Christianity and Islam share much common ground. Both trace their roots to Abraham.? Both believe in prophecy, God’s messengers (apostles), revelation, scripture, the resurrection of the dead, and the centrality of religious community.
Both Christianity and Islam have a strong sense of community spirit: what the church is to Christianity, the umma is to Islam. We plead with our religious leaders from both communities to go back to the development of the theological positions of both faith? and traditions, bring them up-to date and promote their findings among their followers.
This would be a positive way of promoting the culture of respect and religious tolerance in our country. Despite these significant similarities, however, these two world religions have a number of significant differences as well.
I would like to comment on one of these which is the reason for the Christian celebration of Easter. The main reason for this choice is to use this festive occasion to further educate religious leaders from both communities so that they will in-turn better educate their members.
This is a civilised way of living with differences. It is the hope of this writer that these two communities will, with a better understanding of each other’s knowledge of God stop these brutal killings of each other and make Nigeria a more peaceful place to live and serve God and one another.
The Understanding of Sin and Salvation in Christianity and Islam:
Sin and salvation are central categories in Christian theology and spirituality.? Christianity teaches that the effects of original sin have corrupted the world and the human beings who exist in it (Gen. 3:1-24; Rms.5:12). In Islam, however, there is no such a thing as original sin.?
The Qur’an does indeed state that Adam and Eve sinned, but according to Islamic belief, they repented and were fully forgiven so that their sin had no repercussions for the rest of human race ( Al-Baqarah 30-39; Al-A’raf. 11-25; Taha 115-127).
My position is that the Islamic rejection of original sin is really the rejection of a ‘specific understanding’ — what I would consider to be a ‘narrow’ understanding — of original sin.? Islam rejects the doctrine of original sin that asserts that all human beings inherited the guilt — the culpability — of the sin of Adam and Eve.? This seems unfair to the Muslim:? Why should we have to accept guilt for someone else’s disobedience?
To respond to such a question, we Christians must move beyond a narrow Augustinian understanding of original sin, the view that, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.”? The Calvinists later carried this view to an extreme, saying that the result of Adam’s sin is total human depravity; that is, that original sin has made human beings completely incapable of doing anything good without the assistance of divine grace! Such a notion is thoroughly incomprehensible to Muslims!
There are, however, other (in my opinion, more suitable to non-Western Christians) understandings of original sin in the history of Christian theology. These can explain original sin to the Muslim inquirer in more palatable terms.? Western Christians (both Protestants and Catholics) need to move beyond the traditional Augustinian-Calvinist understanding of original sin and look toward the ancient Christian East for what I would consider to be more satisfactory explanations. Eastern Christianity understands original sin in this way:?
No sin that is committed is without its effect. Every sin that you and I commit — every sin that is ever committed — disrupts the entire created world.? Your sin has an effect not only on you but on everyone and everything else.? Any sin that you and I commit has a reverberation throughout the world.
Every puff that you take on your cigarette pollutes the air that everyone else breathes, so to speak.? So when the Old Testament claims that the sin of the father will be visited upon the children (Ex 20:5), it is not issuing a threat; it is simply describing reality.?
Think about this proposition, and I think you will recognise that it is true.? Is it realistic to claim, as Muslims do, that Adam and Eve’s sin – the first of the human race! – had no effects in the world into which all other human beings were born?? Is it realistic to say to ourselves today that the misbehaviour of the so-called Boko Haram is not negatively impacting our corporate existence as a nation? I do not think so!
No, sin indeed has a snowball effect: it accumulates? throughout human history, impacting upon all who are born into the world. What started this off was the sin of Adam and Eve — the first, or original, sin in this process.?
For the Eastern Christians to say that all suffer the effects of original sin is not to say that all are born guilty, but rather that, all human beings have to deal with the powerful force of sin that has accumulated from the sin of our First Parents until the present day.? If we explained original sin to our Muslim brethren in this way, perhaps it would be more understandable to them (and to us, I might add!).?
Once one understands original sin in this way, I think the need for salvation — the ability to break loose from the overwhelming bonds of sin that have grown stronger and stronger through the ages — becomes evident.?? With sin’s effects everywhere around us, we have an undeniable proclivity to sin; and no one of us reading this article is capable of freeing himself or herself from sin’s grip.?
Because Islam has understandably reacted against the deficient understanding of original sin I described earlier, it has tended not to be receptive to this more realistic understanding of the pervasive effects of sin on all human beings. Thus, it sees no need for salvation; it cannot understand how Christ’s death and resurrection bring salvation. “Salvation from what?” They ask.?
Just as it is unthinkable to Muslims that one person should have to shoulder the guilt for another person’s sin, it is unthinkable that another person (in this case, Christ) would be able to pay the penalty for another person’s sins (Rms.3:24-25).
Furthermore, because Muslims believe that prophets are sinless (this doctrine is known as isma), it seems a blasphemy to say that Christ died the shameful death of a sinner on the cross.?
They therefore deny that it was Jesus that was crucified (An-Nisa:157-158) they say that it was Judas (whom God made to look like Jesus so that he would suffer his rightful penalty for betrayal). Through such a story, Muslims see themselves as protecting the prophetic integrity of Jesus, since a true prophet, according to Islam, could not suffer the indignity that Jesus did.? Muslims affirm that Jesus ascended to heaven but deny that he died on the cross.
But back to our main point:
Because Muslims do not recognise the universal and corruptive power of sin, unleashed as a result of original sin, they see no need for salvation in the Christian sense. If there is no sin that has a throttle-hold on you, you do not need to be saved from it.?
What you should do, according to the Islamic view, is to live a good life, pleasing God in all that you do.? Submit to God and follow His directives.? Religion, to the Muslim, does not mean salvation from sin; it means following the right path, or the shari’a, mapped out by Islamic law.?
While? Christianity is a faith concerned primarily with “orthodoxy,” or “right belief,”? Islam is a faith concerned primarily with “orthopraxy,” or right practice.? It is a religion of law, and it sees Christianity’s rejection of the law (as taught by St. Paul in his writings, especially Romans and Galatians) as a serious deficiency in the Christian way of life.?
This, of course, does not mean that Islam is not at all concerned with right doctrine or that Christianity is not at all concerned with right practice.? It simply means that the emphasis is different in the two religions.
But that difference in emphasis is very important.? If one recognises the pervasive power of sin, salvation is not just an option; it is a necessity. Christians lament the fact that a faulty presentation of original sin led early Islam to “throw out the baby with the bath water” with regard to their understanding of sin.?
By reacting against an anaemic understanding of original sin, as I have described it, they have missed what Christians consider to be the central truth of human existence: that no matter how hard one tries to conform to right practice, he or she will fall short of the goal (Rms. 3:23).? We cannot live the kind of life that God wants by our own power. And that is why salvation is necessary.
At Easter, Christians celebrate in the Crucified God, the liberation from the power of sin over their lives by the resurrection from the dead Jesus Christ. Christians celebrate the reversal of the consequences of the curse on the head of all humanity, they celebrate a new relationship, a new status of being God’s children by adoption.
These matters, of course, are very profound, and I do not pretend to have exhausted what should be said about them.? In this part of my presentation, I simply wanted to point to the divergent Christian and Islamic understanding of the crucial issues of sin and salvation. It is hoped the elites from both communities will engage each other, learn a bit more about the different ways Christians and Muslims over the centuries have wrestled with the effects of sin and salvation.
The more this is done, the more there is a better informed understanding between the two communities and the more we respect our differences and reduce the bitter hatred among us as a people and a nation. Happy Easter to all those reading this article.
Josiah Idowu Fearon, Ph.D (ABU), is the Anglican Bishop of Kaduna Diocese.