Rethinking the Prophethood of Muhammad in Christian Theology Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy (By Anna Bonta Moreland)
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Keywords
Christian Theology, Thomas Aquinas, Vatican II, Muhammad
Abstract
In the modern world, there is an incessant amount of research on religions and interfaith interaction. Yet, too much of our theological activities remain shockingly intramural. Instead of allowing an inherent energy to launch us into the larger reality of global religiosity, we insist on protecting our theology from the threat of contamination. Among many points of agreement, the centrality of Muhammad’s prophethood remains key among the contentious issues between Islam and Christianity. Anna Bonta Moreland’s Reconsidering Muhammad takes us on a journey into the reception of Muhammad in Christian Theology. Engaging Islam from deep within the Christian tradition by addressing the question of the prophethood of Muhammad, Anna Bonta Moreland calls for a retrieval of Thomistic thought on prophecy. Moreland sets the stage for this inquiry through an intertextual reading of the key Vatican II documents on Islam and on Christian revelation. This review will retrace the historical reception of Muhammad in early European tradition and also how Moreland’s work is a pathbreaking introduction to one of the least talked about theological puzzles between Islam and the Christian tradition.
References
1 Sophia, Rose Arjana. Muslims in the Western Imagination, (Oxford University Press,
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2 Robert Cummings Neville, Behind the Masks of God: An Essay Toward Comparative
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3 See Anna, Bonta Moreland, “The Qur’an and the Doctrine of Private Revelation: A
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4 Anna Bonta Moreland, Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic
Prophecy. (University of Notre Dame Pess, 2020) 34
5 Moreland, Muhammad Reconsidered, 3
6 Sophia, Muslims in the Western Imagination. 8
7 Tolan (2002) gives many examples of Western Christian views of Muhammad; e.g.
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16 In his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict XVI called for a
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and the postconciliar Church. This address was reprinted as the introduction to a
collection of essays meant to follow the pope’s lead on this issue. See Benedict XVI,
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17 Moreland, Muhammad Reconsidered, 32
18 James L, Heft, and John O’Malley, eds. After Vatican II: trajectories and hermeneutics.
(Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012), xiii.
154 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISL AM AND SOCIE T Y 40:3-4
19 I disagree with Mikka Ruokanen, who argues that “what is apparent to human
reason has become an institutionalized religion in Islam” in his The Catholic
Doctrine of Non–Christian Religions according to the Second Vatican Council, 78.
Roukanen implies that only what is apparent to human reason emerges in Islam. In
my reading of the conciliar texts, the overlapping web of beliefs about Mary, Jesus,
eschatology, and so on, added to the fact that we “adore” the one God together,
imply that Muslims do not come to know God just through natural reason.
20 Moreland, Muhammad reconsidered, 43.
21 Karl, Rahner. Visions and prophecies. (Quaestiones disputatae, 1963) 21.
22 For a recent outstanding and helpful bibliography of modern studies of “prophecy”
in English, see Hvidt, Christian Prophecy.
23 See Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis; Scripture and Metaphysics; Christ’s
Fulfilment of Torah and Temple; Dauphinais, Aquinas the Augustinian; Mattison,
Introducing Moral Theology; Tapie, Aquinas on Israel and the Church; and Hütter
and Levering, Ressourcement Thomism.
24 Moreland, Muhammad reconsidered, 107.
25 Christian W. Troll. Dialogue and Difference: Clarity in Christian-Muslim relations.
(Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 2009) 117.
26 John Renard. Islam and Christian Theologians, (CTSA PROCEEDINGS 48 (1993)
41-54.
27 David, Marshall. “Muhammad in contemporary Christian theological reflection.” (Islam
and Christian–Muslim Relations 24, no. 2 (2013). 161-172.
28 Moreland, Muhammad reconsidered, 114.
29 David Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas.
(University of Notre Dame Pess, 1992) and Freedom and creation in three traditions.
(Univ. Notre Dame Press, 1993).
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