w. montgomery watt - the christianity criticized in the qur'an [a]

8/16/2019 W. Montgomery Watt - The Christianity Criticized in the Qur'an [a]

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THE CHRISTIANITY CRITICIZED

I N

THE QUR’AN

The a im of this article is simple. It is to take a fresh look at the

criticisms o r app are nt criticisms of Christianity to be fo un d in the

Qur‘Bn, and

t o

consider whether these

are

attacks on orthodox Chris-

tianity, or whether they should not be regarded as attacks on Christian

heresies which orthodox Christians would themselves criticize. The

present article was conceived before the appearance of the scholarly

and eirenic work of Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the QuP London:

Fa ber , 1 9 6 5 ) ~ nd many of the points to be made have been anticipated

by him. Yet

i t

still seems worth while to devote attention to the specific

question: Was the Christianity attacked by the QuPPn orthodox or

heretical? In this question the word ‘orthodox’ is to be taken in a

general sense, and not as referring specifically to the Holy Eastern

Orthodox Church. It should even be provisionally extended to include

Nestorians and Monophysites, since the question should be left open

whether Islam is

closer to, say, Nestorianism, than to any other

Christian doctrine.

It is natural for occidental scholars to approach the QuF5.n with

the assumption that it attacks Christianity, since there was hostility

between Muhammad and Christians in the closing years of his life. At

fir st he had been amicably disposed towards C hristians. W he n he began

to receive revelations, Khadija’s Christian kinsman, Waraqa ibn-

Na wfal, is said to have given him encouragem ent. little later the

Negus of Abyssinia provided a secure refuge for the Muslim emi-

grants from Mecca; they may indeed have hoped for some active help

from him and in this been disappointed, but on the other hand he

refused to help the pagan Meccans against them. After the Hijra to

Medina the hostility

of

the Jews there became an important factor in

the experience of the Muslims; and the contrast between Christian

friendliness and Jewish hostility is reflected in the verse (5.82/5)

“Indeed you will find the most hostile of the people to the believers

are the Jews and the pagans, and you will find the closest of them

in love to the believers are those who say, ‘We are Christians’; that

is because among them are priests and monks, and they are not proud.”

I t was probably af ter the conquest of Mecca Janu ary 6 3 0 ) ~ nd

more particularly afte r the expedition to Tab iik Oc tober to December

6 3 0 ) ~ hat M uham mad realized that he would have to face military

opposition from the Christian tribes towards the Syrian border-the

direction in which it was necessary for the Islamic state to expand.

Christians are presumably included among the opponents against whom

fighting is prescribed in Siira g

29.

If

one assumes that the QuPBn

was revised-and this assumption does not contradict the Muslim con-

ception of revelation, since the revisions could have been revealed as

a fo rm of nrisikh-then it is probable that many verses which at first

only criticized Jews, were now revised to apply to both Christians and



98 THE

MUSLIM WORLD

Jews. So far as the QurJHn itself is concerned it does not appear to

assert any general corruption of Jewish and Christian scriptures; 1

after the conquest of Iraq Syria and Egypt however the doctrine

of

tahrif

or ‘corruption’ was elaborated in various ways to give the

Muslim Arabs a defence against the better-educated Christians with

whom they were now mixing. From

this

period onwards Islam and

Christianity have been rivals and this has made it natural to suppose

that the criticisms of Christian doctrines in the Qu?in have a hostile

that is anti-Christian intention. With the thought in mind that this is

probably a mistaken assumption based not on the ‘obvious’ pihir)

meaning of the QuFZn but on later polemical interpretations let

us

look in detail at some of these criticisms.

The obvious point at which to begin is the apparent attack on the

Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

“Disbelieved have those who say that

God

is the third of three;

there is no deity except one deity ‘I 5.7317)

“ people of the book do not be extreme in your religion and of

God say only the truth; the Messiah Jesus son of Mary is the mes-

senger of God and his word which he cast into Mary and a spirit from

him; so believe in God and his messengers and do not say “Three”;

desist and it will be better for you; God is only one deity; sublime is

he beyond having a son..

Now if these passages are examined without

parti

pris,

it is clear

that they are not attacking the orthodox Christian doctrine of the

Trinity but the misinterpretation of that doctrine sometimes called

‘tritheism.’ The great body of Christians officially deny that they be-

lieve in three gods and in their creeds profess their belief in God who

is one. They officially claim to be monotheists and would indignantly

repudiate the charge that they are tritheists. There may indeed be

simple-minded Christians who fall into something like the error of

tritheism in practice but in so far

as

they are tritheists they are heretics.

It is not part of the purpose of this article to look for sources for the

criticisms being discussed; but it may be noted in passing that they

might well be derived from Christians.

Closely connected with this attack on tritheism is the apparent attack

on the divinity of Jesus. Two aspects may be distinguished here the

denial of divinity and the assertion of humanity and creatureliness.

Now it must be admitted that there are verses which could be applied

to orthodox Christian doctrine on this point such as the words in 9.30:

“the Christians say that the Messiah is the son of God.” I t may be

argued however on the basis of other verses that this was not in-

tended as

an

attack on the orthodox Christian conception of the son-

ship of Christ but on something else. Thus there is a clear denial that

1 Cf. Watt “The Early Development of the

Muslim

Attitude to the Bible,’’

Transactions of the GImgow University Oriental

Society ,

xvi 1957) , 50-62,

esp.

50-53.

(4.1711 )



C H R I S T I A N I T Y C R I T I C IZ E D

I N THE

QUR’AN

r

Jesus is to be regarded as one deity in three, in line with the tritheistic

conception already discussed:

“God

said,

‘

Jesus,

son

of Mary, didst

thou

say to the people,

“Take me and my mother as two deities apart from

God”?’ e

said,

‘Sublime art

thou;

it is not for me to say what

I

have no right to say;

i

I

said it, thou hast known it; thou knowest what is in me, and

I

do

not know what

is

in thee; thou art knower of the unseen.’” 5.116)

Let

us

ignore the complication here that Mary is apparently regarded

as the third hypostasis

of

the Trinity; the view may have been held

by badly instructed Christians. The assertion that Jesus

is

a deity apart

from God is definitely heretical from the standpoint

of

Christian

orthodoxy. I n the light of the Qur‘anic attack on tritheism, it seems

certain that the denial that the Messiah was the son of God was a

denial that he

was

a deity separate from

God

nd this is confirmed

by the later p art of

9.30

which identifies what is denied with the views

of ‘former unbelievers’ q m l

alladhinu

kufuri? m n qabl ) , that is,

presumably, of pagans.

Yet another

form of

Christian belief in the divinity

of

Jesus is

denied in two verses

5.17119, 7216

in the words:

“Disbelieved have those who say, ‘God is the Messiah, the son

of

Mary.’” The first of these verses continues with an argument which

might well have been fam iliar to some of the original heare rs as a

result of contact with Christian sources:

“Say: ‘W ho then would overrule God at all,

i

he willed to destroy

the Messiah, the son of M ary, an d his mother and all the earth ?’ fo r

God’s is the sovereignty of the heavens and the earth and what is

between them, creating what he will, seeing he has power over every-

thing.”

W ha t is denied here is the assertion

of complete identity between Jesus

and God, an assertion sometimes made by Christians but generally

regarded as the heresy of confusing the hypostases. Once again the

Qur‘Hn is attacking Christian heresy and not Christian orthodoxy. It

is also noteworthy that the QuPHn takes cognizance in this

way

of

divergent Christian views.

Complementary to these attacks on the divinity of Jesus is the

assertion of his humanity and creatureliness.

“The likeness of Jesus in

God‘s

sight is as the likeness of Adam ; he

created him

of

dust, then said to

him

‘Be’ an d he was.” 3.5912 ; cf.

q / 2

The creation of Jesus

is

of course, to

be

understood as his creation

in the womb of his mother. The initiation of his individual existence

there is the result of God‘s wo rd ‘Be’ and not of the act of a hum an

father; but there is no suggestion that the later development there

takes place by other than, in modern terms, natural processes.

Now

most of what is asserted o r implied here is not contrary to Christian

orthodoxy, for, as the Athanasian creed puts it, “he is man, of the

substance of his mother, born in the world.” Similarly there is nothing



2

THE M U S L I M

WORL

heretical in such sayings put into the mouth of Jesus by the QuPHn

as: “serve God, my Lord and your Lord”

5.7216).

Indeed there is

almost a New Testament ring in the verse

4.17210):

“The Messiah will not disdain to be called a servant to

God,

nor

will the angels, the cherubim.”

‘The servant of God’ was a n honoured title in the Old T estamen t, an d

Paul goes so far as to say that Jesus humbled himself and took the

“form of a servant.”

3

Thus in

this

respect, as in several others, the

Q u f i n is asserting one strand in Christian orthodoxy.

Some reference to the Virgin Birth is relevant here. s is well

known,

he QuPBn teaches the Virgin Birth but interprets it simply

as

a miracle on som ewhat the sam e level as the miraculous birth of John

the Baptist. Perhaps it is not even accurate to say that the Qur’5n

gives

this

specific interpretation, but only that it provides materials

on the basis of which later Muslim scholars have adopted this inter-

pretation. The point is difficu lt to discuss, because there has been much

confusion in recent Christian thinking

on

the subject, perhaps as a

result of opponents of Ch ristianity think ing that, i f they showed that

birth from a virgin was scientifically impossible, this disproved the

divinity of Jesus. In this way many Christians came to think that to

maintain the literal tru th of the V irgin Birth w as a central point in

the defence of Christianity.

It

is rather the case that the Virgin Birth

is no part of the

proof

of the divinity of Jesus, just as it played no

part in the earliest Christian preaching. What should be held is that,

once divinity of Jesus is believed

in

on other grounds, the conception

of the Virg in B irth is seen to be approp riate. The very fact that millions

of Muslims believe in the Virgin B irth of Jesus but deny his divinity

should make it clear that, contrary to the view of many Christians,

there is no necessary connection between Virgin Eirth and divinity.

To

some readers it might seem that the most important item of the

attack or appar ent attack of the Q u f h on Christianity was its denial

of the crucifixion. Yet careful examination

of

the precise wording of

the Qur‘Hn show s that this is not a direct attack. Th e passage4 tells

of

Gods

punishment of Jews fo r various faults an d among other things:

“f or their saying, ‘W e killed th e Messiah, Jesus son of M ary, the

messenger of God,’ when they did not kill him and d id not cr ucify

him, but a resemblance was made for th e m .. and they certainly did

not kill him, but God raised him to himself.”

Once again

the

prim ary denial is of something heretical, namely, th e

Jewish contention that the crucifixion had been a victory fo r them, an d

this same denial would of course be most vigorously a ffi rm ed by

Christian orthodoxy. Unfortunately the denial is linked with a positive

assertion which is unacceptable to orthodox Christians, contained in

’

f.

3.51144;

5.117.

3.

Philippians, 2.7 cf .

Parrinder, 34-37, with fuller references.

4.15312-15917,

esp.

15716.



CHRISTIANITY CRITICIZED IN THE QUR’KN

201

the rather vague phrase here translated “a resemblance was made for

them”

shubbiha

Za-hum). In the present context there is no need to

speculate on the possible gnostic origin of the positive conception. The

point to be insisted on here is that the Qur‘h is not attacking Chris-

tianity,

but rather defending it against Jewish atacks.

This verse also illustrates how there are many Christian doctrines of

which the

Qul3S n

shows no clear understanding or appreciation. I t

makes virtually no assertion corresponding to the Old Testament ideas

of sacrifice and consequently cannot refer to the link between these

and the crucifixion. It is perhaps becauses of t is that it minimizes the

‘work’ of Jesus; he is spoken of s only one messenger among many

instead of the word of God as asserted by Christians.

In conclusion it may suggested that if the main contention of this

article is sound namely that there is no primary attack on Christianity

in the QuIJPn then a widespread realization of this point has profound

implications for the relations of Islam and Christianity now and in

years to come. I t would be premature to think of a union of religions

but in the foreseeable future Muslims and Christians might well come

to accept one another as fellow-servants of God.

5.7519; 3.49/3), and as a word from od 3.45140;

cf. 4-171/6g),

he

University,

Edinburgh,

Scotland

W. MONTGOMERY

ATT

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