and the human nature of God had never committed a single sin, unlike the rest of humanity. When, therefore, Satan sought to seize His soul so as to imprison it in Hell—just as he had done with all who came before, even though that human nature was sinless—Satan thereby became liable for the Lord to seize him and to deliver Adam’s descendants from his captivity.

By this claim they ascribe to the Lord—glorified and exalted be He—ignorance, impotence, and injustice. For if, as they allege, He Himself had granted Satan authority over the children of Adam, there would be no difference between the Messiah’s human nature and that of anyone else, since all belong to Adam’s progeny. Moreover, if that human nature was granted the right to repel Satan, they also contend that he entered Hell and released Adam’s offspring from it.

It may therefore be said: If Satan’s right to confine them in Hell was legitimate—owing to their own sins and to their father’s sin—then it would not be permissible to set them free merely because the Messiah’s human nature was sinless. And if they were being wronged by Satan, it would have been obligatory to rescue them before the crucifixion of that human nature, and delaying that rescue would not have been permissible. The mere sinlessness of the Messiah does not entail the sinlessness of anyone else. If they further claim that, unless Satan had been empowered to crucify him, he would have been unable to repel him, then once Satan had gained that power the Messiah would have been even more powerless.

The second faulty premise upon which they built their question—purporting to direct it at the Muslims along with its answer—is their assumption that Muslims say: “After the mission of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, every wording of every extant copy of these scriptures was altered.”