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