Toward Respectful Understanding and Witness among Muslims

Essays in Honor of J. Dudley Woodberry

Evelyne A. Reisacher, Joseph L. Cumming, Dean S. Gilliland, Evelyne A. Reisacher, Joseph L. Cumming, Dean S. Gilliland

• Publisher: William Carey Library
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780878086979
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Iglesia cristiana

Fifteen preeminent Christian scholars of Islam present their latest research and reflections. The book is organized around three themes: encouraging friendly conversation, Christian scholarship, and Christian witness. Published in honor of J. Dudley Woodberry, it is more than a collection of essays by friends and colleagues. It offers a seldom-available synopsis of the theories of contemporary leading Christian academicians whose work is currently influencing a wide range of Christian institutions, agencies, churches, and individuals. The authors provide cutting-edge and greatly needed resources for developing a better understanding of Muslims. In an age of increasing challenges facing Muslim-Christian relations, this volume offers Christians a unique opportunity to rethink their assumptions. It also presents practical steps which can inform their daily encounters with Muslims. This book is essential reading for people with research interests in Islam, for Bible school and seminary students, for church leaders, and for all those who want to be informed of the latest empirical research and theoretical perspectives affecting Muslim-Christian relations.

SECTION 2

Christian Scholarship

INTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH L. CUMMING

In view of Dudley Woodberry’s outstanding scholarship on Islam—both on its historic and sacred texts and on the “lived Islam” of contemporary Muslim-majority cultures—the second section of this Festschrift is appropriately dedicated to highlighting innovative scholarship on various aspects of Islamic practice, theology, and civilization. While it is true that basic to our Christian presence among Muslims is simple witness to the good news with reliance on the Holy Spirit and humble, godly character, and while we would be remiss to forget that the Lord Jesus was born in simplicity as a carpenter’s son, one cannot read the Bible without also noting that God has called certain people throughout history to dedicate themselves to excellence in scholarship, particularly scholarship on the thought systems of great world civilizations.

In considering Islam, we are engaging not just a religion but one of the greatest civilizations in human history—one that has profoundly developed systems of thought and a rich intellectual, theological, and ethical history which, from a human and academic standpoint, is fully the equal of our own intellectual traditions. In such a context we do well to consider how the Lord’s servants in the Bible dealt with the major world civilizations and empires of their times. The examples of Moses (with ancient Egyptian civilization), of Daniel (with Babylonian/Persian civilization), and of Paul (with Greco-Roman civilization) illustrate God’s intentional appointment of educated intellectuals during critical points of history.

We read the following in Acts 7:20–22 (NIV) regarding God’s servant Moses:

At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months he was cared for in his father’s house. When he was placed outside, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.

During that generation, Egypt was the most powerful and sophisticated civilization in the greater region. God providentially positioned a certain man so that he would become well trained in the educational, philosophical, literary, and cultural heritage of that civilization. God arranged for Moses to be “educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Similarly, in our generation Providence raises up men and women of God like Dudley Woodberry who dedicate themselves to serious scholarship and learning about Islamic civilization—a civilization which has had a profound influence on world history and intellectual development during the past fourteen centuries and continuing today.

During the time of the prophet Daniel, the most powerful and influential civilization was that of the Babylonians. And similarly, God providentially positioned Daniel to master the scholarship of Babylonian civilization. In Daniel 1:3–20 (NIV) we read:

Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility—young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians … To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning … At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.

Thus, in the case of Daniel and his three companions, Scripture attests not only that they became learned in Babylonian literature and thought, but that their scholarship on Babylonian civilization was “ten times better” than that of the elite scholars of that kingdom. Similarly, in our generation, God seeks godly followers of Christ like Dudley Woodberry who dedicate themselves to becoming not merely “good” scholars of Islamic thought and civilization, but “ten times” better-informed scholars than even their Muslim colleagues in areas of Islamic philosophy, literature, theology, law, and practice.

In the time following the Lord Jesus’ ministry on this earth, the Apostle Paul provides an example of a follower of Jesus who was also well educated in the religion, philosophy, and literature of the great thought system of his world—that of Greco-Roman civilization. Athens was the place of higher education in that society, much as we might think of the Ivy League or Oxford and Cambridge today. In Acts 17:27,28 (NIrV) we read the following in Paul’s words to the scholars at the Areopagus in Athens: “God did this so that people would seek him. Then perhaps they would reach out for him and find him. They would find him even though he is not far from any of us. ‘In him we live and move and exist.’ As some of your own poets have also said, ‘We are his children.’”

In this passage Paul quotes two different writers known to Athenian scholars, probably the philosopher Epimenides of Crete (or words attributed to him) and the poet Aratus in his hexameter work “Phainomena.” What is particularly striking is that Paul was apparently prepared to cite such quotations impromptu in an interactive situation. In order to do so, he would have to have spent substantial time on earlier occasions poring over Greek philosophical and poetic texts, taking careful note of points of common ground that might constitute a basis for dialogue and a starting point for making the good news intelligible to the Athenians. Similarly, in our generation, God raises up men and women who make the effort to become familiar with the writers and poets and philosophers commonly known to Muslims around the world. Sometimes Christians look for “magic keys” to communicate with Muslims. But God is looking for people who will do their homework, who love Muslims enough to devote long hours to learning and understanding what Muslims believe and how Muslims think and feel, in order to speak with them in a way that will be meaningful.

Dudley Woodberry embodies the intellectual commitment we see in the prophets Moses and Daniel and the Apostle Paul. He earned his PhD at Harvard under Sir Hamilton A. R. Gibb, who was perhaps the greatest Western scholar of Islam of his time. In that context Dudley studied the same Arabic texts that Muslim scholars study when they train at the elite Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and thus Dudley became “learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Then, in addition to keeping up his textual scholarship, Dr. Woodberry took up an additional scholarly interest in the popular piety found in the contemporary “lived Islam” of Muslim-majority cultures around the world, including what Dean Gilliland refers to in his chapter as “folk Islam.” Dudley blended the best of text-based scholarship with the anthropological and sociological study of Islam as it is lived by ordinary Muslims day to day. And he did this at a time when very few evangelicals engaged in either k...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Contributing Authors
• Biography of J. Dudley Woodberry
• Section One: Encouraging Friendly Conversation
• Section 2: Christian Scholarship
• Section 3: Christian Witness
• Conclusion
• Complete Works of J. Dudley Woodberry
• Selected Bibliography
• Index