Solly
October 26th 2004, 11:11 AM
Sandals at the Mosque: Christian presence amid Islam.
Kenneth Cragg, SCM Press, 1959, pp 136-139
If an active righting of the world is so crucial to the sovereignty of God, why does the redemption in Christ appear so unsuccessful? If we insist that since law is flouted, there must be a re-making of the heart, why do we not face the fact that it seems to make so little difference? We assert that man because he violates the very good he approves has deeper needs than revelation satisfies [ie, as in Quranic Islam]. But is the enterprise of reconciliation any more effective in ensuring the good life and the true society? Has a Gospel of pardon more success than a law of submission? The true enthronement of God - the God to end gods - and the restoration of the one right worship, are these any nearer on Christian terms?
Is exhortation to obedience in Islam in any worse case than exhortation to conversion in Christianity? Is not the natural man as dominant and as determiniative of things and of himself, whether we hope him perfectable or proclaim him fallen and invited to newness of life? The mystery of the unredeemedness, not least of the Christian world, seems sadly to jeopardise the New Testament announcment of the peace of God. Muslims genuinely suspect that this is the Achilles' heel of the Christian scheme.
Do not these queries menace the underlying assumptions of Islam as well as Christianity? If we must write off God's ways with men as failure, or suppose that his righteousness is defeated, we abandon both our faiths. We can only face this problem of human non-Islam, of history's seeming rejection of the things of peace (be they law or grace), if we believe in Divine sovereignty. Only on such an assumption do the questions make sense. If God is not supposed to reign, there can be no 'mystery of iniquity'. If the problem is real, it is only because the conviction about Divine Lordship is real. The very burden of the problem is, in fact, the other side of our conviction that God is, and that he is almighty. If the Christian concept is groundless, what is at the heart of Islam about God can hardly breathe more easily. Rather it is likely to expire.
Islam has always believed that the cross of Jesus ought not to happen: which is perhaps one way of insisting that if it did, it ought not to be a fruitless failure, an utter extinction barren of consequence. Love ought not to be worsted, says the Muslim. Hence Islam rescues Jesus prior to the cross. By the same token, all the more, if the cross happens, love ought not to be worsted beyond it. Further, to be sure, as Muslims are, that no means of forgivenss are necessary for God does not accord with the notion that the Divine Will, engaged in a redemptive enterprise, might find itself frustrated. Muslim views of God have serious stakes in the Christian ones.
The Gospel of grace has a different relation to man in evil than has law. Even where man's defiance continues, there is a large difference in what we defy. Law informs our ignorance and when the problem is no longer ignorance, but obduracy, this it will rebuke and condemn. Then the gulf widens and the righteousness of the law goes, by the way of the law, even further from our reach. If we acquiesce in this situation we are complacent sinners: if we deplore it we are desparing ones. The Gospel of grace is beyond this dilemma of the law. It assures us in the cross that it reaches beyond our despair, while leaving us no ground for refuge in complacence. In its offer of pardon and newness of life it brings the very power of God to the restoring of our souls.
Even where it remains despised and rejected by the soul of man, the cross stands majestically. It has a patience and a promise, beyond the competance of the law. Its' grace will never let us go, as at some point law necessarily must.Yet in the very last resort, the question of man's being unredeemed despite the Gospel of God in Christ cannot be faced purely in discursive terms. The ansswer to all queries about men being saved is the summons: 'Enter ye in...' The question becomes inescapably personal. All our effort after a 'frontier theology', our hope to explore kinship of meaning between the Gospel and the Quran, must terminate in the contagion of loving Christian personality. The presence of the peace of God is the common society of men in whom it dwells and reconciles and rules.
Argue over proof texts as much as you want, the only proof text that will count is Christ written on your heart as a letter of recommendation. Islam has the indomitable bending of the will to serve God; Christianity either has the transformation and renewal of man, or it has nothing more than Islam.
Kenneth Cragg, SCM Press, 1959, pp 136-139
If an active righting of the world is so crucial to the sovereignty of God, why does the redemption in Christ appear so unsuccessful? If we insist that since law is flouted, there must be a re-making of the heart, why do we not face the fact that it seems to make so little difference? We assert that man because he violates the very good he approves has deeper needs than revelation satisfies [ie, as in Quranic Islam]. But is the enterprise of reconciliation any more effective in ensuring the good life and the true society? Has a Gospel of pardon more success than a law of submission? The true enthronement of God - the God to end gods - and the restoration of the one right worship, are these any nearer on Christian terms?
Is exhortation to obedience in Islam in any worse case than exhortation to conversion in Christianity? Is not the natural man as dominant and as determiniative of things and of himself, whether we hope him perfectable or proclaim him fallen and invited to newness of life? The mystery of the unredeemedness, not least of the Christian world, seems sadly to jeopardise the New Testament announcment of the peace of God. Muslims genuinely suspect that this is the Achilles' heel of the Christian scheme.
Do not these queries menace the underlying assumptions of Islam as well as Christianity? If we must write off God's ways with men as failure, or suppose that his righteousness is defeated, we abandon both our faiths. We can only face this problem of human non-Islam, of history's seeming rejection of the things of peace (be they law or grace), if we believe in Divine sovereignty. Only on such an assumption do the questions make sense. If God is not supposed to reign, there can be no 'mystery of iniquity'. If the problem is real, it is only because the conviction about Divine Lordship is real. The very burden of the problem is, in fact, the other side of our conviction that God is, and that he is almighty. If the Christian concept is groundless, what is at the heart of Islam about God can hardly breathe more easily. Rather it is likely to expire.
Islam has always believed that the cross of Jesus ought not to happen: which is perhaps one way of insisting that if it did, it ought not to be a fruitless failure, an utter extinction barren of consequence. Love ought not to be worsted, says the Muslim. Hence Islam rescues Jesus prior to the cross. By the same token, all the more, if the cross happens, love ought not to be worsted beyond it. Further, to be sure, as Muslims are, that no means of forgivenss are necessary for God does not accord with the notion that the Divine Will, engaged in a redemptive enterprise, might find itself frustrated. Muslim views of God have serious stakes in the Christian ones.
The Gospel of grace has a different relation to man in evil than has law. Even where man's defiance continues, there is a large difference in what we defy. Law informs our ignorance and when the problem is no longer ignorance, but obduracy, this it will rebuke and condemn. Then the gulf widens and the righteousness of the law goes, by the way of the law, even further from our reach. If we acquiesce in this situation we are complacent sinners: if we deplore it we are desparing ones. The Gospel of grace is beyond this dilemma of the law. It assures us in the cross that it reaches beyond our despair, while leaving us no ground for refuge in complacence. In its offer of pardon and newness of life it brings the very power of God to the restoring of our souls.
Even where it remains despised and rejected by the soul of man, the cross stands majestically. It has a patience and a promise, beyond the competance of the law. Its' grace will never let us go, as at some point law necessarily must.Yet in the very last resort, the question of man's being unredeemed despite the Gospel of God in Christ cannot be faced purely in discursive terms. The ansswer to all queries about men being saved is the summons: 'Enter ye in...' The question becomes inescapably personal. All our effort after a 'frontier theology', our hope to explore kinship of meaning between the Gospel and the Quran, must terminate in the contagion of loving Christian personality. The presence of the peace of God is the common society of men in whom it dwells and reconciles and rules.
Argue over proof texts as much as you want, the only proof text that will count is Christ written on your heart as a letter of recommendation. Islam has the indomitable bending of the will to serve God; Christianity either has the transformation and renewal of man, or it has nothing more than Islam.