(I would add, however, that we are more than likely actually looking at different periods of time and that this perhaps strengthens my argument while weakening yours. You can look back into history prior to Islam, when Christians primarily evangelized pagans, Jews, and others, and find many witnesses that you’ll say substantiate your claim;
Yes, but the question is how you can possibly maintain that the Supreme Deity of the pagans is the true God while the Islamic “Allah” is not. That’s why I have pointed to Christians who wrote before the rise of Islam. Writers like St. John of Damascus are assuming that legacy, which is why St. John speaks of God univocally with regard to Christian and Islamic concepts, without seeing any need to ask the question of whether Muslims worship the true God.
However, when we begin to see writers tackling Islam specifically, then we see opinions of a different sort.
Not in John of Damascus.
Nicetas of Byzantium wrote a book against Islam which can apparently be summed up as advancing the view that “
In short, Muhammad was an ignorant charlatan who succeeded by imposture in seducing the ignorant barbarian Arabs into accepting a gross, blaspheming, idolatrous, demoniac religion, which is full of futile errors, intellectual enormities, doctrinal errors and moral aberrations.”)
In itself, this does not necessarily constitute a claim that Muslims are referring to a false god when they speak of “Allah.” After all, early Christians condemned paganism as idolatrous while recognizing that the supreme deity of pagans (who was not generally the direct object of pagan worship) was the true God.
However, your reference to St. Nicetas caused me to Google him, which led me eventually to a discussion of the twelfth-century controversy between Manuel I and the bishops over the “God of Muhammad.” I will give a bibliography at the end of my post–the occasional citations in what follows refer to the sources found there.
Apparently the rite of abjuration required of converts from Islam had come to include a phrase abjuring the “God of Muhammad who is made of beaten metal.” This rite is variously dated, including as early as the eighth century by some, though others put it later–about the mid-9th century seems to be the most common view.
The idea that the Qur’an describes God as made of beaten metal apparently comes from Theodore abu-Qurra as interpreted polemically by St. Nicetas (Hanson, 63). Scholars seem agreed that this is a mistranslation of the word “samad” from the Qur’an, which is more usually translated “eternal” and has the connotation of “firm, permanent.” In other words, Byzantine theologians erroneously claimed that Muslims believed that God was material, and on this they based their condemnation of the “God of Muhammad.” The same passage in the Qur’an that contains the word “samad” also speaks of God not begetting or being begotten, so this passage came to represent the false Islamic concept of God as a whole. It appears to me, however, from the sources I cite below, that the supposed materiality of God was the decisive factor.
In the 12th century, Manuel I ordered that the phrase anathematizing the “God of Muhammad” be removed from the rite of abjuration. Emperor Manuel insisted that this phrase anathematized the Christian God, who was the same as the God spoken of by Muhammad. He also seems to have understood that the Qur’an was being mistranslated and that Muslims did
not believe in a material God. This was met with horror by many of the bishops, who accused him of violating the traditional view of Islam (this is in your favor). Craig Hanson argues that they were mistaken on this point, and that Manuel was in fact continuing or returning to a traditional approach. At any rate, Manuel won and the phrase was deleted from the abjuration.
Finally, Daniel Sahas argues (pp. 75-76) that John of Damascus not only did not have the faulty translation of “samad” used later by Nicetas, but also tacitly accepted the characterization of God as one who neither begets nor is begotten as correct if properly understood. Sahas clearly believes that John accepted the Islamic God as the true God, agreeing with me over Mickey!
**Sources:
**Craig L. Hanson, “Manuel I Comnenus and the ‘God of Mohammed,’” in *Medieval Christian Perspectives on Islam, *ed. John Victor Tolan (Routledge, 1996, 2000), 55-76.
J. M. Hussey,
The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (1986; reprinted with foreword and bibliographical supplement by Andrew Louth, Oxford 2010), pp. 153-54.
John Meyendorff,
The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodox Church (St. Valdimir’s Seminary Press, 1982, 2001), pp. 89-114, esp. 100-101 (on Nicetas).
Daniel J. Sahas,
John of Damascus on Islam: The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites” (Brill, 1972).
David Thomas and Barbara Roggema, *Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History *(Brill, 2009), vol. 1, p. 95 (dating the rite of abjuration to the 9th cent.)
I found all these sources on Google Books.
Thanks for bringing up Nicetas and giving me the occasion to learn quite a bit!
God bless,
Edwin
Ours isn’t all that cool either. The crime rate in the US is off the hook, drugs, rape, murder and on and on. Yes we have came a long way in 250-years, but we haven’t “arrived” to be sure.
Whenever a self-professed “Christian” individual or group does this, they put themselves outside of Christianity.