Valuable History

When I began my theological education, I thought I would lose my mind on account of all the references to past theologians about whom I knew little or nothing. A friend might call someone else a ‘Barthian’ or a ‘Thomist’, or a lecturer would question whether a particular idea can be believed after Kant, or someone would laugh about what we would all believe even today if it hadn’t been for Anselm. I knew that I would eventually study many of these figures, but I also knew that I would not study all of them, and that much time would pass before I got to some of them. There are, of course, massive reference books with copious information to which I could (and did) turn, but I also needed something compact, something I could keep on my desk for the quick reference between lectures.

Then a friend introduced me to a very handy little book, Jonathan Hill’s The History of Christian Thought. It was just what I needed. This succinct volume packs a load of useful information. Hill divides the history of the Christian Church into roughly chronological categories: the Church Fathers, the Byzantine Empire, the Middle Ages, etc. Each section opens with a brief introduction to the important cultural, ecclesiastical, or philosophical movements that marked the particular era. Hill then turns to the main content of the section, which consists of a series of entries – each a few pages long – for the major theologians of the era. These entries are then punctuated by more general entries providing further background information – perhaps on an intellectual movement or a church council or a city that became an important centre of thought for the time.

So, are you confused about Calvin? Unsure about Schleiermacher? Ignorant of Irenaeus? In just a few minutes you can have the gist of the thought of any one of these. Each entry is clear and easy to read. Hill does a fine job of simplifying complex ideas without being unduly simplistic. Of course, certain details and nuances are glossed over because of the nature of the book, but if you’d like to know in broad strokes about the ideas of a major Christian thinker, there is a very good chance Hill will provide you what you need.

Another notable characteristic is that Hill treats different schools of thought in a balanced and objective way. To illustrate, a review on Amazon.co.uk says in essence that the book will crush any conservative impulse, while feeding the inner radical. I found nothing akin to that effect, and further, the latest edition of the book is published by IVP Academic, an Evangelical label. So Hill’s objectivity is vindicated – if your starving soul seeks further impoverishment, this work does not seek to dissuade.

Two caveats are needed, both in the category of the book’s strengths also being its weaknesses. First, because Hill does an excellent job of locating each thinker in his or her context, after reading an entry for a thinker you might realize that you need to know more about that context in order to fully understand the entry. So you might read the preceding entry, then the next preceding entry, and each entry will just be illuminating enough to drive you to its predecessor and you may find it difficult to stop. Second, because the book is of a manageable size, not all thinkers and movements are covered. For example, Eastern Orthodox thought after the Byzantine era is ignored. Neither is there mention of the recent phenomenon of Radical Orthodoxy, the writers of which are so hopelessly opaque as to beg for a concise interpreter. And perhaps most importantly from my perspective, nearly two centuries of Lutheran and Reformed confessionalist thinkers are left out in the cold.

Still, if you are not a theologian and yet are interested in the history of Christian thought, do not let these caveats keep you from purchasing The History of Christian Thought.

 

Islam and Human Rights, Oh (my)

I recently finished reading Irene Oh’s The Rights of God: Islam, Human Rights, and Comparative Ethics. The thrust of the argument is that Islam deserves a voice in human rights dialogue. And my initial response was: well of course it does.

Then I recalled how the Muslim world took issue with the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) because it granted freedom of conscience in matters of religion. Why? Muslims are willing to allow anyone but Muslims the right to abandon or change their religion, but according to Islam apostasy from Islam is not permissible and even punishable by death.

Now, I don’t really like the UN. I don’t even like everything I read in the UDHR. Its insistence on the right to economic prosperity and health care stink too much like social egalitarianism (which, if you ask me, is the greatest enemy of liberty). That Muslims took issue with it isn’t a big issue for me. What they took issue with is.

So when I read the first sentence of Oh’s book, “Promoting Islam as a defender of human rights is fraught with difficulties,” I almost chuckled. Talk about stating the obvious! But as I read the book my laughter was replaced with vitriolic grunts and groans.

Here’s why. Oh does a good job of outlining the thought of ‘Abdolkarim Soroush, a progressive Iranian Muslim, who like other moderate Muslims is heroically attempting to separate mosque from state. From what Oh says, he is a pious Muslim, but he is willing to put aside his theology when it comes to ethics, politics, and other temporal things. All this is good, and I’m glad Muslims like Soroush are finally making a splash. What absolutely irritated me was Oh’s suggestion that the thought of the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb and Indian Abul ‘Ala Maudidi might also contribute to global ethical discourse.

For those who aren’t familiar with these two Muslim thinkers you ought to be—Qutb in particular. These are the ideological fathers of the global jihadists out there. In fact, there is evidence that Sayyid’s brother Muhammad (who is still living and just as austere as his brother) tutored Osama bin Laden when he was in a Saudi Arabian university.

Oh claims that the only reason these two thinkers were so hostile to non-Muslims was because they were reacting to western imperialism. If we could just get past their calls to global jihad against the jahiliyya governments in classic Islamic lands and then the rest of the world, we would see they, too, were concerned with promoting tolerance, democracy, and freedom of conscience.

Here is what Oh is essentially arguing. Qutb and Maududi (and contemporary jihadis) aren’t hostile to non-Muslims because they thought (and think) that was (is) what the Quran and Sunna taught (teach). They are hostile to western non-Muslims because we, through our mingling into their affairs, pushed them to hate us.

Well, I’ve read Qutb and Maududi. They pulled all their vitriol out of the Quran and Sunna. In fact, they both wrote multi-volume commentaries on the Quran, which are read the Muslim world over today. Go into any Islamic bookstore and you will most assuredly find their material ready for consumption. Sure, western imperialism ticked these guys off. But it ticked them off because it was not Islam. To resurrect pure Islam they then went ad fontes—to the Quran and Sunna—and what they found was their political vision of purifying Islam and expanding its influence.

Although irritated, I did finish the book, and am glad to have learned of Soroush. But I’m mad as heck that such superficial politically-biased crud passes for scholarship.