Revelation

Mary: The Closest Heart to the Logos

Among all the figures who appear in the history of revelation, none is surrounded by greater misunderstanding than Mary. Some elevate her until she seems almost to replace God. Others diminish her until she becomes little more than an incidental character whose role ended with the birth of Jesus. Both approaches begin from the same assumption: that Mary's significance originates in events on earth.

This essay proposes the opposite.

The Pedagogical Role of God in Revelation

Every theology must answer a fundamental question: when Scripture says, "God said," whose voice are we actually hearing? Is it the Father speaking directly? Is it the Son? Or does revelation itself employ a literary form through which divine truth is communicated?

Matthew 6:7: The Our Father Is Not a More Effective Way to Get What One Wants

Jesus Does Not Offer a Better Bid

It is commonly assumed that Jesus criticizes pagan prayer because pagans are using an ineffective religious technique. They use too many words, so their prayers fail; Christians, by contrast, are supposed to use fewer, purer, more correct words, and then prayer will work properly.

But this cannot be the meaning.

If Only I Had Been There at the Miʿrāj

Part 1.

Sometimes I find myself imagining a rather unusual thing.

I imagine that I was standing there instead of Muhammad during the story of the Miʿrāj. God speaks and says, "Fifty prayers each day."

Everyone else seems relieved that the number was reduced.

I cannot help wondering whether I would have reacted in exactly the opposite way.

I honestly think I would have asked for sixty.

Not because I enjoy collecting obligations. Not because I believe that more prayers somehow earn more points with God. Quite the contrary.

Why are you persecuting Me?

What does it really me "persecuting me"? How come Saul was persecuting Jesus who was already sitting on the Heavenly throne? But it is clear that this question is not about persecuting others but namely Jesus Chist, the Son of God.

Acts 9 (and repeated in Acts 22 and 26) has been much flattened by the “mainstream” explanation that Jesus merely identifies himself with his followers. That is not false on the surface, but it is shallow. Let’s unpack a better interpretation.

Two Ways of Nearness: The Household of the Word

I. One Light, Two Postures

Throughout history the divine Word has addressed humanity in different idioms.
Christianity receives the Word as incarnate—God drawing near in personal intimacy.
Islam receives the Word as revealed—God speaking with majestic authority.
The contrast is not opposition but angle: the same sun viewed from two horizons.

“Read”: Revelation as Epistemic Clearing Rather Than Instruction

The traditional account of the first revelation to Muhammad—in which the angel commands “Read,” the prophet replies “I cannot read,” and is then repeatedly seized and squeezed—has been explained countless times within Islamic theology. Yet the dominant explanations, particularly in their common apologetic presentation, remain internally unstable. They oscillate between “read” and “recite,” between illiteracy as proof and recitation as function, and between portraying the angelic embrace as strengthening while describing it in terms that are unmistakably forceful.

The Stalemate of Jesus: Why the Debate Never Ends

For two thousand years, the figure of Jesus has generated something unusual in human history: a stable stalemate. There is enough evidence to persuade billions that he lived, taught, was crucified, and rose again. Yet there is also enough ambiguity to sustain serious doubt. Entire civilizations have formed around affirming him. Entire intellectual traditions have formed around questioning him. And neither side has eliminated the other.

In the Mosque and Beyond: A Narrative of Conscience

I confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Lord.

I do not hide this. I do not soften it. I do not reinterpret it to make it socially acceptable. It is the center of my faith, and I proclaim it openly.

At the same time, I do not experience contradiction when standing in a Muslim house of prayer where strict monotheism is affirmed and where it is said that “God has no son.”

To many, this sounds impossible. It sounds like compromise, duplicity, or confusion. It is none of these.

Objections to the Educational Interpretation of Jesus' End-Time Warnings — and My Replies

Objection 1: "You are turning prophecy into mere rhetoric."

If Jesus was not primarily predicting future events, then his warnings about the nearness of the end become little more than persuasive rhetoric. This strips prophecy of its supernatural character and reduces it to a teaching technique.

My Reply

Not at all.

The objection assumes that prophecy has value only when it provides information unavailable through ordinary means.

But the greatest prophets were not merely transmitters of hidden information. They were reformers of hearts.

Revelation