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Listening to God, Learning
from Scripture
Christians and Muslims
attend to God’s word communicated to them through the
revelatory power changed in their respective scriptures. How
does this dynamic operate?, a question explored along this
chapter through the analysis of one Christian and two
Muslims, intersparsed with two dialogues relating to some
concepts of this dynamic of approaching the scriptural
texts.
In his presentation about
Christian reading of the Bible, Tom Wright expounded
the paradigmatic story of Jesus’ disciples on the road to
Emmaus in Luke Gospel. He explained Luke’s intention to
present the story as the continuation climax of the Old
Testament.
This is obviously illustrated through
the opening scences where the birth of John the Baptist and
Jesus recall the birth of Samuel and the birth of John the
Baptist and Jesus recall the birth of Samuel and the call of
David, and through the locality of the story within the
wider world of Roman Empire. Then through subsequent points
such as his specific comments at the transfiguration scene
where Moses and Elijah talk to Jesus about his forthcoming
“exodus” which bear the meaning of departure and death. Thus
the meaning conceived through relating this new exodus to
the first exodus and exile of Israel, still undone by the
mere geographical return, considering pagans, rule over
Caesar’s Empire and gaining the soveignty of death, the
deepest exile. The story especially Jesus’ account for it,
and repeated “dei” it is necessary, is announced to be
undetached from the longer purposes of the creator God. Thus
Jesus through, his birth, death and resurrection become
Israel’s ultimate representative. He resembles Israel
Israel sufferings, and through God’s
saving of it, the whole world must be brought within the
recreation of justice and peace through repentance and
forgiveness announced to all nations fro Jerusalem.
And this is the message which the
disciples and the emerging church have to carry and seek
through the living spirit of Jesus.
Luke’s Gospel therefore is
intended to provide a formative grounding narrative for the
Early Christian community, complementary to this Old
Testament. God’s salvation and redemption are defined around
the extra-textual historical reality not the religious
miracle concerning Jesus who-and not the Bible – had all
authority and continuous presence as the centre of God’s
revelation and the everliving Lord of the World and the
church. This narrative is a way to generate and sustain the
ongoing community of Jesus’ followers and hence pointing
them to worship, mission, belief and behaviour and their
role in this endless story... in their reading, practicing
of the scripture and their own bread breaking according
Jesus’ focus.
Tom Wright ends his
presentation of Luke 24 by using it as an example of
different but complementary Christian ways in reading and
using scripture. He chose three examples designed to cross
over the various boundaries as formal & informal, public and
private, academic and devoted… etc.
The first example is the
public reading within liturgy during church services,
especially in the eucharistic liturgy, where Gospel passage
is designed to “set the heart on fire” and prepare believers
to recognize the lord in the breaking of the bread. And in
“Mattins and Evensong” offices centred on reading chosen
verses from both Old and New Testaments proclaiming and
celebrating the God and the world focusing on Israel and
Jesus’ story summing up Israeli history. Those readings
according to Luke’s view of Jesus are small windows opening
on the enormous narrative from genesis to revelation. Thus
celebrating the whole story and fulfilling the biblical
command to declare God’s mighty acts to his glory, and
construct the community which the readings shape.
The second example is the
historical study based on the importance and priority of the
literal sense. This historical critical method, calling the
traditional Christian faith into question was criticized as
being hostile & destructive to authentic faith, while others
accomplishment and Spirit’s power. Luke applied this method
in the same Greek words found in Genesis.
The third type of reading
is the devotional or Ignatian approach, which means
imagining the narrative and entering into it like an actor
in play. This may render us energized to speak of the events
and dialogue and give our vocation new focus and impetus.
Vincent Cornell
spoke about “listening to God through the” Qur an” assuring
that the concept of listening is the major theme in Qur an
where the word listened is a focus word. The call for
listening is frequently repeated specially before Friday
prayer rituals. Whether in the Qur an recited before it, or
in every cycle of prostration there is a statement that
active listening is reciprocal between the worshipper and
god Himself Who listens to the one who praises Him. Then
comes listening to the sermon following the prayer as
commentary on god’s words and active listening is a means of
Salvation.
The Qur’an and not the
prophet is the theophany of Islam as he presents the divine
word, not incarnate as Jesus for Christians, but in
liberate. Though it is compiled in a book as it refers to
itself and it is the authoritarianism, as fostered by
Islamic traditionalism and fundamentalism represented by
some Shi’ite elites,. The wahhabis, Taliban and Jamaat.
Preachers and interpreters with such tendencies
Limit the sources of divine wisdom and
render God’s word univocal and impede Islam being universal
religion. To face this problem of over interpretation the
Qur’an and divided its message into two parts: The Muhkamant
or verses accessible to all as regulating daily life’s
activities, and Mutashabihat or ambiguous verse that need to
be interpreted by specialists through an approach including
rational, contextual, linguistic, philosophical and even
mystical text’s perspective. Exclusive interpretations do
not fit for the deep symbolism of the concept of words of
the Qur’an; like “verse” and its multivalency as a statement
in the speech of God, a miracle, or a sign in symbolic or
semiotic sense. Thus expressing two language of the Qur’an
and that of nature discerning the existence of God through
his creation. Verses are sign posts pointing to the ultimate
reality and enabling believers, through reason and
inspiration meaningly the intuition of the heart to decipler
the open book of the nature. That is why approaching the
Qur’an requires rituals ranging from ablution before
handling it to using its words in magic and divination. The
metaphor of the “Way of the Heart” is a hallmark of Islamic
mysticism. This idea of a macrosmic scripture is expressed
in the Qur’anic concept of the “Preserved Tablet, the Book
of the World, and the Qur’an.
The ultimate guarantee of
the truth of religious experience is the fact that God
revealed himself to human beings. But in Islam – as in
Judaism this manifestation was not in a visible form, but
through in direct speech to his prophet in a humanly
understandable language, through revelation by a mediator:
the Holy Spirit or Angel Gabriel.
This way copes with Islamic theological
belief of absolute transcendence of God over immanence and
the ontological distance between God and human beings. Even
in some direct experiences of revelation the necessity of
transformation was realized through the
Intense
suffering of the prophet which indicated a profound
transformation of his inward self; an exchanged of his
humanity for a more profound state of angelicality. Moreover
the voice of revelation was not human but something “in
prophet’s account” like the ringing of a bell. This metaphor
was used by some sufi theologians to describe the pealing or
reverbation of God’s word in the heart of every believer as
a symbol for the call for concentration and active listening
to God’s word in scripture and in the divine harmonic of the
universe, and hence devotion to God and union with Him.
Nearly the same ideas were
stressed by Timothy Winter in his essay “Reading of
the readings”. The Qur’an is the theophany of Islam as it
contains God’s word not “incarnate” but inliberate.
Considering the internal spiritual metabolism of Muslim
piety, Qur’an is not just a text but a real authentic
presence of God. As Christians experience God in the
Eucharist, so Muslims do by just opening their scripture as
its words resonate within themselves as if it were the
breath of god.
This is dynamic works through the
verses as signs pointing cognitively and iconically to
heaven, and the capacity of the inmost nature of souls. Tim
winter recalls the resemblance between Qur’anic effect as a
healer and that of honey as stated in the text itself. To
assure this, the speaker refers to a story of a poor,
illiterate Indian woman who experiences Qur’an as the
central theophany in her world despite her inability to
understand it. Muslim devotion to their prophet is grounded
upon that he himself through his virtues and life the
Qur’an. This is the core of the centrality of the Qur’an and
of its formal cantilation in Muslim prophetetology and
soteriology. It is expressed in Sufi concepts and literature
expressing Muslim yearning to the Prophet’s intercession at
the resurrection.
Finally, the speaker
justified the truculent temper and the extremist tendencies
among Muslims today by their isolation in the world of
modernity to which they have no contribution. The threat of
this danger is growing with the decline of classical Muslim
Institutions and canons of scriptural management.
Hence rises the need of evolving new
spiritual guided criteria for approaching Qur’an texts that
ensure realizing its utmost spiritual message in healing
which is a trans-historical, universal human possibility.
Besides, the chapter
presented two dialogues intersparsed with these
presentations and built around pairs of paralleled passages
from Christian and Muslim scriptures. The first one
concentrated upon the Biblical text Psalms (19) and Qur’anic
text al- Rum (30) 19-30. The dialogue proves that both texts
celebrate a real almighty God Who reveals himself both
through natural and human phenomena and written scripture.
Both faiths recognize the consistency, complementary, and
mutuality of interpretation between scriptural and natural
books both granted from God. Divine authorship of both books
is understood by Muslims through belief of the eternal
existence Qur’an as the infallible word of God. Meanwhile
most Christians reject the view dividing the Bible into
divine and human parts. This consistency proposes generating
scripture self interpretation using straight forward passage
as keys to ambiguous ones. Qur’anic coordination of
contracting pairs of phenomena, along with the subversive
character of the Gospel parables and the very sign of
judging and deciphering divine conduct. The way of
challenging the contrast between the inherent perspicuity of
God’s word and the persisting obduracy of its hearers
differs between two faiths, for it is characterized by
Christianity as “sin” and by Islam as a result of
“ignorance” or being left in astray by God. The main
difference between two religious lies in the refusal of the
other’s ability to read correctly the divine message. While
Christians find difficulty in accepting the Qur’an as a
message revealed later than full God’s self communication in
Jesus Christ, Muslims view Christian reading of the Bible
under different levels of alteration.
The second dialogue was
built on the Qur’anic text Al- Imran (3) 1-7 and the
Biblical text John 1, 1-18. The dialogue revealed
similarities in the underlying questions faced by Muslims
and Christians such as the authentic faith in the
faithfulness, consistency and truth of the God addressing
them through revelation. Hence came their insistence on the
double sense eternity of the word of God and on the word’s
indivisible unity with the divine being and His purpose.
Both believe that the very structure of
divine dispensation towards humanity requires that scripture
should give its own reading of scripture through vertical
historical dimension of self exegesis and horizontal dynamic
through the mutual interpretative parts of the scripture:
“Muhkamat and Mutashabihat in the Qur’an, and the Old and
new testaments of the Bible.
Nevertheless, there is
pivotal division between two faiths over the locus of the
fullest statement of the word of God. For Muslims it is the
written text of a book, the Qur’an, while for Christians it
is the life of a human being “Jesus of Nazareth”. In this
sense the option for the Christian conception of incarnation
or for the Islamic concept of inlibration of the word of God
can be seen as an option for or against a Trinitarian
understanding of the one God. Besides, consistent
truthfulness of God’s word implies Muslims’ refusal of
passages and interpretation contradicting Qur’an and their
view of the alteration of authentic Jewish and Christian
scriptures. Such divergence is provided also by the verse
“there is no God save Allah”, which can he read as implicit
rebuke to the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Jesus as
Son and Word.
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