Gabriel Said Reynolds is the Jerome J. Crowley and Rosaleen G. Crowley Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame and a faculty fellow with the Ansari Institute. His current research focuses on the Qur'ān and Muslim/Christian relations.
He is the author of The Qur'an and Its Biblical Subtext (Routledge 2010), The Emergence of Islam (Fortress, 2012), The Qurʾan and the Bible (Yale University Press, 2018) and Allah: God in the Qur'an (Yale University Press, 2020). At Notre Dame, he teaches courses on theology, Muslim/Christian Relations, and Islamic Origins. He runs a popular YouTube channel, “Exploring the Qur’an and the Bible” that features conversations on scripture with leading scholars.
Over Zoom, Professor Reynolds sat down with Rebekah Go, the Ansari Institute’s Program and Communication Manager, to talk about her research and scholarship. The following has been edited and abridged for clarity.
I first reached out to interview you because I saw on your CV that Pope Francis appointed you in 2020 as consultor to the Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims, a part of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Can you explain what that is and what this appointment means? Are the majority of the individuals in the Dicastery Catholics who study Islam? Or are they themselves practicing Muslims?
Thank you. It is a great honor to be considered by the Holy Father to serve with the Catholic Church on what they now call the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. The group of consultors are different academics, theologians, priests, and others who in conversation with the Church - but also through our studies of Islam and encounters with Muslims - think about how we can help the Church support its initiatives for theological dialogue but also dialogue about the world in which we all live in today. You know, how to make the world a better place.
This dicastery is like a huddle of a football team. So it's all Catholics although we do have Eastern rite Catholics in addition to Latin rite Catholics. We get together as members of the Catholic Church to pray together and think together. We meet in person in Rome once a year and speak, deliver papers, and talk about current events that affect the Church: the Church in the Islamic world and also Muslim minorities in the West and how the Church can support them in that context.
The beautiful and challenging thing for the Catholic Church is that it is tasked by Christ Himself with the faith that the Gospel has given and the Church's principal responsibility is to preserve and share that faith with the world. But then the other element of the Church's experience is always listening to what's happening in the world today. So theology is at once ancient, but also ever new.
This is a five year appointment- so it is nearing its end. What are you most proud of about your time on this Commission?
I don't think I've personally accomplished very much; I've just been a humble member of the group. I've really benefited more than given some spectacular theological insight. The group of consultors include scholars from all over the world: from Southeast Asia, Indonesia, South Asia, various African countries, West Africa and East Africa, from the Middle East, including Iraq, and Egypt. and Jordan, and then scholars like myself who work in Islamic studies in the West. It's so important to learn about the experience of the Church and its engagement with Muslims in different contexts.
There's some places where the church is really suffering. We have a Nigerian colleague and the Church is just bleeding in Northern Nigeria. So there the urgency is to support Catholics and other Christians who are suffering. Then other places there's very lively theological dialogue going on - exciting encounters, new books, new ideas. Islam is very diverse - so Muslim thinkers from different perspectives are engaging with Christian theology.
Pope Francis has been super active in engaging with the Islamic world. He signed this document on human fraternity co-authored with Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, a Muslim, which is revolutionary. He went to Iraq and met with the great Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and others. So I've been listening and learning from others more than giving anything.
When you were first appointed to the Commission you said in the Notre Dame news release “In the Vatican II documents Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate, the Church emphasizes common bonds with Islam.” Can you provide a brief overview of what the Church says in these documents?
Sure. Yeah, I love speaking about this. The question of the Church's relationship with Islam has been something that has been a challenge for centuries. It's a challenge because, on the one hand, the Church has a missionary command given to it by Christ. The Church cannot say, “we decided not to share the Gospel.” This is not an option. Christ Himself at the end of the Gospel of Matthew commands the apostles to baptize people in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit unto the ends of the earth. This is imposed upon the Church by Christ, so evangelization is part of the Church's identity.
But then there's this other element which is that you also have to have charity for everyone. Christ also imposed upon the Church love of everyone - not only fellow Catholics or other Christians but the whole world. John 3:16 speaks of God's love for the whole world, not only for believers. God loves believers of other faiths and God loves atheists as well. Humans are called to share in that divine love and that means forming good relationships, respecting others, and understanding their faith.
So this is why it's a challenge, right? The missionary impulse and then the impulse of charity.
So how is the Church going to work this out in regard to Islam? Islam forms a special challenge. Why is Islam a special challenge? Well, Judaism is sort of its own question. Judaism comes first. Christianity emerges out of Judaism. We share a Scripture, the Hebrew Bible. We affirm that God really formed a covenant with Israel. Then there are religions - many of which began in South Asia or East Asia - such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism where there's no common salvation history. However Islam is neither like Judaism nor like these other religions because it historically comes after Christianity and then - and this is the real difficulty for the Church - Islam itself claims to correct what Christians believe about Christ and about God and about Scripture. So, Islam comes with all of these criticisms of Christian belief - in God, in a Trinity, in the divinity of Christ, in the salvific nature of Christ, in Scripture.
So for Vatican II in 1962 or 1965, the Church got together in Rome and there, among other things, is a question in the air about how to relate with non-Christian religions. And there are basically two paragraphs - well, technically three - one is in this document known as Lumen Gentium, which is a dogmatic constitution, and then Nostra Aetate, which is a declaration - and in both of these documents the Church speaks about Islam in very similar language and in uniformly positive language.
There is not one whisper of criticism or polemics against Islam.
So this is really significant because the Church is directing theologians who are thinking about Islam away from polemics or attacks and towards generosity, understanding, and appreciation. These documents affirm a common belief in God; they affirm a connection between Islam and Abraham; and they even commend Muslims for their moral lives - their life of prayer, their life of obedience to their religion. So they hold up Islam and Muslims for their positive qualities.
You gave an interview once where you said, “the key task for me in interreligious dialogue is, is the task of Muslims, Christians, and Jews - when we sit down together - to reach some sort of common point, some sort of middle ground, or is the task to better understand each other and consequently to better understand ourselves? And it’s the latter approach which is more interesting to me.” Given that, what are some best practices you have seen and/or practiced in terms of helping people reach deeper understanding without that desire for common ground necessarily.
Yeah, great question. I think this is a real difference among Christians engaging with Islam. I think a lot of Christians, out of goodwill, have an impulse to Christianize Islam. This sort of phenomenon has different manifestations. One common thing is Christians will really get interested and excited about mysticism in Islam: mystical poetry, whirling dervishes, maybe certain Muslim mystics who said things that sound Christian-like. So this is one way of trying to find common ground right? I'm going to emphasize this element of Islam - mysticism - and not other things. So one instinct is to focus on that element of Islam that looks familiar or more like my Christianity.
Another way of finding common ground which is more intrusive is to reinterpret - almost on behalf of Muslims - things in the Qur'an or in the Hadith or somewhere else and to say, “actually, this is not really opposed to Christianity.” So just one example: all but one Chapter of the Qur'an begins with this introduction, “in the name of God, the Merciful, the Benevolent.” It's called the basmala. And every once in a while a Christian pops up and says “look, it's basically like ‘the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ We don't actually disagree, right?”
This also happens in unfortunate ways with Christians where they don't try to reinterpret things for Muslims, but they'll reinterpret their own faith so that it seems more palatable to Muslims. I remember I was at a conference and there was a Catholic speaking with a Muslim; and the Muslim was like, “we respect Christians and Christianity. We see Jesus as a prophet. But we just don't accept the Trinity.” And the Catholic was like, “Oh, well, I don't think the Trinity is really that important. It's just not a big deal. That shouldn't be a difference between you and me.” And - I didn’t butt into the conversation - but I wanted to be like “bro, you can't do that! It is believed in by all of the Saints, all of the Popes, all of the Bishops, all of the theologians, and just because you think this might make your conversation go better with a Muslim friend, you are just going to cast this off? Seriously?”
None of this - to me - is the most fruitful way of having conversations with Muslims.
Islam and Christianity are different. They are two different religions. They have different Scriptures. Islam is shaped not only by the Qur'an, but also by thousands and thousands of these sayings, known collectively as the Hadith. Christianity is shaped not only by the Bible but by the authoritative teaching of the Church known generally as “tradition.” According to Islamic Scripture what God told the world looks a certain way; and according to Christian Scripture and tradition what God told the world looks profoundly different.
So let's understand how Muslims see divine revelation, what God told the world. Let's respect it - see its coherence, see its beauty, see how it all works together. Then let’s see why that leads Muslims - for example - to pray in a certain way and to develop certain ideas about the roles of men and women, see other ethical principles, see how it impacts their view of the human person, and the human’s relationship with God. Let’s appreciate that as Islam and then also share with Muslims what's distinctive about Christianity. So, it is kind of jargony, but I kind of like it: the goal is not to agree but to disagree well.
At the end of the day you said that these two traditions are very distinctive and yet both are talking about salvation beyond this world. In the Catholic tradition it seems as though this is the urgency of evangelization: there's a difference in what one believes in this life and how it will impact one's salvation. So what do you say to people who ask about this? If there is an urgency to evangelize because it impacts a person's salvation, what do you do with that anxiety about somebody else's salvation?
Yeah, a hundred percent. Different Catholic thinkers have different takes on this question but I think we can make a couple of standard observations about the view of salvation of non-Catholics and non-Christians.
One is Catholic teaching. The first thing the Church says is no one is assured salvation. Some Protestant traditions believe that once you accept Jesus, you can't lose your salvation. This is not Catholic teaching. We can have a certain level of assurance because there are promises given to us by the Lord; but, we always live with a little bit of fear and trembling. So we're always looking to repent, to grow in saintliness. So, it’s not actually something that’s only a question for non-Catholics or non-Christians. It’s a question for us too. We are always called to continual conversion and renewal.
But Christ established the Church for a reason. In Catholic teaching the Church is not something like an association or club that the apostles just come up with so they can meet once a week. Christ explicitly and clearly established the Church. He gives authority to the apostles. He promises the Holy Spirit to the Church - the active, living, ongoing presence of God. So the Church is the vehicle that God is using for salvation in the world and the Church speaks about itself with that awareness: God is using the Church in the world; so there must be an added value to become part of the Church - to be baptized and to receive the sacraments.
However, Catholic theology is based not only on faith but faith in reason. Theologians have been super clear about this. And so Catholic thinkers have used reason when considering non-Christians and knowing that God is merciful and that God loves the entire world. This is not something new. This is not a 21st Century innovation because everyone is all soft and cuddly. This is in Thomas Aquinas’ thought himself: that those who had no opportunity to accept the Church; their unknowingness of the Church is invincible. They cannot be held responsible - or culpable - for their unknowingness of the Church or not belonging to the Church. So their salvation cannot be excluded.
So there is a certain agnosticism generally about our own salvation, but also about the salvation of non-Catholics including non-Christians. That's the Catholic take: there's more grace when you receive the sacraments in the Catholic church and that will help you in the next life but we would never exclude the salvation of non-Catholics and non-Christians.
So what does it mean to evangelize? It just means, as Peter says in one of his letters, always have an answer in your heart when people ask you for the hope that is within you. We are called to have a simple, clear account of the hope we have in Christ. And for many Muslims too - what Christians would call “evangelization” and Muslims would da‘wa - their da‘wa is to speak straightforwardly and honestly, with integrity and sincerity, about Islam. On both sides that is the right kind of evangelization and many of our Muslim friends and our Catholic friends manifest what really is the best spirit of this.
Your current research is on Christianity in the context of the Qur’an - and you seem to be looking specifically at Biblical turns of phrase that show up in the Qur’an that demonstrate that Christian communities were present in the very location where Islam started. Could you just talk about that?
I'm delighted to talk about it. I have a book manuscript that's complete and I’m just working on some revisions that I'll be sending off this Summer 2024. The provisional title is simply Christianity and the Qur’an with Yale University Press. The big argument, the heart of the book, is that both Islamic tradition and the standard take of Western scholars about the context in which the Qur'an was proclaimed has been that it was principally pagan. That's the backdrop to the Qur'an: pagans, polytheists. Whereas the argument of this book is that the region wasn't pagan; it was principally Christian. So that will be rocking the boat a little bit.
I'm not arguing that the Qur'an is Christian. I should be very clear about this. The Qur'an has its own theology and actually I think it's largely anti-Christian - in order to make space for its own prophet it very clearly criticizes Christians and Christian teaching. So I'm not saying the Qur'an is Christian. The Qur'an is Islamic. But I'm saying that the context in which the Prophet was working in the Qur'an was Christian and there are different arguments I advance in the book to make this case.
The most exciting argument is the evidence of pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions from the 5th and 6th Century. This is something that's really new and really exciting. Over the last couple of decades studies have been coming out on these inscriptions from the 5th and 6th Century in Arabic and we've been discovering that they were monotheists, whereas the tradition tells us this would have been pagan territory. And some of these inscriptions are explicitly Christian.
So the exciting thing that we're now realizing through the scholarship of others like Ahmad Al-Jallad of Ohio State University, Hythem Sidky of the International Qur'anic Studies Association, Christian Robin of the Sorbonne in France, and Laïla Nehmé also in France. Somewhere around the year 500 the inscriptions basically shift from polytheism to monotheism. So there's a revolution before the revolution of Islam in the record of these Arabic inscriptions. It shows that monotheism spread in a sudden way, in a relatively brief period of time. Polytheistic inscriptions completely disappear and the inscriptions that appear in their place are monotheistic.
I have worked in higher ed now for a little over ten years and I spoke to one Religious Studies Professor who shared that some of her Catholic students were very reticent to even learn about other wisdom or faith traditions. The phrase that she heard repeatedly was concern that students might be enticed “to stray.” How would you respond to a student who shared such a concern?
My sense is that Islam can be a real gift to Christians.
In a very practical manner, as a rule Muslims - at least in the Western context - are more religious than Christians. There’s a huge wave of disaffiliation among Catholics and Protestants in the West. Muslims are showing us you can be religious in America or in Europe and you can be faithful to your religious tradition. You can integrate what you learn about science and your religious beliefs. You can have different positions on different political and social issues and still be a faithful believer. In a special way, practicing Muslims show fidelity to things like modesty, regular prayer, how to eat, what to eat, not drinking alcohol, and what to wear. Christians have our own teachings, so the way that we work through things will look different - I'm not saying we should just imitate Muslims. But Islam can be a gift for Christians just by the faithfulness that we see in Muslims and the way they manage to be religious in America, and Christians can look at that and say, “yeah, I want some of that.” They can discover their own faith anew through their friendship with Muslims.
Originally published by at ansari.nd.edu on July 08, 2024.