The Mystery of Islam:
Further Reflections Stratford Caldecott |
The
article by Roch Kereszty O.Cist. in the Fall 2001
issue of Communio (“The
Word of God: A Catholic Perspective in Dialogue
with Judaism and Islam”) constitutes an
important step forward in the dialogue of
faith-perspectives, and deserves to be widely
read. My
own smaller piece in the second issue of Second
Spring on the same theme (“His Seed Like
Stars”), though conceived independently, did
little more than restate a few of Kereszty’s
points in more popular form for a mixed audience. The
response to it made me aware of the delicacy of
this dialogue, particularly in the wake of 11th
September and growing tensions in the Middle East,
not to mention the persecution of Christians in
some Muslim states.
Nevertheless, it is important, indeed
vitally important, that this dialogue continue,
and that we invite Muslims and Jews to join us in
discussing these fundamental issues. The
present contribution is an attempt to extend this
debate as far as possible, from within a
commitment to the full integrity of the Catholic
tradition. Evangelization depends upon both dialogue
and proclamation,[1] but neither
dialogue nor proclamation will be effective unless
Catholics are perceived by others as committed
above all to the search for truth. This commitment
logically precedes our commitment to the Catholic
faith itself. We are interested in truth per se,
and not just truths that will help persuade others
to our own point of view. We are interested in
truth wherever it may lead. [2]
We are Christians because we love the truth and
because we believe we have found its fullness in
Jesus Christ and in his Church, not because we
feel comfortable being Christians, or because our
ancestors were Christian - or for any other of a
million possible reasons. Elements
of Truth The
Second Vatican Council in the 1960s affirmed that
there were elements of truth and goodness in other
religions, and that those elements come from God. The
Council’s teaching was picked up in the 1998 Catechism
of the Catholic Church, and may be found in
sections 839-48 (see also 856). It was
repeated in the document Dominus Iesus,
issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith in 2000.
For example, Dominus Iesus makes
clear that “the salvific action of
Jesus Christ, with and through his Spirit, extends
beyond the visible boundaries of the Church to all
humanity”, and goes on to quote the Vatican
Council as follows: “For since Christ died for
all, and since all men are in fact called to one
and the same destiny, which is divine, we must
hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the
possibility of being made partners, in a way known
to God, in the paschal mystery”. It
reaffirms also that “it is the Spirit who sows
the ‘seeds of the word’ present in various
customs and cultures, preparing them for full
maturity in Christ.” The
implications of this are clear, and the document
does not shirk them, while at the same time
endeavouring to keep them in balance with the
essential point, namely the necessity of Christ
for human salvation. Section 21
states that: “it
would be contrary to the faith to consider the
Church as one way of salvation alongside those
constituted by the other religions, seen as
complementary to the Church or substantially
equivalent to her, even if these are said to be
converging with the Church toward the
eschatological kingdom of God. Certainly,
the various religious traditions contain and offer
religious elements which come from God, and which
are part of what ‘the Spirit brings about in
human hearts and in the history of peoples, in
cultures, and religions’. Indeed, some prayers
and rituals of the other religions may assume a
role of preparation for the Gospel, in that they
are occasions or pedagogical helps in which the
human heart is prompted to be open to the action
of God. One cannot attribute to these, however, a
divine origin or an ex opere operato salvific
efficacy, which is proper to the Christian
sacraments. Furthermore, it cannot be overlooked
that other rituals, insofar as they depend on
superstitions or other errors (cf. 1 Cor.
10:20-21), constitute an obstacle to salvation.” The
document wants us to be sure, as Catholics in
dialogue with the other religions, that those
other religions cannot be “salvific” apart
from Christ, that the Holy Spirit does not “save”
apart from Christ, and that Christ does not “save”
apart from the Church. In this
connection it is important to note the argument by
Augustine DiNoia OP that other religions do not
even claim to “save” in the sense that
Christ does.[3] Only
in Christ is it revealed that God has called us to
intimate and eternal union with him in the life of
the Holy Trinity - rather than to liberation from
ignorance, escape from suffering, dissolution into
God, or some other form of natural fulfillment. The word
“salvation” acquires this special meaning only
in Christian discourse. Nevertheless,
as the Church herself affirms, men and women may
be saved (even in the full Christian sense)
within other religions and even, perhaps, outside
formal religion altogether, if they are “ignorant”
of the Gospel “through no fault of their own”
(Catechism, 847). They are
saved, of course, by Christ, provided they remain
faithful to the truths and graces they have
received, though they may not know it during life. None of
this undermines in the slightest the Christian’s
mission and duty to evangelize; that is, to
attempt to convey to all peoples the otherwise
unguessable truth that has been revealed to us
concerning salvation through Christ from death and
evil. Only
the conscious recognition of Christ and
participation in the sacraments of the Church can
bring them directly to the source of their
salvation. (This
is underlined in Redemptoris Missio by Pope
John Paul II. A
Providential Role for Muhammad?
In
Section 21 of Dominus Iesus the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith states
that: “With
respect to the way in which the salvific grace of
God — which is always given by means of Christ
in the Spirit and has a mysterious relationship to
the Church — comes to individual non-Christians,
the Second Vatican Council limited itself to the
statement that God bestows it ‘in ways known to
himself’.
Theologians are seeking to understand
this question more fully. Their work
is to be encouraged, since it is certainly useful
for understanding better God’s salvific plan and
the ways in which it is accomplished.” Here we
come to an important point, potentially extremely
fruitful for the future of interfaith dialogue. The
emphasis in the following quotation is mine: “theology
today, in its reflection on the existence of other
religious experiences and on their meaning in God’s
salvific plan, is invited to explore if and in
what way the historical figures and positive
elements of these religions may fall within the
divine plan of salvation. In
this undertaking theological research has a vast
field of work under the guidance of the Church's
Magisterium.
The Second Vatican Council, in fact, has
stated that: ‘the unique mediation of the
Redeemer does not exclude, but rather gives rise
to a manifold cooperation which is but a
participation in this one source’. The content
of this participated mediation should be explored
more deeply, but must remain always consistent
with the principle of Christ’s unique mediation.” It is
clearly implied here that other religions
and prophets such as Muhammad may have a
role in God’s salvific plan (subordinate to that
of Christ). Christian
theologians are asked to explore this question,
and to come up with hypotheses of their own. What,
then, may be made of the providential role or “participated
mediation” of Islam? In the
case of the great religions, as distinct from the
various heresies within them, we have to take
account of the fact that they have not withered
after a few generations, but have successfully
inspired an entire civilization. Thus the
counsel of Gamaliel (Acts 5:33-9) would seem to
apply to them.
God, it seems, permits several religions to
exist, even though they conflict with each other. It is this
mystery that we must struggle to understand a bit
better. But
what hypothesis may be offered for a religion such
as Islam, that appears to contradict Christianity
on so many points, and whose followers are
actively persecuting Christian believers in many
parts of the world? A Religion of the Absolute As Fr Kereszty makes plain
in the article referred to, Islam and Christianity
may in fact be doctrinally closer than is
frequently assumed.[5] The
statements of the Qur’an which contradict
Christian doctrine may be mitigated to some extent
by noticing that they seem to be directed against
misunderstandings that were prevalent at the time
of Muhammad, particularly in the Jewish and
heretical Christian communities with which he may
have had most direct contact. Louis
Bouyer argued along these lines some years ago in
his book The Invisible Father. For Bouyer,
Islam is intelligible partly as a protest movement
directed against a Christian tendency towards
idolatry and tritheism. The “truth,
the original and lasting authenticity of the
prophetic element” in this protest is attested
by “the quality of the mysticism Islam has
nourished” ever since. Bouyer
looks forward to the time when the “Wedding of
the Lamb ... will consummate the truth of the
prophetic protest of Israel and of Islam, and do
this within the pure confession of a Christianity
which will have overcome every historical
temptation”.[6] If we look for the positive
religious content of Islam, instead of always
comparing it with Christianity to see how it falls
short, we find that one important function that
Islam has performed has been to preserve Abrahamic
monotheism into the post-Christian era, alongside
the Judaism that has rejected Christ, while
transforming that faith into a universal creed
open to all people – even the most
unsophisticated. The
creed of Islam is gloriously simple: There is
no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet. This does
not, of course, mean that Muhammad is regarded by
Islam as the only Prophet of God (his
actual title is “Seal of the Prophets”), but
it does lay a special emphasis on the Unity of
God. At
the heart of Islam is a kind of “contemplative
asceticism” focused on the Absolute as such. Kereszty writes, “Christians
cannot but acknowledge that God spoke through the
Qur’an and communicated the experience and
knowledge of himself to countless millions of
people”.[7] Islam is a
tree that has borne innumerable good fruits as
well as bad.
However, in order to concentrate on the
transcendence of God, Islam had perforce to
disentangle God from history. On this
basis it was able to accept Christ only in
diminished form, as a prophet rather than a divine
Incarnation.
From a Christian point of view I would
argue that much more has been lost than gained by
this. Allah
has many names - the Compassionate, the Merciful,
the Just, the Powerful, the Beautiful, and so on -
but too often “Love” appears not to be one of
them, whereas for Christians this is the one name
that really counts.
While Christianity is a religion of love,
Islam is a religion of the Absolute. Or rather,
it would be more accurate to say that in Islam the
identity of God as Love remains hidden, or “esoteric”
(to Sufis, of course, who are the mystics of
Islam, it is central). To the
ordinary Muslim, God is God: there can be
no Trinity, no Hypostatic Union, no divinization
of man. God
cannot have died on the Cross for us. Instead,
the gulf between man and God is overcome
politically, by attempting to establish a theocratic
state (as was done also in Islam’s “sibling”,
Judaism). Conclusion
If it is divinely permitted
by God for the Abrahamic monotheists to reject
Christ for a time - as it evidently is, despite
every Christian effort at evangelization, which
must continue till the very end and even in the
face of persecution - then Islam must exist as the
possibility, now actualized, of a semitic
monotheism active on the world stage as a rival to
Christianity, constituting for us both a scourge
and a challenge.
So be it.
The passages in the Old Testament where God
uses the pagan kings to rebuke Israel and to bring
about his purposes in history are there to confirm
this possibility.
Nevertheless (Kereszty
points out), Muslims believe that it is Jesus,
rather than Muhammad, who will come back at the
end of the world to institute the reign of God. For that
reason I suggested in the earlier article that
Islam may be seen as helping to prepare the world
for the Second Coming of Christ, alongside
rabbinic Judaism.
To Christians Islam, though chronologically
subsequent to the birth of Christ, appears to
belong to an earlier period of religious
development, one that has been extended in time
for reasons connected with the failure of
Christianity to be accepted by the Jews – a
divine “reprieve” for monotheism. Islam no
doubt requires its own purification before the
End. Of
that I am not qualified to speak. Nevertheless,
when Jesus does return, the Muslims, unlike
our Western atheists, will at least have been
taught to expect his arrival. The fact that Christ was an “Incarnation”
of God (not a mere Prophet, Manifestation or
Avatar)[8]
places him at the centre of history. No matter
how much of great value there may be in the other
religions, and whatever providential roles they
may be able to perform, they can only be
subordinate to a religion in which God is
completely united with man. The fact
of the Incarnation, however, can be known only
by faith, and is necessarily veiled from those
who are not Christian believers. A
Christian, on the other hand, is obliged by this
knowledge to take seriously the task of
evangelization, the purpose of which is to try to
convert others: by, for example, removing
obstacles that might be preventing them from
receiving God’s gift of faith. What should happen, then, were Christians to be successful in persuading or enabling all human beings to be baptized? Let us assume that the various religions (though of course I have been writing here mainly of Islam) do possess a "critical mass" of truth, goodness and beauty that makes them culturally valuable in their own right, and not simply valuable as a source of potential converts to Christianity. In something of the way we might imagine all remaining Orthodox Christians, at some indeterminate point in the future, uniting with the Catholic Church while retaining a somewhat separate liturgical rite and patriarchal jurisdiction, we might (even more distantly) envisage a flowing together of the world religions, but in a way that would preserve a diversity of cultures rather than subsume them all within a European matrix. The Catholic Church would gain immeasurably in the process, and would be transformed outwardly in tremendous and unpredictable ways.[9] Furthermore, nothing of real value in any of the religions or their associated cultures would need to be discarded. Cultural diversity would remain, but it would now be within the Church. And the wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion and the ox shall eat straw... (Isaiah 65:25).
That is the nearest I can
come to a formulation of the Christian
eschatological hope for the world religions. It is only
a thought-experiment: a kind of dream. The wisest
thing to do would be to leave the whole matter to
God. The
end of the story is his business: for our part, we
must simply concentrate on doing in the present
moment whatever we are called upon to do. If we are
Christians, we must evangelize. We must
love the Truth, which is God, above all things,
and our neighbour (even though he be of a
different faith) as much as we love ourselves. We must
walk the path that is before us, knowing the
direction, but not yet in sight of the end. [1] Dialogue and Proclamation is the title of an excellent document produced jointly by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in 1991, complementing the encyclical on the missions, Redemptoris Missio, by John Paul II in the previous year. [2] I think this is true of all Christians; nevertheless those who converted as adults, as the result of a search for truth and a conscious decision, may be more conscious of it than others. This is the reason converts are often despised (or smiled upon) for their "enthusiasm" – as though it will eventually wear off! So-called "cradle Catholics" who have never examined their faith closely with their adult intelligence may sometimes harbour a certain reluctance to do so, fearing that their faith might be weakened. They should not worry. [3]J.A. DiNoia OP, The Diversity of Religions: A Christian perspective (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1992. Cf. Gavin D’Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), which argues that “pluralist” approaches to inter-religious dialogue (Hick, Knitter, Panikkar, etc.) are marked by modernist and secularizing assumptions. [4] From Gertrude von Le Fort’s Hymns to the Church, trans. Margaret Chanler (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942), pp. 25-32. [5]In his popular book, Ecumenical Jihad (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996, p. 104), Peter Kreeft writes: “I suppose you know that the Qur’an attributes no shortcomings of any kind to Jesus. And that it says (3:59) that He was one of only two men who were immediately created by god, rather than having a human father. (The other was Adam.) And that it calls Jesus ‘the Word of God’ (4:171). And that it says He had the power to work miracles, even giving life to the dead (5:110). And that He shares with the angels the experience of being in God’s presence (4:172).” According to Kreeft, the Virgin Mary is mentioned 34 times in the Qur’an: more than any other woman. The devotion of many Muslims to Our Lady is well known. [6]Louis Bouyer, The Invisible Father: Approaches to the Mystery of Divinity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), p. 246. The great Catholic scholar Louis Massignon made a sympathetic study of Sufism, and in particular of the martyr Hallaj. Charles Journet also called attention to these Islamic mystics of love, so close to the heart of Christianity, in The Meaning of Grace (London: Chapman, 1960), last chapter. [7]He also points out that Catholic acceptance of this “inspiring activity of God in Muhammad” would not amount to an endorsement of the Qur’an as an inspired text on the same level as the Christian Scriptures. This is something I also assumed, but did not state. There is a qualitative distinction between a canonically inspired text of Scripture and the statement of a human individual, however “inspired” in the looser sense of that word. On private revelations, see Cathechism paras 65-67. [8]A Prophet is a man inspired by God, a Manifestation of God is a man whose whole life expresses as aspect of the divine, and an Avatar is a God who takes on the appearance of a man. The God-Man, on the other hand, is a human being but also a divine Person: the very concept is so unique that it only makes sense within the theological terms of reference that have been developed to account for the Incarnation within the Christian tradition. [9]In The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000, p. 133) Gavin D’Costa writes that “learning from other religions is not simply a matter of looking at the Other to see Christianity’s already attained mirror image (as the undialectical notion of fulfilment tended to suggest), but in meeting the Other, there may be a real challenge to Christian identity in the radical manner expressed in Gaudium et Spes 44. Hence, Christian practice and reflection may change in ways that are not a priori predictable in the light of encountering other religions.” D’Costa believes that the centrality of the doctrine of the Trinity makes possible for Christianity an extraordinary appreciation and praxis of diversity within unity.
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