The Church and Islam

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The Church and Islam
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Remarkable

• The military expansion of the Islamic faith is
  one of the remarkable stories of the medieval
  era. Within a century of its beginning in 622 it
  had spread to the Indus Valley in the east to
  Spain and across the Pyrenees in the west.

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Christian Response

• The Crusades
• A series of Holy Wars called by Popes and
  Christian kings primarily to reclaim Christian
  lands.
• The Crusades inspired the most dedicated valor,
  the most bloodthirsty cruelty, and the greediest
  vandalism of medieval men.
• Seven Crusades targeting three primary areas
  beginning with the preaching of the first crusade
  in 1095 by Urban II
• Palestine, Jerusalem, Egypt
• Iberia (Finally reclaimed in 1492 after nearly
  800 yrs of Moslem presence)
• Sicily
• Constantinople (originally directed at Egypt)

Map
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Urban II and the 1st Crusade

• The noble race of Franks must come to the aid
  their fellow Christians in the East. The infidel
  Turks are advancing into the heart of Eastern
  Christendom Christians are being oppressed and
  attacked churches and holy places are being
  defiled. Jerusalem is groaning under the Saracen
  yoke. The Holy Sepulchre is in Moslem hands and
  has been turned into a mosque. Pilgrims are
  harassed and even prevented from access to the
  Holy Land.
• The West must march to the defense of the East.
  All should go, rich and poor alike. The Franks
  must stop their internal wars and squabbles. Let
  them go instead against the infidel and fight a
  righteous war.
• God himself will lead them, for they will be
  doing His work. There will be absolution and
  remission of sins for all who die in the service
  of Christ. Here they are poor and miserable
  sinners there they will be rich and happy. Let
  none hesitate they must march next summer. God
  wills it!

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Crusades
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Purpose of the Crusades

• Not primarily the conversion of Moslems
• Regain territory
• The safety of pilgrims and Christians in Moslem
  regions
• Assist the Eastern Church and in so doing gain
  the upper hand over the Eastern Church

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Results

• In three ways the Crusades have left an almost
  indelible stain on Christian history.
• (Neill 97)
• Permanently injured the relations between the
  Western and Eastern Churches.
• Generated a deep bitterness between Christians
  and Muslims
• The lowering of the whole moral temperature of
  Christendom.

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Legacy of the Crusades

• Viewed in the light of their original purpose,
  the Crusades were failures. They made no
  permanent conquests of the Holy Land. They did
  not retard the advance of Islam. Far from aiding
  the Eastern Empire, they hastened its
  disintegration. They also revealed the continuing
  inability of Latin Christians to understand Greek
  Christians, and they hardened the schism between
  them. They fostered a harsh intolerance between
  Muslims and Christians, where before there had
  been a measure of mutual respect. They were
  marked, and marred, by a recrudescence of
  anti-Semitism....
• (Williston Walker et. al.)

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Yet

• The crusades also generated a response among the
  faithful.
• Protest
• Thomas Aquinas
• Francis of Assisi
• Shift from the monastery to the Religious Order
  Franciscans and Dominicans.
• The birth of missiology with Ramon Lull

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Lull

• Ramon Lull must rank as one of the greatest
  missionaries in the history of the Church.
  Others were filled with an equally ardent desire
  to preach the Gospel to the unbelievers, and if
  necessary to suffer for it it was left to Lull
  to be the first to develop a theory of missions
  not merely to wish to preach the Gospel, but to
  work out in careful detail how it was to be
  done.
• (Neill 115)

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Lull

• Mystic
• Scholar in both philosophy and theology
• Mission strategist
• Wrote over 300 works in Latin, Arabic and Catalan
  on theology, logic, philosophy wrote fiction and
  poetry.
• Known as a alchemist, but had no training in
  occult arts, and invented his own Christian-based
  concepts to try to explain the alchemical
  mysteries. Reputed to have solved the
  "lead-into-gold" mystery legend says he worked
  on it to finance missionary work.

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Lull on Logic and Knowledge
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Lull

• Converted at 30
• Passion for the conversion of infidels
• Everywhere in the Christian world
• Universities Paris, Montpellier
• Courts of kings France, Sicily, Cyprus
• In the presence of every pope from 1265-1320
• General Council at Vienna in 1311

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The Book of the Lover and the Beloved

• Said the Lover to his Beloved Thou art all,
  and through all, and in all, and with all. I
  would give thee all of myself that I may have all
  of Thee, and Thou all of me. The Beloved
  answered Thou canst not have me wholly, unless
  thou art wholly mine. And the Lover said Let
  me be wholly thine, and thou wholly mine.
• The Lover and the Beloved met, and the Beloved
  said to the Lover Thou needest not to speak me.
  Sign to me only within thine eyesfor they are
  words to my heartthat I may give thee that for
  which thou dost ask.

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Lull

• Three things were necessary to evangelize
  Saracens
• Knowledge of their language
• Established a collage for the study of oriental
  languagesArabic and other Semitic languages
• At the Council lf Vienne he convinced the council
  to establish 5 colleges of languages associated
  with the famous universities of the day.

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Lulls Strategy

• The demonstration of the truth of Christianity by
  necessary reasons.
• Motivated by his encounters with Moslems and
  Islamic scholasticism
• Islam had preserved much of the ancient Greek
  thinkers and had been deeply influenced by them.
  Thus there was a common ground.
• Sparked the genre of apologetic literature
  directed to Islam

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Lulls Strategy

• The willingness to be a faithful and courageous
  witness even to the cost of ones life.
• Reckoned with the realities of ministry among a
  people whose religion prescribes death to those
  who convert and are converted.
• Missionaries will convert the world by
  preaching, but also through the shedding of tears
  and the blood and with great labour, and through
  a biter death.

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Lull

• His missionary experience
• Four visits to Moslem lands to preach and dispute
• Zwemer comments (overstates?) that Lull was
  orthodox and evangelical to the core.