Islamic Prophethood Understood Thomistically?

Christianity has never spoken with one voice on just about anything, including how Muhammad should be regarded. Some dismiss him as a delusional devil; others see him as saying things which Christians should regard as largely unobjectionable, if not conformable to their own tradition; others think he is advancing a species of Christian heresy largely derived from Arianism; and still other voices, ancient and modern, have still different views.

Along comes what seems to be a very careful new book giving painstaking consideration to these questions. Released just last month is Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy by Anna Bonta Moreland (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), 196pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Scholarly attempts to understand Islam in the West over the past several years have failed to take Islamic theology seriously. This book engages Islam from deep within the Christian tradition by addressing the question of the prophethood of Muhammad. Anna Bonta Moreland calls for a retrieval of Thomistic thought on prophecy to view Muhammad within a Christian theology of revelation, without either appropriating the prophet as an unwitting Christian or reducing both Christianity and Islam to a common denominator. This historical recovery leads to a more sophisticated understanding of Islam, one that honors the integrity of the Catholic tradition and, through that integrity, argues for the possibility in principle of Muhammad as a religious prophet.

Moreland sets the stage for this inquiry through an intertextual reading of the key Vatican II documents on Islam and on Christian revelation. She then uses Aquinas's treatment of prophecy to address the case of whether Muhammad is a prophet in Christian terms. The book examines the work of several Christian theologians, including W. Montgomery Watt, Hans Küng, Kenneth Cragg, David Kerr, and Jacques Jomier, O.P., and then draws upon the practice of analogical reasoning in the theology of religious pluralism to show that a term in one religion—in this case “prophecy”—can have purchase in another religious tradition. Muhammad Reconsidered not only is a constructive contribution to Catholic theology but also has enormous potential to help scholars reframe and comprehend Christian-Muslim relations.

The Complexities of Monotheism

Often my students, including many self-identified Christian ones, have to admit, at least grudgingly, that they do not really understand Trinitarian theology and therefore find certain Islamic criticisms of the same to be unduly compelling--invariably based on a superficial reading of both. These are not, of course, new issues; but a new book, released last week, is giving them fresh and welcome attention:  Monotheism and Its Complexities: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, eds. Lucinda Mosher and David Marshall (Georgetown University Press, 2018), 208pp.

About this collection we are told:

Conventional wisdom would have it that believing in one God is straightforward; that Muslims are expert at monotheism, but that Christians complicate it, weaken it, or perhaps even abandon it altogether by speaking of the Trinity. In this book, Muslim and Christian scholars challenge that opinion. Examining together scripture texts and theological reflections from both traditions, they show that the oneness of God is taken as axiomatic in both, and also that affirming God's unity has raised complex theological questions for both. The two faiths are not identical, but what divides them is not the number of gods they believe in.

The latest volume of proceedings of The Building Bridges Seminar ― a gathering of scholar-practitioners of Islam and Christianity that meets annually for the purpose of deep study of scripture and other texts carefully selected for their pertinence to the year's chosen theme ― this book begins with a retrospective on the seminar's first fifteen years and concludes with an account of deliberations and discussions among participants, thereby providing insight into the model of vigorous and respectful dialogue that characterizes this initiative.

Contributors include Richard Bauckham, Sidney Griffith, Christoph Schwöbel, Janet Soskice, Asma Afsaruddin, Maria Dakake, Martin Nguyen, and Sajjad Rizvi. To encourage further dialogical study, the volume includes those scripture passages and other texts on which their essays comment. A unique resource for scholars, students, and professors of Christianity and Islam.