In a much publicized recent controversy, Larycia Hawkins, a tenured
political science professor at Wheaton College (a private, Christian
Evangelical institution) is being fired for wearing a hijab—in an act of
solidarity with Muslims—and for suggesting that Christians and Muslims worship
the same God. Predictably, this incident erupted across social media and the blogosphere
in a fire storm of apologetics and arm-chair sermonizing. Much of the
commentary has involved a simplistic dichotomy of “yes” or “no”. From a
historical perspective, however, the answer is more like “yes” and “no”. It
very much depends on who you ask and how the question is framed.
It has become commonplace in recent decades to talk about the “Abrahamic”
religions. Usually, this implies an ecumenically motivated understanding of the
three major monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) as
belonging to the same family of faiths. Since they are siblings, then
understandably they squabble over who has the most authentic claim to the
inheritance of Abraham, who biblical tradition presents as the first person
called to worship the “one, true God” (Genesis 12). Moreover, this familial
relationship is underpinned by an inclusive interpretation of Abraham’s
progeny. Ishmael, through Hagar, from whom God promised to raise up a great
nation (Genesis 21), has long been interpreted as the forbearer of Muslims,
while Isaac is seen as the ancestor of the Jews and Christians. In principle,
then, all the descendants of Abraham would worship the same deity, except for
the fact that Jews, Muslims, and Christians conceptualize God in starkly
different ways. In fact, the outliers in this scenario tend to be the
Christians, with their complex Trinitarian theology.
It should be noted, however, that Christians themselves have not always
agreed on what God they worship. To be sure, Jesus is alleged to have spoken of
his “Father,” but for some Christians this did not mean the God of the Jews.
Some Christians, commonly referred to as the “gnostics” (because they claimed
to possess specially revealed “knowledge” [gnosis]), argued that the god
of the Jews was a demonic imposter who created the world out of ignorance as a
prison for human beings. The “true God”, they supposed, was an ethereal Platonic
deity beyond the realm of matter and creation. This being, they said, was the
actual Father of Jesus. “Gnostic” theology, however, with its radical
re-reading of Genesis, even though it gained a certain amount of traction in
the early 2nd century CE, was ultimately rejected by the emerging
Christian orthodoxy as heretical. By abandoning the Jewish God, gnostic
Christians were distancing themselves from their Judaic heritage and thereby confirming
Roman suspicions that Christianity was a new “superstition” not rooted in
ancestral piety. Ultimately, however, Christians do come to agree that they too
worship the supreme creator God of the Jewish Bible. More than that, they
believed that this ancestral God came to visit them in human form and established the Church as the vehicle of salvation for the new chosen people. This imagined
unity, however, was short-lived as Christians spent much of the next 500 years
excommunicating each other over variant formulae about how Jesus could be
defined as both “God” and “man”. As such, arguments about the nature of God are
endemic to Christianity as a religious tradition.
It is precisely this Trinitarian factional infighting that puzzled the
earliest Muslims. The Qur’an makes repeated references to the
fundamental unity of God and counsels its hearers to “say not ‘Three’” (Surah
4.171). The core Christian theological idea that God “begat” a Son is harshly
critiqued (Surah 19.88-92). In fact, anti-Christological slogans adorn
the famed Dome of the Rock, erected in Jerusalem by Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik
in the mid-5th century CE. In spite of this, the early Muslims did
not suppose that Christians (or Jews for that matter) were worshipping a different
God. They were simply thought to be worshipping him incorrectly and elevating
Jesus (who Muslims consider to be a messenger of God) to divine status. Jews
and Christians are clearly acknowledged by Islamic tradition as “People of the
Book”—that is communities that have received divine revelations and therefore
have special status. Whether or not that revelation was properly understood or preserved
is another matter. Surah 3 of the Qur’an says: “Truly among the People
of the Book are those who believe in God and that which has been sent down unto
you.” Thus, for early Islamic tradition at least, it is a non-issue whether or
not Muslims worship the same God as the Christians and Jews. It’s a matter of
how. As the 12th century scholar Zamakhshari wrote, interpreting the
verse “Do not be fanatical in your faith” (Surah 4.171): “The Jews went
too far in that they degraded the position of Christ in regarding him as an
illegitimate child (of Mary). And the Christians went too far in that they
unduly elevated him in considering him a god.”[1]
Yet what did Christians think about this issue when they first
encountered Muslims? Interestingly, one of the earliest names applied by
outsiders to Muslims was “Saracen,” which some interpreters in antiquity gave a
Greek etymology as Sara-kene (“Sarah is barren”)—a reference to the
Abraham story. Others referred to them more explicitly as “Hagarenes” or “Ishmaelites,”
which also implies an acknowledgement of the Abrahamic legacy and, therefore,
common theological ground. In fact, a connection was drawn between Arab tribes
and the descendants of Ishmael even prior to the coming of Islam. The 5th
century church historian Sozomen states:
This is the tribe which took
its origin and had its name from Ishmael, the son of Abraham; and the ancients
called them Ishmaelites after their progenitor. As their mother Hagar was a
slave, they afterwards, to conceal the opprobrium of their origin, assumed the
name of Saracens, as if they were descended from Sara, the wife of Abraham.
Such being their origin, they practice circumcision like the Jews, refrain from
the use of pork, and observe many other Jewish rites and customs. If, indeed,
they deviate in any respect from the observances of that nation, it must be
ascribed to the lapse of time, and to their intercourse with the neighboring
nations. Moses, who lived many centuries after Abraham, only legislated for
those whom he led out of Egypt. The inhabitants of the neighboring countries,
being strongly addicted to superstition, probably soon corrupted the laws
imposed upon them by their forefather Ishmael. The ancient Hebrews had their
community life under this law only, using therefore unwritten customs, before
the Mosaic legislation. These people certainly served the same gods as the
neighboring nations, honoring and naming them similarly, so that by this
likeness with their forefathers in religion, there is evidenced their departure
from the laws of their forefathers. As is usual, in the lapse of time, their
ancient customs fell into oblivion, and other practices gradually got the
precedence among them. Some of their tribe afterwards happening to come in
contact with the Jews, gathered from them the facts of their true origin,
returned to their kinsmen, and inclined to the Hebrew customs and laws. From
that time on, until now, many of them regulate their lives according to the
Jewish precepts. Some of the Saracens were converted to Christianity not long before
the present reign. They shared in the faith of Christ by intercourse with the
priests and monks who dwelt near them, and practiced philosophy in the
neighboring deserts, and who were distinguished by the excellence of their
life, and by their miraculous works (Church History 6.38 [NPNF]).
According to Sozomen’s account, the Ishmaelites had abandoned the faith
of Abraham, only to be reintroduced to it by later interactions with Jews and
Christians. This places them solidly within the Abrahamic paradigm. Yet, once
the Arab tribes appear as carriers of a new religious message the tone becomes
more polemical. For instance, the earliest Greek reference to Islam (from 634
CE) speaks of a “prophet who has appeared with the Saracens” (Doctrina
Jacobi),[2]
who is later dismissed as false. Around the same time the Christian author John
Moschus noted that “the godless Saracens entered the holy city of Christ our
Lord, Jerusalem, with the permission of God and in punishment for our
negligence.”[3]
John’s account is somewhat ambivalent in that it refers to the Saracens as “godless”
but also as instruments of God meant to punish the Christians for their
constant infighting. A similar sentiment is expressed by Sophronius, the patriarch
of Jerusalem at the time.[4]
Over time, Muhammad is increasingly portrayed by Christian writers as a
false-prophet and his teachings as yet another heresy (see John of Damascus).[5]
Interestingly, some of the first Christians to encounter Muslims
were members of the Syriac churches, who spoke a dialect of Aramaic—the language
of Jesus himself and lingua franca for the entire late antique Near
East. It surprises most people to know that the Syro-Aramaic word for God is alahah,
equivalent to the Arabic allah. Contrary to common misconception, this
is not an Islamic name for a god (like Zeus or Thor) but the basic term for God
used by Aramaic speaking Jews and Christians. Even Jesus himself would have
referred to God in this way! Syriac Christian writers were on the frontline,
culturally and linguistically, of the encounter with the emerging Islamic
tradition. One of the earliest sources from this Syriac perspective, a letter from Isho‘yahb
III, bishop of Nineveh-Mosul (in what remains of modern Iraq), relates that “these
Arabs to whom at this time God has given control over the world, as you know,
they are [also here] with us. Not only are they no enemy to Christianity, but
they are even praisers of our faith, honorers of our Lord’s priests and holy
ones, and supporters of churches and monasteries.”[6]
Bishop Isho‘yahb’s charitable sentiments, however, are not always share by
other writers of the time who express apocalyptic alarm and confusion at the
advancing Arab forces. Still, they are echoed by an 8th century
Syriac chronicle, which portrays the Prophet as leading his people from
polytheism to the worship of the one God:
This Muhammad, while in the
age and stature of youth, began to go up and down from his town of Yathrib to
Palestine for the business of buying and selling. While so engaged in the
country, he saw the belief in one God and it was pleasing to his eyes. When he
went back down to his tribesmen, he set this belief before them, and he
convinced a few and they became his followers.[7]
Thus, we can see that, historically speaking, those Christians who first
encountered carriers of Islamic tradition were unsure what to make of them—as many
are today who haven’t had regular contact with Muslim communities and cultures.
Were they (or are they) harbingers of doom and minions of the Antichrist? Or,
were they (or are they) fellow travellers in the on-going salvation history of
humanity’s relationship to the God of Abraham? It very much depends on the
theological attitudes of those involved. Believers who take an exclusivist view
contend that only they are right. Theirs is the only true understanding of
religion; all others are false. In this sense the adherents of ISIS and radical,
western Christian agitators have much in common. These would say that Muslims
and Christians most definitely do not worship the same God. Yet, if
theirs is a God of violence and hate, then perhaps they ultimately do. By way
of contrast, believers who adopt an inclusivist theological outlook
allow themselves to see the value in other traditions and can recognize that
they are not alone on the journey of faith. They seek a God in common. One
can only hope that the latter group outnumbers the former in contemporary
encounters.
Unfortunately, most discussions of political, cultural, and religious
interactions occur in a historical vacuum. The public has very little awareness
of their own history let alone the history of those they fear. Yet, mining the
past, even a little, can yield some valuable insights.
