Islam, Christianity, and liberalism again (Updated)

Hope you won’t mind submitting to one more post on Islam (the last for a while, I hope).  What follows are some comments on some of the discussion of Islam and its relationship to Christianity and to liberalism that has been going on both in my own comboxes and in the rest of the blogosphere in the weeks since I first posted on the subject.

Referring to God and worshipping God

In my recent post on the debate about whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God, I made it clear that all that I was there addressing was the philosophical question of whether Christians and Muslims succeed in referring to one and the same thing when they use the word “God.”  In other words, I was discussing an issue in the philosophy of language.  That’s it.  In response, lots of people wanted to get into a debate about the merits of Islam as a religion, the consequences of Muslim immigration into Western countries, universal salvation, political correctness, etc.  All of that is simply irrelevant.  Someone could take an extremely negative attitude about Islam and still agree, consistently with that, that Christians and Muslims are, despite their deep disagreements about the divine nature, referring to the same thing when they use the word “God.”

That should be obvious from what I said in my later post on liberalism and Islam, wherein I discussed Hilaire Belloc’s view, developed in his book The Great Heresies, that Islam is a kind of Christian heresy.  Because Belloc regards Islam as a Christian heresy, he thinks that Muslims are talking about the same God Christians are, even if they go on to say false things about his nature.  Because Belloc regards Islam as a Christian heresy -- and he develops his interpretation in the context of what is essentially a book of Catholic apologetics -- he is by no means taking a positive view of Islam, any more than he takes a positive view of any of the other heresies he discusses in the book.  You can consistently say that Christians and Muslims refer to the same thing when they use the word “God” -- despite their differences over the doctrine of the Trinity -- and then go on to criticize Islam harshly, just as you can consistently say that Catholics and Arians refer to the same thing when they use the word “God” -- despite their differences over the doctrine of the Trinity -- and then go on to criticize Arianism harshly.

Notice that Belloc, who was writing in the 1930s and whose work is popular with Catholic traditionalists, can hardly be accused of political correctness, theological liberalism, belief in universal salvation, etc.  Nor was he saying anything that would have been considered the least bit remarkable in his day.  Consider what the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia -- not exactly a liberal document -- has to say when it discusses the God of Islam.  In its article on “Monotheism,” it says:

The Allah of the Koran is practically one with the Jehovah of the Old Testament… The influence of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, on Mohammedan Monotheism is well known…

In its article on “Allah,” the Encyclopedia says:

It is certain, however, that before the time of Mohammed, owing to their contact with Jews and Christians, the Arabs were generally monotheists.

The notion of Allah in Arabic theology is substantially the same as that of God among the Jews, and also among the Christians, with the exception of the Trinity, which is positively excluded in the Koran…

In response to doubts about whether the nomadic tribes of Arabia were truly monotheistic, the article remarks:

It is preposterous to assert… that the nomadic tribes of Arabia, consider seriously the Oum-el-Gheith, “mother of the rain”, as the bride of Allah and even if the expression were used such symbolical language would not impair, in the least, the purity of monotheism held by those tribes.

And in its article “Mohammed and Mohammedanism,” the Encyclopedia says that though “to the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Divine Sonship of Christ Mohammed had the strongest antipathy,” nonetheless “the doctrines of Islam concerning God -- His unity and Divine attributes -- are essentially those of the Bible.” 

Overall, the Encyclopedia’s treatment of Islam is hardly positive or politically correct.  Indeed, it is very critical.  But it never occurs to its authors to suggest that “Allah” must be the name of some false, pagan deity or that Muslims fail to refer to the true God when they use the word “God.”  The reason this doesn’t occur to them is that it simply does not at all follow from the critical things the Encyclopedia does say about Islam. 

Consider also that St. Thomas Aquinas is able both to find great value in what Muslim philosophers have to say about matters of philosophical theology -- Aquinas’s doctrine on essence and existence, which plays a central role in his account of the divine nature, was famously influenced by Avicenna -- while at the same time saying some extremely harsh things about Islam.

Really, the point isn’t difficult to see.  It seems that one of the things some readers get hung up on, though, is the word “worship.”  They seem to think that if you say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, then you are insinuating that Christianity and Islam are both salvific, or that the differences between Christian and Muslim theology and ethics are not very important, or something along those lines.  But none of that follows at all.  To “worship” something as divine is to acknowledge that it has the highest possible status or dignity and consequently to give it the highest reverence, devotion, or adoration.  To say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is merely to note what follows from the facts that (a) they refer to the same thing when they use the word “God,” and (b) they both worship that to which they refer.  Nothing at all follows about whether Muslim worship is sufficient for salvation, whether it is mixed with egregious theological and moral errors, etc.

Why any Christian would find this mysterious or puzzling, I have no idea, because the New Testament itself makes it clear that it is possible for a person to worship the true God and still be so deep in theological and moral error that his salvation is in jeopardy.  For example, in chapter 7 of Mark’s Gospel, Christ quotes Isaiah against the Pharisees, saying: “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.”  He doesn’t say: “Well, since you’re a brood of vipers and a bunch of whited sepulchres, you don’t really worship the true God at all.”  Rather, he says that even though they do worship the true God, their worship is “in vain,” because of their grave moral defects.

So, there simply is no necessary connection at all between, on the one hand, saying that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, and, on the other, taking a politically correct attitude toward Islam, affirming universal salvation, etc.  Some people have such difficulty seeing the point, or even acknowledging, much less answering, the arguments for it, that it is hard to avoid the conclusion that their thinking here (or lack thereof) is driven by non-rational factors.  It’s pretty clear with some of them that their hatred of Islam is so visceral that they desperately want it to be the case that “Allah” is the name of some demon, pagan god, or idol.

This is intellectually dishonest, pointless, and harmful.  It is intellectually dishonest because it simply isn’t true to the facts.  It is pointless because acknowledging that Christians and Muslims worship the same God in no way whatsoever commits one to political correctness, to universal salvation or theological liberalism, to taking a positive view of Islam, etc.  And it is harmful because it gives aid and comfort to those who want to shut down even the most sober and dispassionate critical thinking about Islam by shouting “bigot.” 

Conversion from Islam?

Bill Vallicella links to Alain Besançon’s excellent 2004 Commentary article “What Kind of Religion is Islam?” (an article I’ve cited myself several times over the years).  The whole thing should be read, especially by those who want to explore further the nature of Islam’s philosophical and theological departures from Christianity.  But there are two passages to which I want to draw special attention.  First, Besançon notes that:

[T]wo facts about Islam… always astonished medieval Christians… : the difficulty of converting Muslims, and the stubborn attachment to their faith of even the most superficially observant. From the Muslim point of view, it was absurd to become a Christian, because Christianity was a religion of the past whose best parts had been included in and superseded by Islam. Even more basically, Christianity was anti-natural: … its moral requirements exceeded human capacities, and its central mysteries defied reason.

End quote.  Belloc, in The Great Heresies, also commented on the difficulty Christianity has had historically in converting Muslims, and on the tremendous “marketing” advantage Islam’s simplicity gives it over Christianity.  But properly to understand the significance of these points requires attention to another observation made by Besançon:

Even if we decline to credit the Qur’an as an authentic revelation, we are still obliged to account for its unique sense of virtue; and especially the “virtue of religion”... What complicates this task is that, under Islam, and notwithstanding what I said earlier about the moderateness of the [Islamic] religious life, the domain of one’s duties can be pushed beyond what biblical religion considers appropriate.

In the latter, man is responsible for conducting his affairs within the framework of a universe -- natural, social, political -- that operates by internally consistent rules. The performance of one’s religious and moral duties is thus confined to a rationally definable area.  In Islam, by contrast, the will of God extends, as it were, to the secondary causes as well as to the primary ones, suffusing all of life.  Religious and moral obligation can thus take on an intensity and an all-encompassing sweep that, at least in Christian terms, would be regarded as trespassing any reasonable limit…

End quote.  What Besançon is talking about here is in part what I described in my post on liberalism and Islam as Islam’s absorption of the natural order into the supernatural.  And the moral and theological simplicity of Islam cannot properly be understood except in light of this absorption.  As Besançon notes, the Islamic ethos is earthy or sensual compared to the Christian moral ethos, which is at least by comparison ascetic.  But that earthy or sensual ethos is nevertheless seen as having an essentially supernatural foundation rather than a natural one.  Hence though Islamic morality is in a sense less demanding in terms of its content, its imperative force is nonetheless at the same time felt more strongly insofar as it is taken to come straight from God rather than through nature, and insofar as every aspect of life is seen entirely in the light of revelation rather than reason, the supernatural rather than the natural. 

Now, here’s one implication of this combination of views.  Our buddy Matt Briggs notes in a recent post at his own blog that Western progressives are prone to the delusion that Muslim immigrants are likely to succumb to the lures of secular consumer society, just as so many Christians have.  The idea is that over time, Muslim immigrants will, like even most conservative Catholics and Protestants, become so absorbed in acquiring the latest cell phones, watching the latest movies, ordering lattes at Starbucks, chatting with their secular friends about the latest episode of Modern Family by the office water cooler, etc., that after a generation or two they won’t care so much about converting non-believers, much less working to make the laws of Western countries conform to the moral code taught by their religion.  

The reason many liberals are prone to this delusion is that they often foolishly suppose that religious people are pretty much all the same, so that if Christians commonly succumb to the lure of secular liberal consumerist society, so too will other religious believers, including Muslims.  The reason this is a delusion is that the Christian and Islamic systems simply differ radically, and in a way that makes Christians more liable to succumb to the lures in question than Muslims are.

In particular, Christians are far more likely to be tempted by liberal secular society for three reasons.  First, what is distinctive in Christian morality is relatively ascetic and otherworldly, and liberal secular society promises a release from its demands.  Second, Christianity nevertheless does affirm the existence of a natural order distinct from the supernatural order.  Thus, as I noted in my previous post, Christianity itself allows that at least some measure of moral behavior and political justice is possible even apart from Christian revelation.  Hence, a Christian is liable to be tempted by the thought that he can still be a morally decent person, or decent enough anyway, even if he forsakes some of the demands of traditional Christian morality.  Third, liberal secular society was an outgrowth (even if, as I noted in that previous post, essentially a “heretical” outgrowth) of Christian civilization.  Hence succumbing to the lures of secular liberal society can seem to Christians a natural transition rather than the adoption of something alien. 

None of these factors are present in Islam.  First, since Islamic morality is not in the first place as ascetic or otherworldly as Christian morality -- even if it is still austere by liberal standards -- there is much less temptation for the Muslim to seek to be liberated from its demands.  Second, since for Islam there is no clear basis for morality outside divine revelation, a Muslim is much less likely to be tempted by the thought that he can still live a morally decent life if he forsakes the traditional moral demands of his religion.  Third, since liberal secular society arose outside the Islamic context and has made inroads in Islamic countries only when imposed from outside, the Muslim is much more likely than the Christian to see it as something alien and hostile, whose mores he cannot adopt consistently with maintaining his religion.

Hence, if liberals believe they are more likely than Christians have been to succeed in converting Muslims to their point of view, they are gravely mistaken.  Certainly their position, where not grounded in basic misunderstandings about the nature of Islam or in fallacious generalizations from a few secularized Muslims they can think of, appears to be “faith-based” rather than supported by actual evidence. 

Natural versus supernatural

Bonald, at the blog Throne and Altar, comments on my post on liberalism and Islam.  Though he agrees with much of it, he suggests that since (as I there argued) liberalism and Islam both collapse the distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders, they are not quite opposites, as I claimed they are, but “really are closer to each other than either is to Christianity.”  Writes Bonald:

Christianity posits two orders, each largely defined by the opposition of the other.  Liberalism takes one, Islam the other, but if you’re just left with one order which covers everything, does it matter so much what you call it?  It’s just like we know whenever somebody starts going around teaching that everything is sacred, one knows with certainty that anyone who believes it will promptly lose his sense of the sacred entirely, since the sacred only exists for us in opposition to the profane.  Or take the idea of a “theocracy”.  What’s the difference between a priest declaring himself king and a king declaring himself priest?  We call the first “theocracy” and the second “Erastianism” and label them opposites, but they are the same thing.

I think Bonald is mistaken, though, and that what he overlooks is the way in which (as I have argued many times before) reductive claims are always implicitly really eliminative.  His analysis would be correct only if this were not so.

Hence, consider, for example, the claim that mind and matter are identical.  You could read this as saying that what we call mind is really something essentially material.  Or you could read it as saying that what we call matter is really something essentially mental.  The former is a materialist reading of the claim, the latter an idealist reading.  Now, materialism and idealism are hardly the same view.  To say that matter alone is real and that what is irreducibly mental is an illusion, and to say that mind alone is real and what is irreducibly material is an illusion, are incompatible claims.  Hence, those who identify mind and matter are not all saying the same thing, because what they mean by this claim is very different.  One side is really saying something like “Matter alone is real, and mind doesn’t exist” while the other is saying “Mind alone is real, and matter doesn’t exist.” 

Or consider the claim that God and the world are identical.  You could read this as saying that what we call God is really just the physical universe.  Or you could read it as saying that what we call the physical universe is really God.  The former is an atheist reading of the claim, while the latter is a pantheist reading.  Now, atheism and pantheism are no more the same view than materialism and idealism are.  Atheism essentially says that the contingent, finite, material world is all that exists, so that (from this point of view) if someone claims that God is identical to that world, then he is therefore implicitly saying that God (who is essentially necessary, infinite, and immaterial) does not really exist at all.  Pantheism, meanwhile, essentially says that God as the necessary, infinite, immaterial ground of all being is all that exists.  In claiming that the world is identical to God, then, pantheism is really implicitly saying that the world (which is essentially contingent, finite, and material) does not truly exist at all.  (Hence the tendency in pantheistic religion to regard the empirical world as illusory.)  Those who identify God and the world are thus not all really saying the same thing.  One side is saying something like “The world alone is real, and God doesn’t exist,” whereas the other is saying “God alone is real, and the world doesn’t exist.”

This sort of result follows whenever someone tries to identify two things, A and B, which are in fact distinct.  He will always implicitly either be affirming A and denying B, or affirming B and denying A.  And someone who affirms A and denies B is taking a position which is definitely incompatible with, and opposite to, that of someone who affirms B and denies A.  The fact that they may both say “A = B” simply doesn’t entail that they are really at the end of the day saying the same thing, because each of them means something radically different by this. 

So, from the fact that liberalism and Islam both collapse the natural and the supernatural, it simply doesn’t follow (as Bonald seems to think) that at bottom they are really just riffs on the same view and not clearly opposites.  That’s like saying that materialism and idealism are really at bottom the same view, or that Richard Dawkins’ atheism and Hindu pantheism are really at bottom the same view.  For the nature of the collapse is in each case radically different.  Liberalism (to oversimplify) essentially collapses the supernatural into the natural, and thus implicitly denies the supernatural.  Islam, meanwhile, essentially collapses the natural into the supernatural, and thus implicitly denies the natural.  These positions are as opposite and incompatible as materialism and idealism, or Dawkins’ atheism and Hindu pantheism.

UPDATE 1/17:  I noted above that, long before Vatican II, Catholic writers who by no means took a “politically correct” or otherwise positive view of Islam nevertheless did not deny that there is a sense in which Muslims worship the true God.  Reader Br. Matthew kindly calls my attention to a couple of other texts relevant to this issue.  In the 1908 Catechism of Pope St. Pius X we read:
 

Infidels are those who have not been baptised and do not believe in Jesus Christ, because they either believe in and worship false gods as idolaters do, or though admitting one true God, they do not believe in the Messiah, neither as already come in the Person of Jesus Christ, nor as to come; for instance, Mohammedans and the like.

Note that Pope St. Pius X -- not exactly a liberal, a modernist, an indifferentist, a fan of interreligious dialogue, etc. -- here distinguishes Muslims from those who worship false gods, and labels them “infidels,” not because they worship a false god but rather because, though they “admit one true God,” they deny that Jesus is the Messiah.

Pope Leo XIII’s Satis Cognitum (1896), after addressing Protestants, goes on to address non-Christians and says:

Our soul goes out to those whom the foul breath of irreligion has not entirely corrupted, and who at least seek to have the true God, the Creator of Heaven and earth, as their Father. Let such as these take counsel with themselves, and realize that they can in no wise be counted among the children of God, unless they take Christ Jesus as their Brother, and at the same time the Church as their mother.

Note that though he says that they cannot be counted as truly among the children of God if they remain outside the Church, nevertheless he allows that they do indeed “at least seek to have the true God, the Creator of Heaven and earth, as their Father.”  Obviously, then, Pope Leo did not suppose that a rejection of Trinitarianism prevents non-Christians from even referring to the true God when they use the word “God.”  That they at least know God as “Creator of Heaven and earth” makes it possible for them to seek Him as their Father despite their grave theological errors.