God Talk

By Kate Kennedy
The Qur'an

One hundred years and differences in language, tradition and geography separated the lives and writings of St. Bonaventure and Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali.

Neither the Franciscan theologian nor the Muslim philosopher/theologian envisioned that anyone would be comparing his writing with that of an author of another faith. Yet that is what Rev. Sidney Griffith, S.T., and advanced students in the course Muslim God, Christian God did when they read St. Bonaventure’s The Soul’s Journey to God and al-Ghazali’s The Niche of Lights during the spring 2010 semester.

Students discovered in the words of Bonaventure, who died in what is now France in 1274, and al-Ghazali, who died in Persia in 1111, a shared focus on spiritual growth. Despite their religious differences, they wrote with similar themes, including the use of light as a metaphor. “Light is a metaphor for God, of course,” Father Griffith says, “and for what it is that God communicates to creatures.”

It’s those similarities — and differences — in writings of Christian and Muslim thinkers that is the point for the graduate theology class. “We’re reading texts by different authors in the two different traditions precisely for the purpose of comparing,” says Father Griffith, professor and chair of the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures and a priest of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. “We’re looking for similarities and dissimilarities in themes, in concepts, in recommendations for spiritual practice.”

The Muslim God, Christian God course is most often taken by students in the religion and culture concentration of CUA’s School of Theology and Religious Studies. But it is also open to students attending the 13 other schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area. Three Georgetown University students were in the class last spring, including Rev. Diego Sarrio, a priest with the Missionaries of Africa. “It fits perfectly with my program of studies at Georgetown, which focuses on a comparative approach to religious pluralism,” the first-year doctoral student says.

Father Griffith in class

The students brought a diversity of religions, languages and backgrounds to the course. Meeting each Tuesday afternoon, the class included a Muslim woman, a Catholic priest from Spain (Father Sarrio), a French seminarian and a Mormon man. A Lutheran woman from Europe and a Frederick, Md., man rounded out the class of six students.

Zeyneb Sayilgan, a second-year doctoral student in theology at Georgetown, was born and raised in Germany as the child of Kurdish immigrants from Turkey. “It is always an enrichment when members of different faith traditions are represented in class,” she says. “That adds to our learning and deepens our understanding. It is also valuable when a variety of perspectives can be offered on a particular issue or concept.”

Father Griffith agrees. “When we read the texts, often the Muslim students will have a slightly different or sometimes a considerably different take on them. It definitely enriches the course.”

Starting with the establishment of Islam, the course examines writings from different historical periods with an eye toward identifying interaction between the two faith communities.

During a class meeting early in the semester, the professor and students examined the Quran for references to Christians, including critiques of Christian doctrine and practices, to get a sense of how Muslims might regard Christians.

Father Griffith cited a passage that he says shows “the Quran expects there to be conversations between Muslims and Christians at the very least. These conversations are meant to be in the manner of actually arguing about religion. Arguing about religion was not politically incorrect, as perhaps it is in our era.”

He points out that the language in the Quran is not temperate. It “offends modern sensibilities,” he notes. “But it is nevertheless a conversation.”

The writings of Muslim philosophers and of Christian thinkers such as St. John of Damascus and St. Thomas Aquinas are read in the following weeks. “I attempt to choose texts in such a way that we’re always talking about God,” Father Griffith says.

Some believe that the ways in which Christians and Muslims talk about God are so different that they are talking about different Gods. But Father Griffith says that thinking goes too far.

Despite the differences in the writings and the way they critique the other religion, he says, “there are many things that are comparable — the way that different writers speak about God, the way that different writers speak about living a responsible life and response to God’s call.

“Both Muslims and Christians are willing to speak of the one God who is the creator of all that exists, the God of Jacob, of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac,” Father Griffith says.

“So is this the same God or not?” he asks. “I personally think that Muslims and Christians are talking about the same God. But that they have very different theologies, and the very different theologies have very different thematic emphases and even affirmations that are in some instances mutually contradictory — the Christian affirmation that Jesus is the Son of God versus the Islamic denial that this is the case.”

The author of the book The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam, Father Griffith studies and writes about the millions of Christians who have lived alongside Muslims in the Arabic-speaking world and how they have responded to challenges from Islam.

A scholar in comparative theology, he is a well-known expert in the field of Christian-Muslim relations. “It was always my desire to take one of his courses and benefit from his extraordinary knowledge,” Sayilgan says.

Father Griffith’s goal is to help students realize that they can study other religions in an objective way — “that one can try to gain a sense of the perspective that one religion brings in its attitudes to another religion, especially when critique is involved,” he says.

Centuries have passed since many of the religious texts being studied were published. Yet these writings have a bearing on contemporary attitudes and current events.

“We have had more than a millennium of mutual hostility on a religious level,” Father Griffith says. “Both Muslims and Christians have a large fund of inherited prejudices and negative attitudes and stereotyping with regard to one another.”

Father Griffith in class

As Carl Cranney, a CUA doctoral student in systematic theology and a Mormon, notes, “Any attempt to increase understanding of another faith’s tradition cannot help but increase understanding among people hailing from disparate faiths.”

For Brandon Turner, a CUA doctoral candidate from Frederick, Md., perspective on current events is found in the writings of Timothy I of Baghdad, a patriarch of the Nestorian Christian Church who lived from 727 to 823. “He understood what the Quran itself says, took seriously its critique of Christianity, while also taking seriously the orthodoxies of his own faith.”

To complete the course, students do a research project. The subject of Father Sarrio’s project was Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, a Muslim theologian of the 14th century. During one class meeting, Father Sarrio suggests to his classmates that Ibn Taymiyya might have believed that Christians and Muslims worship different Gods.

Father Griffith — who wants students to come to their own conclusions about the two faiths based on their reading and study — found Father Sarrio’s comment interesting. “But,” Father Griffith cautions, “I think we have to make a distinction between the talk about God and the God about whom we are talking. That’s at the heart of the matter.”

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