Posted on Tuesday, April 1, 2003
For nearly 50 years I have admired the distinguished Christy family and its commitments to the Gospel and the mission of the Church in this country and across the world. I count it a special honor and privilege to be delivering this lecture. I wish to express my thanks to the Christy family and to all those responsible for this lectureship for inviting me and so graciously hosting us as a family on this occasion.
Our subject tonight is: Road Signs for a Journey with Islam (Denials, Dangers and Challenges in the New Century)
It seems that in each century since the 1700's a dominant ideology has appeared that has boldly pushed itself forward as a utopian vision for the salvation of the world.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, via Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hobbes, Hume and others, rationalism confidently presented itself as a solution to the major problems of humankind. The vision flourished, but did not fulfill its promise.
In the 19th century, with the building of European empires, there was a deep certainty in Western Europe and North America that Western culture, with its capacity for critical thinking, its industry, and its social and political structures, would gradually enlighten the world and make obsolete all wars and rumors of wars. It didn't happen.
In the 20th century the new "Messiah" was Marxism. That ideology was supremely confident that it held the key to history and destiny and would usher in the Golden Age. It also failed.
The 21st century appears to have two players determined to dominate the stage. Each enters that stage with a promise to solve the world's major problems. One is Western, secular democracy with its technology and free market capitalism. The other is the rapidly growing community of 1.3 billion Muslims who are very confident that, "Al-Islam, huwa al-Hall" (Islam is the answer). Answer to what? Islam feels it has the answers to the economic, political, social, religious, gender, and racial issues of our troubled planet.
The near total self-confidence that each of these communities exhibits on the world stage is astounding to contemplate when one has had in depth exposure to both. Neither is aware of the power and the rock-like self-assurance of the other. Neither is cognizant of the resources or commitments of the other and each is only very recently discovering the easy shift in each camp from utopian vision, to overt acts of violence.
Dr. Mary Mikhael, the President of the Near East School of Theology, in Beirut, Lebanon recently wrote that two events in 2001 changed the world. She sees the two as roughly equivalent in their long term significance. Each of them was a horrendous act of violence. The first was September 11, 2001 and the other occurred three weeks later on October 7. In North America the first date is seared forever into our memories. The second rings no bells at all. October
7, 2001, we ask? What happened on October 7? That was the day America began bombing Afghanistan. The major differences between the two events are that the second was more violent than the first, a greater number of people were killed in the aftermath and those who died represented a larger part of a much smaller population base. But we are Christians. What is the significance of these two dates for us?
For us there is separation of Church and state. Thus, we know that our Christian ethos and goals are distinct from those of the secular culture around us. Or, do we? To answer this question it is necessary to examine afresh the composition of the larger Christian community. For more than a thousand years the demographic center of the Christian population of the world has been located in Western Europe and North America. But this is no longer the case. In 1800, one percent of the active Christians on the planet lived in the Two-Third's World, of Africa, Asia, and South America. By the year 1900, 17% of global Christianity was located in that Two Third's World. But in the year 2000 the non-Western percentage of the active Christian family jumped to 65% and that percentage continues to grow. The last 50 years have witnessed this new and astounding Christian demographic shift. After a 1000 years of Western Christian dominance, suddenly, to be Christian is to be part of a worldwide faith that is predominantly non-Western.
Yes, there is a raging global confrontation between some parts of political and military Islam and the political and military centers of power in a few secular Western democracies. But I am convinced that the violent expressions of this devastating confrontation will cause more problems than they will solve, regardless of how they are played out. Our concern tonight is that there is a distinctively different aspect of the face off between Christianity and Islam that I choose to call "a journey with Islam," which, in the long run, may be the critical journey of contemporary history as it plays itself out across, at least, the next 100 years.
The pilgrimage I wish to briefly describe tonight is a journey that this multi-cultural, primarily non-Western Christian community of faith must inevitably make with Islam. In North America we are a small but influential part of that Christian band which is starting to pack its mental bags for such a journey. I want to point out a few signposts that call to us from the sides of the road.
Granted, if a Nigerian Christian were delivering this lecture different signs than those I have chosen would no doubt be highlighted. Yet, my intention is to look at the big picture in its global dimensions.
Having spent 40 years on that road already, I know it is a road with a past
whose signs need to be written on plain tablets " ... so that he who runs may read."
Yes, ... the vision awaits its time
it hastens to the end - it will not lie
If it seems slow, wait for it
it will surely come, it will not delay (as Habbakuk affirmed).
Some of these signs are faint, but are yet important, especially for activists who see the world's troubles as a series of problems for which there are instant solutions if one is but bold, brave, rich and powerful.
Some of these road signs are denials, others are signals of dangers that lie ahead, and a third category is comprised of a few neglected challenges that await us in the new century.
My angle of view for this journey is theological. Political, technological, cultural, economic and military forces are not even aware of the language required for this theological journey. This is a journey we must take, with Islam, not against Islam. Let us turn tonight, ever so briefly, to the three above mentioned types of road signs.
First: the denials.
Each of us is aware of the term, anti-semitism, a dark ugly force deeply embedded in Western Christian history that exhibits itself as an irrational fear and hatred of all things Jewish. Since the end of the Second World War, this evil force has been openly recognized, and great strides have been made to eliminate it, for which we should rejoice wholeheartedly as we continue our efforts in this direction.
But there is a second dark corner of our Western Christian psyche that has yet to be named and eradicated. I have given it a name and long for the day when this word, or its equivalent, becomes as well-known in the English language as the word anti-semitism. I have called it "anti-crescentism." By definition it means "An irrational fear and hatred of all things Muslim."
Yes, there are historical backgrounds to our fears and hatreds. Such fears often stem from deep within our history even though the details of that history may be long forgotten. It is as if we drink from a river on a mountainside that has chemical waste flowing into it at various distant points up the mountain, places that we have never seen and may know little about.
The seventh century Islamic conquests were deeply humiliating and excruciatingly painful for the entire Christian world. The anguish caused by those invasions still sears the consciousness of Eastern Christians. The Crusades were a short-lived and ineffectual response to those conquests. So the Muslim conquests and the European response, by way of the Crusades, were the first "tit-for-tat" between Islam and Christianity.
Then came the Islamic reaction to the Crusades in the rise of the Turkish empire that conquered Constantinople in 1453 and finally led the Turks to the gates of Vienna.
After that it was Europe's turn, and what a turn it took with the rise of the empires of Portugal, Great Britain, France, Germany, and finally Italy.
In the Middle East, Western imperialism arrived with Portuguese conquests in the Arabian Gulf, to be followed by the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon in 1798 and continued on to the British takeover of Egypt in the late 19th century. The 20th century saw the British, French, and Italians seize control of the entire Middle East, a movement that climaxed with the brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine, a sad but very real part of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The British, Italians and French faded by the mid 20th century and for the last 50 years the major outside political, economic and military power in the Middle East has been America.
So now we see the third tit-for tat of East and West. Islamic groups have, over 150 years, slowly radicalized, and inflicted violence against their own moderates for their perceived accommodation with the West. Then came the brutal attack of 9/11. America responded by beginning to bomb Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 and all that has transpired since then.
So we are faced with three rounds of "tit for tat - "
The Islamic conquests - and the Crusades
The Turkish empire - and Western imperialism
Radical Islamic attacks - and the war on terrorism
These three pairs of opposing waves reflect 1400 years of violence. And what is at the bottom of it all?
Not only is there our deep irrational fear and hatred of Islam, our
"anti-crescentism," but from the Muslim side there is a similar unnamed negative focus of energy that I have chosen to call "anti-crossism" which, by definition, is an irrational fear and hatred of all things Christian. These two forces are like giant tides that ebb and flow across the centuries.
Yes, Islam has its "anti-crossism" but that is its problem. Our need is to look inward and to recognize the "anti-crescentism" of our own souls. For 1400 years, this cancer of hatred has been growing and gaining momentum. Much of the hostility relates to economics and politics. Yet there is a crucial theological component to this explosive mix that we must do our part to defuse. But the starting point has a problem: the above mentioned denial!
Both communities are in denial. Without names there is little public recognition that these opposing irrational hatreds even exist. Neither community senses a deep need to exorcise the demons of the evils within.
These are road signs as we pass on our journey that must be illuminated so that all travelers will be obliged to read and ponder their messages.
But there is a second set of road signs that have been denied and need to be noted. The denials blend into the second topic of this lecture: Dangers.
These dangerous denials can be called "The misguided assumptions of innocence."
On this point also, both Islam and Christianity are in denial. Each of us sees ourselves as the innocent victims of the brutality of the other. Generally speaking, neither of us is, as yet, willing to view the world through the eyes of the other. Each of us has chosen to utilize special vocabulary that assists in this self-deception. Words such as "crusader," "imperialist," "colonialist," yes - and "terrorist" - are shaped into clubs with which to batter the opponent. Such words are calculated to reinforce the supposed innocence of the speakers.
In his most recent book, Am I Not your Lord, Bishop Kenneth Cragg, the
world's leading contemporary Christian scholar on Islam, writes:
Wild things have been said about American demerits .... That that there is a global charge-sheet against the West in general and the USA symbolic of it, cannot be in doubt. It stems from the sinful imbalance in the world's economies, the weight of privations and of debts, the utter disparity in living standards of white and Afro-Asian, and most of all the long guilt of an assumed innocence (pp. 11-12).
An important component of this presumed innocence is the centuries-old American word "savages." When you want to kill people and seize their land, while seeing yourself as righteous, this is a very useful word. With this particular word we managed to eradicate entire tribes of Native Americans while describing ourselves as under attack. "Circle the wagons! They will kill us all!" was the battle cry. The cry sounded throughout the continent at the very time we were shooting "Indians" like wild pigs. The Nazi word was "untermenschen" (sub human) a blatantly racist word that was used to justify unspeakable atrocities. Now we have the infinitely flexible word "terrorists." As Meron Ben Venisti, the Israeli Vice Mayor of Jerusalem under Teddy Kolleck, has said, "If you don't like the rules of war and you don't like the laws of peace, call your enemy a "terrorist" and any brutality is given the sanctity of legitimacy."
But Paul told the philosophers on Mars Hill, "(God) made from one [blood] every nation to live on all the face of the earth." It follows from this affirmation that the death of an Afghan peasant is as great a human tragedy as the death of an American. Do we really believe with Abraham Lincoln and the framers of our constitution, not to mention the book of Genesis, that " ... all men are created equal?" Or, when push comes to shove, are the peoples of the Two-Third's World "untermenschen?"
As regards the Muslim world, behind us lies 200 hundred years of Western assumptions of the right to intervene militarily in the Middle East at any time and place of our choosing that serves our interests, and, with it, the assumption of near total innocence.
But the global Islamic community also lives in a similar dangerous denial. Again and again, since 9/11, we have been told that Islam is a religion of peace and love, caring only for justice and mercy. I am always glad to hear such affirmations. Islam will be what Muslims say it is. In so far as there are moderate Muslims who are determined to shape the future of Islam along these lines, we can all rejoice and such voices should receive enthusiastic Christian support.
At the same time, each of us must admit to, and take responsibility for, our own history, past and present. The 20th century opened with the Armenian holocaust during which Muslim Turks massacred about 50% of the Armenian Christian population of Armenia. That same century closed with the killing of approximately three million, mostly Christian, Southern Sudanese by the Northern Muslim army, a tragedy that continues and indeed intensifies as the world's attention is focused elsewhere. To this can be added East Timor and now northern and central Nigeria.
Yes, in the last two decades of the 19th century, King Leopold of the Belgians was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 10 million Africans during his 20 year brutal rule of the Congo. Officially, Leopold was a Christian king, ruling a Catholic nation. He claimed he was taking the benefits of civilization to the Congo and bought American silence during those 20 years of serial massacres with promises of "free trade" in ivory and rubber. The banner of "free trade" opens many doors!!
The Muslim conquest of the seventh century and the Christian Crusades of the 11th centuries were a very long time ago. What of the brutalities of each of our communities in the last 150 years? Can any of us advance the cause of truth and justice by continuing to live in a state of dangerous denial? Why is the word "terrorist" used so easily and frequently to describe the people who hurt us and never voiced to describe our violent actions against others? If Slobodan Milosevic has obliged us to realize the reality of state terrorism, why are we never told that, with American guns, the Turks have massacred a greater number of Kurds than Saddam Hussein? The last count was more than 3,000 villages obliterated by carpet bombing. But of course they are only fighting terrorism. And are we not all all against terrorism?
Thus, there are recent road signs that each of us has chosen to deny. Signs that must be faced regardless of how far they take us out of our comfort zone. These signs are written in large letters to read for those whose with eyes to see and ears to hear. Surely openness and honesty must govern our perceptions of ourselves as well as our understanding of others if we would journey together along the road toward peace and look to the future with hope.
Denials, some of them dangerous - yes - and there are a few specific challenges that must be faced if we are to travel together on the same road through our global village.
"Challenges" is a big word with many facets. Hardly a day passes without some public reference to some form of challenge that confronts us as we face the world of Islam. There are economic, cultural, political and security related challenges, all of which are important.
I would narrow our reflections, on this third set of road signs, to three challenges that few, oh so very few, are considering. For me, they are the most important challenges of all for they are theological. In one way or another these challenges are an important part of the basis of all the others.
The challenges I wish to note briefly in passing are: Christology, the doctrine of the Trinity and the historicity and meaning of the cross. A semester's course would not be sufficient to thoroughly cover even one of these three. What can be said in a few brief minutes? Let us "sin boldly" as we try to point to a few almost one-liner road signs that cry out for exposure and attention.
The first is Christology. The Middle Eastern Christian world, in the early centuries of its life, boldly hammered out its understanding of the person of Jesus. It did so in the categories of the philosophical tradition of the Greek world. The end result was the Confession of Nicaea and the formulations of the Council of Calcedon. Jesus was defined as fully God and fully human and described as,
"God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made of one being with the father" and so forth. I confess this Creed with a glad heart and with no disclaimer footnotes. It is not my Creed, it is our Creed, the Creed of the whole Church and a rich treasure to be cherished and nurtured by Christians everywhere.
At the same time, as noted, in the seventh century, Islam conquered the "lands where it all began." Eastern Christianity was obliged to turn around, and face a new intellectual force that used a different language, held a new sacred book in its hands and asked an entirely new set of questions. The Nicene and Calcedonian formulations of the person of Christ were not adequate. The Eastern Churches' efforts in facing this new challenge were heroic and their centuries of scholarship remain for the most part untranslated, unpublished and thereby unknown. Many decades of serious effort will be required before those rich treasures are available to us.
At the same time, the challenges they faced a milleninim ago have now come to us. Islam has not conquered us (as happened in the East in the seventh century). Nevertheless, the Islamic theological challenge is upon us. The worldwide web, the ease of international travel for those with the financial means, the movement of literally millions of Muslim immigrants from East to West, the rise of the American Black Muslim movement and the commerce and conflict that has blessed and cursed our relations, have all contributed to bringing our cultures together in ways that even one generation ago was not imagined. Islam, like a great wave, ready or not, has reached our shores.
I am deeply convinced that we must begin the arduous task of "the re-semitization of our Christololgy." What if Alexander the Great had marched West rather than East? If that had happened, he would have conquered Rome, Gaul and Spain rather than the Middle East, Persia and half of India. There would have been no Hellenism in the Middle East and the New Testament would have been written in Hebrew or Aramaic. Yes, he did march East, there was a cultural force called Hellenism and the New Testament has come to us in Greek. The result is that our understanding of Jesus has, for centuries, been deeply influenced by Greek categories of thought.
But if we return again to the New Testament it is possible to discover an Eastern Jewish semitic understanding of who Jesus was and is. Not that the Greek-influenced formulations are wrong, but they are but one side of the Christological coin. The theological challenge of our journey with Islam surely requires us to undertake a fresh start, in our understanding of the mystery of God, present in Jesus Christ, the word made flesh that, through the spirit still dwells among us.
This re-semitization of our Christology must be done, not only to answer the queries of our Muslim friends who journey with us on the same road, but also for the renewing of our own theologically weary churches who so desperately need the infusion of new insights into our theological bloodstream.
Yes, Jesus is very God of very God, of one being with the Father. But in Luke and in John, Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd. In the 23rd Psalm David wrote, "The Lord is my shepherd." Jeremiah promised the people that one day God himself would come to his people like a good shepherd and round up the lost sheep. Ezekial repeated and expanded that same vision. Jesus, unmistakably utilized that image when he created the great parable of the lost sheep. His Pharasaic audience could not have missed that he was
describing himself as the divine presence among people fulfilling those prophetic promises.
In Luke 15 the good shepherd seeks his lost sheep. The good woman searches for her lost coin. The good father runs down the road to find and restore his lost son. These three images of Good Shepherd, Good Women and Good Father all appear in the Psalms as metaphors for God. Jesus carefully selects these three and applies them to himself. God promised, in Jeremiah and Ezekial, that he himself would search and find his lost sheep. Jesus claims to be fulfilling that great promise. I submit to you that, in these parables, we have as profound an affirmation of who Jesus is as can be discovered anywhere in the New Testament.
In Jesus' day, the temple contained a revered stone in the holy of holies called "sheyteyyeh" (the foundation). The rabbis understood that stone to be, not merely the foundation stone of the temple, but ultimately the very first item created by God and from which God created the rest of the world. In the parable of the two builders, Jesus describes himself and his words as "the foundation." Paul twice reuses that very image and it appears yet again in I Peter. Jesus, is the foundation stone!
The woman, in the house of Simon (described in Luke 7), honors Jesus by washing his feet. She is best understood as doing so out of gratitude for forgiveness received. No thanksgiving offering at the great high altar in Jerusalem is made by her. Jesus accepts her devotion and blames Simon because he is not acting in a similar fashion. For this simple woman, the shekinah, the divine presence of God, known to dwell in the center of the holy of holies, had moved. It was available to her in the person of Jesus. Furthermore, by her devotion to him she participated in his Messianic suffering, in feeling his pain as her pain, as she wept over his feet washing them with her tears and wiping them with her hair. She offered her devotion to the shekinah, the presence of God which she perceived to be present in the person of Jesus.
Islam's communal worship and the daily prayers of every pious Muslim are directed towards Mecca because of the unique presence of God in the Ka'bah, the great black sacred stone which is at the center of the great mosque. For Islam, God is also uniquely present in the word of God, the noble Quran. In Muslim thought, that sacred book is affirmed to be eternal; uncreated in the mind of God. According to Islam it was then revealed by the Angel Gabriel to the Arabian prophet in the Arabic language.
For Islam, God is present in the community of faith in the word of God and in the stone of God. So, if God is among us in a stone, and in the words of a book, is it not possible, within the world of Islamic thought, for God to be perceived among us as a person who is both "the foundation stone" and the word made flesh? Surely the distance from God present in his recited and written word to the word made flesh is not an impossible journey.
As noted, Jesus was described by Paul as "the foundation stone." He is our Ka'bah and our Quran. Not a Quran that we read but a Quran that reads us. So there is a Quran to be read, and a Quran that speaks to us. We need a re-semitization of our Christology. The New Testament itself offers us rich language and imagery for just such Christological formulations.
Christology, yes, but what of the Trinity? Some Syriac texts, shortly before the rise of Islam, described the Trinity as: God, his wife Mary and their son Jesus. Was Muhammad, as a merchant, exposed to such heretical ideas in his travels outside the Arabian Peninsula? Perhaps. In any case, the trinity that the Quran denies is clearly such a trinity; a trinity that Christians also vigorously deny. With the witness of the Quran, we also deny that God had a female consort and through her fathered a child called "Son of God."
But what of God, his spirit and his word? All three are mentioned in the Quran. All three appear in the New Testament. In I Corinthians Paul selects a human being as a parable of the trinity. He mentions the person, that person's thoughts and that person's spirit. Each of us is made in the image of God and each of us is composed of a person, with a unique spirit and the capacity for speech. As you listen to my words this evening you are listening to me. And this expression of me, through my words, reveals a part of my spirit. The three are one and yet are somehow mysteriously distinct. What new formulations, of our understanding of the Trinity, growing out of the heart of the New Testament witness might allow for a re-semitization of our understanding of the Trinity that would be so very much closer to the Islamic mind than we have long imagined?
Finally, the cross? Yes, the Quran affirms, "They (the Jews) did not kill him, they did not crucify him, but it appeared so to them." This idea is mentioned only once in the Quran and yet is known to nearly every Muslim worldwide. For centuries this verse has been understood as a clear denial that Jesus was ever crucified.
But there is a difference between the text of the Quran and traditional Muslim interpretation of it. Jesus, in John 10: 17 affirms, "I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, I have power to take it again."
Jesus is clearly affirming "The Jews think they are going to take my life from me. That is not the case. I am surrendering my life as an act of my own free will." In like manner, this key Quranic text can be read, "They (the Jews) did not kill him, they did not crucify him, but it only appeared so to them." Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. No one took his life, instead, he freely surrendered it. Jesus boldly told Pilot, to his face, that he could do nothing without divine permission.
Thus, even at the most critical points of disagreement with Islam there are doors that can be gently and quietly opened and their opening can offer the promise of understanding and communication. That is, such doors can be opened - if we become friends.
Dangers, denials and theological challenges. I am not looking to the immediate present with the various sides of its passionate debates, its barking dogs of war, its hubris, its violence, and its rational and irrational fears. Rather, I yearn for a new vision that will look beyond the present as we contemplate the promise of a century that has only just begun to unfold.
I commend to you, for your own extended reflections, these road signs that call to us from the side of the highway as we journey with Islam. Observing these signs I am hopeful that the God who is indeed "merciful and compassionate" in God's own good time, can yet be widely seen as having the face of Jesus Christ.
For more information visit the Westminster College Peace & Conflict Resolution Center.
