Replies

“God’s love is not like my father’s love. God is not a family of persons. Human families have nothing in common with God. The relationship between God and man is the relationship between master and slave. He loves us as a master loves his slave, cares for us as a master cares for his slave, we owe him obedience as a slave owes his master, not as a son owes his father.” This is the reply of the Muslim to that particular Christian evangelistic approach.

This certainly is an essential difference between Islam and Christianity. Muslims don't understand love as we understand it, and they don't understand freedom as we understand it.

As it happens, love and freedom are interconnected. In Milton's "Paradise Lost," the Archangel Raphael explains to Adam, "Freely we serve, / because we freely love, as in our will / To love or not." Milton drew that insight, probably, from St. Augustine's "Enchiridion." Milton explains that God gives man freedom because He wants to be freely loved, not served by servile slaves or puppets.

But I'm not sure that I follow this author's "solution" to the problem of converting Muslims. The solution is not to show how Orthodoxy and Islam are similar, or for that matter how Luther's concept of a Deus absconditus resembles the Muslim idea of a God who is wholly different from anything we understand about love and goodness.

A better way is to try to show Arabs the meaning of love and freedom. Bush seems to be making a start on it. Regretably, Hollywood seems no longer to understand such concepts as love, freedom, courage, or any of the other Christian virtues, nor do any of the socialist politicians of Europe, and that is no help in speaking to the Muslim world.

Hillaire Belloc thought that the key was to talk to Muslims about the Virgin Mary and her loving relationship with her Son. It was noticeable that Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" was well received in the Muslim world, according to disappointed media reports.

One solution to the problem, doubtless, is to resist violence and kill terrorists. But we also need to fight Islam with ideas, and ultimately with the ideas of freedom and love.

As it happens, love and freedom are interconnected. In Milton's "Paradise Lost," the Archangel Raphael explains to Adam, "Freely we serve, / because we freely love, as in our will / To love or not." Milton drew that insight, probably, from St. Augustine's "Enchiridion." Milton explains that God gives man freedom because He wants to be freely loved, not served by servile slaves or puppets.

Great post, Cicero.

I wonder how many posters here agree with you.

A better way is to try to show Arabs the meaning of love and freedom. Bush seems to be making a start on it...Hillaire Belloc thought that the key was to talk to Muslims about the Virgin Mary and her loving relationship with her Son. It was noticeable that Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" was well received in the Muslim world, according to disappointed media reports.

Well, Belloc was just emphasizing one connection between Christianity and Islam: Mary. I'm just generalizing his principle. Why use just one aspect when we should use every one we have available? Shock and awe, my friend, shock and awe.

BTW, one of the reasons Gibson's "Passion" was well-received in the Muslim world was Moslems concentrated on the negative portrayal of the Sanhedrin (which, for the record, was not anti-Semitic, but which could be conflated that way if you were already pre-disposed). For the most part, Muslims still don't believe Jesus died on the Cross.