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Introduction
Abraham in the Koran
The
Galatian Test
Conclusion
Footnotes
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John 1.18.
No one has ever
seen God. It is God the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart who has
made him known (nrsv)
Galatians
3.16.
And the promises were made to Abraham and to his
offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings” as to many; but it says,
“And to your offspring”, that is, to one person who is Christ.
Ephesians 4.15
But
speaking the truth in love we must grow up in every way into him who is the
head, into Christ.
Pope John
Paul II
Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran,
clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation.
It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about
himself, first in the Old Testament through the prophets, and then finally
in the New Testament through his Son. In Islam all the richness of God’s
self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New
Testaments, has definitely been set aside.
Introduction: the Heythrop College advertisment
Heythrop, the Jesuit college
of theology and philosophy affiliated to the University of London, has
prepared a new degree course, ‘A BA in Abrahamic Religions’, to commence
this Autumn 2007. The full page colour advert for it which it placed in the
Tablet, a Catholic weekly, describes the Christian, Jewish and Muslim
religions as Abrahamic and says that together they are 'the three
great monotheistic religions. They all affirm belief in the one God who is
known through divine revelation in history. This university degree will
examine the key concepts behind these three great traditions and explore
their similarities, differences and relationships’.
On the surface it looks a
rather straightforward exercise. The assumption that emerges from the full
text of the advert is that common to these three religions is a belief in
one God; that he has revealed himself in history; that the source or origin
of both items of faith is a common ancestor; namely Abraham; and that that
makes all three ‘Abrahamic’. The purpose of the course then is to examine
the ways in which the three interpret that inheritance.
The description of
Christianity, Judaism and Islam as ‘the three great monotheistic religions’
does not of itself exclude other religions from being monotheistic, though that is the likely
intention of the phrase; it does
imply however that these three are the ‘great’ monotheistic religions. What
the college means by ‘great’ is not explained. The Sikh religion, mystical
and deeply benevolent, is monotheistic.
Hinduism at its profoundest, which if known more generally would
take away the breath of any open-minded theologian, is monotheistic.
The advert provides some
details of the similarities and relationships it will be exploring. It says
that, ‘Jews look to Abraham as father of the Jewish nation, see
themselves as his direct descendants and believe God promised him the land
of Israel. Muslims refer to him as ‘the friend of ‘God’, see him as a
patriarch and prophet who rejects idolatry and the person who founded the
Kabah in Mecca. Christians regard him as ‘their father in faith’ and
describe ‘those who belong to Christ as Abraham’s offspring and heirs of
the promise that God made to him’ (Gal.3.29)’. There is much here to
unpack and analyse. The advert also says that the three religions have a
lot in common in matters both of faith and philosophy. Where they differ,
as they do in many ethical matters, it is very much, says the college,
because of differing scriptures and differing attitudes towards their
scriptures. Is it? Pope John Paul II held the contrary opinion.
The course is an important
one. This Heythrop dialogue with Islam is possibly the first serious
Christian dialogue with a religion other than Judaism that has ever taken
place in England, maybe the beginning of a very important historic
endeavour. England is a very different place culturally and religiously
from what it was, say, in 1950 before mass immigration. Islam, Hinduism,
Sikhism and Buddhism now have a very substantial presence. The opportunity
that presents itself to English Catholicism, and of course Christianity in
general, is immense, the contribution they will make to it can only be
glimpsed ‘as in a glass darkly’ at this point in our history. (fn.1).
Theological dialogue however has always presented severe problems for both
Islam and Judaism; the former because of its understanding of the nature of
revelation, the latter because it is race-based as in the phrase used by
the Heythrop advert ‘Jews look to Abraham as father of the Jewish
nation, see themselves as his direct descendants’. So, the exercise is
no easy one. One has to ask if the three religions do in fact have a common
ancestor in Abraham; and if they do, in what way; and if only these three?
Taking that last question
first. Take Sikhism . Its founder Nanak took from both Hinduism and Islam.
He wove the ‘bhakti’ movements of Hinduism, especially the ‘nirgunam’ form
which stressed the imageless and formless God, with Islamic devotion to
Allah. ‘There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim’ were his words when he
emerged from out of his mystic three day experience. The fact that Sikhism
is emphatically monotheistic puts a question mark against the college
assertion that ‘Christianity, Judaism and Islam are the three great
monotheistic religions’. Sikhism may only have 23 million or so followers
but size, when it comes to theology at least, doesn’t quite matter.
Diamonds are carried in small packets. The number of Christians at one
point could only fill one upper room.
With 23 millions Sikhism might in fact have as many followers as
Judaism. If Islam is an Abrahamic
religion, and we have to explore if it is, then one might also conclude
that Sikhism, because it takes from Islam in a most fundamental way,
particularly in its monotheism, is Abrahamic too. It is with monotheism
that Mohammad associates Abraham. Sikhism may well be derivitive but so are
all religions and ideologies. The Koran is unremittingly eclectic. In its
composition Mohammad took ideas and stories in plenty and without
hesitation from his own Arabic polytheistic origins and background and from
Judaism and Christianity. Nothing comes from nothing.
To complicate things even
more, modern scholarly
opinion is that Abraham was not himself a monotheist at all. Most likely he
was a polytheist. If that is the case, the college course looks to be
batting on a very sticky wicket in associating the three religions together
on the basis that they derive their monotheism from Abraham. The god he
believed in was most probably the god of his family, his clan, his tribe,
and not the one and only god. Abraham was indeed ‘a man of faith’, but his
faith was in the existence of his tribe’s god, as a god of power who would
protect his tribe against other tribes and their gods. This race-based
aspect of Judaism of course persists to this day. Christianity repudiated
it at its very origins, though not without fierce debate within its
membership. ‘God has no favourites’ declared Peter in Acts10.34, ‘but in
every nation the man who is god-fearing and does what is right is
acceptable to him’. Those four simple words ‘God has no favourites’ are
surely among the most meaningful ever uttered in the whole history of
mankind. In Christian theology the saving intervention of the one and only
God was to identify Himself with Abraham’s god and thereby make Abraham’s
faith in his god faith in the one and only God. ‘I will be god to your
descendants’ was God’s decision and his promise (Gen. 17.8), freely made,
without any merit on the part of the recipient. Besides which the recipient,
the people of Israel did not exist at the time anyway. It was a choice that
gave them nothing to boast about at all, just as none of us have anything
to boast about either. Salvation in all aspects is the gift of God. There
is no other source of salvation. What gives Abraham a role in Salvation
history is God’s choice. His faith in his god becomes by God’s act faith in
the one true God. Whether Abraham was or wasn’t a monotheist is of no real
importance at all in Christianity. It seems he wasn’t. What matters is
God’s choice of him and his response. And even that choice did not make him
a monotheist. He was a polytheist to his dying day.
And why should an examination
of the relationships between Christianity, Judaism and Islam just single
out Abraham as particularly special? Mohammad in the Koran cites Moses even
more often than he does Abraham, with even more purpose and respect, using
the most significant titles. He calls him ‘a chosen man, an apostle and a
prophet’ (19.51). He says ‘God spoke directly to him’ (4.165), and that the
Scriptures Moses delivered to the Jews were ‘a light and a guide for
mankind’ (6.92). More than that. Heythrop is attaching huge importance to
Abraham as being particularly significant for Islam in that for Mohammad he
stood for monotheism. But so did Moses in the opinion of Mohammad, indeed
more so. ‘We led the Israelites across the sea’’ says the Koran 7.138, ‘and
they came upon a people who worshipped idols. They said to Moses: Make us a
god just like the gods they have. Moses replied: You are indeed an ignorant
people…Am I to seek for you a deity other than a God?’ Mohammad’s version
of the Golden Calf incident follows in which Moses triumphs over his
people’s idol worship and pleads for his people to be forgiven with the
prayer: ‘To you alone we turn’ (7.156). About none of the ‘apostles’ and
‘prophets’, be they Jewish or Christians, Abraham included, whom Mohammad
claimed to be his precursors, does he speak so highly as he does of Moses.
Into God’s mouth Mohammad puts these words: ‘Moses, I have chosen you of
all mankind to make known my message and my commandments’ (7.145). For the
purposes of establishing a basis for dialogue between Christianity, Judaism
and Islam, being ‘Mosaic’ is equally as valid, as far as it goes, as being
‘Abrahamic’, and in the Koranic texts, especially 7.145, even more so.
As presented in the Bible
Moses is a towering figure. A baby rescued from being murdered by being put
into a basket into the Nile, taken into the household of the Pharaoh by his
daughter, risking his life to defend a fellow Jew, fleeing into the desert,
called by God into his presence in a scene and with words which have
resounded down the centuries, sent by him to take his people out of slavery
and into the Promised Land, standing up to the Pharaoh himself, confronting
him and bringing down twelve plagues upon him and all Egypt, leading the
people of Israel through the Red Sea, taking them through the desert for
forty years, meeting with God on Mount Horeb, bringing the ten commandments
and the law down the mountain to the people, rebuking them in rage and
anger when he found them worshipping the golden calf, leading them to the
very borders of Canaan but not allowed to enter. Adventure and exploits of
the most dramatic kind, but all happening for a profound spiritual purpose
–to bring about the salvation of all mankind. The personality of Moses in
the Bible is so much stronger and nobler than the personality it ascribes
to Abraham. One can reasonably say that as portrayed in the Bible record
Moses achieved far more than Abraham did for the Jewish people; and in
sharp contrast to Moses’ immense strength of character, Abraham on two
occasions deals very dishonestly and ignobly with his wife Sarah, and
weakly and cruelly with Hagar. Yet, in the English language at least,
‘Mosaic’ is not a welcome way to describe a religion. It has become
synonymous with law and commandments, whereas ‘Abrahamic’ has a much freer
connotation. Theology and religion have, fashions and flavours too. ‘Abrahamic’ is a notion nowadays being
used in inter-faith dialogue. So it has to be addressed; and interestingly,
as will emerge, it actually exposes the profound differences that exist
between Christianity and Islam.
The Heythrop advert states: ‘They
–the three religions- all affirm belief in the one God who is known through
divine revelation in history’. That sounds very unifying. In reality it
is anything but. The Islamic understanding of revelation is fundamentally
different from that of Christianity’s, and the outcomes of the difference
permeate every aspect of their faith as well as their moral teaching. For
example, by reason of its understanding of the nature of revelation and the
origins of the Koran, Islam can never accept that Abraham was not a monotheist,
no matter what the evidence for his polytheism might be. ‘My Lord has
guided me to a straight path, to an upright religion, to the faith of
saintly Abraham, who was no idolater’ declares Mohammad (Koran.6.162).
Islam can never acknowledge that in saying that Abraham was no idolater
Mohammad got it wrong. In fact, it does not accept that Mohammad said it in
the first place. It believes that the Koran was spoken by God as from
eternity, even to the extent in the faith of some Muslims, possibly all,
that the Koran exists in ‘heaven’ as a text or a sound in Arabic as from
eternity.(cf 85.2, 56.77, 43.3 and 13.39). It is the faith of Islam that
God composed the Koran, not Mohammad. So anything said in the Koran is
correct and is to be followed because it comes from God and from eternity,
no matter what it is, no matter how unacceptable it now is. Such as for
example the command of the Koran: ‘As for the man or woman who is guilty of
theft, cut off their hands to punish them for their crimes. That is the
punishment enjoined by God’ (5.38). So too is the statement: ‘Men have
authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other and
because they spend their wealth to maintain them’ (4.34).
Considered objectively such statements
or precepts are recognisable as expressions and examples of the culture of
one particular 7th century desert Arab tribe. That is what they
are. However, when Mohammad represented them as belonging to the revelation
which he believed he had received from God,
they became a part of a ‘text’ which for him and his followers
constitutes a code of behaviour they believe originates directly and
eternally from God, one that is universal in its application irrespective
of time, place and culture. Such a notion of revelation, and hence of
morality, based on a theology of revelation essentially different from that
of Christianity.
Catholic Christianity
understands revelation in a radically different way from Islam. For one
thing, for Catholicism revelation is not a book. Rather revelation is the
person of Christ (Jn.1.18), the Word made flesh. Jesus Christ did not leave
a book, indeed any text at all, to his followers. Instead, as he expressly
states, he left his Spirit ‘I will ask the Father and he will give you
another to be your Advocate, who will be with you for ever –the Spirit of
Truth’ (Jn.14.15f); ‘When your Advocate has come, whom I will send you from
the Father –the Spirit of Truth who issues from the Father- he will bear
witness to me’ (15.26. The texts of the New Testament did not exist until
some thirty years after the resurrection of Jesus and were written to give
expression to the faith and life of his Church as it had developed in that
period under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth. Christianity wasn’t
founded on any texts but on the Spirit of the risen Christ. The Spirit is
to be found and experienced in the life, the sacraments, the faith, the
liturgy and the teaching of the Church which is the body of Christ. ‘And
you also are my witnesses’ (15.27). ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’
(15.5). God never wrote a single word. Men wrote the books of the Bible
(males in every instance one supposes though it is difficult to read the
book of Job without feeling only a woman could have written it, which is
very tendentious of course and somewhat beside the point of this article).
The books of the New
Testament are statements of the faith of the Church, the earliest such
statements. The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, for example, the first of
the NT writings, is a statement of the Christian faith, because the Church
has said so by placing it in the canon. It is for the Church, in which
Christ’s gift of his Spirit dwells, to decide what is, and what isn’t, a
statement of its faith. This enables the Church to evolve in its
understanding of its faith and its morals. The instruction of the writer of
the Ephesians to wives, for example, to be subject to their husbands in
everything (5.24) is a case in point. It is as culturally conditioned as the
precepts contained in the Koran which I have cited above. It belongs to a
time and a place and is not universally applicable across the reaches of
time. It is not an instruction any
Catholic priest would repeat nowadays. Islam is unable to make this progress
because it believes the Koran is composed by God as from eternity. For that
reason it is per se ‘fundamentalist’. It has to take its followers back to
the culture of Mohammad’s time and place.
What all this is pointing to
is something very important. The characteristic ‘Abrahamic’ actually serves
as much to distinguish Christianity from Islam as to associate them. The
fact the Abraham features in both the Bible and the Koran is not in itself
of much value. Anyone aspiring to set up a new religion can find plenty of
space in it for Abraham if they want to. What matters is the role Abraham
has in Christianity and in Islam. His role in each is very different; and
it is correct to say that the different role he has in each is one major
difference between them. His role in the Koran and Islam is as an examplar
of monotheism. His role in Christianity is to be the progenitor of the
Christ, a phrase of very few words but one that will require explanation
particularly from Matthew’s gospel and Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
The Heythrop advert states: ‘They
–the three religions- all affirm belief in the one God who is known through
divine revelation in history’. Belief in the one God? Do they? Of
course at one level, emphatically ‘yes’. But at another level emphatically
not, because the one God of Christianity is not the one God of Islam. For
Christianity God is both one and three and we are christened in their name,
Father, Son and Spirit, as the Son commanded. We know that through God’s own
revelation, and only through God’s own revelation. However. Mohammad did
not accept that revelation, not out of any irreligiousness or perversity
but out of concern for the unity of God as he understood it. ‘Do not say
‘three’. God is but one God’ is his instruction (4.172). However, what God
is is what God reveals. The oneness of God is not the oneness of human
understanding. It is the Christian faith that God revealed himself in his
Son. ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son who is close to the
Father’s heart who has made him known’ Jn.1.18. The one God is revealed by
the Son of God as Father, Son and Spirit, which Mohammad rejected. I
repeat, the oneness of God is not the oneness of human understanding; and
we must submit in faith to that revelation. The Christian faith in the one
God is not the same as the Islamic faith in the one God.
It is this
that Pope John Paul II himself directs us to understand: ‘Whoever knows the
Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process
by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to
note the movement away from what God said about himself, first in the Old
Testament through the prophets, and then finally in the New Testament
through his Son. In Islam all the richness of God’s self-revelation, which
constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been
set aside’ (Crossing the Threshold of Hope 1994)
One can –indeed must-
sympathise with Mohammad’s concern to abolish the polytheism of Arab 7th
century tribal society. However, there is much more to polytheism than
error. The same can be said about animism. The Trinitarian nature of God
runs deep in all creation -actio sequitur esse- not least in the
human quest for God. ‘Nihil humanum alienum a me puto’. Polytheism
in all its many forms, be it Hindu or Roman or Arab or Greek or whatever,
represents that intuition of the human condition that God is beyond any
human category, that the mathematical ‘one’ is a limitation of the divine,
not a description, that God cannot be put into a box. Animism found the
divine in stones and hills and trees and rivers just as English
Christianity, to mention but one, found it in wells, rivers, streams and
the very stones and the glass with which it built its cathedrals and its numinous
ancient parish churches, and in the animals, plants, coloured inks and
paints with which it illuminated the Word of God and the Hours of the
Divine Office; and crafted it all organically into the ways it celebrated
the feast days of the Lord, his mother and the saints. Polytheism in India
is said to have had as many as 300 million gods. The mystical tuition of
the Indian people sensed that our numbers and our words are inadequate and
that the power and expression of Divine Being is beyond our ability to
understand and to describe. Out of those millions of ‘gods’ emerge the trio
of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as the most important. God has revealed him, in
the fullness of time, in his Son, as three in one, as Father, Son and
Spirit, as Creator, Saviour and Life-giver, the fulfilment of every deep
human religious sense, intuition and desire, and all our hopes and all our
years and all our fears are immersed and found in the very Word of God
becoming flesh itself, emptying itself into the form of a slave. God is
one, absolutely so, but it is a oneness that is beyond us. Like Abraham we
have to have faith and travel at his command to the land to which he
directs us; and like Moses we must take off our shoes, the shackles of our
mind, we are on holy ground, we walk and we bathe in sacred springs. We
accept God as he tells us he is. ‘I am who I am’. The god of Islam is not
the God of revelation. The only God is the God of revelation. The god of
Islam is one great human step on the path to the God of revelation, a step
impossible to take without God’s guiding hand. But only a step nonetheless.
‘It is God the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart who has made him
known’.
So, what does the word
‘Abrahamic’ mean? Who decides? Heythrop College asserts: 'Abraham is of
decisive importance for all three traditions'. In what way is he
decisive? Is he ‘decisive’ at all?
And if he is, is he in the same way for all three of them? Or differently in each of them? Is Islam
‘Abrahamic’ in the way Christianity understands itself to be? In the same
way as Judaism understands itself to be? The answer is a very definite ‘no’
both in the case of Christianity and that of Judaism.
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