“Unity and Harmony” with Islam?: Correspondence on the Abrahamic Heritage Overture (Part I)

Written by Michael R. Walker

Friday, 09 June 2006 00:00

Below is some of my initial written correspondence with Bob Donaldson, a PC(USA) elder who helped develop the Abrahamic Heritage overture coming to the 217th General Assembly of the PC(USA). That overture is an attempt to establish a basis for dialogue between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. PFR does not support the overture in its current form, and you can see our official views by reading our advice on that overture at www.GA2006.com. Bob wrote to me, responding to PFR’s advice on the overture, and that started a nice little dialogue of our own. Bob and I both thought the rest of the church might benefit from seeing our correspondence.Please keep in mind that, for both of us, these are quickly-written letters about a serious subject. They were not word-smithed or edited. And we are barely scratching the surface. This post contains two of Bob’s letters, and one of mine (in between his). My response to Bob’s second letter is in a second post.

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Bob’s letter, which he wrote after reading PFR’s Advice on the Abrahamic Heritage overture he developed:

Dear Michael,

I read the thoughtful position paper on the Overture. However, I think that it misses the point in the fourth paragraph. As I read it, the Overture is addressing the who we worship, not the how. If we get into the how, it will become a futile effort. Just as you and I represent ourselves to be Christians, I sincerely doubt that, if we had time to explore how you and I worship, we would be in complete agreement. Does this mean that we are not to be counted as members of Christ’s flock?

Also, if all three religions profess one true God, how can there be a difference? Pope Pius II (1458-64) had occasion to write to Ottoman Sultan Muhammad II (Also known as Mehmet the Conqueror, 1451-81). At one point in the part of the letter dealing with religious questions, the Pope wrote:

“There are many points of Agreement between Christians and Muslims: one God, the creator of the world; a belief in the necessity for faith; a future life of rewards and punishments; the imortality of the sould; the common use of the Old and New Testament; all this is common ground. We only differ about the nature of God.” (R.W Southern, “Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages” [Harvard Univ. Press., 1962], p. 99, also cited in Rollin Armour, “Islam, Christianity, and the West: A Troubled History [Orbis Books, 2002], pp. 109-110).

As Presbyterians, why can’t we at least move to try to establish a basis for dialog with our Muslim bretheren? There is no doubt that the wording of the Overture can be improved. Wouldn’t that be better than rejecting it out of hand. We desperately need to establish a basis of dialog and need to be careful that we don’t diminish our faith in doing so.

I will appreciate your comments.

Yours in Christ,

Bob Donaldson

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My Response to Bob’s letter:

Dear Bob,

This is a difficult subject and, like you, I believe it is one that requires a good deal of our attention, and that we need to make every effort to establish a good basis for dialogue with Muslims (and Jews). I think the best thing for us to do would be to have a conversation about this. But let me offer a few brief comments in response to your earlier note.

The two things you indicated as being different about Muslims and Christians are extremely important things that are at the very center of the Christian faith, namely the “how” of worship (through Christ) and the nature of God (as the Father of our Lord Jesus). De-centralize these, and we are no longer Christian. So the question for me is, how can we, as Christians, engage in peaceful dialogue with Muslims? I am convinced that the answer is not to say that Muslims, too, worship the God and Father of Jesus, like we do. In fact, for Muslims who take their faith seriously, that would be rather offensive, far from a good basis for peaceful dialogue. That platform for inter-religious dialogue has been tried, and it was found to be based on a peculiarly Western and modern (and many would say “liberal”) understanding of the nature of religious belief, namely that we are all groping after the same thing (”God”) but in different ways or forms and with different holy books arising from different cultures, etc. We are all basically the same, “unity and harmony,” and the form of our religious beliefs ought not separate us.

It has seemed to many, and I think rightly so, that such an approach is ironically rather imperialistic — imposing secular and modern Western assumptions about the nature of religious belief onto those who genuinely believe that God (or Allah) has discernibly revealed himself in a very distinctive way, i.e. orthodox believers don’t think we are groping in the dark and have invented our own forms, but that God has shown us how and through whom to worship. In other words, this older platform for inter-religious dialogue doesn’t respect orthodox Christians or orthodox Muslims (and most Christians and most Muslims are orthodox, in the sense intended here).

The other, more fruitful approach would be to respect our differences and admit that our differences, while not preventing us from proselytizing each other, ought to prevent us from killing each other. This is admittedly easier for Christians, because the teachings of Jesus lend themselves to peace more readily than some dominant strands of the Koran, but many Muslims do tell me that they believe their orthodox faith leads them to peaceful co-existence with us [note: see my clarification of this comment in the next post]. And so we talk about differences peacefully, rather than denying our differences as an attempt to be peaceful.

I guess I’m just saying here that peace begins with respect of the other, and respect of the other means respecting the other’s differences, rather than making presumptions that may turn out to be more harmful than helpful.

Those are my off the cuff thoughts at least.

God bless you brother.

Michael Walker

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Bob’s Response:

Michael,

Thank you for your interesting reply.

I certainly agree with your first premise, “that we need to make every effort to establish a good basis for dialog with Muslims (and Jews).” It behooves all of us to focus on establishing a dialog in good faith. Given that, where do we begin?

I firmly believe that Overture 40 is the place to start. Why? Because endorsement by the PCUSA of its premises provides a credential that will:

- underline our sincerity,
- indicate that we are being proactive in promoting peace, and
- provide a vehicle to initiate dialog on a broader basis.

I am a bit puzzled by your term, “de-centralize” in the second paragraph. Perhaps you can clarify that. And, in particular, how that concept would result in our no longer being Christians. “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?”

How can we suggest that Muslims, by worshiping the same God that we do, are not, in fact, worshiping the Father of Jesus Christ? Certainly they recognize that this is the case. They acclaim that Allah is the Father of all. They just don’t accept the divinity of Jesus. Why does any dialog for creating peace with Muslims have to dwell on this difference? It seems to me that the intent of Overture 40 [Abrahamic Heritage] is to get past that difference. In my dialogs with Muslims (and there are numerous ones in progress), they have discussed this difference and do not take offense. Moreover, they continually stress that they accept Jesus as a prophet and point to Surah XIX Maryam (Mary) in the Qur’an that is about the mother of Jesus.

Rather than making assumptions about the nature of religious belief where opinions may vary drastically (as you and I are discovering), the Overture emphasizes points on which there is total agreement; orthodoxy is not an issue.

Finally, a look at history does not show that “Christians” have been peaceful. If it is so easy, and if your Muslim friends tell you - as mine tell me - that their faith leads them to peaceful co-existance with us, then the passage of the Overture will send them a strong signal that we believe that too. What a great foundation to build on! The downside consequences of not approving the Overture are something that I do not even want to contemplate. I assume that you will be in Birmingham. I wish that I was going to be there to meet you, to continue this interesting dialog in person and to see how this all plays out.

I will look forward to your further comments.

Yours in Christ,

Bob

For my response to Bob’s letter, see part two of this series on the Abrahamic Heritage correspondence.

The Notebook

Calvin quotes

Here are a few quotes from Calvin's Institutes that I selected for inclusion in a church magazine to reflect the basic posture of Calvin's piety, oriented as it is toward magnifying the glory of God and subordinating self-concern. Unfortunately these don't convey the Christological centered-ness of his piety, but they convey where Christ leads us by the Spirit:

"We are consecrated and dedicated to God in order that we may thereafter think, speak, meditate, and do, nothing except to his glory."

"We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God's: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God's: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God's: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal."

"We ought to we seek not the things that are ours but those which are of the Lord's will and will serve to advance his glory. This is also evidence of great progress: that, almost forgetful of ourselves, surely subordinating our self-concern, we try faithfully to devote our zeal to God and his commandments. For when Scripture bids us leave off self-concern, it not only erases from our minds the yearning to possess, the desire for power, and the favor of men, but it also uproots ambition and all craving for human glory and other more secret plagues. Accordingly, the Christian must surely be so disposed and minded that he feels within himself it is with God he has to deal throughout his life. In this way, as he will refer all he has to God's decision and judgment, so will he refer his whole intention of mind scrupulously to Him. For he who has learned to look to God in all things that he must do, at the same time avoids all vain thoughts. This, then, is that denial of self which Christ enjoins with such great earnestness upon his disciples at the outset of their service."

Ecclesiology and the Cartesian Turn

Janos Pasztor offers a packed summary of some of the ecclesiological consequences of the so-called "Cartesian turn" - the rise of the anthropological starting point -- and often endpoint -- in the pursuit of knowledge that became dominant among philosophers in the 18th century and has characterize "Modern" thought):

"Theology itself was very considerably influenced by this development. It was a 180-degree turn: it began losing its theocentric character and became more and more anthropocentric. For these kinds of theologies it was not God who would come to man addressing him in his life-giving Word, but man would make attempts to approach God by means of an intellectual enterprise. A late twentieth-century representative of this trend of thought says: 'God is the object of my consciousness which I perceive in so far as I perceive something, that is I allot him a place within the framework of a sign-system, in order to be able to talk to others about this matter.' Consequently, the church is the people, who, by virtue of having accepted the common sign-system, are seeking common answers to the meaning of existence.

"These trends of thought, however respectable they might have been otherwise, have rejected most of the things the Reformers stood for. The divine Logos, the eternal Son, 'true God from true God, begotten not made, of one Being with the Father,' became the Logos of the philosophers, a principle and idea, or a set of thoughts. As Blaise Pascal put it, here one has to deal with the God of the philosophers instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus Christ. Instead of listening obedience to the Word of God, one meets the rule of reason in rationalism; instead of the freedom of God's liberated children, one gets the freedom of the individual thinker in liberailsm. These ideas had a devastating effect on the field of Christology. They brought about what has been termed by Hungarian theologians, a Unitarian theology in everything but name."

"...the church is nothing but one of the many human organizations dealing with issues like religion and morals."

"....For people with that kind of idea, catholicity meant 'as opposed to confessional catholicity...the universal kingdom of spirit, but something other than the Holy Spirit,' if it meant anything at all."

Janos Pasztor, "The Catholicity of Reformed Theology," Toward the Future of Reformed Theology (Eerdmans, 1999), p. 29.

Recovering the Wounded: Healing a Church in Exile

Psalm 147:2: "The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel."

Commenting on this verse, Calvin expreses confidence that God would ultimately restore the Church from the ruinous state that formed so much of Calvin's own life:

"In calling God the former and architect of the Church, his object is to make us aware that by his power it remains in a firm condition, or is restored when in ruins. Hence he infers that it is in his power and arbitrament to gather those who have been dispersed. Here the Psalmist would comfort those miserable exiles who had been scattered in various quarters, with the hope of being recovered from their dispersion, as God had not adopted them without a definite purpose into one body. As he had ordered his temple and altar to be erected at Jerusalem, and had fixed his seat there, the Psalmist would encourage the Jews who were exiles from their native country, to entertain good hope of a return, intimating that it was no less properly God’s work to raise up his Church when ruined and fallen down, than to found it at first. It was not, therefore, the Psalmist’s object directly to celebrate the free mercy of God in the first institution of the Church, but to argue from its original, that God would not suffer his Church altogether to fall, having once founded it with the design of preserving it for ever; for he forsakes not the work of his own hands.

This comfort ought to be improved by ourselves at the present period, when we see the Church on every side so miserably rent asunder, leading us to hope that all the elect who have been adjoined to Christ’s body, will be gathered unto the unity of the faith, although now scattered like members torn from one another, and that the mutilated body of the Church, which is daily distracted, will be restored to its entireness; for God will not suffer his work to fail.

In the following verse he insists upon the same truth, the figure suggesting that though the Church labor under, and be oppressed by many diseases, God will speedily and easily recover it from all its wounds. The same truth, therefore, is evidently conveyed, under a different form of expression — that the Church, though it may not always be in a flourishing condition, is ever safe and secure, and that God will miraculously heal it, as though it were a diseased body."

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