[1] 23 March 2011.

Miroslav Volf   – a high profile ‘Progressive Evangelical’ (my term) theologian – has written a recently-published book about Islam and Christianity – the book I’ve been waiting for!

From  The Publishers Weekly:

‘Recent disputes like the “ground zero” mosque controversy have their roots in historical conflicts, according to Yale professor and author Volf (Exclusion and Embrace). The author, who grew up in what was then Yugoslavia, explains that Christians’ ability to live in community with Muslims depends on their answer to one question: is the God of the Qur’an the same as the God of the Bible? With a conversational tone and the backing of both sacred texts, the author argues that while beliefs about God may differ, the object of worship for both religions is the same (or at least the objects are “sufficiently similar”). Such “claims are spicy,” but come after careful consideration. Volf provides a thorough examination of theology to show the complexity of what seems a simple question of terminology. Perhaps the most stirring and involved debate concerns the comparison of the Christian Trinity to Allah. On such a heated topic, readers will appreciate Volf’s sense of humor and optimism. Though the text may not convince those who fear religious pluralism, his timely call for Christian love toward Muslims should at least lead to further dialogue, if not increased social cooperation. This is an important book.’

Product Description: ‘Three and a half billion people ¢â‚¬”the majority of the world ¢â‚¬â„¢s population ¢â‚¬”profess Christianity or Islam. Renowned scholar Miroslav Volf ¢â‚¬â„¢s controversial proposal is that Muslims and Christians do worship the same God ¢â‚¬”the only God. As Volf reveals, warriors in the  ¢â‚¬Å“clash of civilizations ¢â‚¬  have used  ¢â‚¬Å“religions ¢â‚¬  ¢â‚¬”each with its own god and worn as a badge of identity ¢â‚¬”to divide and oppose, failing to recognize the one God whom Muslims and Christians understand in partly different ways.

 ¢â‚¬ ¢ What the Qur ¢â‚¬â„¢an denies about God as the Holy Trinity has been denied by every great teacher of the church in the past and ought to be denied by Christians today.

 ¢â‚¬ ¢ A person can be both a practicing Muslim and 100 percent Christian without denying core convictions of belief and practice.

 ¢â‚¬ ¢ How two faiths, worshipping the same God, can work toward the common good under a single government.

Volf explains the hidden agendas behind today ¢â‚¬â„¢s news stories as he thoughtfully considers the words of religious leaders and parses the crucial passages from the Bible and the Qur ¢â‚¬â„¢an that continue to ignite passion. Allah offers a constructive way forward by reversing the  ¢â‚¬Å“our God vs. their God ¢â‚¬  premise that destroys bridges between neighbors and nations, magnifies fears, and creates strife.

About the Author

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and the founding director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.  ¢â‚¬Å“One of the most celebrated theologians of our time, ¢â‚¬  (Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury), Volf is a leading expert on religion and conflict. His recent books include Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Persisting Enmities, and Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation ¢â‚¬”winner of the 2002 Grawmeyer Award in Religion.’

I’m giving the next month to mastering Volf’s thesis. Most days I’ll post something on my Facebook page for discussion, and will provide a progressive/cumulative summary on the John Mark Ministries website (Google Volf Allah there if you can’t see it)…

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Last night, at a Christianity/Islam conference in Melbourne, I chatted with Dr. Mark Durie – one of Australia’s leading Evangelical scholars of Islam [1]. My Kindle search facility tells me Volf discusses/quotes/cites Durie 11 times in this book. Sample: ‘Australian scholar and vicar Mark Durie… agrees that God as described in the Bible and God as described in the Qur’an share certain similarities. In both, God is said to be “the creator, all-powerful, merciful, and the judge of humanity”. Yet for Durie this does not suffice to say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. He maintains that if you don’t have a *complete* match between descriptions of God in Islam and Christianity, you don’t have identity. To find out whether the God of the Qur’an is a genuine or false God, the procedure should be the same as when trying to figure out whether a banknote is genuine or counterfeit. If there are any differences from the banknote you know is genuine, then it’s counterfeit…’

‘The two approaches – the “commonalities” approach and the “differences” approach – yield very different results.’

Elsewhere Volf contrasts the views of Christian Calvinists and Arminians, and asks: do they worship the same God? More stark: the Crusaders who butchered Muslims – men, women and children – in Jerusalem in June 1099: ‘they could have had all the right beliefs about God, and yet they in fact worshipped a very different god than the God who in Christ “was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).

Class: what do you think?

Note: I have an early version of Kindle which does not provide pagination. For example, the above quote was taken from ‘30%’! Maybe I can figure out how to get a later version, and I’ll put page numbers with quotes.

[1] Google Durie on the John Mark Ministries website to find about 10 articles by and about Dr. Mark Durie. His book on this broad subject is titled ‘Revelation? Do We Worship the Same God?’

Shalom/Salaam/Pax!                Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.org.au/

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Mark Durie responds:

It is good that Volf is going into this in greater depth, and look forward to interacting with what he has written.

Actually I wouldn’t want to say that you must have a *complete* match to  establish identity – that was Volf’s interpretation of what I said – but rather that key identifying characteristics must be the same.

Attending to areas of potential difference is an important part of the process of establishing identity: establishing a handful of similarities is not enough if there are important differences, no matter how long  the list of similarities may be. Any two human beings share a HUGE list of similarities, but this doesn’t make them the same.

Also, if one is to pursue the analogy with people all the way, finding some differences are also not enough to disprove identity. E.g. one can wear a wig, lose a limb, grow grey hair etc. You have to consider the nature of the differences themselves – are they identifying characteristics?

My view of Allah of the Koran is that what is different from the god of the Bible includes key identifying characteristics, and it is important to know what these area.

Also I note that in Revelation [Mark’s book] my discussion of this issue was intended to be fairly simple – it is not a long book, and not philosophically sophisticated. It was written for ordinary Christians as a practical resource.

Mark Durie

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Response from a Facebook friend:

“The trouble with Durie’s ‘key identifying characteristics’ is when applied to Christians they fail! No Christian at the time doubted that Arians were Christians worshipping the same God, but they viewed Jesus similarly to Muslims- ie denied His full deity.   So Volf is right and Durie is wrong.”

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From another friend:

I’m looking forward to reading this. Some initial very sketchy thoughts.
My own understanding of dialogue between faiths seems somewhat different
to that which is suggested in that very short glimpse of Volf’s thesis.
If   in fact Volf is trying to build a case for a synthesis of the two
faiths on the basis of similarities between Allah and Yahweh then I
actually think the opportunity for meaningful dialogue is reduced. On
the basis of Martin Buber’s philosophy of relations I think of dialogue
more in terms of a celebration of differences between faiths and an
embrace of the diverse religious symbols that they provide. As
Christians we hold that Jesus as the Christ is the final revelation of
God in human experience. Following Paul Tillich’s understanding of
‘final’ as ‘final criterion’ we can understand this to mean that all
other revelations of the divine, both within Christianity and without,
can be discerned as meaningful for the Christian on the basis of how
they are judged by the revelation of Jesus as the Christ. Such an
understanding allows us to consider the possibility that there is such a
thing as revelation in other faiths and to carefully discern how such
revelation stands in relation to Jesus as the Christ. Relation does and
indeed must include difference. What is important is that difference be
identified, celebrated, encouraged and learned from. It could be argued
that if we all become the same then we’ll have nothing to talk about.
Thus dialogue is not always served by synthesis (though I am a fan of
synthesis in some circumstances).

In my local Interfaith Dialogue group I get bored when all we talk about
is our similarities. I come to life however, when our differences become
apparent and we have a real dialogue. Then I learn something.
Part of what I learn is that in every faith tradition there are people
of the Spirit and people not of the Spirit and I include Christianity in
that. This Sunday’s reading (John 4) give’s us food for thought when the
Samaritan woman challenges Jesus on the question of the difference
between Samaritan religous practice and Jewish religious practice (vs
20). Jesus’ response is encouraging for those who embrace interfaith
dialogue. Religions will always differ, but those who worship in spirit
and truth are the ones that God seeks. I would argue that such people
are to be found in all walks of life, all religions and indeed in what
we call secular humanism. In other words, sometimes the ‘non-religious’
look more like Christ than the religious do!