The Qur'an and the loss of the plot

Imagine you're reading The Lord of the Rings. Having finished The Two Towers, you turn to The Return of the King, which is supposed to be the sequel to the other two. But as you start to read, you discover that the story doesn't pick up where The Two Towers left off. The same characters are still there - Frodo and Sam, Gandalf and Aragorn, even Sauron - but the ring is barely mentioned, and the quest to destroy it seems to have been forgotten. Instead, you find a retelling of some of the things that happened in the previous volumes, but without the context of the War of the Ring. These stories seem to serve as examples of the kind of thing that happens in Middle-earth rather than advancing the plot.

At some point, you would start to seriously doubt that it was really the same author behind all three volumes. How could the same author have completely lost the narrative thread between the second and third volumes? And yet that's exactly the experience of a Christian reading the Qur’an. In the Bible, there's a narrative thread that begins in the Old Testament and continues in the New Testament, but the Qur’an seems to be entirely ignorant of this overall story arc.

The tale of God and his people

That overarching story of the Bible begins with God's creation of heaven and earth. This creation is initially “very good”, but when the man disobeys his Creator and eats the forbidden fruit, sin enters the world. From that moment on, there is corruption and death on the earth, and the man and his wife are expelled from the Paradise of Eden and deprived of God's presence. The big question in the story of the Bible is how can the relationship between God and man be restored? That process begins with God choosing one man, Abraham, to found a people who will become the people of God, through whom God intends to bless the whole world. Abraham's family moved to Egypt, and there they became a very numerous people, but enslaved by the Egyptians. God hears their cries, and intervenes to save his people and to judge those who stubbornly resist him. God gives this people his law, and brings them into the land he promised to their ancestors. Despite all these blessings, the people of Israel are constantly unfaithful to their God, and he is compelled to discipline them with judgments that become more and more severe, until he sends the Babylonians to take his people away captive in a foreign land. 70 years later, God graciously allows them to return to their own country, but it's clear that they still have the same hardness of heart, and the question remains: what is the solution for sin? How does God plan to save his people once and for all?

As all these historical events are playing out, God sends prophets with revelations of a coming figure, a savior for God's people. He will be a prophet who reveals God in a new way, a king who will make God's people live in peace and security, and, mysteriously, a man who will suffer and die for the sins of the people.

Here the Old Testament ends, and the reader is left in suspense: how will God fulfill all the promises he made in this first volume of scripture? The answer given by the New Testament is the sending of Jesus, God the Son, into the world. Just as God dwelt among his people before in the Tabernacle, Jesus comes to dwell among God's people, showing them his glory. The people reject him, and he is crucified by order of the Roman prefect. But on the third day, he is raised again and appears alive to his disciples. He makes them understand that by his death he has taken upon himself the punishment for the sins of his people, and by his resurrection he has conquered death once and for all. He then sends them out to proclaim this good news throughout the world, because everyone who places his faith in Jesus is united to him and becomes an heir of eternal life. Then Jesus ascends in glory to the right hand of God, where he sits as a victorious king until the time determined by God, when he will return to destroy his enemies and establish his kingdom on the earth. Then sin and death will be no more, and God will live among his people forever.

A book which confirms?

This story is not completed by the Qur’an. Despite references to creation, final judgment, and past prophets, the Qur’an shows no familiarity with the overarching plot of the Bible. The logic of the Qur’an is that God constantly sends messengers to various peoples to remind them that He is the only God worthy of worship. Almost without exception, his messengers are rejected by their people, and the story ends with the salvation of the prophet and the destruction of the non-believers. It becomes apparent that the story told of every prophet of the past is modeled on Muhammad's own experience. Their message was the same as his and if he is rejected, it's not surprising because it that’s what happened to them too. Totally absent is the idea that God has a plan to save his people from sin and death, a plan that is unfolding through all the centuries of the history of the world. What's more, the New Testament, unlike the Old, doesn't leave the reader waiting for a third volume.¹ Christians aren't waiting for a prophet to come and complete God’s revelation. The one we’re waiting for is Jesus himself to come and fulfill his promise and finish the story that began in Genesis chapter 1.

1. And if there's a weakness in the Lord of the Rings analogy, it's the fact that, unlike the New Testament, The Two Towers clearly expects a sequel.