Within one hundred years after the death of Muhammad, more than half of the world’s Christians found themselves living under Muslim rule.[1] What had historically been considered largely Christian territory swiftly came under the control of Arab invaders during the early conquests of the seventh century. This new administration eventually adopted religious beliefs that directly opposed core doctrines of the Christian faith: the Incarnation, the Trinity, the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross, and the resurrection. How did these Christian communities defend truth against this new religious threat? In what follows, I survey two common apologetic methods used by Christians in their defense of central Christian claims. With the rise of Islam in the West, my hope is that Christians today can use these methods in their own interactions with Muslims.
1. Sidney Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam, Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 11.
Defending the Deity of Christ
2. See scholar of early Christian-Muslim dialogue Samir Khalil Samir, “The Earliest Arab Apology for Christianity (c. 750),” in Christian Arabic Apologetics during the Abbasid Period (750–1258), ed. Samir Khalil Samir and Jorgen S. Nielsen (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 109–14.
Apologetic works during the rise of Islam followed a general trend in terms of how they approached defending Christianity.[2] Since Muslims relegated Jesus to being nothing more than a mere prophet, believers were put in a position relatively early on where they had to defend His divine nature using an assortment of methods. The earliest works leaned heavily upon biblical Scriptures to support truth claims. Drawing from the example of earlier patristic writers—especially those who had engaged Jewish objections—these authors made frequent use of biblical testimonia.[3] Biblical testimonies are lists of scriptural passages typically organized by topic and were largely used to demonstrate the unity of the Old and New Testaments.[4] At the heart of this method was a simple but powerful claim: the Old Testament anticipates the coming of the Messiah, and these promises find their fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. By tracing prophetic expectation to its realization, Christians argued that the entirety of Scripture bears witness to Christ’s divine identity.
3. For an introduction to biblical testimonies in the patristic era, see Martin Albl, “And Scripture Cannot Be Broken”: The Form and Function of the Early Christian Testimonia Collections, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 96 (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
While many Christians adopted biblical testimonies to advance their claims, some writers went one step further and sought to prove the deity of Jesus by telling the story of the Bible. To these authors, the metanarrative of Scripture proved to be fertile ground from which to evidence the centrality of Christ.
4. For example, a Christian seeking to show that Jesus fulfills messianic expectation might connect Zechariah 9:9, which foretells Zion’s coming king riding on a colt, with Matthew 21:9, where Jesus enters Jerusalem in that same manner.
An example of this can be seen in the earliest Arabic-Christian apology written in the Islamic context.[5] In it, an anonymous Chalcedonian monk walks his Islamic readers through the metanarrative of Scripture—from Genesis to the second coming of Christ—seeking to show how all of God’s works in the world revolve around Jesus. Beginning with the entrance of sin into the world, he traces God’s dealings with humanity through figures such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the people of Israel. These episodes, he argues, underscore the persistent inability of any human agent, prophet or otherwise, to resolve the problem of sin or secure deliverance. Consequently, the prophetic witness culminates in the expectation that God Himself must intervene. This expectation reaches its climax in the Incarnation, where God enters human history, defeats the power of sin and Satan, and redeems humanity through the cross. In the words of the monk, “he crucified sin by His crucifixion and killed death—which Adam inherited by his disobedience—through his death.”[6] By retelling the story of the Bible, the monk argues that Christ is not merely one prophet among many, as Muslims posit, but rather is the center of all of God’s Scriptures.
5. This work is preserved in a single manuscript witness at Saint Catherine’s Library on Mount Sinai. See MS Sinai ar. 154 99v–139v. For an English translation of the manuscript, see Devon Provencher, “Defending the Messiah in the Islamic Milieu: A Critical Analysis and Translation of the Earliest Arabic-Christian Apology” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2026).
For Christians today seeking to defend the deity of Christ in conversation with Muslims, the cohesive nature of the biblical storyline offers a clear and compelling witness.[7] Beyond demonstrating that all of God’s acts in human history focus on the person of Christ, it also provides a stark contrast to the Quran itself. While the Bible details a consistent chronological view of God’s dealings with the world, the Quran knows no such unified narrative framework and storyline.
6. MS Sinai ar. 154 107v.
Defending the Biblical Scriptures
7. For an introduction to the big story of the Bible, see Vaughan Roberts, God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003).
By the end of the eighth century, as Islam continued to develop, Christians increasingly faced the charge that their Scriptures had been corrupted (taḥrīf).[8] Muslim critiques took two primary forms. Some claimed that Christians had distorted the meaning of their texts through misinterpretation (taḥrīf al-maʿnā). Others advanced a stronger claim, asserting that Christians had altered the biblical text itself (taḥrīf al-naṣṣ). In response, Christian apologists developed several strategies to defend the integrity of their Scriptures. Among the most striking was their appeal to the Quran itself as a source of corroboration. This approach functioned along two complementary lines.
8. While the Quran does assert that Christians and Jews twisted their Scriptures, hid them, and misunderstood them, no clear verse exists which advocates the wholesale textual corruption that later Muslim theologians adopted.
First, Christians pointed to passages in the Quran that speak positively of Christians as a devout and faithful community. A notable example appears in the reported debates between Theodore Abū Qurra and Muslim interlocutors in the court of Caliph al-Ma’mūn (ca. 829). In his defense of the Bible, Abū Qurra cites Quranic texts such as Q. 3:113–114, where the Quran describes the People of the Book as those who “recite the revelations of Allah in the night season… believe in Allah and the Last Day, and enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency…” and are “of the righteous.”[9] He argues that such affirmations would be incoherent if Christians had already corrupted their Scriptures. For Abū Qurra, the Quran’s commendation of contemporary Christians implicitly affirms the reliability of the biblical texts they possessed.
9. The Qur’an, trans. Marmaduke Pickthall, 3:113–114, accessed June 4, 2026. Unless otherwise noted, Pickthall’s translation will be used for all citations of the Quran. David Bertaina, “An Arabic Account of Theodore Abu Qurra in Debate at the Court of Caliph al-Ma’mun: A Study in Early Christian and Muslim Literary Dialogues” (PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 2007), 404.
Second, Christian writers highlighted Quranic passages that recognized the authority of the Christian Scriptures during the lifetime of Muhammad. This line of reasoning is especially evident in the well-known exchange between the Christian apologist al-Kindī and his Muslim interlocutor al-Hāshimī (ca. 830). Drawing on verses such as Q. 10:94 and 5:46, al-Kindī argues that the Quran not only acknowledges earlier revelations but, at points, directs inquiry back to them as authoritative sources. In Q. 10:94, for example, Muhammad is told that if he doubts Allah’s revelation, he should “question those who read the Scripture (that was) before thee.” Additionally, Q. 5:46 states that Jesus was given the “Gospel wherein is guidance and a light, confirming that which was (revealed) before it in the Torah.” On this basis, he presses his opponent with a pointed challenge: “See how your own book bears witness to us that the true reading of any passage is our reading. You are required to ask and receive judgment from us on such points. Now then, can you affirm that we have corrupted the text? What is this, but to contradict your own scriptures?”[10] By embedding his argument within the Quran’s own claims, al-Kindī exposes what he sees as a fundamental inconsistency—namely, that to assert biblical corruption is to undermine the very scriptures they hold dear.
10. N. A. Newman, Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue (Hatfield, PA: Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, 1993), 498–99. The translation available in Newman is Anton Tien’s manuscript no. 25190.
In both cases, Christian apologists turned a central Islamic text into a tool for their own defense. By appealing to the Quran’s positive assessment of Christians and its apparent affirmation of earlier Scriptures, they sought to demonstrate that accusations of corruption were not only historically unfounded but also theologically inconsistent within an Islamic framework. While the Quran was not an authoritative source for either al-Kindī or Abū Qurra, they were content to point out the internal inconsistencies within Islam as it pertained to beliefs about the biblical Scriptures. Many Christians today can and have adopted a similar approach to great effect in dialogue with Muslims using these same verses from the Quran.
Reflection
Christians today find themselves answering similar objections to the identity of Christ and the trustworthiness of Scripture in their conversations with Muslims. This pressure feels acutely true in the American context, as Pew Research Center reports that the Muslim population in North America has grown by 52 percent from 2010 to 2020.[11] Although the historical setting has changed from the early medieval period until today, central theological challenges have not. The example of these early Christian apologists offers both encouragement and direction for believers today seeking to defend the person and work of Christ. Two brief points of reflection emerge from their witness.
11. Conrad Hackett et al., “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2020,” Pew Research Center, June 9, 2025.
First, their confidence in the unity and authority of Scripture should inspire our own approach. Whether through the careful use of biblical testimonies or by tracing the grand narrative of redemption, a deep familiarity with the Bible remains one of the most powerful tools in any apologetic engagement. These medieval Christian works remind us to resist the urge to rely primarily on novelty, rhetoric, or bare philosophical argumentation. Rather, faithful apologetics begins with confidence that the Scriptures themselves bear a coherent and compelling witness to Christ.
Second, these Christians modeled faithfulness and prudence by engaging thoughtfully with Muslim beliefs and texts. Rather than dismissing Islamic claims outright, these apologists took the time to understand the objections and countered them with an internal critique. This attentiveness enabled them to respond with clarity and precision, at times even drawing on the Quran itself to expose internal tensions. At the same time, they maintained a firm commitment to the unique authority of the biblical Scriptures, refusing to grant the Quran a status it should not hold within the Christian worldview. Their witness shows how faithful apologetics involves both careful listening and unwavering conviction.
As Islam continues to grow in North America and beyond, the need for wise, patient, and biblically grounded Christian engagement will only become more pressing. For that reason, the apologetic labors of earlier centuries should not be left in the past. They remind us that the church has long wrestled with these same questions and that, by God’s grace, Christians today can draw from this inheritance as they bear witness to Christ among their Muslim neighbors. If believers can recover this confidence in Scripture and careful attentiveness to the claims of Islam, such efforts may serve not merely to answer objections, but also to commend the beauty and truth of the gospel, so that more Muslims might be won to Christ.
