Muslim-Christian Encounters (Routledge Revivals)

Perceptions and Misperceptions

William Montgomery Watt

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415734905
• eBook ISBN: 9781317820420
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

First published in 1991, this title explores the myths and misperceptions that have underpinned Muslim-Christian relations throughout history, and which endure to the current day. William Montgomery Watt describes how the myths originated and developed, and argues that both Muslims and Christians need to have a more accurate knowledge and positive appreciation of the other religion. Chapters discuss the Qur'anic perception of Christianity, attitudes to Greek philosophy and the relationship between Islam and Christianity in medieval Europe. Written by one of the leading authorities on Islam in the West, Muslim-Christian Encounters remains a relevant and vivid study and will be of particular value to students of Islam, religious history and sociology.

Chapter 1

The Christianity encountered by Islam

When one begins to think about the Christianity encountered by Muhammad and the first Muslims, it has to be realized that it was very different from the Christianity we know today. Round about AD 600 there was a main body of Christians constituting the Great Church, which later divided into the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant churches of today; but there were also important bodies of Christians who had been expelled from the Great Church as heretics, notably those often known as the Monophysites (Jacobites and Copts) and the Nestorians. Most of the Christians of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Iraq – the lands first occupied by the Muslims – probably belonged to these heretical bodies. To these bodies also belonged most of the Christians in Arabia itself.

VARIOUS CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

The religious distinction between orthodoxy and heresy was closely linked with ethnic or perhaps rather cultural differences. The Great Church was intimately associated with the ruling groups in the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire, and these were essentially Greek in culture. The Monophysite heresy, on the other hand, had become the focus of anti-Greek feeling both among the Copts or native Egyptians and among the Jacobites of Syria, who are sometimes described as West Syrians. The Nestorian heresy had played a similar role for those often called East Syrians, and their opposition to the Greeks was such that they had been expelled from the Byzantine Empire and by the year 600 had established their main centre in Iraq in the Sassanian (Persian) Empire. The Great Church also included the Christians of western Europe, whose culture was basically Latin and who in 600 were divided among various Frankish and other petty kingdoms; but in the early seventh century the Arabs were not in contact with these.

In the ecumenical councils of the Church (such as those of Nicaea in 325 and of Chalcedon in 451) the bishops of Greek culture had played a dominant role, and the formulations of trinitarian and christological doctrine officially accepted by the councils were largely in terms of the type of Greek philosophy then current in the Byzantine Empire. The bishops of Latin culture were in general less philosophically minded than the Greeks but acquiesced in the Greek formulations. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that the Latin terms for trinitarian doctrine (one substantia, three personae) were accepted as equivalent to the Greek (one ousia, three hypostaseis) although they are not identical, since substantia corresponds etymologically to hypostasis. The bishops representing the Egyptians and the East and West Syrians rejected the Greek formulations and adopted various alternatives, with the result that they were excluded from the Great Church and in the case of the Nestorians from the Christian empire.

Most people of today, when they look at the detailed doctrinal discussions about the Trinity and the person of Christ, have the impression of being in a labyrinth of abstractions, whose relevance to actual Christian living is hard to discern. I hold that one can begin to make a little sense of the discussions if one asks why the protagonists argued as they did, and tries to answer this question by looking at features of their cultural background. What did they consider to be the chief problem of human life, and how did they understand Jesus to have solved this? In other words, what are the fundamental beliefs underlying the arguments, and how are these related to cultural differences?

ORTHODOXY

Greek culture was, of course, far from being homogeneous, since under its umbrella had come people from various backgrounds where the native languages, such as the speech of Lycaonia,¹ had not achieved the status of literary languages, as had Coptic and Syriac. One feature of Greek culture was its belief in orthodoxy.² It is not fortuitous that the eastern section of the Great Church has come to be known as the Orthodox Church, for it was here that complete agreement in belief was held to be the basis for the unity of the community of Christians. The western section, on the other hand, was more concerned with the catholicity of the church, that is, the unity of the church throughout the world, and this was to be maintained by recognition of the authority of the hierarchy derived from the original apostles. The orthodox vision of a community homogeneous in belief and united in worship was important for the church as a whole; but in practice the vision could be perverted into the tool of a dominant majority tyrannizing over minorities. Orthodoxy was taken to mean the acceptance of credal formulations, and these were the subject of negotiation between different parties at the ecumenical councils. In these negotiations minorities like the Egyptians and Syrians lost out, and had to choose between abandoning some of their inmost convictions and leaving the Great Church.

Greek culture in pre-Christian times had been characterized by a dualistic conception of the human person, in which the soul was regarded as the real person and the body as a mere instrument. There had even been a tradition in Greek thought according to which the body (sōma) was the tomb (sēma) of the soul, so that real life only began when the soul was freed from the body. An early Christian thinker of Greek outlook was Clement of Alexandria (d. 215?) who was clearly not Egyptian despite spending much of his life in Egypt, and who aimed at a defence of the Christian faith in terms of the current philosophy. For him the rational soul was the essential person, but people have become irrational in thought and conduct, in that sin consists in the conquest of reason by sensual pleasure. This being the main problem for humanity, the unique work of Christ was seen as the bringing of true knowledge and the freeing of reason from the bonds of irrational nature. True knowledge is held to lead to right action, and the ideal human life is one in which rationality is developed to the fullest extent.

A later stage in Greek thinking can be seen in the work of Gregory of Nyssa (d. c.395), who was one of those mainly responsible for the trinitarian doctrine of the Council of Constantinople (381) that Christ is of the same being (homoousios) as the Father, not of similar being (homoiousios). Gregory emphasized that in Christ we see operations identical with those of the Father, e.g. giving life and health, cleansing and guiding. The human person for Gregory is essentially the soul, created at the same time as its body. The body is not in itself evil, but through its connection with the body the soul becomes stained with sensual passions and affections, and the work of Christ is to cleanse the soul from these. At the resurrection the soul is given a new imperishable and impassible body.

These brief statements are perhaps sufficient to give an idea of the Greek culture on which the credal formulations of the Great Church were based.

THE MONOPHYSITES

The difference between Greek culture and that of the Egyptian and Syrian Christians is most clearly seen by looking at the Christianity which developed into the Coptic church. Among the well-known features of pre-Christian Egypt are the practice of mummification and the building of pyramids. These show an intense interest in overcoming human mortality, and the same interest is to be found in many Christian writers of native Egyptian origin, notably Athanasius (d. 373). In such writers we find a monistic conception of the human person; that is, though the person consists of soul and body, the body is as much part of the person as the soul. According to Athanasius human beings are by nature perishable or mortal like animals, but by the gift of reason (not here identified with the soul) God made them immortal. Human beings lost this immortality, however, because they were deceived by the devil, who, and not the body, is regarded as the source of evil. The work of Christ according to Athanasius is twofold. On the one hand, he accepts the penalty of death on behalf of sinful humanity. More important, however, is the incarnation of the divine Word in Jesus by which his human nature becomes incorruptible and is resurrected after death. Jesus really died, since that was necessary to achieve salvation for humanity; but, because his body was united to the Word, it was no longer subject to corruption, so that on the third day the resurrection took place. Through association with the body of Christ Christians share in this incorruptibility or immortality. Athanasius has a sentence which sums up his teaching: “Christ becomes incarnate that he may make us divine.” It is difficult not to see in this line of thought a Christianizing of the ancient Egyptian preoccupation with death and the escape from it.

From this account of the teaching of Athanasius it is possible to see how it was inevitable for later Egyptian or Coptic thinkers to adopt Monophysitism, the doctrine that there is a single divine-human nature in Christ. The central problem of human life, the problem of mortality, was solved by the union of the divine Word with human nature, in such a way that human nature became incorruptible. On the other hand, if in Christ the divine and human natures remained distinct, as the Greeks maintained, then human nature had not become incorruptible, and the human nature of ordinary Christians remained subject to death. To those in the Egyptian tradition this was tantamount to a denial of the saving work of Christ.

The other branch of the Monophysites, the Jacobites, or West Syrians, held the doctrine of the one divine-human nature for a slightly different reason. Their views can conveniently be studied in the writings of Severus of Antioch (d. 538), who was Patriarch of Antioch from 512 to 518. Severus holds a monistic view of the human person, at least to the extent that he does not regard salvation as becoming free from the body. For Severus, as for many Semites, the great problem for human beings is the attainment of security in respect of the economic and material side of life. Suffering and hardship were in general regarded as punishment for sin, though in some cases they were used by God to recall his servants to a better life. In the thought of Severus God is primarily “power in action” (energeia), not reason; and the incarnation of the divine Word in Jesus means that in him we see a divine-human or theandric energeia. By this theandric energeia human beings were delivered from the demonic powers which enticed them to sin and incur the penalties of sin; and Christians may obtain the benefits of this deliverance by participating in the Eucharist. Central in the thought of Severus is this conception of the divine power manifesting itself in and through a human life, and so bringing security to humanity as a whole. This result could not be achieved, however, if the divine and human natures in Jesus remained separate. This latter view, that Jesus is both divine and human, but that the two natures are distinct is, of course, the official view of the ecumenical councils and of most Christians today, and is known as Dyophysitism.

THE NESTORIANS

When we turn to the East Syrians or Nestorians, we find that a central point in their thinking was that God is eternal and impassible. It was for this reason that they objected to the term theotokos or “God-bearer” applied to Mary, since God the eternal cannot be a human infant. Nestorius and his followers emphasized the humanity of Jesus because it was in his humanity that he won a victory over Satan, by “humbling himself and taking the form of a servant”.³ He was tempted as human beings are, but he did not yield to the temptations; and in this struggle he had no advantages which we may not also have. Nestorius seems to be suggesting that previously people could not detect the deceptions of Satan and did not believe that it was possible for humanity to fulfil the commandments perfectly, and thus they acquiesced in disobedience; but now they know that obedience is possible for human nature and so have become capable of obedience. Both for Christ’s humanity and for us the assistance of divine grace is not excluded. It was in his humanity that Christ overcame Satan, but in his self-emptying to take the form of a servant there was for humanity a supreme model of humility. Nestorius, however, had great difficulty in explaining how God’s eternity and impassibility can be united with temporal humanity, since God cannot suffer. He placed some emphasis on unity of will, since God’s will can operate in temporal circumstances, but this unity of will was a consequence of the unity of humanity and divinity and not its ground.

KNOWLEDGE OF CHRISTIANITY IN MECCA

Of the Christians of Muhammad’s time the Nestorians and the Monophysites were the most important cultural groups distinct from those lumped together under the heading of “Greek” culture. Recently the theologian Hans Küng has taken up a line of thought followed by earlier German scholars and has suggested that the form of Christianity best known to the people of Mecca at that time was that of small groups of Christians from a Jewish background, who had never accepted the credal formulations of the Great Church, but had managed to maintain their existence in relative isolation. Such groups would accept Jesus as Messiah but not as a divine hypostasis.⁴ It is impossible to know to what extent these Jewish Christians or the more numerous Arab Monophysites and Nestorians influenced the ideas about Christianity current in Mecca. In some ways the general cultural outlook of the Meccan Arabs seems to be closest to that of the Nestorians. Moreover, despite the presence of numerous groups of Christians among both nomadic and settled Arabs, there can have been very few persons with a scholarly knowledge of Christianity, and these would be some clerics and monks.⁵ The ordinary Christian Arab had presumably only a meagre knowledge of his religion.

There was no Arabic translation of the Bible or even of the New Testament, though there may have been translations of short passages in monasteries and similar places.⁶ The statement of Ibn-Isḥāq⁷ that Waraqa ibn-Nawfal, the cousin of Muḥammad’s wife Khadīja, was a Christian and knew the books, could only mean that he had read some of the Bible in Syriac or had had it read to him. A number of Meccan merchants, including Muhammad, had travelled to Gaza and Damascus in the Byzantine Empire, and some to Christian Abyssinia; but such persons would generally learn only about the external features of Christianity unless they were specially interested. There were also some Byzantine Christians in Mecca from time to time, perhaps chiefly craftsmen. Something was known about Judaism in Mecca from the presence of Jewish clans in Medina and in various Arabian oases. Thus people in Mecca knew of the existence of the Jewish and Christian religions, but had little accurate information about them.

CHRISTIAN WEAKNESSES

For a due appreciation of the first encounter between Islam and Christianity it is necessary for Christians to be aware of the weaknesses of the Christianity of that period. There are three main points.

In the first place Orthodox Christianity, that is, the Great Church in general, was too closely associated with the Byzantine Empire after it became the official religion of the Empire in the reign of Constantine. Had the Meccans become Christians, they would inevitably have become in some respects subject to the Byzantines. For the sake of their trading interests, however, it was important for them to maintain neutrality between the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires. About 590 or a little later a Meccan called ‘Uthmān ibn al-Ḥuwayrith, who had become a Christian, apparently tried to get the Meccans to accept him as a kind of prince by saying he could get special privileges for them from the Byzantines; and it may well have been the religious aspect as well as his pretensions to lordship which made them reject his proposal.⁸

In the second place, official Greek theology as defined by the ecumenical councils had become much too abstract and was completely beyond the grasp of the ordinary Christian. The Monophysites and Nestorians, in defending their positions against the official formulations, had also become somewhat abstract. This meant that any Christians whom the Meccans were likely to meet would be incapable of explaining the subtleties of Christian doctrine. It is not surprising that inadequate and erroneous ideas about Christianity were current in Mecca, but this is something for which Christians themselves were responsible.

Last, the rejection of the Copts, Jacobites and Nestorians by the Great Church was almost certainly a factor facilitating the conversion to Islam of members of these groups. Essentially the decision of the Great Church that these were heretics was a failure to make due provision for cultural diversity among Christians. Christians today should be thinking seriously about the fact that in its homelands their religion has virtually been replaced by Islam, and should be asking whether God has brought this about because of Christian failures.

Chapter 2

The Qur’ānic perception of Christianity

THE GENERAL CONCEPTION OF PROPHETHOOD

The Qur’ānic perception of other religions in general and of Judaism and Christianity in particular is inevitably dependent on the level of historical understanding current in Mecca and the rest of Arabia about AD 600; and this level was distinctly low. The Arabs had no written historical documents. There were some inscriptions from earlier kingdoms, but it is doubtfu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 The Christianity encountered by Islam
• 2 The Qur’ānic perception of Christianity
• 3 The elaboration of Qur’ānic perceptions
• 4 The encounter with Greek philosophy
• 5 Encounters under Muslim rule
• 6 Encounters with medieval Europe
• 7 The background of the modern encounter
• 8 The modern encounter
• 9 Towards the future
• Notes
• Index