By Darrell L. Bock and Mikel Del Rosario
[Darrell L. Bock is Senior Research Professor in New Testament Studies and Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. Mikel Del Rosario is cultural engagement assistant.]
According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum for Religion and Public Life, more than eight in ten people around the world are part of a religious group. Of these, 1.6 billion self-identify as Muslim. While Christianity is the largest faith represented worldwide, Islam remains the second.[1]
Like Christians, Muslims are monotheists and trace their spiritual heritage to the Jewish patriarch Abraham. Indeed, Muslims share many points of connection with the Christian worldview. Still, key differences exist between these two faiths. Before attempting to identify these differences, however, it seems best first to understand the basic teachings of Islam and the resulting worldviews of Muslims.
During their appearances on “The Table” podcast, J. Dudley Woodberry, Senior Professor of Islamic Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Imad Shehadeh, President of Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary, considered fundamental questions like “What is at the heart of the practice of Islam?” and “How do Muslims view God and the Bible?” These discussions highlight how two basic elements of Islam—the Five Pillars and the Muslim conception of God—involve key theological differences between the two largest religions in the world.
In a segment entitled “Understanding Islam in the West,” Woodberry, who served as a consultant on the Muslim world to President Carter, explains the Five Pillars of Islam:
Woodberry: The First Pillar would be their confession of faith, which is “There is no God but God,” or “Allah.” They chose the word “Allah” that Arab Christians used at that time and still use today. So it is a confession, the first half of which Jews, Muslims, and Christians can agree on—that there is only one God. Then the second part of it, “and Mohammad is the apostle of God,” of course, singles out Muslims distinctly.
The Second Pillar has to do with prayer. The prayer is a prayer five times a day. Its content, except for the reference to Mohammad at the beginning and at the very end, is similar to what Jews or Christians might pray as well.
Then you have almsgiving. It’s not the tithe that Jews were to give and that Christians give. In most branches of Islam, [it] is about two and a half percent of the negotiable, debt-free earnings that they have. But again there’s a commonality there between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
Then you have fasting. Originally, the fast seems to have been during the ten days leading into Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But when the Jews of Medina, where Mohammad was at the time, did not accept him and actually turned against him, there was a changing of the fast to the month of Ramadan.
Then there is the pilgrimage. The pilgrimage [was] sort of baptized into Islam, we might say—the practices of a pagan ritual, but now identified with Islamic themes. Although the Jews used to make a pilgrimage three times a year to Jerusalem, and the Muslims do it to Mecca, many of the elements are quite similar.
After this, Darrell Bock, Mike Pocock, and Mark Bailey join Woodberry in a conversation about the Muslim conception of God and the Christian Scriptures, as well as the way other religions have influenced Muslim practices in a variety of contexts.
Bock: So what would be the Doctrine of God for the typical Muslim? And how do they view the Bible of the church?
Woodberry: First of all, their doctrine of God. As I indicated, they chose the word “Allah” that Arab Christians used at the time. There is [a] verse in the Koran that says that “your God and our God are one”; so they were trying to refer to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Ishmael. Now what they say about that God, in some areas, is very similar to what Jews and Christians would believe, but in other areas extremely different.
[This is] because the Christian would see God as revealed most fully in Jesus Christ. So in some way, Jesus could say, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” So it is not easy to say yes or no on [the question] “do we worship the same God?” We are referring to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but our understanding of Him is different in some very crucial areas.
The Koran says that it does not distinguish between the Torah, the Psalms, the Injil or Gospel, and the Koran itself. But because there are some things in the Bible that are different, or things in the Koran that seem to contradict the Bible, most Muslims believe that the Bible got corrupted along the way at any point where it differs from koranic teaching, although not all Muslims believe that.
Pocock: There are over a billion Muslims worldwide, about one sixth of the world’s population. I’ve heard that maybe 70 percent of those Muslims might be what we call “folk” Muslims, leaving only 30 percent orthodox. What is the difference between being an orthodox Muslim or a folk Muslim?
Woodberry: An orthodox Muslim is one who practices the Five Pillars of Islam and would find his or her faith expressed by the Koran and the practice of Mohammad and [the] law as it developed in the first three hundred years of Islam. The folk Muslim is a mixture of that with pre-Islamic practices and beliefs that were in various countries that they went to. So folk Muslims might go to the mosque on Friday, but during the week if their child is sick, they will go to a shrine and seek to get [a] blessing or power from the saint who is there (dead or alive). They might wear amulets to ward off evil. They have many practices that are not in accordance [with] formal Islam.
Having said that, many Muslims—maybe the majority—would be a mixture of both. They would do their ablutions, which are similar to Jewish washing of hands, nostrils, face, and feet and so forth. In orthodox Islam, the meaning would be to cleanse oneself before prayer. The folk Muslim might see putting their fingers in their ears and nostrils with water and so forth as cleaning out demonic pollution. So [it would have] the same form, but it would have additional meanings in folk practices.
Bailey: Does folk Islam vary depending upon the background or geography [of the] country?
Woodberry: That’s right. That folk Islam would be the blending of various pre-Islamic practices and beliefs with the Islam that came in. Now the Wahabism that we hear about in Saudi Arabia, for example, was an attempt to cleanse these practices from Islam. It took a very militant form originally, when Abdul Aziz Ibn-Saud, the father of the recent kings of Saudi Arabia, was conquering and trying to cleanse the land, as he understood it. It is often taking a more militant form, not always, but often taking a more militant form in other parts of the world.
While many Christians minister to Muslims around the world, some continue to be hesitant about cultural engagement in an Islamic context, especially given the religious violence popularized in the media. Is peace possible in a multi-religious society? What is the place of Christian evangelistic efforts in relationship to a peaceful coexistence? Pocock and Woodberry examine these timely questions while discussing Woodberry’s involvement in organized efforts for peace between Christians and Muslims.
Pocock: I understand, Dr. Woodberry, that you work on a committee or an alliance of Muslims and Christians seeking to procure more peace and more well-being among Christians and Muslims living together as they are in the United States and in many other countries. What is [it] like working on that commission, and what progress have you seen so far?
Woodberry: Well, first of all, it’s something that I feel Christians should be involved in along with evangelism because Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Paul said in Romans, “Seek to live peaceably with all people to the extent that you are able.” So I see it as a Christian calling.
Having said that, what we are doing is seeking to find resources in our faiths that can be used for conflict resolution. Because if you go to the Koran, for example, you can find peaceful verses. You can find a verse in chapter 5 of the Koran that says, “Those closest to you in affection are those who say, ‘We are Christians.’ ”
But then, in chapter 9 of the Koran, you will find a verse about fight[ing] against the enemies, including the people of the Book, which would include Jews and Christians, until they submit and pay the poll tax. When you go to the Koran, and when you look at history, you can find plenty for peace and plenty for militancy.
So we are trying to find those resources that can be used in our respective communities to seek to live peaceably with all people, as the Apostle Paul has enjoined us to do. We are working on literature that can be used with our communities. Al-though it is slow progress, we are content that it is moving along and will, hopefully, be helpful in our country.
Bailey: I was taken with your comment. You were very quick to respond with the peace initiatives for conversation and living with well-being that wasn’t in order to sacrifice evangelism or to eliminate your evangelistic fervor. Talk to us about the place of evangelism in relationship to a peaceful coexistence.
Woodberry: Well, I think the Bible is quite clear on its evangelistic mandate. We’re told in Acts 1:8 to wait in Jerusalem until we’ve received power, then to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and the outermost parts of the earth. We’re told at the end of the Gospel of Matthew to make disciples of all people. So the evangelistic commission is clear. But when we put beside that “Blessed are the peacemakers” and “Seek to live peaceably with all people to the extent that you are able,” [and] when in Jeremiah 29 we are told to seek the welfare of the city to which we have been taken, for in its welfare is our welfare, [then] obviously these are both commissions that we should be working on, and they do not need to be conflicting with each other. I think they are biblical callings that we can throw ourselves into wholeheartedly.
Bailey: They’re not mutually exclusive?
Woodberry: They should not be mutually exclusive, because if we see the gospel as proclamation and demonstration of the transforming work of the gospel, there’s plenty of room to be involved in both. We should be involved in both. Now, what our Lord did show is there are certain times where we should emphasize the deed. He healed the leper and then said tell no one. So there are certain times where we are demonstrating the deed. But ultimately, the gospel needs to involve both proclamation and deed.
Still, Christians discover that even a gentle, straightforward proclamation of the gospel of grace is often met with resistance as it collides with the Muslim conception of God. How could a biblical teaching like “God is love” sound so different to Muslim friends? In a segment of “The Table” entitled “Challenges of Bible Translation,” Imad Shehadeh and Darrell Bock discuss the Muslim view of God and the challenge of mentioning the idea that Jesus is the Son of God.
Shehadeh: When we say “Son of God,” they hear that we’re talking about a relationship beyond Creation. That’s what they hear. There’s a relationship within God, i.e., Trinity [as it was called] eventually. So they hear that there’s a relationship between a Father and a Son that we’re talking about really. That strikes at the heart of the problem, because what happens is a theological struggle in their history, a struggle between different factions with a major theological conflict on this issue of relationship within God as it relates with the attributes of God, because an attribute necessarily demands a relationship. So if you have love, for example, you must have the lover and the one loved. And if the attribute is eternal, so is the relationship. That’s just a simple thing.
But if you deny a relationship to begin with, if that’s the mindset, then you’re forced into finding a way to explain. . . . How can [such] an attribute in God exist without a relationship? That’s the bottom line struggle [of what] we might call “the monadic monotheism.” . . . [E]ventually, what you end up having is an inability to define the attributes of God in a way that would appeal to man in a positive way. And actually the proposed solution ends up being that the attributes of God such as love or compassion or holiness . . . stem from His will. It’s something He chooses to do if He so wills to do.
So what you end up having is that the dominant attribute is really that of a powerful will. If we’re to talk in a normal language, a person of that persuasion would say if God were to love me, it’s because He chose to love at some point, but He may choose not to, and I really do not know. Whereas in the biblical concept of the triune God, where you have an eternal relationship, a Christian would say God loves me because He is love. He was always in a relationship of love and that relationship is eternally defined as a Father/Son relationship . . . It’s like a father/son—human father to human son—[relationship], only it’s infinitely more. It’s way beyond.
So [it’s] supreme, but it’s like us. In other words, I can relate to it, and then because there is that love relationship [and] that love attribute . . . in a relationship, [this] fixes the attribute of love. And so He loves me because He is love. He cannot but love. So that’s the beginning of a road, of a diversion, in the understanding of God. . . . The issue becomes the attributes of God and how we define, essentially, the relational attributes of God.
Bock: Would it be fair to say that in Islam, the hub for the character of God . . . is primarily in the category of power and authority?
Shehadeh: Yes.
Bock: Whereas in Christianity. . . it isn’t that there isn’t power and authority, but there’s a relational dimension that’s not in the emphases that you see in Islam. Would that be the fundamental difference in terms of the conception of God that we’re dealing with?
Shehadeh: Yes, I think so. And because we have a relationship in the Christian biblical understanding, that means that God is self-sufficient. Yet there’s a love, a joy that is with it, shared between the persons in the one God, apart from Creation. Whereas in the monadic monotheism, you have a relationship [that] only starts in Creation. So Creation becomes a need that God has in order to have a relationship. So power comes before love in a monadic monotheistic understanding; whereas it’s the opposite in the Christian understanding.
Christians in today’s multireligious context must understand the basics of Islam and the challenges of discussing the gospel of grace in order to more effectively engage in spiritual conversations with Muslim friends and neighbors. An understanding of the Five Pillars allows one to see how Muslim practices are like and unlike Christian practices. However, it is in the understanding of God as relational, not just sovereign and powerful, where the two faiths differ the most in their understanding of God’s attributes. That alongside the unique work of Jesus makes Christian faith distinct.
Notes
- “The Global Religious Landscape,” Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project, December 18, 2012, accessed September 6, 2013, http://www.pewforum.org /2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec.
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