took in comparing what the angels said about Christ and about Adam. On the contrary, my shock was deepened to the point of near exasperation, when I discovered from these verses that Christ and Adam are not only similar, but at the same time so amazingly different from and opposite to each other, that any thought about equating Christ and Adam as far as their natures is concerned in the context of the Koran lost all meaning for me. But I kept on searching for additional possibilities of reconciling what I was taught by my Muslim teachers about the purported total equality in nature of Christ and Adam based on what the Koran actually teaches about Christ and Adam.