THE DEATH OF JESUS IN
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY
In 2001 at the University of
Cambridge, I met Thomas McElwain, a Muslim
anthropologist from a Scandinavian university. A native West Virginian, he had
gone to Russia as a Baptist missionary where he converted to Islam as a result
of friendship with a Muslim shopkeeper. I found he believed in the authenticity
of the Gospels and in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. As a Muslim,
however, he rejected the Christian doctrine of the atonement (cf. A.H.M. Zahnizer’s The Mission and Death of Jesus in Islam and
Christianity [Orbis, 2008] 11-12).
Todd Lawson devotes an entire
book to Muslim thought about the crucifixion, including the thoughts of a
significant minority of Muslims throughout history who have acknowledged the
historicity of the death of Jesus. Lawson mentions salvation on only three
pages, all in a context of Muslims like Professor McElwain
denying salvation has anything to do with the cross (The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim
Thought [Oneworld, 2009] 23 [esp. n. 32, 127, 144])!
Furthermore, even those Muslims who deny the crucifixion reveal that the issue
for them is not really the historicity of the death of Jesus but the
“Christian theories of salvation” attached to it (144).
This essay takes a closer look and offers a wider perspective on the
human condition and the death of Jesus to assist Christians-Muslim discussions
about the significance of the cross for Christians.
The Human Condition
Mohamed Jawad Chirri,
late Imam of a Muslim community in Michigan, represents most Muslims when he
states, “God did not condemn mankind because a sin was committed by a couple at
the beginning of time” (Inquiries about Islam, 4th ed. [The Islamic
Center of America, 1996] 69). According to him, the Qur’an reveals that Adam
disobeyed God, but God forgave him, and his sin affected no one else. Then God
required Adam and Eve to leave Paradise (Q 2:34-39; Q 7:19-25; Q 20:120-27). (The Qur’an, transl. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, Oxford World Classics [Oxford University Press,
2005] is used throughout.)
The Imam explains why: “By acting improperly, . . .[Adam]
became susceptible to slip again; that is, he had lost his immunity for [sic]
impropriety.” His “firm purity” being gone, “he could no longer communicate
with his Lord at any time” (Chirri, 74). To be
precise, the sin of Adam did not effect condemnation for the rest of humanity,
but it did affect their status as pure. Even for Muslims, then, Adam’s and Eve’s expulsion resulted in changed
circumstances for the human community thereafter: their progeny can communicate with God only at times of “firm
purity.”
According to Christian theology, in disobeying God, Adam and Eve
represent all humans. Just as the descendants of Adam and Eve are not guilty of
the decision that renders them impure, so the descendents of Adam and Eve are
not guilty of the disobedience that renders them cut off from their original
relationship with God. All humans have solidarity
with Adam in their loss of original purity, according to Islam, and in their
loss of original intimacy with God, according to Christianity. Furthermore,
everybody comes into a world where it appears people inevitably sin. Since the
fall of the first couple, humans experience solidarity in the pervasiveness
and persistence of sin.
The Qur’an presents a composite
picture of human sinfulness very much like that of the Bible: “man’s very soul
incites him to evil” (Q 12:53); “man is truly unjust and ungrateful” (Q 14:34);
“If God took people to task for the evil they do, He would not leave one living
creature on earth” (Q 16:61); “man is more contentious than any other creature”
(Q 18:54); “If it were not for God’s bounty and mercy towards you, not one of
you would ever have obtained purity” (Q 24:21); and “man exceeds all bounds” (Q
96:6).
Paul writes, “in
Adam all die” (1 Cor 15:22; NRSV used throughout);
and in another letter he explains that “death spread to all because all have
sinned” (Rom 5:12). He does not say “because Adam and Eve sinned.” Death
symbolizes human solidarity with Adam in sin and the loss of this divine
relationship; and life symbolizes the human solidarity in Christ: “As in Adam
all die; so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor
15:22). Death spread because all have sinned. This brings us to the death of
Jesus.
New Testament discourse on the atonement clusters around at least five “constellations of images”: (1) “justification,” drawn from Mediterranean legal language (e.g., Rom 3:23); (2) “redemption,” drawn from the market place (e.g., Rom 3:24); (3) “reconciliation,” drawn from personal relationships in the Greco-Roman world (e.g., 2 Cor 5:18); (4) “sacrifice,” drawn from worship familiar to both Jews and non-Jews (e.g., Heb 7:27); and (5) “victory,” drawn from the battlefield (Col 2:15) (cf. Green and Baker, 23, and ch. 4, where the death of Jesus is also treated as “revelation” [e.g., John 17:1]). None of these requires or enables God to forgive sins and none provides the only adequate interpretation of the death of Jesus.
The Gospel of Mark, for example, presents an interpretation of Jesus’ death as an act of service to others, leading to their liberation. Mark 8-10 feature Jesus among his disciples predicting that, as God’s Messiah (8:27-30), he must undergo suffering, rejection, and death; and then be resurrected (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33). Each prediction occurs in a geographical setting, with a misunderstanding on the part of Jesus’ disciples, followed by a related teaching. In Caesarea, Peter fails to understand the mission of the Messiah in suffering and death (Mark 8:33 and parallels). After setting him right, Jesus teaches a crowd in the presence of his disciples that the way of the Messiah models the way for his followers as well (8:34-37). In Galilee, Jesus catches his disciples arguing over who is the greatest among them, and teaches them their true role: “whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all” (9:35). In Judea, James and John ask to sit on Jesus’ left and right in his kingdom. Jesus teaches them again to accept solidarity in suffering, rather than to seek prominence of position (10:35-40).
When, in getting angry at James and John, Jesus’ other disciples also demonstrate a secular and hierarchical perspective (Mark 10:41), Jesus reminds all his disciples of the servant role he expects of all followers. He offers his own mission as an example for them: “whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (10:42-45).
On the long journey from Caesarea to Jerusalem Jesus has been showing his disciples that the way of life of the Messiah as Suffering Servant (Isa 52:13-53:12) should describe the way of life of his followers also. They will drink the cup that he drinks; they will be immersed in his ordeal (Mark 10:38-39). They will not be served—but they will serve. They, like him, will give their lives for others.
But what of this word “ransom”?
The word “ransom” itself recalls God’s liberation of Israel from their bondage in Egypt (Exod 6:6). So even though the ransom image is taken from the world of slavery, this Exodus connection shows it does not mean “paying someone off” but setting many free (cf. Green and Baker, 42). Ransom can be seen in this light as living in solidarity with others for their liberation.
Herbert McCabe helps us see that the death of Jesus sets us free to be truly human, to live a life dominated by love. McCabe insists his view is only one way of viewing the meaning of Jesus’ death. First of all, why did Jesus die? Two facts stand out in current scholarship: (1) Jesus threatened the stability of Roman rule in Palestine, and (2) the Jewish establishment urged them to do away with him primarily because he spoke and acted on his own authority and not in conformity to Jewish custom, law, and ceremony (90).
Jesus did not want to die. Jesus even prayed that God would make this seemingly inevitable event unnecessary. Nevertheless, Jesus ended his Gethsemane struggle accepting what God willed for him (Mark 14:32-42). Neither did God want Jesus to die because he needed an innocent victim in order to forgive sin. God wanted Jesus to be fully human, to live out the love that is central to life under God’s reign. Because that project made Jesus a threat to the entrenched interests of Roman and Jewish leadership, it entailed his death.
Parents do not want their children to suffer; but they know that in any human life suffering occurs. Because they want their children to be alive, to be mature, to be human, they do not protect them from all ventures that might result in such suffering as disappointment, struggle, and defeat. Similarly, the Father willed for Jesus to be truly human, to live and act in love—the love that called for service leading to liberation for others; the service that he had modeled and insisted on from the beginning of his mission. Again, McCabe
Jesus was the
first human being, the first member of the human race in whom humanity came to
fulfillment, the first human being for whom to live was simply to love—for this
is what human beings are for. The aim of human life is to live in friendship—a
friendship amongst ourselves which in fact depends on
a friendship, or covenant, that God has established between ourselves and him.
(93)
The
death of Jesus moves us powerfully because we see in it the ultimate symbol of
Jesus’ willingness to live in love at whatever the cost. The death of Jesus
challenges us because he lived in love’s faithfulness as a human being. “Jesus was the first human being who had no fear of love at all;
the first to have no fear of being human” (95).
The
threat of Jesus to Roman culture and power, to Temple and religious hierarchy,
is the same threat he poses to us as individuals and communities. Our
institutions eventually evolve into structures of domination. If we, like
Jesus, determine to be as human as possible, which is to say to love, living
into the full humanity that only Jesus fully models and that God has in store
for us in the New Jerusalem, we will face misunderstanding, rejection,
suffering, and struggle. We may even face an untimely death; regardless, we
will ultimately die. If we can accept our death as inevitable and go on loving,
following what Jesus taught and did, then we will, like him, die of being human
(97). Thus Jesus represents us in dying and represents us in resurrection.
By recognizing the representative
nature of his death, and by entering into solidarity with him through faith,
trust, and obedience to his way, Jesus’ followers come to know God’s forgiveness
and to appreciate the lengths to which God goes for their liberation from the power
of sin and evil. Like the apostle Paul, they “want to know Christ and the power
of his resurrection and the sharing in his suffering by becoming like him in
his death” (Phil 3:10). They know Jesus joins them in solidarity for the often
difficult tasks of discipleship and assures them that God’s way of setting
things right will win out in the end. Not only does the cross show us the
lengths to which God is willing to go in order to remain in relationship with
us, but the resurrection assures us that, if we too will put ourselves in God’s
hands, we too will be, paradoxically, finally on the way to eternal life.
What Imam Chirri
objects to in the Christian doctrine of atonement as he knows it is identified
well by Green and Baker, “Within a penal substitution model, God’s ability to
love and relate to humans is circumscribed by something outside of God—that is,
an abstract concept of justice instructs God as to how God must behave” (147).
Is this the form of salvation the Muslim anthropologist Thomas McElwain rejected?
The death of Jesus does not enable
God to forgive. God is not bound by his holiness or the demands of abstract
justice to cause an innocent person to die in order to grant forgiveness. The
death Jesus takes upon himself results from the suffering inflicted by the sins
of others and from his own faithfulness to God’s way of being fully human.
St. Irenaeus’ (d. c. 202) recapitulation
theory of the atonement (Against Heresies 5.14) connects Jesus’ death
and resurrection with his life of faithfulness to God’s way of being human.
Jesus’ whole life, ministry, death, and resurrection “recapitulate,” or relive,
the life of Adam. In this “participatory
journey of the Son by the Spirit” (cf. C. Pinnock’s Flame
of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit [InterVarsity,
1996] 94), Jesus, the
second Adam, represents all humans in living a true human life without sin.
As participatory and incarnational, Jesus’ journey is both God’s journey and
our human journey—a journey we humans may participate in by faith and the
support of the Spirit. In sinning humans reveal their solidarity with Adam, but
are responsible for their own sins. In believing in God as revealed by Jesus,
humans accept their solidarity with Jesus and are responsible for doing their
utmost in the Spirit to live a human life as he lived it—in other words, to
take up their crosses and follow him.
Some Iranian Muslim
poets felt Jesus’ solidarity with them in their efforts to work for the
liberation of others. Their poetry suggests they were on their way to
understanding the connection between Jesus’ death on a cross and salvation. The
NT Jesus represented for them a spiritual shepherd who is publicly responsible.
His representative and participational journey in
solidarity with God and humanity, his deeds and words, including his embracing
of his crucifixion, aimed at saving others. These lines from one of them, Ahmad
Shamlu (born 1925), show he identifies openly with
the symbol of the cross:
Lo,
there am I, having traversed all my bewilderments,
Up to this Golgotha.
There
am I, standing on the inverted cross
A statue as tall as a cry.
There
am I
Having plucked
the cross-nails out of the palms with my teeth. (S.S. Soroudi,
“On Jesus’ Image in Modern Persian Poetry,” The Muslim World [1979] 224)
By A. H. Mathias Zahniser, Professor Emeritus of Christian Mission, Asbury
Theological Seminary; Scholar in Residence, Greenville College, and author of The
Mission and Death of Jesus in Islam and Christianity (Orbis, 2008).