There is something that I notice about Christian-Muslim theology debates that kind of runs on repeat. Basically, Muslims have a tendency to bring up Bible verses where Jesus is shown as praying, or emphasizing in some way His servitude to God, and try to use them as ways of proving to Christians that Jesus was not God.
The problem with this method is that the Church was the one that assembled these texts as canonical, including verses like this, even while it defined the tenets of Trinity and Incarnation. These quandaries are not newly being brought to our attention, but rather have been grappled with over two millennia within the Christian tradition, through multiple lenses, and in light of other verses, prophecies, etc.
Basically, each religious tradition strives for its own internal consistency, and without taking that into consideration, it’s impossible to get a good understanding of what others believe. The Gospels really must be taken together as opposed to just pulling given verses, and traditional commentaries(written as early as the first and second generations from the events described), should be given attention.
I know that the Islamic view of the Bible is one that judges authenticity based largely upon whether it measures up to the Quran, so it’s kind of hard to argue anything on the Bible in that light, since our understanding of it is different. For example, the Passion narratives involving the crucifixion of Jesus for me are the easiest to believe because of their raw realism, and yet Muslims reject the story of Christ being crucified because it is rejected in the Quran.
With regards to verses involving Jesus, I say this as something that swings both ways: Christians should not gloss over these very human verses about the human and self-emptying nature of Christ (again, there’s a whole intricate theology on this, in which Christ is “made as nothing”), but the verses that strongly indicate “something more” about Christ should not be glossed over or explained away either.
For me, the hypostatic union has already addressed this type of complexity, this type of “more” that caused people to think that something strange was going on with Jesus in His own day and age. No one has to believe it, and clearly if you believe the Quran is the inerrant word of God, you’re not going to. But my point is that this type of verse won’t pull the rug out from under the Christian worldview and theological tradition.
That’s the beauty and mystery of Christianity: we grapple a ton, and we believe that’s good for us. But something I’ve realized is that, on an inherent level, there is also a tendency among some people to view this in and of itself as being a sign of untruth. It’s not so much that Christianity doesn’t have answers, but rather that the answers themselves are not so much to “clear things up” as to expand upon the depth of the mystery and its implications.
We’re very organic in our understanding of God working within humanity. Historical Christianity, i.e. Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and some other high church denominations, reject the concept that God gives us everything we need to know in a lump sum, including the concept of a pure transmission revealed book. The Bible for us is “the Word of God through the word of men.”
The Church councils are breathed into by the Holy Spirit, but they involve real people, with real grappling, and yes, real evolving, like a living, breathing organism. Hence, we are perfectly comfortable with the concepts of doctrines being “defined” and then continuously explored and expanded upon by great religious thinkers and Doctors of the Church throughout the centuries.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the root of our “split-point”, perhaps, is one of expectation. If one is expecting answers to be “easy,” avoid Christianity like the plague. If you expect, however, to be gradually drawn into the facets of a revealed mystery and its multitudinous implications, then this is probably your journey home.
I’ve noticed something of a trend among many converts from Christianity to Islam that runs a similar course, but doesn’t hit the root that I’m driving at quite as clearly. For example, I’ll quote a video snippet from the YouTube Channel ‘ Muslim Converts’:
“Islam’s theology is much simpler than Christianity’s: there is One God, he created the universe, and it is in our best interests to follow his instructions as to the best way to live and behave. Furthermore, He told us how to behave through divine revelation. There’s more detail, but if you believe the above, essentially you’re Muslim. Compare this with the complexities of Christian theology: ideas like the Trinity (are they three gods, the same god, forms of the same god) can be hard for people to understand. Or this idea that Jesus died for our sins; but exactly which part of Jesus died on the cross, the man, or the God? Clearly it wasn’t the God, so it must have been the man. But is a single man being sacrificed sufficient to atone for all of man’s sins?”
As you can imagine, there are a thousand different ways I can, and have, come at her questions, since I’m the type who spends a good portion of my waking hours pondering, and being spiritually enriched, by these mysteries of faith. Indeed, she could look up a ton of sound resources from out of Church history that could make sound responses to her inquiries. But I don’t believe she would be content with them, because, as she stated in her opening, she’s looking for a “simpler” route.
She’s looking to streamline the major beliefs of Islam and Christianity. Basically, the core principles are: God in the heavens and the earth below, and the messengers are sent out to tell humanity how God wants us to behave. Which is fine. Both Muslims and Christians believe this . Christians just don’t stop there. And that is why when Muslim friends ask me a ton of questions on Christianity, and ask me why I don’t ask as much about Islam, I tell them. “because yours is just easier to grasp.” And they will say in response, “So if you’re admitting that, why don’t you embrace Islam?” And I will say, “Because I do not believe ‘easier to grasp’ makes something inherently more truthful than stuff that turns your world upside down with its subversion of what we expect.”
In essence, it comes down to the following question: does simple always mean more truthful, or is it perhaps the opposite? Is reality simple, or straightforward, or is it often a paradoxical mystery? This, I sense, is a core quandary that many Christians and Muslims face in these debates, but don’t always articulate, and one which we will no doubt continue to “grapple” with, just as we always have.