Presenting Christ to Muslims

Mark Beaumont

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912343973
• eBook ISBN: 9781913363192
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

This is an abridged version of Mark Beaumont's Regnum book, Christology in Dialogue with Muslims. It presents an analysis of Christian presentations of Christ for Muslims in the most creative period of Christian-Muslim dialogue, the first half of the ninth and the second half of the twentieth century. In these two historical moments, Christians made a serious effort to present their faith in Christ in terms that take into account Muslim perceptions of him, with a view to bridging the gap between Muslim and Christian convictions produced by Muslim rejection of Christ's divine sonship and the death of Christ by crucifixion.

The Christologies of Kenneth Cragg, John Hick, Hans Küng and Sīra al-Masīh, and Muslim Response

The two questions asked of the ninth century apologists in chapter six may be profitably posed to their twentieth century equivalents. Firstly, what developments in Christology can be observed as a result of engagement with the Islamic context? Secondly, what impact did these presentations of Christology have on Muslims? The answer to the first question in the ninth century apologetics was little development in content but a considerable effort to defend established Christology in terms that Muslims might find acceptable. The answer now is similar. Cragg, Hick and Küng do not alter their Christologies to any extent in the Islamic context, but they do attempt to defend their established views in ways that might be understood by Muslims. Sīra al-Masīh, however, is more an original appoach to Christology from within an Islamic context, rather than an already established view applied to it. The answer to the second question can be found in the dialogue partners of the three modern apologists. Only Hick’s Christology is enthusiastically received for his acceptance of Islamic premises for the interpretation of Christ’s significance.

The Christology of Kenneth Cragg

Cragg presents to Muslims the incarnation and atonement as essentially true for them as much as for Christians. From The Call of the Minaret to Jesus and the Muslim he believes that Muslims need to believe in the revelation of God in Christ rather than merely the speech of God in Christ’s mouth. In his dialogue with al-Farūqī, Cragg puts forward the argument about personal revelation in incarnation as essential for Muslims to accept. The central point of Jesus and the Muslim is ‘truth through personality’ though he acknowledges that the notion is difficult for Muslims to accept.

He presses Muslims to accept that personal revelation is the only means of divine identification with sinful humanity. But this focus on the atonement comes up against the fact that the death of Christ is denied by the Qur’ān. Christians should proclaim that the cross is not the failure of God’s prophet, but the door to victory over all that might defeat God’s rule in the world he made. At the heart of personal revelation is the forgiveness of sin. If according to Islam God forgives without the cost of coming into relationship with sinful humans, then that forgiveness is not nearly so profound as that which is offered through the death of the Incarnate Christ.

Future dialogue would be better served by avoiding such direct assault on Islamic thought, perhaps by arguing that God was under no necessity to forgive through the cross, but that he chose to show his compassion to humanity through the death of Christ. Cragg does speak for the vast majority of Christians who uphold the Apostolic convictions of the incarnation and atonement and they will continue to find inspiration from his determined efforts to persuade Muslims that God was in Christ reconciling humans to himself.

The Christology of John Hick

Hick’s Christology is much more likely to be received warmly by Muslims than Cragg’s since Jesus is aligned with other prophets in status, but at the same time is unlikely to be accepted by most Christians who view Christ as much more than a prophet. In the final analysis, by confining Christ to being an exemplar for the spiritual experience of others, Hick parts company with mainstream Christians who continue to uphold the incarnation and atonement as true, and therefore he does not represent majority Christian opinion in dialogue with Muslims. Hick’s pioneering Christology leaves him exposed on the fringes of Christianity with the result that he can only speak for a small number of like-minded theologians. Thus while providing an attractive portrait of Christ from a Muslim point of view, Hick may mislead Muslims into thinking that he is in the vanguard of a new approach to Christology that will become increasingly accepted by other Christians when this is unlikely to be the case.

The Christology of Hans Küng

Küng comes somewhere between Cragg and Hick in his estimation of Christ. He believes that the incarnation was an Apostolic overlay on the much more modest claims of Jesus of Nazareth, who was proclaimed Son of God only after his death and resurrection. Certainly, Küng’s desire to eliminate ontology from Christology is likely to find a warm response from Muslims, but his denial of the Apostolic faith in the essentially divine character of Christ distances him from most Christians.

Like Cragg he thinks history must win the argument over theology, though unlike Cragg he does not insist that God’s forgiveness comes through the historical event of the death of Christ. Forgiveness may be granted by God to Muslims without the mediation of Christ’s death as a sacrifice for sin, so the value of Christ’s death lies rather in the expession of God’s love in the self-giving of Jesus, and the assurance that God is involved in human suffering to bring new meaning and hope.

Küng then rejects Cragg’s insistence on the incarnation and atonement as essential to Christology and to ongoing relations with Muslims. On the other hand, he disagrees with Hick’s reading of Jesus’ attitude to Jewish law, and to his setting aside of the death of Jesus. Both of these details from the gospels must be upheld by Christians as historical facts and cannot merely be regarded as interpretations of Jesus’ life that are negotiable because Muslims do not approve. On the contrary, one of the tasks of genuine dialogue between Christians and Muslims is to get consensus on the facts of history, and Muslims have to be persuaded that this is essential to good relations between the two faith communities.

Like Hick, Küng has been interested in relationships between Christians and people of many different faiths rather than merely Christian relations with Muslims, so his Christology reflects this wider audience. Küng’s Christology departs from mainstream Catholic doctrine which continues to insist on the incarnation and atonement as essential to faith in Christ, and therefore his ability to represent his own church community in dialogue with Muslims is put in question.

The Christology of Sīra al-Masīh

The Christ of Sīra al-Masīh is similar to the Christ of the gospels in many respects. He performs the same miracles, tells the same stories, makes similar authoritative pronouncements in God’s name, and sets himself on a collision course with Jewish leaders that leads to his arrest and crucifixion. However, he rarely calls God his Father and never refers to himself as Son of man. His followers never call him Son of God as they often do in the gospels. Sīra’s Christ has no identity of being with God, although he does appear to have an eternal relationship with him. Without doubt Sīra has presented a form of incarnation tailored to Muslim sensibilities over ideas of sonship. This imaginative reshaping of the gospel story avoids the need to advance an apologetic for traditional gospel language as Cragg and Küng have done.

Sīra has gone beyond anything seen in the history of Christian-Muslim dialogue. Cragg and Küng stand outside the Islamic world in their thinking, and do not hesitate to judge the Qur’ān as containing an erroneous portrait of Christ. Sīra is composed from within the Islamic world by Christians fully aware of the reality of life as a minority in an Islamic milieu. Only Sīra, among modern presentations of Christ for Muslims, has accepted the full responsibility of speaking about Christ in terms that Muslims may receive without instantly rejecting as unsound. Muslims may well find this portrait congenial to their perceptions of Christ in such a way that they are enabled to see the fuller life of Christ found in the gospels as completing the summary details in the Qur’ān.

The very telling of the story makes use of Islamic language to suggest to Muslim readers another interpretation of the denial of Christ’s death. Still, the denial of the crucifixion may not so easily be undone by Sīra’s transformation of negation to affirmation and the basic contradiction between gospel testimony and Qur’ānic counter-claim remains a continuing problem for Christian-Muslim dialogue.

Nevertheless, Sīra has not replaced standard translations of the gospels in Arabic, and therefore has a limited role among Arabic speaking Christians. Whether such a contextual version of the gospels can become more widely accepted by Christians remains to be seen. In other words, Arab Muslims, who may be drawn to the Christ presented in Sīra, are still faced with the traditional portrait prized by Arab Christians as a whole with all the problems inherent in the established versions of the gospels that Sīra has attempted to overcome. Once again, creative theology in dialogue comes up against traditional modes of expressing faith held by the majority to be essential.

Muslim Responses to Christian Views of Christ in the Twentieth Century

The Muslim dialogue partners of Cragg and Küng, al-Farūqī and Nasr, both base their understanding of Christ on the Qur’ānic portrait. Cragg’s challenge to al-Farūqī to make room for the possibility of incarnation as part of God’s freedom of action is met by the warning that God has revealed in the Qur’ān that certain divine actions are inconceivable as contradictory to the character of God. Christ must be seen as human but not divine.

Nasr objects to Küng’s criticisms of the Qur’ān by asserting that for all Muslims without exception the whole of the Qur’ān is the word of God and not just certain parts of it. If Christians want to dialogue with Muslims then they will have to adhere to this principle, otherwise no serious conversation can take place.

The approach of Cragg and Küng to the Qur’ān is not likely to be the best way forward for twenty-first century dialogue between Christians and Muslims, because any direct challenge to the authority of the Qur’ān simply frustrates genuine dialogue. A more fruitful approach to dialogue could arise if Christians were to develop concepts and arguments for their Christology from the teaching of the Qur’ān in the way that Sīra has done.

Conclusion

Developments in Christology are seen in the way Islamic concerns are addressed by the Chris...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Content
• Introduction
• The Islamic Context for Dialogue on Christology
• The Beginning of Dialogue on Christology in the Eighth Century
• The Christology of Theodore Abū Qurra in Dialogue with Muslims
• The Christology of Habīb ibn Khidma Abū Rā’iṯa in Dialogue with Muslims
• The Christology of `Ammār al-Basrī in Dialogue with Muslims
• The Christologies of Abū Qurra, Abū Rā’iṯa and `Ammār al-Basrī and Muslim Response
• New Beginnings in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
• The Christology of Kenneth Cragg in Dialogue with Muslims
• The Christologies of John Hick and Hans Küng in Dialogue with Muslims
• The Portrait of Christ in Sīra al-Masīh
• The Christologies of Kenneth Cragg, John Hick, Hans Küng and Sīra al-Masīẖ, and Muslim Response
• Conclusion Prospects for Dialogue on Christology
• Short Bibliography
• BCover