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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2022
In past iterations of ecclesiastical historical writings and teachings, there has not always been sufficient acknowledgment of the encounters between Christians and their religious Others. This article is an exercise in diachronic comparative interreligious encounter: a Muslim-Christian engagement in the eighth century CE and a Jewish-Christian epistolary exchange in the seventeenth century CE. The former took place in Baghdad in the court of a caliph, whereas the latter took place between individuals in London and the Hague, between Baruch Spinoza and Henry Oldenburg. While it might be tempting to highlight the narratives of conversion away from one religion into another—whether from Christianity to Islam, Christianity to Judaism, or vice versa—in current historiography, it also seems that quotidian realities of interreligious exchange often do not lead to such conversions, and yet leave the participants better informed and further enlightened about the practice and pursuit of their own religion. The following two accounts are neither triumphalist nor tragic. Patriarch Timothy and Caliph al-Mahdī's exchange in eighth-century Baghdad shows the degree to which divine identity and Christian apophasis mattered. The letter exchanges between Spinoza and his interlocutors also show the degree to which divine mystery as ontological demarcator for both the doctrine of the Trinity and corresponding Christology, as well as Spinoza's repudiation of both, mattered. Lastly, these two examples of interreligious engagements show a pathway of encounter which does not dismiss or cancel the religious Other.
An earlier version of this article was delivered as the Presidential Address for the American Society of Church History in New York on January 5, 2020. The author wishes to thank Euan Cameron, David Michelson, Meredith Riedel, and Andrea Sterk for comments and feedback on various manifestations of this paper.
1 See Terence, The Self-Tormentor, ed. and trans. by John Barsby, Loeb Classical Library 22 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), line 77.
2 Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, vol. 1, Apostolic Christianity, A.D. 1–100 (New York: Scribner, 1882)Google Scholar, title page.
3 For a similar perspective in interpreting the complex trajectories in the history of Christianity, see, inter alia, Cameron, Euan, Interpreting Christian History: The Challenge of the Churches’ Past (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chapman, Alister, Coffey, John, and Gregory, Brad S., eds., Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
4 Wolterstoff, Nicholas, Until Justice and Peace Embrace: The Kuyper Lectures for 1981 Delivered at The Free University of Amsterdam (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983), 162Google Scholar.
5 Although, unfortunately, there was a persistence of the use of theologically inaccurate terms such as “Nestorians” and the “Nestorian Church,” a number of scholars have adopted a more theologically accurate, ecumenically inclusive, and less culturally insensitive term “Church of the East.” I am grateful to both David Michelson and Meredith Riedel for bringing this to my attention. See also, inter alia, Brock, Sebastian P., “The ‘Nestorian’ Church: A Lamentable Misnomer,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78, no. 3 (1996): 23–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halbertsma, Tjalling H. F., “On the Term ‘Nestorianism’ and the Early Chinese Terms for Christianity,” in Halbertsma, Tjalling H. F., Early Christian Remains of Inner Mongolia: Discovery, Reconstruction and Appropriation (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Parker, Lucy, “The Ambiguities of Belief and Belonging: Catholicism and the Church of the East in the Sixteenth Century,” English Historical Review 133 (December 2018): 1420–1455CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 David D. Bundy, “Timotheos I,” in Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition, ed. Sebastian P. Brock, Aaron M. Butts, George A. Kiraz, and Lucas Van Rompay. Digital edition prepared by David Michelson, Ute Possekel, and Daniel L. Schwartz. (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2011); online ed. Beth Mardutho, 2018. https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Timotheos-I. My gratitude to David Michelson for referring me to this trove of resources.
7 Baum, Wilhelm and Winkler, Dietmar W., The Church of the East: A Concise History (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), chaps. 1–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Penn, Michael, “Early Syriac Reactions to the Rise of Islam,” in The Syriac World, ed. King, Daniel (London: Routledge, 2019), 175–188Google Scholar.
9 See Daniel Wilmshurst, “The Church of the East in the ‘Abbasid Era,” in The Syriac World, ed. Daniel King, 189–201.
10 On Miaphysitism, see Winkler, Dietmar W., “Miaphysitism: A New Term for Use in the History of Dogma and in Ecumenical Theology,” The Harp: A Review of Syriac and Oriental Studies 10, no. 3 (December 1997): 33–40Google Scholar; Winkler, Dietmar W., “Monophysites,” in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. Brown, Peter, Grabar, Oleg, and Bowersock, Glen W. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 586–588Google Scholar; Zachhuber, Johannes, “Personhood in Miaphysitism: Severus of Antioch and John Philoponus,” in Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition, ed. Torrance, Alexis and Paschalidis, Symeon (London: Routledge, 2018), 29–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zhyrkova, Anna, “The Miaphysite and Neo-Chalcedonian Approaches to Understanding the Nature of the Individual Entity: Particular Essence vs. En-Hypostatized Essence,” Review of Ecumenical Studies 11, no. 3 (2019): 342–362CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Schall, James V., “Preface: Dialogue without Resolution,” in The Patriarch and the Caliph: An Eighth-Century Dialogue between Timothy I and al-Mahdī, ed. Samir, Samir Khalil, trans. Nasry, Wafik (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2018), xivGoogle Scholar.
12 Schall, “Preface: Dialogue without Resolution,” xiv.
13 For the purpose of this essay, I will be drawing from both the Mingana edition as well as the Samir-Nasry edition, with appropriate notations. For the technical discussions on which translation has primacy, and thus, greater likelihood of capturing or best approximating Timothy's recollection of the actual dialogue as it happened, see, inter alia, Clint Hackenburg, “An Arabic-to-English Translation of the Religious Debate between the Nestorian Patristic Timothy and the ‘Abbāsid Caliph al-Mahdī,” (MA thesis, Ohio State, 2009).
14 It is unfortunately true that, for many Christians in the West, this dialogue, or apology, is not well-known even though this dialogue has appeared in more recent anthologies and sourcebooks of the Muslim-Christian encounters. See Anti-Christian Polemic in Early Islam: Abū ‘Īsā al-Warrāq's “Against the Trinity,” ed. and trans. David Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 31, 198, 199, 201, 205; Charles L. Tieszen, Christian Identity amid Islam in Medieval Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 157; Mark Swanson, “Folly to the Humafā: The Crucifixion in Early Christian-Muslim Controversy,” in The Routledge Reader in Christian-Muslim Relations, ed. Mona Siddiqui (London: Routledge, 2013), 77–80; and John W. Coakley and Andrea Sterk, eds, Readings in World Christian History, vol. 1, Earliest Christianity to 1453 (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2004), 231–42.
15 By “theo-logic,” I refer to the way philosophers and theologians had to adapt their logic to allow for the discursive possibility of the real-presence of Theos/God.
16 The Apology of Timothy the Patriarch before the Caliph Mahdi, ed. Alphonse Mingana, with an introduction by Rendel Harris, Woodbrooke Studies 2 (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1928), 17 (hereafter cited as Apology of Timothy the Patriarch).
17 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 17 (italics added); In the Samir and Nasry translation from the Arabic, it is rendered more tersely, yet the same polemical gist remains unchanged: “It is not fitting for one like you, with what I observe of your understanding, to say that God took for himself a consort or had a son from her.” The Patriarch and the Caliph: An Eight-Century Dialogue between Timothy I and al-Mahdī, ed. Samir Khalil Samir, trans. Wafik Nasry (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2018), 2 (hereafter cited as The Patriarch and the Caliph).
18 For the references in the Qur'an regarding the sheer impossibility of God begetting a son through a woman, see 4:171, 5:17–18, 5:71, 5:114, 6:99, 6:101, 9:29, 10:69, 18:1–5, 19:30–37, 19:90, 43:73–83, 72:3. I owe these references to Euan Cameron.
19 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 17.
20 The Patriarch and the Caliph, 2 (italics added); and Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 17.
21 Dejan Azdajic, “Longing for the Transcendent: The Role of Love in Islamic Mysticism with Special Reference to al-Ghazālī and Ibn al-Arabī,” Transformation 33, no. 2 (2016): 99–109; and Richard J. A. McGregor, Sanctity and Mysticism in Medieval Egypt: The Wafā’ Sufi Order and the Legacy of Ibn `Arabi (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2004). Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975) still remains a reliable guide.
22 See, inter alia, Deidre Carabine, The Unknown God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena (Louvain: Peeters, 1995); Ivana Noble, “The Apophatic Way in Gregory of Nyssa,” in Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Exegesis, ed. Petr Pokorny and Jan Roskovec (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 323–339; Henny Fiskå Hägg, Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Apophaticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Knut Alfsvåg, What No Mind Has Conceived: On the Significance of Christological Apophaticism (Louvain: Peeters, 2010); and Karolina Kochanczyk-Boninska and Tomasz Stepien, Unknown God, Knowing in His Activities: Incomprehensibility of God during the Trinitarian Controversy of the 4th century (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018).
23 I owe this expression to David Michelson.
24 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 17.
25 Augustine, De Trinitate 12.2.6–8; Michel René Barnes, “Divine Unity and the Divided Self: Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology in its Psychological Context,” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Sarah Coakley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 45–66; David B. Hart, “The Mirror of the Infinite: Gregory of Nyssa on the Vestigia Trinitatis,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (October 2002): 541–561.
26 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 18; and The Patriarch and the Caliph, 4.
27 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 18.
28 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 18.
29 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 19–20.
30 “The Definition of Chalcedon” (451 CE), in Documents of the Christian Church, ed. Henry Bettenson and Chris Maunder, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 54–55.
31 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 22; and The Patriarch and the Caliph, 12.
32 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 22; and The Patriarch and the Caliph, 12.
33 The Patriarch and the Caliph, 12. See Augustine, De Trinitate, 7.3.6; Gregory Nazianzen, “The Fifth Theological Oration. On the Holy Spirit,” 31.32. Timothy further explores the analogy of the sun with the divine nature of the Son and Spirit: “As light and heat are not separable from the sun, so also (the Word) and the Spirit of God are not separable from Him. If one separates from the sun its light and its heat, it will immediately become neither light-giver nor heat-producer, and consequently it will cease to be sun,” in the same way God, if separated from his Word and Spirit, will cease to be “a rational and living God.” Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 23.
34 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 22–23.
35 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 61.
36 The Patriarch and the Caliph, 28–32.
37 The Patriarch and the Caliph, 28.
38 Apology of Timothy the Patriarch, 89–90. It is also noteworthy to see that, in The Patriarch and the Caliph, there is no such ending section, expressing the mutual hope for greater enlightenment and clarity. However, in Clint Hackenburg's unpublished work, there is a similar verbiage at the end. See Hackenburg, “Arabic-to-English Translation,” 144.
39 Bibliography on Spinoza and Spinozism is ever increasing, especially in the past two decades or so, fueled in substantial ways by the contribution of Jonathan I. Israel. See, inter alia, Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Jonathan I. Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750–1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For these volumes in the “trilogy,” the singular significance of Spinoza for Israel cannot be overstated. For a contrasting view, see David A. Bell, “Where Do We Come From?” review of Democratic Enlightenment, by Jonathan I. Israel, The New Republic, 1 March 2012, 28–32. For other works on Spinoza and his significance in early modern religion, see Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Stephen Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011); Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1967); Susan James, Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Carlos Fraenkel, Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Michael A. Rosenthal, eds., Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); J. Samuel Preus, Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Sherry Deveaux, The Role of God in Spinoza's Metaphysics (London: Continuum, 2007); and Richard Mason, The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
40 On Spinoza's excommunication, see Steven Nadler, “The Excommunication of Spinoza: Trouble and Toleration in the ‘Dutch Jerusalem,’” Shofar 19, no. 4 (Summer 2001): 40–52; Asa Kasher and Shlomo Biderman, “Why Was Baruch de Spinoza Excommunicated?” in Sceptics, Millenarians and Jews, ed. David S. Katz (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 98–141; Reiko Shimizu, “Excommunication and the Philosophy of Spinoza,” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 3 (September 1980): 327–348.
41 Quotes from the biographical essay in “The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg,” Early Modern Letters Online, accessed 12 November 2020. http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections/?catalogue=henry-oldenburg.
42 Wiep van Bunge, “Spinoza and the Collegiants,” in Spinoza Past and Present: Essays on Spinoza, Spinozism, and Spinoza Scholarship, ed. Wiep van Bunge (Leiden: Leiden: Brill, 2012), 51–65. For the controversial thesis that situates Spinoza within the stream of radical Dutch Protestantism, see Graeme Hunter, Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005). For a critical review of Hunter, see Yitzhak Y. Melamed, review of Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought, by Graeme Hunter, Journal of the History of Philosophy 45, no. 2 (April 2007): 333–334.
43 Letter 78, from Spinoza to Oldenburg, dated 7 February 1676. Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley, vol. 2 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016), 481.
44 Benedictus de Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ed. Carl Gebhardt, vol. 3, Spinoza Opera (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1924), chap. 14, par. 15 (hereafter cited as Spinoza, TTP, with chapter and paragraph number from the Gebhardt edition, along with the page numbers from the Curley edition below). All translations of TTP are taken from Edwin Curley's edition in The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley, vol. 2 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016), [xiv. 24], 268.
45 Spinoza, TTP, [xiv, 24], 268.
46 Spinoza, TTP, [xiv, 25–28], 268–69.
47 Spinoza, TTP, [xiv, 28], 269. The quoted biblical text is Rom 3:9–10 (AV).
48 Spinoza, TTP, [xiv, 28], 269.
49 Letter 62, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:435.
50 In Letter 30, Spinoza expressly states his hope to Oldenburg that the “treatise on my opinion about scripture,” namely, TTP, be used to disabuse the “prejudices of the theologians,” discredit the villainous accusations of the “common people” regarding Spinoza's alleged atheism, and further cultivate an ethos for the “freedom of philosophizing” without fearing the “preachers [who] suppress” it. Letter 30, Spinoza to Oldenburg, 1 October 1665, in Letters, 29–41, 1665–1669, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:14–15. See also, Piet Steenbakkers, “The text of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” in Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise, ed. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Michael A. Rosenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 29–30.
51 Richard Mason, The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 208.
52 Letter 61, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:434.
53 Edwin Curley, “Spinoza's Exchange with Albert Burgh,” in Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, ed. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Michael A. Rosenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 11–29 (quotation on p. 11).
54 Letter 67, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:450.
55 Edwin Curley, “Editorial Preface,” to Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:366; see also Curley, “Spinoza's Exchange with Albert Burgh,” 11–29.
56 Letter 76, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:474.
57 For Spinoza, to “worship God with justice and loving-kindness” was demonstrable proof of true religion, regardless of ecclesial affiliation or denominational commitments. And, for Spinoza, it was entirely possible to worship God thus without Christ's mediation through the death and resurrection. See Jonathan Israel, “Introduction,” to Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, ed. Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), xvii–xxi.
58 Letter 76, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:474.
59 Letter 76, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:474.
60 Letter 71, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:464–465.
61 Yitzhak Y. Melamed, “‘Christus secundum spiritum: Spinoza, Jesus, and the Infinite Intellect,” in The Jewish Jesus, ed. Neta Stahl (New York: Routledge, 2012), 140–151.
62 Letter 73, in Letters 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:467.
63 Letter 73, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:468.
64 See, inter alia, Richard H. Popkin, “Spinoza's Relations with the Quakers in Amsterdam,” Quaker History 73, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 14–28; Daniel J. Lasker, “Reflections of the medieval Jewish-Christian debate in the Theological-Political Treatise and the Epistles,” in Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, 56–71; Spinoza's Earliest Publication? The Hebrew Translation of Margaret Fell's A Loving Salutation to the Seed of Abraham among the Jews, whether they are scattered up and down upon the Face of the Earth, ed. Richard H. Popkin and Michael A. Signer (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987); and Graeme Hunter, Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005).
65 Letter 73, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:468.
66 Letter 73, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:468 (emphasis added).
67 Letter 74, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:469.
68 Terence wrote: “Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.” See Terence, Heautontimorumenos: The Self-Tormentor, act 1, scene 1, line 25, accessed 15 November 2020, http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0134.phi002.perseus-lat1:1.1.
69 Letter 74, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:470. On the significance of the Johannine prologue in early modern English religious debates, see Paul C. H. Lim, Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 271–319; and Paul Cefalu, The Johannine Renaissance in Early Modern English Literature and Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
70 Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. E.M. Sinclair (Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1997); Daniel J. Lasker, “The Jewish Critique of Christianity under Islam in the Middle Ages,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 57 (1991): 123–153; Daniel J. Lasker, “Jewish-Christian Polemics at the Turning Point: Jewish Evidence from the Twelfth Century,” Harvard Theological Review 89, no. 2 (1996): 161–73; and Daniel J. Lasker, “Jewish Anti-Christian Polemics in the Early Modern Period: Change or Continuity?” in Tradition, Heterodoxy, and Religious Culture: Judaism and Christianity in the Early Modern Period, ed. Chanita Goodblatt and Howard Kreisel (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2006), 469–488. Lasker's first contribution was his monograph, Jewish Philosophical Polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Ktav Publishing, 1977).
71 Letter 75, Spinoza to Oldenburg, 1 January 1676, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:472.
72 See Stephen D. Benin, Footprints of God: The Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought (Buffalo: State University of New York Press, 1993).
73 Jon Balserak, in Divinity Compromised: A Study of Divine Accommodation in the Thought of John Calvin (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), builds upon and expands the argument made by Ford Lewis Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity,” Interpretation 31, no. 1 (January 1977): 19–38; Randall C. Zachman, “Calvin as Analogical Theologian,” Scottish Journal of Theology 51, no. 2 (May 1998): 162–187.
74 Letter 75, Spinoza to Oldenburg, 1 January 1676, in Letters, 42–84, 1671–1676, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2:472.