15. XIII. Comparison with the Confession of Islam

XIII. Comparison with the Confession of Islam

Something can be gathered from a comparison between the Pauline basis of thought, as stated in these two principles, and the Confession of Islam. Mohammedanism is essentially a revival of the Hebrew religion in a form suited to appeal to the Arab tribes. Although (as I believe) it must have arisen in the soul of Mohammed after intercourse with Christians — and especially with Christians who had rejected the orthodox doctrine through disapproval of the stress which that doctrine laid on the person and the sacredness of the Mother of God — and although it accepts the Divine character of Jesus, yet it loses almost all the Christian development of Judaism and emphasises specially the older and simpler elements in the common Faith. The Confession of Islam is expressed in two propositions. The first is practically identical with the first of the two Pauline axioms: it shows merely verbal variation, though there is much history and psychology and poetry (on which we need not dwell) underlying the variation: “there is no God but God”. The second proposition exhibits very marked variation from the second Pauline axiom, yet the variation is less than appears superficially. “Mohammed is the Messenger of God”: the stress is here laid on the personality of Mohammed, a historical fact explaining the development of Islam from the original Jewish Faith as expressed in the first proposition of the Islamic confession: Mohammed was the prophet and apostle to whom the further truth of Islam was revealed. In other words, revelation by God has been continuous and progressive through Judaism to Islam; the old Hebrew prophets had shared in this revelation of truth (as was fully admitted by Mohammed); but their knowledge required to be completed by Mohammed’s revelation. The fact that Mohammed was a man to whom the truth was revealed by God is the guarantee offered by Islam that revelation of the Divine nature and will to man is always possible.

Thus, apart from the historical fact, the second proposition involves several fundamental truths about the nature of God. God reveals His truth to man in a progressive series of acts: He cares for man, and guides man’s course in the world: He is good. Still, Islam lays little emphasis on the kindness or the love of God, even less emphasis than Judaism did. It has fallen back from the great progress which Christianity made in that respect. It lays almost all stress on the greatness, the power, the justice, the awfulness, of God: the Promise of God fades away into an extension of Islam by force, by massacre and slavery, by the Holy War, so that it shall become the universal religion by the extermination of unbelievers. The comparison shows how thoroughly Hebraic was the texture of Paul’s religious thought: the development of Hebraism in his mind was not an addition of any foreign or discordant element, but merely the explanation and emphasis of an element already existing. Even in Islam, that revival of Judaism, the same element is not wholly lost, but is left unemphasised and partly distorted.