Father Daniil Sysoev:
I have a question for Mr. Vyacheslav. I still haven't understood what arguments he puts forward in favor of the Quran being a revelation from God. He said that the Quran claims to be that. And we don't dispute that. He said that it is a law from God. We know that it presents itself as such. But what proof is there of this? I repeat, I think that Mr. Vyacheslav does not recognize the divine inspiration of Vissarion or Comrade Grabovoy, although they claim to be a new revelation from the Creator.
Vyacheslav Polosin:
Well, firstly, the proof, as I think you know well, both in relation to the Bible and in relation to the Quran, cannot be logical, since the Almighty gives this to us through our faith.
(commentary from the video: As we see, Mr. Polosin cannot prove that the Quran is the word of God, and persistently asserts that we also cannot provide evidential criteria that the Bible is the Revelation of the Eternal God the Creator. Is this really so?)
Father Daniil Sysoev:
We can present the following signs, which the Church usually presents in defense of the fact that the Bible is the true word of God.
These principles apply generally to any religious text claiming to be the Word of God.
The first sign, as our Catechism says, is the sublimity of the teaching. That is, the principle of non-triviality. That is, something that man himself could not invent, something that is not derivable from the data of human experience. It is known that we, as humans, can create something, but within certain limits.
We cannot create a fourth primary color; we are incapable of imagining some kind of extra-spatial reality. There are many such limitations. We assert that it is the Bible that possesses this non-triviality. Because it contains a number of doctrines that one can argue with or not argue with, but which are not derivable from experiential data. For example, the dogma of the "Triunity," the dogma of "creation out of nothing," the teaching on the Incarnation, on redemption by the Blood of Christ, the teaching on the transformation in the power of the universe.
All these doctrines are not derivable from experiential data. Where would we get, for example, data on a universal change, a universal transformation? And at the same time, these data are not derivable from the other religious life of humanity, no matter how much they try to prove it. For example, they say that the "Trimurti" is connected with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity; well, this is a somewhat dubious claim, if only because the Jews were not acquainted with Hinduism. This is a contrived thing.
One may consider Biblical dogmas to be an incorrect doctrine, one may consider them a correct doctrine, but they are non-trivial. This indicates that the author of the Bible is some NON-human source. We are not specifying yet what kind, but NON-human. And from this sign we cannot deduce that it is Divinity. We can only say that it is NOT-human. It is someone other than a human who gave the Bible.
The second sign is the purity of the teaching, that is, the highest moral standard that must belong to the text given by God.
God is good, and naturally, He cannot give laws that are not good. God is righteous, He cannot give unrighteous laws. God is merciful, He cannot give cruel laws. And therefore we must demand that the revelation of God be distinguished by the highest moral standard, measure.
Otherwise, it will not be the Word of God. And one of the main attributes of God, recognized by both Christianity and Islam, is impartiality. God must have one measure for all. The Bible, in this sense, fully meets this criterion. The moral norms of the Holy Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, gradually rose, increased, as humanity developed, and reach the summit of the Gospel, above which no one has yet risen.
And this indicates that the author of the Bible is a certain spirit, of course, again we are not specifying what kind, but a good and absolutely just one.
The Bible is inconvenient for everyone. It is inconvenient for kings who think they can cover their atrocities with God. Even David, who sinned, was rebuked by God for his lawlessness, although he was a prophet. The Bible is inconvenient for the poor, because God says: "neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause." (Exodus: 23; 3) (ed.: John Chrysostom interprets these words thus: "It is said: 'Thou shalt not countenance a poor man in his cause.' What does this mean? It means: be firm and unbending, even if a poor man sins. If one must not countenance a poor man, then much more so the rich. I say this not only to judges, but to all people, that they should nowhere violate justice, but everywhere piously observe it.") The Bible is inconvenient for the rich, inconvenient for priests, inconvenient for prophets. It is convenient only for those who act according to the will of God. This inconvenience shows that the Bible has completely non-human sources. Well, imagine if a person writes a text that he himself must fulfill – and the prophets wrote precisely such texts – he would hardly make life difficult for himself. In this sense, the Quran does not stand any comparison with Holy Scripture. For example, for us Orthodox Christians, the Quran's demand that a woman, if she has left her husband and wishes to return to him, must first marry another, is outrageous.
For us, this statement is an insult to women. For us, the enormous number of calls to violence contained in the Quran is astonishing. We are surprised how such a thing could be. And the main thing that astonishes us is the partiality of the Quran. Why does the prophet have privileges, in the moral sense, that other people do not have? In Christianity, the requirements for the transmitter of revelation are, on the contrary, maximally high – a person communicating with God must be maximally pure, because only into the purest soul can the spirit of wisdom enter. As it is said in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon: *"For into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter; nor dwell in the body that is subject unto sin. For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and remove from thoughts that are without understanding, and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in." (Wisdom of Solomon: 1; 4-5)*
And that is precisely why we cannot accept the Quran as a revelation from God for moral reasons.
The moral standard of the Quran is much lower than the Biblical norms that preceded it and that were known to the author of the Quran. Muhammad interacted with Christians, interacted with Jews, but he lowered the bar below what it was before. For us, the people of God's Covenant, for those people who have lived in union with God for 7,500 years, the position of that spirit which claims to be the Creator, yet at the same time lowers the moral standard, is incomprehensible.
The next property, which for us is a sign of God's revelation, is the presence of prophecies, i.e., the author of the Bible is above time; he predicts what will happen later, in the future. And God offers to test Him by this, therefore, for example, it is said: "I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God." (Isaiah: 44; 6) – says God through the prophet Isaiah.
*"And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people? and the things that are coming, and shall come, let them show unto them. Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any." (Isaiah: 44; 7-8)*
And therefore, the fact that there are many fulfilled prophecies in the Bible, starting from the 333 prophecies that were fulfilled in Christ, and ending with prophecies connected even with the present, the 20th-21st centuries (connected with the return, the violent return of Israel to the Holy Land, and with the constant bloodshed that occurs there, as Moses predicted in Deuteronomy chapters XXVIII, XXIX, XXX. These glories of God are being fulfilled exactly before our eyes.) This indicates that the Author of the Bible is the Lord of history, existing above time. He is an eternal being.
But in the Quran, there are no fulfilled prophecies. The only prophecy contained in the Quran says that the Romans were defeated, but in a few years they will win.
This prophecy, as Emperor Manuel said, is comparable to me saying that after the storm ends, calm will set in. The history of that time knew many centuries of struggle between the Persians and the Romans, where every few years there was either defeat or victory. This is not a prediction. For us, this is, of course, a sign that this is not a divine text.
The next argument in defense of (the test of) whether the Bible is the true Word of God or not, is for us, of course, the question of the action of the Word of God on a person.
If this is the Word of God, it will act; it will transform human life. We know that the Word of God, truly the true Word of God, has indeed transformed and remade the lives of many people. The most famous such historical example is the mass spread of Christianity during the time of persecution and the survival of Christianity now. The Bible still continues to have Divine power. We know of many cases where people were healed and recovered through the simple laying on of the text of Holy Scripture. And by this we see that a certain Divine power is inherent in the Biblical text.
And finally, for us the fact that the authors of the Bible worked miracles is very important. That is, they had testimony that Divine life was active in them. Moses performed signs, the Lord Jesus Christ performed signs, the Apostles performed signs. All of them worked many miracles, showing that the power of God was active in them. We know that the author of the Quran performed only one miracle, described in the Quran – the splitting of the moon, which was not seen by those who were not his adherents. We know that even his opponents always demanded a miracle from him, and he refused to give one. But the Lord said in the Gospel:
*"If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him." (Gospel of John: 10; 37-38)*
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." (Gospel of John: 14; 12)
That is why I am convinced that the most attentive and unbiased look shows that it is the Bible that is the uncorrupted Word of God, which has been preserved, for God Almighty Himself preserves it. And the very thought that the Bible could be distorted is contrary to the notion of the omnipotence of God. And, on the other hand, we believe that Muhammad is a false prophet, and his scripture is false. Because a person who speaks in the name of God, but does not conform to the Biblical norms of what was entrusted, cannot be a true prophet of God. That is what I wanted to say.
