Witnessing God

Christians, Muslims, and the Comparative Theology of Missions

Series: 

This book is a comparative theological investigation into the following question: how does one theologically understand the sincere-truth-seeking religious other who rejects one’s truth claims not out of animosity or ignorance, but rather from a desire to worship God in spirit and in truth? Specifically, this book investigates the extent to which soteriologically exclusivist Muslims and Christians maintain their respective truth claims while maintaining a posture of vulnerability to the revisionary power of the religious other’s claims. To answer these questions, this book examines comparative theology’s missiological foundation through a dialogical study of neo-Calvinist and Reformist Sunni understandings of the epistemic status of the religious other. This book is a practice in comparative theology with the goal of rethinking neo-Calvinist theology of religions through Islamic thought to present a missiological comparative theology amenable to exclusivist theological positions within Christianity and Islam.
Copyright Year:
2025
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978-90-04-71633-9
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16 Dec 2024
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978-90-04-51911-4
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19 Dec 2024
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Alexander E. Massad, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of World Religions at Wheaton College (IL) and an Affiliate Faculty in the School of Mission and Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary (CA). He is a comparative theologian whose research and publications focus on Evangelical and Reformed theology in dialogue with the Muslim tradition.
Acknowledgements

Introduction
 1 Purpose and Outline of the Book
 2 Clarifications and Nuances

PART 1: Methods, Comparative Theology, and Missions



1 A Historical Account of Christians Accounting for Non-Christians
 1 Missionaries, the “Old” Comparative Theology, and the Scientific Study of Religion
 2 The Theology of Religions: a Response to Christian Primacy
 3 The “New” Comparative Theology: an A Posteriori Response to Hegemony
 4 Assessing the “Dialectical” Narrative
 5 Critique of Nicholson’s Narrative – Overstating the Dialectic
 6 The Missionary Spirit in Comparative Theology

2 The Potential for a Missiological Comparative Theology
 1 Evangelical Concerns: Comparative Theology, Multiple Religious Belonging, and Missions
 2 Hegemonic Discourse: Comparative Theology’s Amenability to Missiology
  2.1 The Promise of a Missiological Comparative Theology
 3 An Aggiornamento for Exclusivism and Comparative Theology
 4 Review of Part One

PART 2:Neo-Calvinism and the Islamic Tradition



3 A Neo-Calvinist Comparative Theology
 1 Neo-Calvinist Soteriology and Epistemology
 2 Neo-Calvinist Comparative Theology and Soteriological Exclusivism
 3 Warranting a Neo-Calvinist Comparative Theology
  3.1 Abraham Kuyper: Common Grace and Comparative Theology
  3.2 Herman Bavinck: General Revelation and Comparative Theology
  3.3 Contemporary Neo-Calvinist Approaches to Common Grace and General Revelation
 4 Developing a Neo-Calvinist Comparative Theological Perspective
 5 Concluding Remarks

4 Neo-Calvinist Approaches to Muslims and the Islamic Tradition
 1 Abraham Kuyper’s Encounter with the Islamic Tradition
 2 Herman Bavinck’s Meditations on Islam
 3 Johan Herman Bavinck’s Preoccupation with Islam
 4 Assessing Early Neo-Calvinist Theological Engagements with Muslims and the Islamic Tradition
 5 Contemporary Neo-Calvinist Approaches to Muslims and the Islamic Tradition
  5.1 Contemporary Antithesis-Driven Neo-Calvinist Approaches to Muslims and the Islamic Tradition
  5.2 Bartholomew and Strange: a Priori Presuppositionalism
 6 Contemporary Common-Grace-Driven Neo-Calvinist Approaches to Muslims and the Islamic Tradition
  6.1 Mouw and Kaemingk: an Unwitting Perpetuation of Binaries
 7 The Need for a Neo-Calvinism Aggiornamento with Muslims and the Islamic Tradition

PART 3: Contemporary Reformist Muslims and the Religious Other



5 Rashīd Riḍā and Christianity: the Problem of Christian Missions and Riḍā’s Ṭarīq al-Daʿwa
 1 Riḍā and Ṭaʿn
 2 Riḍā and Taḥrīf
 3 Riḍā and Daʿwa
 4 “Missiology” and Riḍā’s Ṭarīq al-Daʿwa

6 From Daʿwa to Shahāda: Muslim Religious Imagination and the Religious Other
 1 Nguyen’s Muslim Theology of Imagination and Engagement
  1.1 Nguyen’s Muslim Theology of Prostration
  1.2 Nguyen’s Muslim Theology of Engagement
  1.3 Nguyen’s Muslim Theology of Imagination
 2 Reimagining Anthropology: From al-Ghazālī’s Epistemological Emphasis to Riḍā’s Fiṭra Focus
 3 Riḍā – Religious Imagination in al-Ghazālī’s Soteriological Taxonomy
 4 From Dār al-Islām to Dār al-ʿAhd to Dār al-Daʿwa
 5 From Daʿwa to Shahāda: Tariq Ramadan
  5.1 Ramadan’s Call to Western Muslims
  5.2 Ramadan’s Fiṭra Anthropology
  5.3 From Fiṭra to Shahāda
 6 From Dār al-Daʿwa to Dār al-Shahāda
 7 Concluding Remarks

PART 4: Comparative Theological Conclusions: Neo-Calvinism, Islam, and Missiological Comparative Theology



7 Reconfiguring Neo-Calvinism through Islamic Thought
 1 Idenburg: a Case Study in Colonial Neo-Calvinism
 2 Colonial Neo-Calvinism and Ṭaʿn
 3 Perpetuating the Problem: a Priori Presuppositionalist Neo-Calvinism
  3.1 The Ethical Problems of Antithesis-Driven A Priori Presuppositionalism
 4 Assessing Ethical Implications within Common-Grace Driven Neo-Calvinism
 5 An a Posteriori Autobiographically Vulnerable Neo-Calvinism: Readings Romans 1 with Riḍā

8 Towards a Missiological Comparative Theology
 1 Accad’s Kerygmatic Missiology
 2 Contemporary Muslim Ṭarīq al-Shahāda
 3 Missio Dei and Comparative Theology

References
Index
This book is intended for scholars in comparative theology, Reformed and Evangelical theologians, Christian missiologists, and Muslim scholars who engage in inter-religious dialogue.
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