Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Mathias Moosbruggger

Do Christians have anything that is sacred? A Christian concept compared to an Islamic point of view

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ABSTRACT

Regarding the contemporary background of an accelerating collapse of traditional liberal and tolerant societies in Europe such as the Netherlands and France, which face a clash of cultures respectively religions within their own borders, this paper tries to re-read the relationship between Christianity and Islam as different conceptions of what is believed to be sacred.

Most theologians today agree that from a Christian point of view nothing in the world can be claimed as being essentially sacred apart from the God incarnate, Jesus Christ himself. Everything else is named sacred or holy as far as it is connected to him; so there is no thing but a special person, who is the one and only reality ever in this world that Christians call sacred. One would think that this conviction is a specific, proper Christian belief and distinguishes Christianity clearly from the other monotheistic religions, and therefore also from Islam. Questions of Christology are seen as the ultimate difference of Christianity. And there is no question that this is not so very untrue. But in fact – and this is quite surprising in the first place –Muslims share beliefs concerning Jesus Christ with Christians, especially Catholics, that are normally seen as consequences of the fundamental belief in Him as the Incarnate Son of God: He is conceived without the participation of a man, his mother stays a virgin even while giving birth to him, he is so close to God, that he even participates in Gods creative power – and more: many Muslims see in Jesus the ultimate seal of holiness, higher even than Muhammad, who nonetheless has a more important role in the plan of God with this world and all mankind.

What the Koran really rejects is that God could ever allow a cruel killing of one of his Prophets like in the crucifixion. The central Sura for this is 4,157f. Although the translation of this text is extraordinarily difficult, most agree that it says not only that Jesus was saved by God from this doom, but that somebody else was put in his place. It is quite obvious that in the background of this different “Christology” there stands a different concept of what being sacred means. Here a concept with a strange and paradoxical mixture of holiness and suffering, there a ‘pure’ one, where God does not allow his holy prophet to fall into the hands of godless sinners. It seems somehow that this is a lighter and clearer God, and that – from a Girardian point of view –here a mythological mixture of victim and God in Christian faith is finally overcome.

But it is necessary to be aware of the consequences that such a hermeneutic of Jesus’ life produces even within the text: another one has to take the place of Jesus.[1]

This paper will try to recover these two similar and at the same time different concepts of what is sacred and their implications on the image of God and his relationship to mankind.