Atonement and Comparative Theology

The Cross in Dialogue with Other Religions

Catherine Cornille

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780823294343, 9780823294350
• eBook ISBN: 9780823294367
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

The central Christian belief in salvation through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ remains one of the most intractable mysteries of Christian faith. Throughout history, it has given rise to various theories of atonement, many of which have been subject to critique as they no longer speak to contemporary notions of evil and sin or to current conceptions of justice. One of the important challenges for contemporary Christian theology thus involves exploring new ways of understanding the salvific meaning of the cross.In Atonement and Comparative Theology, Christian theologians with expertise in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and African Religions reflect on how engagement with these traditions sheds new light on the Christian understanding of atonement by pointing to analogous structures of sin and salvation, drawing attention to the scandal of the cross as seen by the religious other, and re-interpreting aspects of the Christian understanding of atonement. Together, they illustrate the possibilities for comparative theology to deepen and enrich Christian theological reflection.

Why Atonement?

Who Needs It?

ATONEMENT IN MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN THEOLOGICAL ENGAGEMENT

Daniel A. Madigan, S.J.

The place of the study of Islam within the “field” of Christian comparative theology is unique in various ways. Islam, like Rabbinic Judaism, offers a reading of the biblical and post-biblical tradition distinctly different from that proposed by the Christian tradition. Though it is of doubtful value to lump all three together under the rubric “Abrahamic,” there is no escaping the fact that we inhabit the same world of discourse, and therefore Christian theology ignores these challenging voices to its own detriment.

Those of us in the “field” know how enriching for our theologizing is the careful attention we pay to the voice of the other, and this is particularly the case with Muslim voices, because Islam emerges from the Late-Antique religious matrix in which the key elements of Christian faith were still matters of active and often contentious debate.¹ Indeed, the Qur’ān and the early Islamic tradition bear witness to the fact that, in the seventh century, Christians had still not yet found a convincing, or even comprehensible, way to proclaim their faith in the God of Jesus Christ to the many who were prepared to believe in the God of Abraham and to recognize in the history of the People of Israel—including in the mission of Jesus—a privileged locus of God’s engagement with humanity.

It is still the case today, sadly, that even the good-faith questions posed by Muslims, to say nothing of the polemical challenges that are often aired, tend to meet with the same unconvincing answers because our theologizing and our catechesis so often take place, if not in a closed circuit, at least in a world in which the major interlocutor is still too often the skepticism of modernity rather than the world of diverse living faiths. In the classroom, it becomes clear that what distinguishes Muslim students from Christians is not so much the particular questions they have about some central aspects of Christian faith, but the fact that the Muslims are ready to ask those (perfectly legitimate) questions out loud. The Christians often hesitate to probe too deeply lest the questions seem impious, or worse, lest they fail to find a convincing response.

Much of the vocabulary that clusters around the notion of atonement—“redemption,” “expiation,” “ransom”—finds little place in the Qur’ān and the Islamic tradition. To be sure, there are a number of words we might translate as “save” or “salvation,” yet the configuration of these concepts is quite distinct from Christian Arabic usage.² As is well known, the Qur’ān denies at least the significance and perhaps even the very historicity of the death of Jesus. His cross—if, indeed, it was him on the cross—certainly plays no role in God’s engagement with humanity. Although the Qur’ān recognizes both the murderous intent of Jesus’s enemies, and his own readiness to accept the consequences of obedience to his mission, whatever took place seems to be read as a failure on Jesus’s part, one that required divine intervention.³ According to Ismaʿil Raji al-Faruqi, Islamic soteriology is “the diametrical opposite of that traditional Christianity. Indeed, the term ‘salvation’ has no equivalent in the religious vocabulary of Islam. There is no saviour and there is nothing from which to be saved. Man and the world are either positively good or neutral, but not evil.”⁴ For al-Faruqi, “Falāḥ, or the positive achievement in space and time of the divine will, is the Islamic counterpart of Christian ‘deliverance’ and ‘redemption.’ ” Although he states it more forcefully than most, al-Faruqi’s position is not unrepresentative of a substantial part of the tradition:

Islam holds man to be not in need of any salvation. Instead of assuming him to be religiously and ethically fallen, Islamic daʿwah acclaims him as the khalīfah of Allah, perfect in form, and endowed with all that is necessary to fulfil the divine will, indeed even loaded with the grace of revelation!⁵

Al-Faruqi sees this position as thoroughly modern and he encourages Christians to embrace it: “For modern Muslims and Christians the way out of the predicament of sin is in human rather than divine hands. Salvation is achieved by continuous education and each person must educate himself.”⁶ It is not just that the claimed atonement in Christ is deemed ineffective; in a “modern” mindset it is considered unnecessary. Damian Howard notes that Christian theology has already had experience with a similar condemnation of pessimistic views of sin in its engagement with secular modernity, which shares with al-Faruqi a similarly optimistic anthropology. We have responded, says Howard, “by stressing the value and goodness of human agency and the hope for humanity which comes in salvation through Christ.”⁷ However, he adds, the challenge for theology in this climate of perhaps inexplicable optimism about the human is “to ensure that the glory of the Cross is not lost from sight,”⁸ that it is not simply jettisoned as surplus to requirement.

One of the most often repeated claims regarding the theological anthropology of Islam is: “There is no original sin in Islam.” It is said by some, as we have seen, that there is no need of a savior, no need for atonement. These negations usually involve several elements. The following are some of the more important:

1. The Criticism that Christian theology is overly pessimistic and fails to recognize the goodness of God’s human creation.
2. The charge that too much is made of the single transgression of Adam and his wife—such a small matter could not have had lasting consequences for all their offspring.
3. The questioning of any hereditary or social understanding of sin and guilt, with a concomitant stress on individual responsibility and culpability.
4. The affirmation that, like human transgression, divine forgiveness is a relatively straightforward matter. Forgiveness is a free act of divine sovereignty, costing God little, and so there is no need for a savior to effect for human beings something we are unable to do for ourselves.
5. The criticism that the supposed mechanism of redemption by the death of Jesus would only seem to multiply and deepen human sinfulness rather than heal it.
6. The objection that the Cross would seem to demonstrate the weakness rather than the power of God, who is inexplicably unable to save humanity without this maneuver.
7. The accusation that the Christian understanding of salvation short-circuits, as it were, the moral task and responsibility of the human person, that it leads too easily to an arrogant complacency about one’s ultimate fate, and so to a passivity in the face of the world’s needs.

As with most aspects of the Islamic critique of Christian faith, there are here salutary reminders about the possible traps into which Christian theologians may fall as we try to express what we believe about God and humanity. We do not want, after all, to merit the Qur’ān’s accusation, initially leveled against unbelievers, that “these people have no grasp of God’s true measure” (Q 39:67). Indeed, some Christian theologians also seek ways of understanding even the doctrine of atonement without any reference to original sin.⁹ It may also be the case, however, that the Christian affirmation of original sin has some questions to pose to the Islamic tradition. Some of these points of mutual questioning will pinpoint irreducible differences in our theological anthropologies—differences that make us who we are and that cannot be abandoned. The close consideration of other questions, however, may uncover some more elements in common than we are accustomed to acknowledging.

This chapter has three tasks: to identify and acknowledge valid Muslim critiques of some Christian understandings of sin and salvation; to sketch a theology of sin and atonement that steers its way between the various pitfalls to which the Islamic critique points and yet remains true to Christian tradition; and to examine whether the Qur’ān’s understanding of humanity’s situation is as one-dimensional as some would suggest, or whether the Qur’ān might, in fact, offer some insights that would render a Christian theological anthropology somewhat more recognizable to Muslims. Rather than approach these three tasks one at a time in sequence, let me take each of the points of critique and attempt all three tasks with regard to each of them. It is important, however, to make five introductory points.

First, sin and redemption should not be thought of as sequential, but rather as concomitant. Our alienation from God, and God’s activity to overcome that alienation so as to bring to fulfillment what God intended in creating us: both are continuing processes, and one does not simply finish when the other begins. As Rahner would put it, though we speak of them in temporal terms, one after the other, they exist in a circular relationship with each other. We cannot understand fully the nature of guilt except in the experience of being forgiven and of realizing from what we have been delivered.¹⁰ This is why it is difficult to speak of original sin in isolation from atonement (literally at-one-ment, that is, making one). This is a key point to which we will return because an important element of the critique we are considering is an understandable dissatisfaction with the idea of sin having been completely dealt with, and of atonement as a fait accompli.

Second, as Charles Adams puts it, “The centrality of man’s predicament as a sinner does not derive from logical considerations, nor even from the authority of revelation, but from the quality of life. If Christians speak of themselves as sinners, thi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Halft Title
• Introduction
• Why Atonement?
• Suffering and the Scandal of the Cross
• Rethinking Redemption
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Series List