I am very grateful to Martin, Nathan, and Rob for their responses to my conversation opener. While I cannot address all of the ways that they have extended or challenged my thinking, I will engage with some main points from each of them, sometimes agreeing or conceding, and other times countering their proposals or clarifying what I intend by calling for a reformation in theo-political witness to Muslims.
Response to Martin Accad
Martin Accad’s Sacred Misinterpretation was one of the books which encouraged me to examine for myself the pre-modern sources of Christian-Muslim relations. I am happy to concede to him that my article did not say important things about the difference between tahrif al-lafdh (corruption of text) and tahrif al-ma‘na (corruption of meaning, or misinterpretation), and the predominance of the latter accusation over the former in extant Muslim writings until the 11th century.
This predominance, though, should not be exaggerated. As Martin’s own work makes clear, some accusations about corruption of the text were present prior to the 11th century. To quote another Martin (Whittingham), whose book A History of Muslim Views of the Bible corroborates Accad’s view of the Muslim sources in this period, “the accusation of corruption of the text lingers in the background, present but not dominant.” Whittingham also concludes, however, that “it is clear from Christian responses throughout this period that the charge of textual corruption of the Bible troubled them, since Christian writers regularly tackle it. This indicates that the general assumption by Muslims of such textual corruption was more widespread than the evidence recorded in early Muslim texts suggests.”
Even when Muslim scholars do not call into question the textual integrity of the Bible, however, their “muhammado-centric” re-reading of Scripture could still result in conclusions that resemble an inverted form of Marcionism. ʿAbd al-Jabbār provides a good example of this. He alludes to Jesus’ teaching about the law in Matthew 5:17 in order to support his position that Christians are wrong to have abandoned the Mosaic law. In doing so, he is clearly relying upon rather than calling into question the integrity of the biblical text on this matter. His interpretation of the text, though, supports an inverse-Marcionite proposal: Christians should re-establish the Mosaic law (or really its current Islamic instantiation), and abandon the apostle Paul’s teachings.
Martin’s response also invites me to clarify how I regard the criticisms of Muslims and what kind of reforms I am proposing to Christian theo-political witness. He is concerned that my proposal may be a call to break with the church fathers and return Christ’s church “to the Old Testament dispensation” or “to return to a Byzantine interpretation of the Bible to justify the use of the sword in God’s name under the banner of Christ”. Regarding Muslim criticisms, I do not think that they can be heard by Christians uncritically, and I do not endorse ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s proposal to drop claims to Christ’s uniqueness and see him within an Islamic narrative of history. What I take from these criticisms is that they identify, even in the mode of satire, a real problem in the church’s historic witness concerning how the gospel should affect the task of earthly rule. If we present Christ to Muslims as one who came simply to deny or to break radically with all Old Testament expectations regarding rule and kingship, then Muslims are right to accuse Christians of having a Marcionite attitude towards their own scripture in this area. Jesus becomes the God who saves us from the rule of a god depicted in the Old Testament.
While I cannot be certain without more discussion, I fear that Martin’s comment about Jesus coming to “correct” a “chauvinistic ideology” reflected in certain Old Testament passages veers in the direction of Marcionism by opening up space to criticize the normative viewpoint of the Spirit-inspired authors of the Old Testament. I have similar concerns about his view of Jesus’s kingship as being merely a “radical reinterpretation” of the “utter disaster” and “total fiasco” that was kingship in the Old Testament, since the Bible does have positive things to say about Old Testament kings, notwithstanding their many faults. Lastly, I cannot quite agree that Jesus’ kingdom “does not permit wielding human power, whether political, military, or judicial” because these have undergone “radical replacement” via the ethic revealed in Sermon on the Mount. Since the rest of Martin’s response does not lead me to believe that he is a pacifist, perhaps he meant only that when the kingdom is consummated in Jesus’ return, coercive power will be unnecessary for us to wield. Jesus’ teachings and the inauguration of his kingdom in the church certainly thrust institutions which wield the sword to the margins of social existence, but Jesus’ own interactions with soldiers, coupled with Peter and Paul’s teachings on civil authority, do not allow us to think that they are either unnecessary in a sinful world nor off limits to Christians under the right circumstances. Rulers who submit to Christ must learn to apply the sermon on the mount to the way that they use their power (Nathan’s quotation from Augustine is a good starting point for the history Christian reflection on this), and the church must be ready to instruct them and hold them accountable in how they do this. I therefore fully agree with Martin’s later statement that “[t]he church’s willingness to offer service to human rulers and collaboration with earthly power will always have to be subject to the scrutiny of Christ’s life model and teaching. If rulers fail this test, then they are to be resisted…” On this point, we seem only to disagree about how Christ’s life model and teaching relate to the Old Testament.
Rather than presenting Jesus to Muslims by way of radical contrast with kingship and rule in the Old Testament, I propose that we hold together two principals. One the one hand, we have to show Muslims that we worship a God “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:18). Accordingly, Christians must show Muslims how the same God who led Joshua and Israel in the Canaanite conquests and David in subduing the Philistines is the same God who revealed himself in the face of Jesus Christ. We can do so by saying that Jesus manifests the same qualities of power, judgement, and possession that were associate with God’s kingship and his image bearers in the Old Testament. On the other hand, we have to show Muslims that the Old Testament is “but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” (Hebrews 10:1). Jesus is not merely Joshua or David. He is the greater Joshua and the greater David. Old Testament rulers had power to put people to death, but Jesus has power over death; Old Testament rulers have wisdom to judge superficially between one sinner and another, but Jesus has greater wisdom to judge the hearts of all as the wholly righteous one; Old Testament rulers secured a temporary possession that eventually faded away, but Jesus offers the greater, eternal possession kept waiting for us in heaven. This is why Christians worship and obey Jesus as their true king; he meets and fulfils Old Testament political longings for a ruler whose actions coordinate power, judgement and possession for his people’s good. Earthly rulers need to take heed of Jesus’ true kingship and implement their rule in a manner that serves the church’s mission of proclaiming that kingship to all.
Response to Nathan Zekveld
There is much that I can agree with in Nathan’s reflections, especially with regards to the church’s responsibility to speak prophetically to political rulers and to instruct Christian magistrates regarding rule in light of the gospel. I have reservations only about endorsing “the right to self-defence” and by implication “wars of necessity.” Nathan cites Nehemiah 4:14 as an example where the people of Jerusalem are called upon to defend the goods of their homeland. One also needs to consider, though, passages like Jeremiah 21:9-10, where Jeremiah urges the people of Jerusalem not to fight in self-defence but instead to go out and surrender to the invading Chaldeans.
Is there a Biblical framework that can make sense of both cases? I believe so. To understand it, though, we must first relinquish the idea that Scripture endorses “rights” as naturally existing entities which adhere to individuals or groups independent of circumstance (e.g. “a right to self-defence”). Instead, following Anglican moral theologians Joan and Oliver O’Donovan and Nigel Biggar, I think that righteousness (tsadaq) and judgement (mishpat) in Scripture denote a more objective view of ‘right’ as something which must be found out (in cases of moral deliberation about future action) or vindicated (in cases of judgement on past actions) through examination of the circumstances. In other words, Scripture does not speak about individuals or groups having rights that are endowed naturally with creation independent of circumstances, but instead doing what is right and being in the right in each circumstance we face.
We can apply this view of right to thinking about warfare in the following way: it is improper to say that governments or peoples have an unqualified natural right to self-defence. If this were the case, then punishment of wrongdoing through warfare could never extend to regime change without generating irreconcilable moral quandaries. I believe the Allies were in the right, for example, to pursue an unconditional surrender from the Axis powers during WWII, even to the point of invading Germany and forcibly removing its leaders from power when they refused to surrender. If this is correct, it cannot be simultaneously right for German soldiers to have defended their homeland against the Allied ground invasion from March of 1945. Yet we see classical just war thinkers who endorse the ‘natural rights’ view of right, such as Francisco Suarez, getting entangled in precisely this sort of difficulty, where it appears from their views that both sides in a war can lay claim to justice. Suarez tries to rescue himself by saying that innocent persons being subjected to a just war against their own government may “defend their lives” by trying to stop the burning of cities or the sacking of citadels, but they “may not adopt an offensive self-defence…by engaging in combat with just belligerents.” I don’t see how Suarez’s ‘mere defence’ of life, city, and citadel could be implemented without recourse to the type of behaviour he subsequently forbids. We avoid this quandary entirely, though, if we take an objective view of right: it may be the right course of action for a government to enact a war of self-defence, if such a war can effect properly the judgement that God has authorized earthly rulers to perform on wrongdoers (in this case, unjust aggressors). But there will also be cases where a ruler judges that a self-defensive war would be wrong, either because their nation lacks sufficient strength of arms to enact it successfully, or because they judge that their own nation is morally culpable for the current state of hostilities and would be deserving of the punishment that warfare would bring. In such cases, it is not self-defence but a shrewd surrender or a repentant suing for peace which is called for.
Response to Rob Scott
Rob’s opening vignettes, taken from his experience in East London, vividly illustrate the political aspirations of some Muslims, as well as the ways in which they perceive Christianity to be weak on political and social issues. I agree with him that the term “Judaizing” is highly apt for describing Islam, and earlier generations of Christians have made use of it in their attempts to make sense of Islam theologically. It may be capacious enough to capture everything I intend by the awkward term “inverse-Marcionite”.
Like Martin Accad, Rob worries that I have been unfair to some of my pre-modern Christian sources. I agree with Rob and Martin that the cause for Timothy’s omission of discussion about a Christian view of rule may be in part due to the meandering nature of the discussion over a lengthy period. Nevertheless, there remains an incompatibility between Timothy’s statement that the gospel of the kingdom has brought Christians beyond any concern for earthly rule and the text which he quotes from Psalm 2 which speaks about earthly rulers submitting to Christ. As for the anonymous text attributed to al-Kindi, “Christ = kind vs Muhammad = brigand” is not the contrast which concerns me. Rather, it is “Christ = pacifist vs Muhammad = brigand.” This contrast is not explicitly stated by al-Kindi, but it is implicit when he says that the Mosaic lex talionis and law of Christ contradict one another. He ought instead to have said that the law of Christ fulfils the Mosaic law and does not negate the wisdom of the lex talionis, which was a principle designed to limit bloodshed.
Rob also worries that I have too quickly dismissed the way of the cross. Certainly, this was not my intention, and I agree with him that the cross subverts all merely human notions of power and success. I only wish to suggest that the cross cannot be understood as an isolated event endowed with its own significance apart from the meaning of the resurrection and the ascension. It is thus entirely right to say that part of the cross’s significance is that Jesus’ earthly ministry was not focussed on temporal power and that his kingdom was not of this world. Yet if we leave our witness at this point, failing to explain how not only Christ’s death but also how is resurrection and ascension have a political significance which earthly rule alone could not achieve, our witness remains incomplete. So too, if we fail to explain how the political significance of the cross, resurrection, and ascension affects the significance of temporal rule now. (This is not to suggest that ‘complete’ witness will be required in conversation with every Muslim individual. I mean that it is required of the church corporately in its witness to Christ amidst all types of Islam, some of which have deep political aspirations).
Finally, Rob, like Martin, baulks at O’Donovan’s statement that earthly government after Christ’s ascension is “reconceived to serve the needs of international mobility and contact which the advancement of the gospel requires,” on the grounds that it “suggests too close a tie between Church and State and that the gospel cannot advance if state actors prevent mobility”. Offering further context for O’Donovan’s quotation may alleviate Rob’s concern. The quote arises in a discussion of 1 Timothy 2:1ff, where the apostle Paul urges prayers and intercessions for kings, as for all men, “so that we [the church] may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” The peace of the church, though, is not the ultimate justification for the church’s prayers: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior,” Paul goes on to say, “who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (ESV). Not merely the peace of the church, but the growth of the church is envisioned in the command to pray for rulers.
What is thus imagined in O’Donovan’s statement is not a taking up on the church’s mission directly by the earthly ruler through conquest and forced conversion. It is instead an indirect support, a maintaining of an imperfect, earthly peace so that the church can go about its business of spreading the gospel. This maintenance may look like nothing more than the soldiers’ quelling of a violent mob which had seized the apostle Paul (Acts 21:30-32), but that is not nothing! O’Donovan is thus also not claiming that governmental cooperation is necessary for the gospel to advance. Instead, what is implicit in Paul’s prayers is a normative view of how government ought to function in light of the gospel. Certainly, earthly rulers can (futilely) oppose the gospel’s advance, and the church should always be prepared for this possibility. Yet possibility is not necessity. The church must also be prepared to instruct rulers in how to support the advance of the gospel, even if that instruction is often merely a polite request to move out of the way.