'When Islam swept by surprise in the seventh century AD the Christian world was undergoing a series of divisions, conflicts and power struggles that had pitted East and West against each other; both areas also had to struggle internally with deep tensions and differences of opinion.« This is how it begins Oxford History of Islam her article on »Islam and Christianity«.
From the brief, introductory description of this history book, one thing is clear: the Bible did indeed do a great job in prophesying the spiritual darkness of the church of that day! The Christian world did not present a front united by the gospel when Mohammed began his ministry—in fact, it was deeply divided. Thus, to many observers of Christianity at the time, Islam appeared to be nothing more than just another Christian sect (Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Islam, p. 305). This article looks at some of the outstanding issues that set the stage for the rise of Islam...
By the time of Mohammed, the Christian church had adopted Sunday as the "holy day," introduced the doctrine of the immortal soul, and abandoned the preaching of the imminent return of a Savior to come. Because she believed that the church would triumph on earth (i.e. politically) and thereby fulfill the biblical millennium. Paradoxically, these issues were no longer hot topics by the sixth century. The major church controversy of that day centered on the nature of Jesus. So let's cover this topic first:
Ever since the Smyrna period (AD 100-313) the church had attempted to explain the Bible in secular terms.
“The second-century Christian apologists were a group of authors who sought to defend the faith against Jewish and Greco-Roman critics. They refuted a range of scandalous rumors, some of which even accused Christians of cannibalism and sexual promiscuity. Broadly speaking, they sought to make Christianity understandable to members of Greco-Roman society and to define the Christian understanding of God, the divinity of Jesus, and the resurrection of the body. To do this, the apologists adopted the philosophical and literary vocabulary of mainstream culture to express their beliefs with increasing precision and to appeal to the intellectual sensibilities of their pagan contemporaries. (Fredericksen, Christianity, Encyclopaedia Britannica)
As a result, the prominent role of the Bible in the church gradually waned, so that by the third century the Bible had to be explained to the laity. This made theologians as famous as Origen with his commentaries on the Bible (ibid.). This development gave the "elite" theologians more influence, since they could write more eloquently and use their Greek philosophical language to address the public better. Paul already said: »Knowledge puffs up; but love builds up.« (1 Corinthians 8,1:84 Luther XNUMX) With this knowledge, love in the church apparently went further and further downhill and “bloating” kept going uphill. This led to all sorts of schisms in doctrine.
In order to better classify Mohammed and the statements of the Koran, it helps to know the disputes that were up to mischief in the Christian church in his time. Therefore, this article focuses on the various issues in the Oriental Church, which had its seat in Constantinople. Because the influence of this part of the church was particularly noticeable on the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Mohammed and in the Islamic generations that followed.
Ever since the Smyrna period (AD 100-313) the church had attempted to explain the Bible in secular terms.
“The second-century Christian apologists were a group of authors who sought to defend the faith against Jewish and Greco-Roman critics. They refuted a range of scandalous rumors, some of which even accused Christians of cannibalism and sexual promiscuity. Broadly speaking, they sought to make Christianity understandable to members of Greco-Roman society and to define the Christian understanding of God, the divinity of Jesus, and the resurrection of the body. To do this, the apologists adopted the philosophical and literary vocabulary of mainstream culture to express their beliefs with increasing precision and to appeal to the intellectual sensibilities of their pagan contemporaries. (Fredericksen, Christianity, Encyclopaedia Britannica)
As a result, the prominent role of the Bible in the church gradually waned, so that by the third century the Bible had to be explained to the laity. This made theologians as famous as Origen with his commentaries on the Bible (ibid.). This development gave the "elite" theologians more influence, since they could write more eloquently and use their Greek philosophical language to address the public better. Paul already said: »Knowledge puffs up; but love builds up.« (1 Corinthians 8,1:84 Luther XNUMX) With this knowledge, love in the church apparently went further and further downhill and “bloating” kept going uphill. This led to all sorts of schisms in doctrine.
In order to better classify Mohammed and the statements of the Koran, it helps to know the disputes that were up to mischief in the Christian church in his time. Therefore, this article focuses on the various issues in the Oriental Church, which had its seat in Constantinople. Because the influence of this part of the church was particularly noticeable on the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Mohammed and in the Islamic generations that followed.
Another position held that Jesus was only human and that his conception was a miracle. However, the infinite measure of the Holy Spirit, by which he was filled with divine wisdom and power, made him the Son of God. This later led to the teaching that Jesus was not born as God's son, but that God only "adopted" him later during his life as a son. This belief still lives on among many modern Unitarians today.
Another view 'stated the 'subordinatianism' of some Church Fathers that [Jesus was divine but was subordinate to the Father]. She contended, in contrast, that Father and Son were but two different designations for the same subject, for the one God called Father in the former eon, but Son in His appearance as man.' (Monarchianism, Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Around AD 200, Noëth of Smyrna began preaching this theory. When Praxeas brought these views to Rome, Tertullian said: 'He expels prophecy and imports heresy; he puts the Comforter to flight and crucifies the Father." (Parrinder, Jesus in the Quran, page 134; see also Gwatkin, Selections from Early Christian Writers, p. 129)
Much of the orthodox Christian teaching on the Logos, the Word or "Son" of God, has been assembled to combat this heresy. However, modalistic monarchianism resigned to the independent, personal existence of the Logos and claimed that there was only one deity: God the Father. That was an extremely monotheistic view.
Even after the Council of Nicaea, the Christological disputes did not end. Emperor Constantine was inclined towards Arianism himself and his son was even an outspoken Arian. In AD 381, at the next ecumenical council, the Church made Catholic Christianity (of the West) the official religion of the empire and settled accounts with the Arianism of the Orient. Arius had been a priest in Alexandria, Egypt—one of the centers of the Eastern Church (Fredericksen, "Christianity," Encyclopaedia Britannica). Since the Western Church was experiencing an increase in power at the time, this decision led to political attacks from the Eastern Church, which had a strong influence on the next dispute over Jesus' teaching.
This group, in turn, was popular in the Middle East, especially among royalty. She taught that Jesus was both true God and true man. Both did not differ. The human in him was crucified and put to death, but nothing happened to the divine in him. They also taught that Mary gave birth to both the divine and human natures of Jesus.
The next Christological debate was in AD 431 at the Council of Ephesus. Led by Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, the extreme Christology was condemned as heresy by Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Nestorius taught that the man Jesus is an independent person apart from the divine Word, which is why one has no right to call Jesus' mother Mary "Mother of God" (gr. theotokos, θεοτοκος or theotokos). It is difficult to say what Nestorius really taught. Because it is generally assumed that Cyril, as patriarch of Alexandria, wanted to put down his rival on the throne of Constantinople. Therefore, his decision to convict his rival was probably as politically motivated as it was religiously motivated.
What Nestorius actually taught was probably more of a prosopic entity. The Greek term prosōpon (προσωπον) means an externally uniform representation or manifestation of an individual, including additional tools. An example: A painter's brush belongs to his own prosopon. So God's Son used his humanity to reveal himself, and so humanity was something belonging to his prosopon belonged. In this way it was an undivided single revelation (Kelly, "Nestorius", Encyclopaedia Britannica).
However, Nestorianism, as understood by its opponents at the time and eventually by its supporters, insisted that Jesus' human nature was absolutely human. Therefore it was believed that this would make him two persons, one human and one divine. While the orthodox ("true") Christology of the time came to the view that Jesus mysteriously had two natures, one divine and one human, in one person (Gr. hypostasis, υποστασις) united, Nestorianism emphasized the independence of both. He was saying, then, that there are actually two persons or hypostases loosely connected by a moral unity. Thus, according to Nestorianism, in the incarnation the divine Word merged with a complete, independently existing human being.
From an orthodox perspective, Nestorianism thus denies the actual incarnation and presents Jesus as a God-inspired human rather than a God-created human (ibid.). This view was similar to the Melkite view, except that Mary, the divine element of Jesus, did not give birth (Aasi, Muslim Understanding of Other Religions, p. 121).
Cyril's solution to this problem, however, was "a single nature for the Word made flesh." This led to the next argument about the nature of Jesus.
This doctrine asserts that the nature of Jesus Christ remained altogether divine and not human, even though he assumed a mortal and human body that is born, lives, and dies. Thus, the Monophysite doctrine holds that in the person of Jesus Christ there was only one divine nature, and not two natures, divine and human.
Pope Leo of Rome led the protest against this teaching, which culminated in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. “Chalcedon passed the decree that Jesus must be honored with 'two natures unmixed, unchanged, undivided, and undivided'. This formulation went in part against the Nestorian teaching that Jesus' two natures remained distinct and were in fact two persons. But it was also directed against the theologically simplistic position of Eutyches, a monk who had been condemned in AD 448 for teaching that after the incarnation Jesus had only one nature and therefore his humanity was not of the same quality, like those of other men.« (»Monophysite«, Encyclopaedia Britannica)
For the next 250 years, the Byzantine emperors and patriarchs tried desperately to win over the Monophysites; but all attempts failed. The two-natures doctrine of Chalcedon is still rejected today by various churches, namely the Armenian Apostolic and Coptic Churches, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch ( of the Syriac Jacobite Church). (Fredericksen, "Christianity", Encyclopaedia Britannica)
These were Christians who succeeded Jacob Baradei and lived mainly in Egypt. The Jacobites expanded Monophysitism by declaring that Jesus himself was God. According to their belief, God Himself was crucified and the whole universe had to forego its Caretaker and Sustainer for the three days that Jesus lay in the tomb. Then God got up and returned to his place. In this way God became the created one and the created one became eternal. They believed that God was conceived in Mary's womb and that she was pregnant with him. (Aasi, Muslim Understanding of Other Religions, p. 121)
This fourth-century Arabic sect believed that Jesus and his mother were two deities besides God. They were especially attracted to Mary and adored her. They offered her bread cake rings (collyrida, κολλυριδα – hence the name of the sect) as others had practiced towards the great Mother Earth in pagan times. Christians like Epiphanius fought against this heresy and tried to help Christians to see that Mary should not be worshiped. (Parrinder, Jesus in the Quran, p.135)
From this outline of Christian church history and their struggle to understand the nature of Jesus, it becomes clear why Jesus referred to himself as the "Son of God" for the epoch of Thyatira (Revelation 2,18:XNUMX). For this question called for an answer in Christianity. However, it was not the only problem in the church.
As just mentioned with the Kollyridians, many problems were brewing in the Church regarding Mary. Within a few centuries from the dawn of Christianity, Mary had assumed the venerable status among the laity of a Holy Virgin with the incredible privilege of being pregnant with God's Son. This is shown by the frescoes found of her and Jesus in the Roman catacombs. However, this went so far that she finally became known as "God's Mother". Apocryphal writings about her life surfaced and the veneration of her relics flourished.
Although some (including Nestorius) protested sharply, the Council of Ephesus in AD 431 condoned the veneration of the Virgin as Theotokos, the 'Mother of God' (or more precisely the 'God-Bearer') and sanctioned the making of icons of the Virgin and her Child. In the same year, Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, used many of the names for Mary affectionately given by the pagans to the "great goddess" Artemis/Diana of Ephesus.
Gradually, the most popular characteristics of the ancient goddess Astarte, Cybele, Artemis, Diana and Isis merged into the new Marian cult. In that century the Church instituted the Feast of the Assumption to commemorate the day she ascended into heaven on August 15th. On this date the ancient festivals of Isis and Artemis were celebrated. Mary was finally considered the intercessor of man before her Son's throne. She became the patron saint of Constantinople and the imperial family. Her image was carried at the head of every great procession, and hung in every church and Christian home. (Quoted in: Oster, Islam Reconsidered, p. 23: from William James Durant, The Age of Faith: A history of medieval civilization - Christian, Islamic, and Judaic - from Constantine to Dante, CE 325-1300, New York: Simon Schuster, 1950)
The following prayer by Lucius illustrates the worship of the Mother Goddess:
»(You) feed the whole world with your wealth. As a loving mother, you lament the needs of the miserable... You take away all the storms and dangers from human life, stretch out your right hand... and calm the great storms of fate..." (Easter, Islam Reconsidered, p. 24)
Walter Hyde comments on this new phenomenon in Christendom as follows:
'It is only natural, then, that some students would transfer her influence as 'Mother of Sorrows' and 'Mother of Horus' to the Christian conception of Mary. For in her the Greeks saw their grieving Demeter looking for her daughter Persephone, who had been raped by Pluto. The mother-child motif can be found in many statuettes found in the ruins of their shrines on the Seine, Rhine and Danube. The early Christians thought they recognized the Madonna and Child in it. No wonder that it is still difficult today to clearly assign archaeological finds.
The epithet "Mother of God" came into use in the fourth century because it was used by Eusebius, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus in Cappadocia, and others. Gregory said, "Whoever does not believe that Mary is the Mother of God has no part in God." (Quote in Oster, Islam Reconsidered, 24 from: Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, p. 54)
It must be pointed out that the acceptance of Mary in the eastern part of Christendom (the part closer to the area where Mohammed worked) progressed faster than in the west. This is evident from the fact that when Pope Agapetus visited Constantinople in AD 536, he was rebuked by his Eastern counterpart for forbidding Marian devotion and the placing of icons of the Theotokos in Western churches. But gradually the devotion to Mary also caught on in the West. In AD 609 (a year before Muhammad is said to have had his first vision), the Roman pantheon was dedicated to Mary and renamed Santa Maria ad Martyres (Holy Mary and the Martyrs). In the same year, one of the oldest churches, the titular church of Popes Callixtus I and Julius I, was rededicated to »Santa Maria in Trastevere«. Then, at the end of the same century, Pope Sergius I introduced the earliest Marian feasts in the Roman liturgical calendar. The table was now set for the worship of the Theotokos. For the theory of the Assumption of Mary was widespread, and Christians of East and West could now direct their prayers to another "intercessor" besides the one named to us in the Bible (1 Timothy 2,5:XNUMX).
dr Kenneth Oster, an Adventist pastor who has ministered in Iran for many years, says:
“The pre-Christian Roman cults now reappeared in the Church under 'Christian' names. Diana, the virgin goddess brought her contribution to the worship of the Virgin Mary. Rome's Juno, Greece's Hera, Kathargos Tanit, Egypt's Isis, Phoenicia's Astarte, and Babylon's Ninlil had all been Queens of Heaven. Egypt played no small part in this degradation of the simple teachings of Jesus. The surviving figurines of Isis nursing Horus resemble familiar depictions of the Madonna and Child. Thus it becomes evident that this erroneous doctrine of vicious paganism - a god raped a goddess and a "son of god" emerged from this incestuous union... - was adopted in the Canaanite cults of Ugarit and Egypt, in Greco-Roman mythology especially in the Mystery religions, reached its full growth in the apostate church, and was sold as truth to the non-Christian world." (Easter, Islam Reconsidered, p. 24)
This point cannot be overemphasized when studying the setting against which Muhammad appeared. The reader's awareness must be raised to what was really going on in Christianity in order to understand what the Qur'an is talking about. Arabia was not immune to these developments in Christianity. The notion of a "trinity" of a father god, a mother goddess, and her biological offspring, a third son god, was so widespread that the people of Mecca added a Byzantine icon of Mary and baby Jesus to their pantheon of gods, the Kaaba, so that Christian traders who wandering around Mecca had something to worship alongside their hundreds of other deities. (cited in ibid., 25 from: Payne, The Holy Sword, p. 4) …
Another development in Christianity that had a long-term effect on the rise of Islam was monasticism. As early as the fifth century, this movement gained many followers. One of the early founders of a monastic order, Pachomios, founded eleven monasteries in Upper Egypt before he died in 346 AD. He had over 7000 followers. Jerome reports that within a century 50.000 monks attended the annual congress. In the region around Oxyrhynchus in Upper Egypt alone there were an estimated 10.000 monks and 20.000 virgins. These numbers illustrate the trend that was gaining ground in the Christian world. Thousands went to the Syrian desert and founded monasteries with the sole aim of living a life of contemplation (Tonstad, "Defining Moments in Christian-Mulim History - A Summary", Adventist Muslim Relations).
This movement was based on Plato's teaching on the separation of body and mind. The body, they believed, was only a temporary stage of human existence, while the spirit was the true expression of the divine and only temporarily imprisoned in the flesh. Origen and Clement of Alexandria had adopted and propagated this dualistic view of reality, leading many to abandon the "sins" associated with the flesh and to retreat to secluded places where they could seek "spiritual perfection." « strived for. This teaching spread especially in Eastern Christianity, where Mohammed would come into contact with Christians. It is in stark contrast to the less philosophical, more practical tenets he espoused. This is a subject addressed by the Qur'an.
Another development in Christendom was the noticeable slackening of zeal in preaching the gospel to the world. Zeal for the gospel was the common thread among the apostles and in the early church. However, as can easily be seen from the points considered so far, the church was now content with arguing about doctrinal questions and doing hair-splitting with theological and philosophical terms. Finally, by the seventh century, few beacons of Christian mission remained—although the Nestorians had taken the gospel as far as India and China, and the Celts were already proclaiming the Messiah among the Germans (Swartley, ed. Encountering the World of Islam, p. 10).
Adventists will have mixed feelings about these developments. On the one hand, all peoples should hear about Jesus... but should this really happen through a people who teach that God's law has been abolished, that man has an immortal soul, that he is threatened with eternal hell, that Sundays should be worshipped, etc.?
A situation in the seventh century that all Christians lament was the lack of Bible translations. As far as scholars know, the first Arabic translation of the Bible was not completed until AD 837, and was then hardly reproduced (except for a few manuscripts for scholars). It was not published until 1516 AD (ibid.).
This shows the lack of zeal on the part of Christians to take the gospel to the Arabs. The trend continues to this day: only one in twelve Christian workers is sent to Muslim countries, even though Muslims make up a fifth of the world's population. The Bible had already been translated into the languages of lesser-known cultures, such as Chinese or Syriac. But not into Arabic, because apparently there were prejudices against the Arabs (ibid., p. 37).
In any case, Christian scholars believe that neither Mohammed nor other Arabs of the time had the opportunity to read a Bible manuscript in their native language.
Despite the fact that Christianity had degenerated into a culture of debate about the philosophy of the nature of Jesus and although it had embraced the doctrine of the immortal soul, it rejected the biblical Sabbath and God's law and propagated extreme forms of withdrawal from the world , his most despicable quality was probably his use of violence to further his teachings. It is one thing to teach error, but to do so in the loving, Christian spirit Jesus urged His followers ("Love your enemies...do good to them that hate you" Matthew 5,44:XNUMX); but it's another thing to spread false teachings, to be proud of it, and to kill anyone who doesn't agree with it! Yet that is exactly what Christians were doing when Muhammad appeared...
This development began shortly after the Roman Emperor Diocletian (AD 303-313) severely persecuted Christians. Within a generation of Emperor Constantine becoming a Christian, Christianity went from being persecuted to being a persecutor. When the Council of Nicaea declared Arius' doctrine heresy, Constantine believed that in order to preserve the unity of the empire, everyone must be committed to "orthodoxy." It was decided that any belief contrary to the official teachings of the Church was not only an offense against the Church but also against the state.
Eusebius, the leading church historian of Constantine's time, mirrors the thinking of majority Christianity at the time when he praises Constantine as God's chosen vessel that would establish Jesus' rule on earth. One author writes of Eusebius:
»Although he was a man of the church, as a propagandist and historian he founded the political philosophy of the Christian state. He based his conclusions more on evidence from the Roman Empire than from the New Testament. His point of view is thoroughly politicized. His hymn of praise lacks 'all regret for the blessed persecution and all prophetic fear of the Church's imperial control.' It never occurs to him that government protection could lead to the Church's religious subservience and the persecution of dissenters to religious hypocrisy, though both treacherous dangers were easy to discover in his time.« (Tonstad, »Defining Moments in Christian-Mulim History – A Summary«, Adventist Muslim Relations)
Christianity had sacrificed its spiritual purity. The principle Jesus had taught - the separation of church and state - had been traded for popularity and worldly gain. Already in the time of Emperor Theodosius I (AD 379-395) "heretics" were no longer allowed to gather or own property; even their churches were expropriated. Theodosius II (AD 408-450) went a step further and ruled that heretics who did not believe in the Trinity or who taught rebaptism (Donatists) deserved the death penalty.
However, widespread persecution did not occur until the reign of Justinian (527-565 AD), when Arians, Montanists, and Sabbatarians were all persecuted as enemies of the state. The historian Procopius, a contemporary of Justinian, says that Justinian "arranged an invaluable number of murders. Ambitious, he wanted to force everyone to a Christian creed; He willfully destroyed anyone who did not conform, and yet feigned piety all the while. For he saw no murder in it as long as the dying did not share his belief.« (ibid. Added highlight; quoted in Procopius, The Secret History, p. 106)
This might explain why God saw this as the beginning of the absolute apostasy of which the Christian church was guilty. The Bible and the account of Lucifer's creation, his rebellion and attempt to establish his government on God's newly created planet is evidence that God values religious freedom above all else. Knowing the suffering and death that would result from the fall of Lucifer, and therefore of Adam and Eve, God upheld the principle of freedom of conscience. We see in history that God always withdraws His blessing when an authority, whether church or government, decides to rob people of this sacred right. Because then she begins to fight against the Most High.
Back to Part 1: Background to the rise of Islam: The seventh century from a biblical perspective
Abridged from: Doug Hardt, with permission of the author, Who What Muhammad?, TEACH Services (2016), Chapter 4, “Historical Context of the Rise of Islam”
The original is available in paperback, Kindle, and e-book here:
www.teachservices.com/who-was-muhammad-hardt-doug-paperback-lsi
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