by J. Dudley Woodberry, Osman Zümrüt and Mustafa Köyl
It’s great to see Christians meeting with Muslims to discuss how we can get along—and even better when the Christian representatives share a firm faith in the gospel.
University Press of America, 4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200, Lanham, MD 20706, 2005, 172 pages, $27.00.
—Reviewed by Gordon Nickel, assistant professor of Intercultural Studies, ACTS Seminaries, Langley, British Columbia.
It’s great to see Christians meeting with Muslims to discuss how we can get along—and even better when the Christian representatives share a firm faith in the gospel.
The twelve papers in Muslim and Christian Reflections on Peace were first given at a symposium in Samsun, Turkey in 2001. Dudley Woodberry introduces the collection by observing that both religions make exclusive truth claims.
Five of the papers are by Christian scholars. Miroslav Volf and Ng Kam Weng explore the Christian resources for treating “the other” with love. Volf rightly notes that a precious contribution Christians can make is the concept of grace.
Woodberry and Joseph Cumming reach out to Muslim participants by appealing to material in the Qur’an and its commentaries. Woodberry’s paper is a version of his article in Muslims and Christians on the Emmaus Road concerning human sin and evil. He argues that the Christian and Muslim diagnoses of the human condition have much in common. Cumming carefully catalogues the interpretations of Qur’anic verses related to the death of Jesus in four important Muslim commentaries. Not only does he provide helpful information, but he places a matter of crucial concern into the center of the symposium.
Jonathan Culver invites Muslims to consider the Genesis texts on Ishmael, as he was once invited by a Muslim to consider the Muslim materials. Culver and others set out to be open with the faith issues between the gospel and Islam “in a spirit of decency and mutual respect.”
The remaining papers are by Muslim scholars from Ondokuz Mayis University. Some papers show a significant effort from Muslims to seek things in common between the faiths by studying Christian materials. Interestingly, the Christian materials cited most frequently are the writings of Hans Küng, John Hick and Paul Knitter.
Israfil Balci discusses the commands to fight and kill in the ninth sura and the doctrine of abrogation which gave them prominence. Balci suggests that the classical understanding of these verses be rejected as a product of the political tensions of the time.
An interesting twist in this section is the argument of Mahmut Aydin that the main obstacle to peace is “the absolute true claims of world religions” and that the solution is the philosophy of religious pluralism!
We’re accustomed to hearing Christian participants in inter-religious dialogue promote religious pluralism. It’s to the credit of this collection that the Christian scholars promote the gospel instead.
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