A Common Word Between Us and You

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An open letter issued October 11, 2007 by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, a Jordanian Muslim think-tank of sorts, signed by 138 Muslim scholars and addressed to the leaders of all prominent Christian denominations.

Responses

Many formal responses seem to be tracked here: http://www.acommonword.com/index.php?lang=en&page=responses

The response of the Yale Divinity School appears to have gathered the greatest quorum of support -- "Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to A Common Word between Us and You" -- http://www.yale.edu/faith/abou-commonword.htm

Some in the evangelical world expressed concern that the ecumenical urge can be taken too far at the expense of faithfulness:

Neoredemptive Take

Social justice is good, and anyone who claims to serve a compassionate and merciful God is morally bound to pursue it. At the most basic level, no society can be just which does not defend the freedom to speak and worship freely according to the dictates of one's own conscience, for binding the conscience is the most violent assault upon human dignity as image bearers of God.

Dialog is good. In a healthy dialog, neither party dictates terms; instead, there is a sincere and good-faith effort to understand one another's similarities and differences, and to not downplay either. For example, we are skeptical of some Christian ecumenical movements because their apparent goal is to find a sufficiently diluted gospel upon which all parties can agree. Similarly, when engaging in dialog with proponents of other faiths, we should be cautious of overly-broad statements of commonality, particularly when it comes to the area of fundamentals like the identity of God.

Upon a first reading, it is immediately clear where the first point of real disagreement is between the Islamic and the Christian world: the identity of God. The letter speaks frequently of the unity of God, but Christian orthodoxy is built entirely upon God's tri-unity (trinity) -- which demands the worship of Jesus Christ as God, and of the Holy Spirit as God. This is among the most widely-known distinctives of Christianity among the monotheistic faiths, and the authors of the letter are surely not unaware of it. So it is curious that even the abridged version of the letter quotes a Koranic passage widely understood to repudiate the worship of Jesus Christ (because we must not "ascribe a partner [Jesus] unto Him [God]", Aal ‘Imran 3:64). Already the stage is being set for the dialog to be conducted with clearly Islamic ground rules (or, at least, clearly non-trinitarian, which is to say, non-Christian).

Stepping beyond the immediate scope of the letter, we must ask a few exegetical questions if we are to understand how the Koran is being used in this dialog. Particularly, what are we to make of the doctrine of abrogation and of its implications for the Koranic "love thy neighbor" passages? Abrogation is a foreign concept in Christian exegesis and hermeneutics (particularly in the more covenantal theology camps). We believe that all scripture bears equal authority -- so we are (justifiably, I think) concerned and confused about what to make of a doctrine that rescinds scripture with scripture, particularly in light of the increasing militancy of the Koran toward non-Muslims when it is read chronologically.

We agree whole-heartedly with John Piper's concerns about the Yale letter of response. A letter purporting to represent Christendom which refers to "Jesus Christ" as a speaker of divine things (effectively, no more than a prophet) but never as "the Lord Jesus Christ", and which fails to so much as mention the Holy Spirit, has already wandered far afield of orthodoxy in an effort to seem pleasant and agreeable to an irreconcilably differing theology. Speaking simply of "God" in broad terms is not sufficient because, Brian McLaren's protestations notwithstanding, it does matter which deity one is actually referring to with the word "God". The Yale divines seem to give little thought to preserving any Christian theological distinctives in the conversation; "In the Name of the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ" is replaced with a watered-down declaration modeled after the Islamic pattern, "In the name of the Infinitely Good God whom we should love with all our Being". There is little hope for actual dialog or increased understanding when we, from the beginning, refuse to offer up a clear statement of Whom it is we offer our worship to.

Frankly, it strikes us as dishonest to concede, as the Yale letter does, that we agree on the matter of "love for God" when in truth we disagree about who "God" is; and, in light of this disagreement, we should also ask whether we agree as to what it means to "love" either the Trinitarian God or Allah. Thus, we would humbly suggest that a fruitful interfaith dialog not begin with a false pretense of agreement, but rather with a thorough conversation concerning the kinds of love our God and their Allah demand, and how that love then translates to all varieties of "neighbors" (from family members to co-citizens to geopolitical enemies to infidels). By all means, let's discuss how we can pursue peace together. But we will not do so in subjection to an Islamic definition of peace dictated in the name of Allah; we are Christians, and any legitimate common ground will, for us, be a consequence not of a concession as to the identity of God, but rather of the revelation of our God and Father in the man Jesus Christ, our God and Savior.

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