Islam and Christian Theology

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

While many Christians have described Islam as a Christian heresy, many Muslims consider Christianity to be an Islamic heresy. Jesus, they maintain, was a Muslim prophet. Like Adam and Abraham before him, like Muhammad after him, he was sent to preach Islam. In this view Islam is the natural religion--eternal, universal, and unchanging. Other religions, including Christianity, arose only when people went astray. Therefore Muslims have long challenged the legitimacy of Christian doctrines that differ from Islam, including the Trinity, the incarnation, the cross, and the new covenant and the church. In this course we will examine Islamic writings, from the Qur'an to contemporary texts, in which these doctrines are challenged. We will then examine the history of Christian responses to these challenges and consider, as theologians, how Christians might approach them today. Regarding the Islamic Challenge to Christian Theology" is the second of two required theology courses at Notre Dame (the "development" course). These two courses are directed towards a number of goals. First, they provide students with information about the Bible and Christian theology that in itself is important. Second, they form the basis of a Catholic community at Notre Dame where all students (whether or not they are practicing Catholics) have a common experience of texts and questions that might be discussed not only in class but while eating mashed potatoes in North Dining Hall. Third, theology itself is meant as a guiding light for all other classes. As with the great European universities (Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge etc.), Notre Dame was founded by the church to be a community where students are strengthened in their faith and morals, and therefore more able to see the truth in other fields, whether biology, music, or history. Like the first required course (Foundations), Regarding the Islamic Challenge to Christian Theology has the same goals. This is not an Islamic Studies course. It is a course which takes Islam's challenge to Christian teaching as the starting point for Christian theological reflection.