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Prologue: Christian-Muslim Theological Dialogue in Retrospect
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xvii Four historical models of Christian theological engagement with Islam represent a broad spectrum across which Christian theologians have accounted for the church’s relationships with Islamic thought as they have perceived it. The four are the polemical, the Scholastic, the Christianinclusivist , and the dialogical. john of damascus and the polemical model John of Damascus (c. 655–750), sometimes called the last of the classical church fathers, is a fine example of a polemical model. His message to Muslims is that he hears what they are saying and finds that he must take serious account of their rationale, if largely in self-defense and in reaction against a hostile claim. For John, it is clear that what Muslims are reported to hold does not comport with the truth and must therefore be condemned and revealed for the distortion it represents. John instinctively regards Islam as a competitor, either as a Christian heresy or as an upstart heathen creed. His basic assumption is that there is a right belief, and all other belief systems are to be defined in relation to that norm. John’s theological worldview did not arise out of a vacuum. Before taking a closer look at John of Damascus, a bit of historical Prologue Christian-Muslim Theological Dialogue in Retrospect xviii | Prologue context will be useful. A number of seventh- and eighth-century Middle Eastern Christian treatments of Muhammad and Islam are surprisingly positive . The earliest account, Armenian bishop Sebeos’s History of Heraclius (finished c. 661, the year of the commencement of the Umayyad dynasty), is remarkably generous, attributing to Muhammad a thorough knowledge of Mosaic law and acknowledging a general moral uprightness in his teaching. As such, his account represents, in John Moorhead’s view, “not merely a re-telling of what the Arabs believed concerning the status of their religion, but an implicit endorsement of the status they claimed for it.” Moorhead attributes Sebeos’s few negative comments to political rather than theological interests. An anonymous Nestorian monk writing within the next ten years or so likewise acknowledges firm biblical precedent for Islam and the Prophet. About a century later we find the Monophysite Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre virtually applauding Muhammad’s solid stance for morality and monotheism, and against idolatry.1 A number of documents from the seventh and eighth centuries do indeed roundly condemn Muslims and their Prophet on theological grounds. For example, some argue that Muslims do not worship the true God, because they do not acknowledge the divinity of Jesus. But it will perhaps come as a surprise that as late as the twelfth century generally positive assessments of Islam by Middle Eastern Christian theologians seem to outnumber the blanket condemnations. A twelfth-century Jacobite patriarch of Antioch named Michael the Syrian represents one of the latest such evaluations. Were these authors expressing their true convictions, or merely sugar— coating their opinions in fear of their Muslim rulers? Moorhead argues that because they wrote not in Arabic, but in Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic, they would surely have felt free enough to be straightforward. But what of John of Damascus, whose family served the Umayyad caliph in the administration of Damascus and whose own grandfather and father had risen to high rank in fiscal and military matters? Daniel Sahas observes: Studying John of Damascus as a real person, living and reasoning with his own people and with the Muslim settlers in his home city . . . discloses one of the most serious originators of the Muslim-Christian dialogue; a pioneer mind of distinguishing qualities, such as personal objective knowledge and sensitivity, which one finds generally missing from later Christian representatives. . . . [His example allows one to] trace the origins of some of the grossest misunderstandings which have shaped the attitude of one religion toward the other.2 The decree of the Iconoclastic Synod of 754, ironically, condemned John not only for his iconolatry, but for being “Saracen-minded” (sarrakenophroni), slapping him with a total of four anathemas. The epithet had been applied [44.195.47.227] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:45 GMT) Prologue | xix to a number of famous iconoclasts, including Leo III, which was more readily understandable, since he seemed to be acting in sympathy with the iconoclastic preferences of the caliph Yazid II; but why was John labeled a Saracen sympathizer? Evidently because the synod’s constituents regarded John’s background as tainted by his living among Muslims. John’s grandfather , already a high official in Byzantine administration...