Towards a Jewish-Christian-Muslim Theology (Challenges in Contemporary Theology)

213 Pages·2011·0.64 MB·English

by  David B. Burrell

Towards a
Jewish-Christian-Muslim
Theology
Challenges in Contemporary Theology
Series Editors: Gareth Jones and Lewis Ayres
Canterbury Christ Church University College, UK and University of Durham, UK
Challenges in Contemporary Theology is a series aimed at producing clear orientations
in, and research on, areas of “ c hallenge” in contemporary theology. These carefully
coordinated books engage traditional theological concerns with mainstreams in modern
thought and culture that challenge those concerns. The “ c hallenges” implied are to be
understood in two senses: those presented by society to contemporary theology, and those
posed by theology to society.
Published
These Three Are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology
David S. Cunningham
After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy
Catherine Pickstock
Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology
Mark A. McIntosh
Engaging Scripture : A Model for Theological Interpretation
Stephen E. Fowl
Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ
William T. Cavanaugh
Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God
Eugene F. Rogers, Jr
On Christian Theology
Rowan Williams
The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature
Paul S. Fiddes
Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender
Sarah Coakley
A Theology of Engagement
Ian S. Markham
Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology
Gerard Loughlin
Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology
Matthew Levering
Faith and Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective
David Burrell
Keeping God ’ s Silence
Rachel Muers
Christ and Culture
Graham Ward
Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation
Gavin D ’ Costa
Rewritten Theology: Aquinas After His Readers
Mark D. Jordan
God ’ s Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics
Samuel Wells
The Trial of the Witnesses: The Rise and Decline of Postliberal Theology
Paul J. DeHart
Theology and Families
Adrian Thatcher
The Shape of Theology
David F. Ford
The Vietnam War and Theologies of Memory
Jonathan Tran
In Adams Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin
Ian A. McFarland
Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’ s Theory of Knowledge
Lydia Schumacher
Towards a
Jewish-Christian-Muslim
Theology
David B. Burrell
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition fi rst published 2011
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1 2011
To a friend of more than half a century, Nikos Stavroulakis,
animator of Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania in Crete, who
epitomizes the hospitality described in this study
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction 1
1 Free Creation as a Shared Task for Jews,
Christians, Muslims 9
2 Relating Divine Freedom with Human Freedom:
Diverging and Converging Strategies 25
3 Human Initiative and Divine Grace:
Augustine and Ghazali 51
4 Trust in Divine Providence: Tawakkul,
“Abandonment,” and “Detachment” 63
5 The Point of it All: “Return,” Judgment, and
“Second Coming” – Creation to Consummation 87
6 Realized Eschatology: Faith as a Mode
of Knowing and Journeying 129
7 Respectfully Negotiating Outstanding Neuralgic
Issues: Contradictions and Conversions 165
Epilog: Misuses and Abuses of Abrahamic Traditions 189
Index 193
vii
Preface
While preparing to compose this study, I was privileged to spend
the Jewish high holydays at Hania with my friend Nikos Stavrou-
lakis in the Etz Hayyim synagogue ( www.etz - hayyim - hania.org/ ).
I had been overwhelmed by the rapprochement between Christian
and Muslims at various levels effected since Pope Benedict’ s speech
at Regensburg in 2006. His ill - advised example, apparently in
homage to a one- t ime colleague at the university, distracted from a
recondite thesis on the role reason has to play in elaborating reli-
gious tradition, eliciting an astutely critical response from 38 Muslim
scholars within a month. And a year later, a carefully constructed
document, entitled (from the Qur ’ an) A Common Word between Us ,
precipitated an exchange unprecedented in the last fourteen centu-
ries. Something had happened, not without astute guidance, which
called for a reassessment of the commonalities between these two
often estranged traditions. I felt prepared and called to undertake
such an inquiry, since my own work over the past quarter century
had been focused on exchanges extant among Jews, Christians, and
Muslims. Yet mesmerized by these recent events, I initially demurred
from a triadic approach, lamely suggesting that monitoring actual
or potential encounters between Christianity and Islam might at
ix
Preface
best be supplemented with links to Jewish tradition, while suggest-
ing that these best remain illustrative, since Christianity and Islam
are faith- t raditions in a way that Judaism can be, but need not be.
Yet while there is something right about that statement, it can also
be grossly insulting, as celebrating the high holydays at Etz Hayyim
synagogue forcibly reminded me. 1
Y et I confess my initial faux pas here precisely to remind myself
and recall to others how deeply Christian faith has been nourished
in Jewish tradition from its beginning, illustrated whenever the
New Testament refers to “ the Scriptures ” (that is, Hebrew Scripture),
yet how easily the descriptor “ C hristian” can elide that originary
fact. Even more personally, my own initiation into the mystery and
fruits of dialog began with a celebrated mentor in Jerusalem, Marcel
Dubois, OP, who spiced my initiation into the “ sacred geography ”
of the Holy Land with trenchant reminders of a profoundly Jewish
Jesus, best recovered through intercourse with living and believing
Jews. Now the binary title – “ Muslim - Christian theology ” – can
easily obscure that constitutive fact of Christian spiritual life and
intellectual practice, so we begin with a proper Muslim s ilsala ,
giving due homage to mentors from all three Abrahamic traditions.
So this elucidation of latent points of contact between Christians
and Muslims, in selected theological topics over the centuries, will
duly illustrate how that conversation regularly involved Jewish
interlocutors as well. Our indispensable guide to help initiate this
rich historical sweep will be Sidney H. Griffi th ’ s The Church in the
Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Griffi ths synthe-
sizes years of painstaking scholarship to offer stunning detail
regarding the ways the advent of Muslims in the Levant incited
fresh initiatives regarding the telling questions of faith in which all
of the churches had been so assiduously engaged, often leaving
them at odds with one another. It is my contention that a similar
opportunity attends us now.
My next mentor was Georges Anawati, OP, a Dominican confrere
of Marcel Dubois whose Introduction à la th é logie musulmane (Paris:
J. Vrin, 1946), composed jointly with Louis Gardet, offers a model
x
Preface
for this inquiry undertaken nearly three - quarters of a century later.
So I undertake it in grateful recognition of the guidance of these
two French Dominicans, hoping to bring to it some of the astuteness
of their intellects, as well as the simplicity of their spirit. Moreover,
my own experience of comparative inquiry has ever illustrated the
wisdom of the American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce,
reminding us how inextricably triadic is all human apprehension,
which I have found to be true of interfaith exchange as well, where
dyadic conversation can easily lead to impasses that a third inter-
locutor may well unscramble. So while it may appear daunting to
expound three traditions rather than two, that very exercise can also
facilitate the comparative task, with one or another tradition playing
the mediating role as we proceed.
T he chronological emergence of the revelations which shape each
of these traditions leads ineluctably to later ones presenting them-
selves as succeeding – indeed, even superseding – the earlier.
Indeed, this dynamic is often inscribed in the founding documents
themselves. The way Christians characterize their book as the New
Testament, while assigning Hebrew Scriptures as the Old Testament,
offers a classical paradigm of this maneuver. Muslim tradition
presents the Qur ’ an as culminating the revelations to Moses and in
Jesus, yet the book itself does one better by insisting that it initiates
believers into the originary “ religion of Abraham ” (3:95). Here
supersession meets the original to offer a complete package. Yet
Christians make similar claims in presenting their revelation as “ the
Word who made the universe, ” now become human in Jesus, so
eternally fi nessing all claims to historical pre - eminence. Without
pretending to set aside this chronological pattern, this inquiry will
proceed more diachronically to show how each tradition, as it
develops, displays features cognate to the other, usually with little
actual contact. In that sense, we may call this an exercise in “ creative
hermeneutics, ” detailing what we are able to discern in retrospect
in a completely different interfaith milieu.
Our strategy will indirectly corroborate the (sometime contested)
fact that Jews, Christians, and Muslim do worship the same God.
Christians who might doubt this could easily fi nd Christian Arabs
xi