Eastern Christian Books: Islamic Prophethood Understood Thomistically?

Eastern Christian Books: Islamic Prophethood Understood Thomistically?

UND Press: Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy by Anna Bonta Moreland

How can one ask whether someone is a prophet without first asking whether his message is true? How else is a prophet to be judged?

From the publisher's description:

Anna Bonta Moreland calls for a retrieval of Thomistic thought on prophecy to view Muhammad within a Christian theology of revelation, without either appropriating the prophet as an unwitting Christian or reducing both Christianity and Islam to a common denominator. This historical recovery leads to a more sophisticated understanding of Islam, one that honors the integrity of the Catholic tradition and, through that integrity, argues for the possibility in principle of Muhammad as a religious prophet.

How does she do this without embracing some form of religious relativism, with indifference as a possible consequence?

Moreland sets the stage for this inquiry through an intertextual reading of the key Vatican II documents on Islam and on Christian revelation. She then uses Aquinas's treatment of prophecy to address the case of whether Muhammad is a prophet in Christian terms. The book examines the work of several Christian theologians, including W. Montgomery Watt, Hans Küng, Kenneth Cragg, David Kerr, and Jacques Jomier, O.P., and then draws upon the practice of analogical reasoning in the theology of religious pluralism to show that a term in one religion—in this case “prophecy”—can have purchase in another religious tradition. Muhammad Reconsidered not only is a constructive contribution to Catholic theology but also has enormous potential to help scholars reframe and comprehend Christian-Muslim relations.

Using Vatican II document on Islam (Nostra Aetate) when any positive claims about Islam are by their very nature not infallible as they do not have anything to do with Divine Revelation is typical of a Latin mindset, whether the purpose is to uphold the Latin tradition or to deviate from it. What sort of "Christian-Muslim relations" are possible if Christians do not recognize the message of Muhammad as being an authentic divine revelation?

And what could a "theology of religious pluralism" possibly mean, except some claims about how non-Christian traditions can nonetheless contain some elements of truth in them? Christians are not followers of a "Book" or a people of a "Book" or of a "Tradition." Christians are those who have been incorporated into Jesus Christ, the Son of God.