Hard on the heels of the controversy about Rob Bell's new book about heaven and hell, HarperOne has another book sure to set the internet ablaze, Allah: A Christian Response by Miroslav Volf. It is set for release March 15, according to Christianbook.com.
As in the case of Bell's book, we have not read Volf's book. However, we have a much better idea of where Volf is going to go with his argument. Witness this quote from a March 3 article written by Volf on the website, Huffingtonpost.com:
"The fact of the matter is this: fearful people bent on domination have created the contest for supremacy between Yahweh, the God of the Bible, and Allah, the God of the Quran. The two are one god, albeit differently understood."
Let me state clearly --- I do not believe that.
But, let me state just as clearly, I think Volf's entire case deserves a hearing, and I will give it that in May when I have a little more time for reading.
United Methodist bishop William Willimon says in his endorsement of the book, "I've read many attempts to think like Christians about Islam. This is the best I have read. Volf wonderfully explicates Islam in a way that demonstrates the best of Christian thought about God."
We shall see.
Other than Willimon's endorsement, why would I believe Volf's provocative idea deserves a full hearing?
Well, Volf --- a Yale University professor --- is no stranger to evangelical readers. In 2000, Christianity Today named his book, Exclusion and Embrace , one of the classic books of the 20th century.
Also, it is not lost on me that Volf is a Pentecostal by experience, if not by church affliation. In Mark Oppenheimer's 2003 article about Volf in The Christian Century, Volf is quoted as saying,
"I have, as a young person, 'spoken in tongues.' It was a result of prayer in search of words that couldn't find them. There was nothing miraculous in what I experienced. I experienced it as a freeing. It came gently, then subsided."
Of course, credibility is not determined by anecdotes about experiences. The ideas in Allah: A Christian Response will rise or fall on their own. And I will read them carefully.
5 comments:
I would just note the Volf's idea really isn't provocative, or even very new. One would be hard pressed to find more than a decade ago(or even among evangelists to Muslims from a century ago) the idea that Muslims and Christians and Jews don't share a common God. But as you say, Volf's arguments must speak for themselves. Critical is that he at least understands that this is a Christian theological discussion and decision. Robert Hunt
I agree with the review in Publisher's Weekly that says, "Perhaps the most stirring and involved debate concerns the comparison of Christianity Trinity to Allah" found at: http://tinyurl.com/4oypkdt
I must also note that in the Huffingtonpost.com article that I quote, Volf seems there to be laser-focused on peace --- it seems to have an inordinately high value (especially relative to this discussion). Of course, striving for peace is a very hard thing to argue against :-) Wouldn't we all love the world to be at peace, huh?
But, when it comes to believers handling Biblical revelation, being at peace should not be the highest value. The faithful interpretation and transmission of revelation itself should be(e.g., the personhood of God).
One could not make a case that John the Baptist or the Apostle Paul held the prospects for peace as the sieve through which their prophetic voices had to pass through.
Christ Jesus and Allah are not the same. Islam is anti-Christic.
Our God sent His son to die for us. Their god send their sons to die for him.
Thanks!
I'm not sure where you are coming from, Jon, but one brief comment from history may be a tonic for the soul. The prophet Muhammed's father's name was Abdullah, meaning "servant of Allah." But, before Muhammed there was no Islam, only Christianity gave Abdullah his name. Muhammed inherited Allah from Arabic Christianity and Christianity inherited Allah from Syriac Christianity that called God Alaha. Jesus himself spoke a variant of Syriac otherwise known as Aramaic. From the Cross he cried, "Alaha, Alaha, lama sebachthani." The Greek letters deform the pronunciation somewhat. The point of this is that the God of the Jews, the God of the Christians and the God of the Muslims is the same referent, though the stories we tell about God say something different about God's character, the God is the same.
Nihil,
In the Christian Scriptures, the book of Hebrews presents Jesus as God's unique Son and also that,
"He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word." (chapter 1, verse 3 in the NRSV)
Are you, Nihil, in agreement with these things?
Post a Comment