Muhammad in Contemporary Christian Theological Reflection

Abstract

After briefly surveying the generally polemical pre-modern Christian views of Muhammad, this essay considers a range of recent Christian approaches. Daniel Madigan explores often unrecognized complexities involved in the question; he considers Muhammad's message a “salutary critique” prompting Christians to a fuller understanding of their faith. Hans Küng insists that Christians should recognize Muhammad as a prophet; Islam is akin to early Jewish forms of Christianity, whose validity should be recognized. Jacques Jomier and Christian Troll are respectful of Muhammad but argue that, if Christians call him a prophet, they effectively deny their own faith. Kenneth Cragg presents a “positive, critical position”, encouraging sympathetic Christian interpretation of Muhammad's achievement in his context, but expressing reservations about the “political equation” in his ministry and contrasting this with Christ's way of redemptive suffering. Cragg's approach is upheld against criticisms as an exemplary model of Christian theological engagement with Islam.

Keywords:

• Christian theology
• Muhammad
• prophet
• Hans Küng
• Kenneth Cragg

Notes

On Jewish views of Jesus, see Bruteau (2001).

Tolan (2002) gives many examples of Western Christian views of Muhammad; e.g. Peter the Venerable (xxi), Guibert de Nogent (135–147), Pope Innocent III (194).

Mingana (1993). For discussion of Muhammad see pp. 218–219.

See Madigan (2005, 90), where he calls the question of Muhammad “without doubt the most avoided question in Muslim-Christian relations”, noting that, while the documents of Vatican II found plenty to praise in Muslims and their faith, they make no mention of Muhammad himself.

For example, see Goddard (2000, 81–84), on the ninth-century martyrs of Cordoba.

As these developments in recent scholarship on the origins of Islam have not featured significantly in the contemporary Christian theological assessments of Muhammad explored in this essay, they are not discussed further here. For more on this question, see Madigan (n.d.).

Since Vatican II, official Roman Catholic teaching has called its members to turn away from the polemics of the past (Nostra Aetate, 3) and the emphasis of the World Council of Churches is on dialogue. For this essay it has not been possible to establish whether polemical approaches are to be found in any contemporary Orthodox writing on Islam. More widely, on Orthodox approaches to Islam, Caspar (1987, 91) has commented on the scarcity of Orthodox thought on Islam, mentioning Olivier Clément and Georges Khodr as exceptions to this general tendency. Ten years later Zebiri (1997, 185) observed: “The Orthodox study of Islam is not at present highly developed.” However, note should be taken of Andrew Sharp's recent (2012) publication.

It is notable that, even within the examples of modern “Protestant Missionary Literature on Islam” surveyed by Zebiri (1997, 109; see also 196–197), acceptance of Muhammad's sincerity is widespread.

Brown (2011, 41) sets the assassination of satirists in context: satirical poetry was “a political weapon. In Arabia, poets were the propagandists in times of conflict.” For a response to critical comment on the treatment of the Banū Qurayẓa, see Aslan (2006, 91–94).

A helpful survey of some leading twentieth-century Christian writers on Muhammad is given by David Kerr (1995). The main scholars discussed by Kerr are Louis Massignon, Charles Ledit, Michel Hayek, George Khodr, Kenneth Cragg, Hans Küng and Montgomery Watt. For a recent survey of some (mainly German) contemporary Roman Catholic approaches to Muhammad, see Middelbeck-Varwick (2010). The writers selected for discussion by Middelbeck-Varwick are Hans Zirker, Gerhard Gäde, Hans Küng, Christian W. Troll SJ, Samir Khalil Samir SJ and Wolfgang Klausnitzer. There is also much relevant material on approaches to Muhammad in Troll (1998). Troll discusses Jean-Muhammad Abd-el-Jalil, Youakim Moubarac, Giulio Bassetti-Sani, Jacques Jomier, Robert Caspar, Hans Küng, Adolfo González Montes, Hans Zirker and Henri Sanson.

Commenting in personal correspondence, on a draft of this essay, a Muslim colleague wrote about my phrase “the non-violent Messiah”: “Of course this is true, but not in an absolute sense. Certainly the money changers in the temple did not experience Jesus as ‘non-violent’ in the sense we usually use the term in contemporary English.” This raises an interesting point deserving further discussion.

Troll (1998, 71) suggests that “from among the non-official, individual Catholic views of Islam those of Jacques Jomier would meet with broad assent among educated Catholics”.

This interpretation of Cragg is expressed by Kerr (1995, 436) and by Keith Ward (2005).

Balancing this note of reserve, the same sentence speaks of Christian acknowledgment of Muhammad, though it is not stated what Christians should acknowledge Muhammad as.

Richard Sudworth also touches on Muslim criticisms of Cragg. See his essay “Christian Responses to the Political Challenge of Islam” in this volume.

It is significant that Winter's brief references to Küng's work are much more positive (Winter 2009, 24, 26).

Winter refers to Cragg's work Semitism (2005, 77) as an illustration of his “understanding of the supersession of the Law”. However, Cragg is here careful to say that Paul was “not against the law, only against the notion that law was all we needed. … No ‘antinomian’ would have struggled so earnestly for the moral probity and careful discipline of ‘all the churches’.” It seems exaggerated to describe this position as “Marcionite”.

Witness the wide range of contributors to A Faithful Presence: Essays for Kenneth Cragg (Thomas and Amos 2003). Archbishop Rowan Williams provided an introductory tribute to this volume and also a foreword to a recent work by Cragg (2006, viii), which he describes as “a fitting crown to decades of exceptional theological work”.