Refuting Ibn Al-Qayyim's Poem Against Christians

A Lesson in Basic Christian Beliefs

It is ironic that Ibn Al-Qayyim lived in the same city as the great Saint John of Damascus, for the Christian Damascene was one of the greatest Theologians in history, whereas the Muslim damascene is the proud author of one of the lowest quality series of arguments against Christianity. This article will briefly refute the arguments presented in this popular poem.

Oh Worshippers of Christ!  We’d like your most wise to answer our question. If our God was murdered by some people’s actions, then what sort of God is this?

A God that took on human nature, walked among us which is what Emmanuel means,¹ and is the prophesied suffering servant for our sins². God was murdered by the very people he was sent as a Prophet for, to take on sin in the nature He assumed and destroy it.³ St. Gregory the Theologian in his letter to Cledonius says this:

And so the passage, The Word was made Flesh, seems to me to be equivalent to that in which it is said that He was made sin, or a curse for us; not that the Lord was transformed into either of these, how could He be? But because by taking them upon Him He took away our sins and bore our iniquities.⁴

Now we know that our God was prophesied to be born from a virgin since the translation of the Old Testament into Greek by the Hebrew scholars two centuries before the birth of Christ writes that the Messiah will be born from a virgin,⁵ that the Messiah will be named Emmanuel which means “God is with us” and that He will be murdered for our sins, all of which happened to Jesus Christ.

And we wonder.  Was he pleased by what they did to him? If so then blessed are they, for they must have achieved his pleasure. But if he wasn’t pleased with them, then this must mean they overpowered him.

Christ was not pleased with death⁶ for He took on human nature and all of its faculties was afraid of death in His humanity, appropriated our condition of fear of death, but He still took on the passion for our salvation. Christ Himself says that He could easily overpower those who murdered Him if He chose to, but permits this to happen to fulfill the scriptures⁷ but just because God permits it to happen, doesn’t mean that God is pleased that it happens, for such an assumption would make God and author of evil since He permits evil to occur.

So was the present entity left without a God, an All-Hearing being who can hear prayers? And were the Heavens vacated, when he was placed under the earth and the dirt was above him? And was the Universe left without a God to manage it while his hands were being nailed down?

It is fascinating how people actually think this is a good argument against Christianity. The key aspect that this argument fails to understand is how the Word of God could be one person in two natures, Ibn Al-Qayyim in an embarrassing manner seems to be completely unaware that Christ being both God and man is basic Christian dogma.

It is impossible to suggest that God in His own nature could die, for death is a division occurring in the living creature but God is incorporeal, hence, indivisible as St. Gregory the Theologian says:

But dissolution is utterly alien to God the prime nature. So no dissolution means no division; no division means no conflict; no conflict means no composition, and hence no body involving composition. The reasonings stand so, mounting from consequences to first conditions.⁸

When we speak of God dying, it is very clear that God’s nature did not suffer in any manner at all, for the very being of God is beyond all of these categories, but yet Christ did suffer and die on the cross, and He certainly is God, but He is also man, that is He took on human nature, and when we say that “God suffered on the cross”, we say that Jesus Christ who is God suffered on the cross in His human nature. St. Cyril of Alexandria concerning this says:

Your Perfection expounds the rationale of the salvific Passion most correctly and very learnedly when you assert that the Only Begotten Son of God, in so far as he is understood to be, and actually is, God, did not himself suffer [bodily things] in his own nature, but suffered rather in his earthly nature.⁹

Through the experience of death, we understand that whatever happened to Christ that is not proper to His Divinity, happened to His humanity, and what even is death if not the separation of the soul from the body? Now Christ’s humanity was consubstantial with us in all regards except for sin¹⁰ so even death is not proper to Christ’s body, but as we said before, Christ appropriated death by “becoming sin” by His own will, so that when He was murdered, He took sin on His body and crucified it on the cross, thus He “defeated death by death”¹¹ and on the third day He rose again. Thus Christ has the “keys to death and hades” because He took on human nature and appropriated death for us, but He also lives forevermore because He is God by nature and resurrected His body by reuniting it with His soul by that very power, for who else but Christ says to John the Apostle “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”¹²

So since Christ was both God and man simultaneously after His incarnation, how was He sustaining the universe while being specifically present at a point in time as a man? St. Athanasius helps us to understand the dynamic relationship between His two natures:

The Word was not hedged in by His body, nor did His presence in the body prevent His being present elsewhere as well. When He moved His body He did not cease also to direct the universe by His Mind and might. No. The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself… As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the works of His body and through His activity in the world. It is, indeed, the function of soul to behold things that are outside the body, but it cannot energize or move them…With the Word of God in his human nature...His body was not for from Him a limitation, but an instrument, so that He was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Father alone. At one and the same time – this is the wonder – As Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father.

So even in His death, that is even when His soul went to Hades to “preach unto the spirits in prison;”¹³ He was still maintaining the universe, so are we then saying that the Word of God was simultaneously dead and alive? We are, but isn’t that a contradiction? Only if we said that He was dead and alive in the same nature, but we do not say that, for He was dead in His humanity but is immortal in His Divinity and the discussions of essential properties are proper to the natures, even though the person manifests these properties so that nature and person are not confused in God.

And why didn’t the Angels help him when they heard him cry out (in pain)?

As we have said before, if He wanted to He could easily have angels help Him, but this seems to be also an attack of Christ saying “My God my God why hast thou forsaken me?”¹⁴ but such arguments betray their ignorance of scriptures for Christ is repeating Psalm 22¹⁵ and when the ignorant reads this Psalm in its fullness they will notice that this is a prophecy of the crucifixion for the Psalmist then says “For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.”¹⁶

And how could any wooden beam holdup a True God, while He is being fastened to it?

Because He has a human nature which is a body and a soul.

And could any iron ever be brought to Him so that it would be driven inside Him and cause Him pain?

Yes because Christ took on human nature.

And how could ever His enemies’ hands ever reach Him, so that they could whip him from behind?

Because He is human.

And did this Christ revive himself or was there another god that brought him to life?

Christ resurrected Himself in His Divine Nature. St. Gregory of Nyssa says something related to this: “It is not the Human Nature that raises up Lazarus, nor is it the power that cannot suffer that weeps for him when he lies in the grave”¹⁷ Christ has human powers and Divine powers because He is both God and man.¹⁸

And how strange is it. That a grave could be enclosed on a god. And even stranger is the womb that enclosed him (before.)

It is only strange if you have the intellectual capacity of a 5-year-old. How is it strange to say that when I strike an iron that is in contact with fire, the fire would not be struck but the iron is? The principle is no different, the iron is struck by a hammer but even if the fire becomes united with the iron it does not get struck by the hammer since it is not proper to the nature of fire to be struck, how then should we ignore basic logic and say that it is strange for Christ who is human by nature to be born in His humanity?

Which he remained inside for nine whole months, in utter darkness being fed by blood.

The mode in which we are enclosed in the womb is different for we are conceived in iniquity,¹⁹ that is original sin but Christ had no sin even in His human nature, so He wasn’t born in the same mode as we are for the mode in which we are born is shaped by sin but Christ’s mode of being born wasn’t so that to argue He was “fed by blood” is not true.

Then he emerged from the womb as a small child, completely helpless reaching out to be fed. Thus, he ate, drank, and after he answered the call which comes naturally. So is this really a god?

Christ “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”²⁰ not due to necessity, but because He appropriated our state to deify and heal our condition on earth. However behind this argument is the presupposition that being incarnate as a man and being a baby for some reason is not fit for God, now why is that the case, is it contradictory to say that God became man?

God is goodness Himself, and the only thing that contradicts God is evil, so is being human evil? Is it evil to progress like a human being even while retaining omniscience? Is it evil to be born by a loving mother? St. Gregory of Nyssa says this:

Let them demonstrate that the birth, the upbringing, the growth, the advance towards natural maturity, the experience of death, and the rising from death are vicious; alternatively, if they claim that the things we’ve mentioned are free of vice, they will necessarily agree that foreignness to vice is in no way shameful.²¹

so those who say that it is contradictory for God to be for example material need to answer this: When we say God is immaterial, do we mean that God lacks matter? Unless matter is evil, simply lacking matter in your constitution does not make you something greater, it is the transcendence of matter which characterizes the Divine. God is beyond matter, beyond mutability, beyond existence… but notice that we say that He is beyond existence, yet it is clear that God exists for God is beyond existence in His essence but existence is a “propria” or a property of His Divinity, now God is not mutable nor material, but He takes on a mutable material body that is not contrary to His nature because all of God’s creation is good. To say that being human is improper to God is to say that God’s creation is not proper, but to say that God creates things not proper to His nature is contradictory which the Muslim criticism of the incarnation necessarily implies, otherwise it has no arguments against the incarnation, but no argument is better than a bad argument that leads to metaphysical nonsense such as God being the cause of things that fundamentally oppose Him.

High Exalted is Allah above the lies of the Christians.  Each of whom will be asked about their fabrications.

It is quite ironic that the pseudo-poet talks about Christians being liars, for who is it that says that their God is the best of deceivers?²² He speaks of fabrications, but isn’t it a fabrication to claim that the Christian Trinity is Father, Son, and Virgin Mary?²³ What about the various Qu’ranic stories about the Holy Prophets and Christ Himself that were not recorded by anyone until the 7th century? This statement reeks of projection.

Oh Cross worshippers, for what reason is someone exalted (for accepting this) and blameworthy for rejecting it? And is it not logical that we should break and burn (what humiliated Christ) and the one that made it? Since (you claim) that God was forcefully crucified upon it, with his hands nailed to it. For truly what a cursed cross to carry? Which one should discard instead of kissing when glanced upon.

The cross is exalted because it is the instrument that destroyed death. To break and burn the cross is like breaking and burning a sword that was used to conquer land for he confuses the instrument that was used to defeat death and death itself. The cross was also prophesied in Abraham and Isaac, who are both in the Qu’ranic account replaced with imaginary Abraham and Isaac for Abraham was told that his only-begotten Son would be sacrificed, and Isaac carried the wood of the burnt offering that he was going to be sacrificed on,²⁴ do you not feel ashamed of not seeing the obvious here? God used Abraham and Isaac to prepare us for the crucifixion, as Isaac is a type of Christ who was about to be sacrificed on wood like Christ was, and Isaac who was about to be killed was in a way resurrected by God’s declaration, similarly Christ was resurrected by His Divine power on the third day. There are many other instances in the Old Testament scriptures that gives prophecies in the form of these stories.

For (you claim) the Creator was abused upon it.  Yet you appear to worship it, so are you one of His enemies?

Christians do not worship the cross, if they think it is worship because we bow down in reverence to the cross in remembrance of His crucifixion and defeat of death, then Muslims are worshippers of the black cube by that logic.

If you exalt it (i.e. the Cross) because it carried the Lord of all that exists, then why don’t you also prostrate and exalt the graves? For it was the grave that held your (so-called) god in it. Oh worshippers of Christ, Wake up. For this is what the matter is all about.

As was said before, the cross is exalted because it was the instrument that defeated death, not because it merely carried the Lord. We do not worship death, but the defeat of death so to exalt graves would be pointless.

We have thus seen that Ibn Al-Qayyim the Pseudo prophet has absolutely no clue of what he is even criticizing, he created his own version of Christianity in his head in his ignorance and criticized what he thinks Christians believe because he had a less than a cursory glance at the doctrines of the faith and let his insane mind wander to conclusions of his own. Those who repeat his low effort argument might be excused due to their ignorance a couple centuries ago, but cannot be excused today since many of his arguments are based on basic errors and misconstructions of Christian argumentation.

1. Isaiah 7:14 (Brenton’s Septuagint Translation): Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel.

2. Isaiah 53:4-7 (Brenton’s Septuagint Translation): He bears our sins, and is pained for us: yet we accounted him to be in trouble, and in suffering, and in affliction.But he was wounded on account of our sins, and was bruised because of our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his bruises we were healed.All we as sheep have gone astray; every one has gone astray in his way; and the Lord gave him up for our sins. And he, because of his affliction, opens not his mouth: he was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth.

3. 2 Corinthians 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

4. St. Gregory the Theologian, Letter 101

5. Some argue that the supposedly early hebrew manuscripts use the word “Almah” which does not mean exclusively mean virgin, but the fact that the Septuagint translates this to “Parthenos” which means virgin is definitely not a coincidence. Even Muslims would have to acknowledge that Mary was a virgin and gave birth to Christ.

6. See Luke 22:42 (KJV): Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

7. Matthew 26:53-54 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

8. St. Gregory the Theologian, Oration 28

9. St. Cyril of Alexandria, Second Letter to Succensus

10. See the Chalcedonian Definition

11. See the Paschal Troparion

12. Revelation 1:18 (KJV)

13. 1 Peter 3:19 (KJV)

14. Matthew 27:46 (KJV)

15. Psalm 22:1 (KJV) My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

16. Psalm 22:16

17. St. Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius Book 5

18. Ibid. “…so that by reason of contact and the union of Natures the proper attributes of each belong to both”

19. Psalm 51:5 (KJV) Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

20. Luke 2:52

21. St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, Chapter 9

22. See Qu’ran 3:54

23. See Qu’ran 5:72-75 and 5:116-118

24. See Genesis 22:1-14