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Balancing Divergence and Convergence, or “Is God the Author of Confusion?” An Essay on Kenneth Cragg by Jane I. Smith, Hartford Seminary Hartford Seminary, many years ago home to Professor Kenneth Cragg, throughout its history has tried to provide a context in which students preparing for various forms of Christian ministry are encouraged to think theologically about Islam and its ongoing relations with the Christian community. Interest in this pursuit on the part of churches in America has grown spectacularly since the events of September 11, 2001, and the Seminary has redoubled its efforts not only to educate its students but to help pastors and congregations know more about the religion of Islam. Do Muslims really advocate violence, church members want to know, and why do they harbor such feelings of hatred toward us? In addition to helping congregations understand some basic facts about Islam, the Seminary has tried to encourage pastors and church leaders to think seriously about how the very existence of this religion can be put into an intelligible, and even acceptable, framework of Christian theological thinking. Despite the large and rapidly growing amount of Christian literature about interfaith relations in general and Christian-Muslim interaction and response in particular, however, the fact is that resources for Christians who want to ponder seriously how to think theologically about Islam are still meager. Polemical treatises about conversion – the need for and the methods by which it can be accomplished – abound, the likes which were authored in former years by faculty at Hartford Seminary. On the other hand, serious efforts to encourage appreciation of Islam and to find commonalities between the two faiths are readily available with more coming every day. I find, however, that very few scholars and/or theologians have had the inclination, possessed the training, and been urged forward by a kind of compulsion to find the truth that has characterized the work of Kenneth Cragg from his tenure at Hartford half a century ago until today. It is with Kenneth Cragg, then, that I encourage my students to begin their theological endeavors in relation to Islam, and it is to his deeply challenging and beautifully articulated statements about God, prophecy and human understanding that I strongly urge them to turn for reflection. Kenneth Cragg held the chair of Arabic and Islamics at Hartford Seminary from 1951 to 1956, and from 1952 to 1960 he co-edited The Muslim World journal with Edwin Calverly. These were the years in which the institution was in the process of making a dramatic turn from its identity as a training ground for missionaries to the Muslim world to its new task of becoming a locus in which dialogue and mutual understanding between Christianity and Islam are the primary foci. In the person and writings of Kenneth Cragg all of these purposes find their expression, and the tensions that bubble through his often agonized efforts to struggle for theological reconciliation between the faiths reflect both his deep dedication to the evangelical mission and his sincere and ongoing efforts to understand and express the best of what he finds in the Muslim perception of God and humanity. Never willing to settle for mere tolerance or gentle acceptance of the ‘otherness’ of Islam, Cragg has continued to challenge himself, and in the process to pose deeply challenging issues for his students and readers. In Cragg, then, many of us have found a premier resource on which to draw at this moment in history when the business of Christian-Muslim relations is of such crucial importance. This is not to say that all of our students, or our theological constituencies, will find themselves in agreement with either Cragg’s clearly stated presuppositions or his carefully articulated and persuasively argued conclusions. What I say to those with the intellectual capacities to follow his argumentation, however, is that I know of no one who has put the questions so vibrantly and yet so poignantly, and that the task is to work with him through that argumentation and to discover for oneself what theological grounds there may be for ultimately agreeing or disagreeing with him. Cragg’s intention, it has always seemed to me, is not to prove that he is right about anything, but to try to discover what is right, what is true, what seems genuinely to reflect our best human understanding of God, and what Christians and Muslims in the end may have in common in these endeavors. “Perhaps more bravely than any other Christian writer of our times,” says former Hartford Seminary professor David Kerr, “[Cragg] patiently seeks to relate the meaning of the Christian faith to the inner intentions of Muslim faith as perceived in the Qur’an and in the aspirations of Muslim devotions.”[1] When I accepted my current position as co-director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and co-editor of The Muslim World, I spent considerable time looking through earlier issues of the journal to see how the Seminary’s transition from mission to dialogue has been documented and received by the Christian community. Several decades ago a letter to the editor was published from a faculty member at another distinguished institution for theological training, in which the author deeply lamented the fact that Hartford Seminary was no longer a place that took seriously the importance of converting Muslims to Christianity. The dedication to a vibrant mission enterprise, said the letter, had given way to a much paler kind of “religious studies.” Would not Kenneth Cragg, I wondered to myself, feel some real sympathy with those who believe that the Seminary has drifted from its early mandate to prepare candidates for the mission field in the Muslim world? At the same time, however, it is clear through Kenneth’s writings that he deeply respects and appreciates serious efforts to build bridges, close gaps, promote understanding on the deepest possible level, and to work together on projects of mutual concern. Christopher Lamb, in his excellent biography of Kenneth Cragg entitled The Call to Retrieval. Kenneth Cragg’s Christian Vocation to Islam, puts his finger on the reason why “mission to” and “appreciation of” Islam and Muslims are not contradictory objectives for Cragg. To grasp Cragg’s argument, he says, one must understand that “Evangelism is not merely necessary and important, but urgent….But the reason for its urgency is not the common evangelical assumption of the lostness of Muslim millions, but precisely the kinship and nearness of Muslim thought and experience to that of Christians.”[2] For many westerners involved in Christian-Muslim encounter and dialogue, the transition from mission to dialogue seems to imply giving up the project of evangelization in favor of harmonization, setting aside personal witness for what is seen as the more important business of mutual appreciation. Clarity of theological grounding often seems to be sacrificed for the rather nebulous ends of developing new options, alternatives, strategies and methodologies. Those who want to engage the process of better understanding for its own sake often turn their attention to the comparative study of religion, and are careful to distinguish between that task and what has been referred to as “doing theology.” Relatively few scholars of Islam have been ready to take on the “theology” task, confronting what the theological affirmations of the Qur’an may have to say about their own understanding of the meaning of Christ in their lives. Even those who do assume this theological challenge seem for the most part unwilling to, or incapable of, or unconvinced of the need to push theological issues to the point where the very process becomes painful and deeply frustrating. For whatever reason, they do not choose to “get grubby” in their digging for genuine commonalities or, indeed, for irreconcilable differences. Not so Kenneth Cragg. No theological tentativeness, no side-stepping the hard questions, no intellectual bargaining or good-natured compromise here! His theological presupposition, the saving grace of Jesus Christ in human life, is the starting point and the conclusion of his immense study of Islam. He has very carefully avoided the all-too-common alternatives of finding easy equivalents between Islam and Christianity to the neglect of obvious distinctions, on the one hand, and, on the other, acknowledging that differences are so overpowering and fundamental as to preclude or make ludicrous any efforts at theological and philosophical reconciliation. He has, one might say, always worn his gloves and galoshes over his coat and tie, digging as deeply as possible to unearth an Islamic understanding most true to what he knows of the soul of Islam at the same time that he stands firmly on the bedrock of his own Christian conviction. I believe that this amazing effort not only deserves the deepest respect of Christian theological students today, but provides a much-needed model for combining intellectual rigor with personal conviction. “Find out where his deepest concerns lie,” I urge my students, “and articulate some theological responses of your own to the questions that he raises.” Happily for the students, Cragg’s immense scholarship has laid bare the kind of essential information about Islam that allows them to be able to engage the task seriously and to whatever depth they have the skill and inclination to go. Here, then, are some of the concerns that Kenneth Cragg has raised that have challenged me, and challenged my students at Hartford Seminary. I have quoted rather liberally from his writings so as to allow the reader to feel the direct impact of the passion with which Cragg poses his questions. * * * “Many will be compelled to ask,” says Cragg in his 1984 Muhammad and the Christian, “How is the Christian to contemplate positive acknowledgement of Muhammad when his prophetic significance involves such crucial disavowal of truths Christian? Is God the author of confusion? Can authentic revelation contradict itself? Does God deny Himself? How is divine intention to be attributed to that which negates the central confidence of the New Testament? If those Scriptures be the divine word, can others be so also, thus confounded by disharmony? These are in no way mere fastidious scruples. Rather they are deeply authentic troubles both of mind and heart.”[3] For me, this passage reveals as clearly as anywhere in Cragg’s writings the deep agony of spirit that seems to characterize his lifelong quest to understand Islam, to comprehend something of God, and to affirm his clear conviction that the living presence of Christ is a reality for all people. How, then, can God have spoken differently to different communities of people? Or did He? Cragg continues this passage by saying it would seem that there are clear scriptural and historical reasons why Christians should not be able to accept the validity of the Qur’an because of its negation of Christ’s life, mission and death on the cross. This is Cragg’s dilemma, one that despite his heroic efforts, his great scholarly expertise and his many years of close involvement with Muslims he seems never to have been able to resolve. One might almost argue that the more he has evidenced his deep understanding of Islam and its divinely revealed text, the greater has been the predicament. On the one hand he refuses to believe that God has not spoken to the community of Islam, yet, on the other, he cannot give up his certainty that God in Christ has provided for the salvation of all the world. Why, then, does the message of the Qur’an seemingly deny that salvation by denying Christ’s crucifixion? Cragg is not the first Christian to have agonized over this question, but the pathos with which he poses the question, and the depth of understanding of Islam with which he attempts to answer it, in my opinion are virtually unrivaled in western theological literature. The underlying theological issue for Cragg, then, is how to make sense of the integrity of a religious tradition that arose after the death of Jesus and denies the full import of that death. He understands all too well that for one who accepts the message of the Qur’an, the meaning of the cross, resurrection, Eucharist and thus Christian ministry itself are eliminated, which clearly for him is an unacceptable loss. “Christians find it an insuperable veto on their sense of God,” he says.[4] Asking rhetorically but with some anguish whether we must assume that God is the author of confusion, he sets himself the task of trying to make sense of this apparent conundrum. Ultimately he must conclude that the only possible way in which to proceed with the work of mutual understanding is to suspend judgment and learn to live with those things that one cannot reconcile. As his life has made clear, he is compelled to encourage whatever suspension of judgment is necessary in order to “understand and know.” The Christian must be willing to relate to Islam and not be antagonistic, and to hold his or her own beliefs somewhat at arms length so as to be able to hear the message of the other, and to be ready with questions but not to offer one’s own answers too quickly. Yet such an effort is eminently costly for Cragg. “That such openness of heart,” he says, “goes against the grain of religious conviction, other men’s and ours, is all too obvious.”[5] Despite his signal and heroic efforts to present Islam as it is understood by Muslims, Cragg has been accused of not being able to avoid the temptation to read into the Muslim material he knows so well a kind of Christianizing interpretation, a charge he strongly rejects.[6] Some have seen his work as too theological, not sufficiently attending to social and political concerns, while others feel that he has never been able to move fully beyond a persistent ‘missionary’ spirit in his endeavors to understand. None, however, can dispute the tremendous contributions that he has made to the goal of Christian-Muslim understanding. Throughout his writings one is persuaded of the integrity of his effort to grasp the elements of Islam as they are held by Muslims, to see commonalities when they are there and admit when they are not, and to struggle with how Christians can come to terms with a post-Christian faith and still continue to affirm Christ’s finality. The question posed in one of his earliest works, Sandals at the Mosque (1959), remains with him throughout his long career of research and reflection: “What is the relevance of Christ as Christians understand Him to the inward Muslim meanings?”[7] Cragg’s clear and deep appreciation for the religion of Islam have certainly not precluded his critique of the faith, which generally focuses on what he feels is missing rather than what he would identify as erroneous. The bottom line is obviously that the Muslim insistence on divine transcendence, as much as he knows how right and important that recognition is, gives up the real possibility of divine grace as it is expressed in Christian doctrine. As he puts it in Alive to God (1970), Islam, by refusing to adopt the analogies of God as father and Jesus as shepherd, sacrifices what he calls “costly and intimate grace.”[8] He finds the Jesus of the Qur’an “emasculated,” and from his earliest writings he identifies the important task of retrieving that emasculated Jesus, rescuing him from misunderstanding and revealing him “in all His relevance, in words, deeds, and sorrows, to the whole plight and aspiration of men.”[9] This retrieval is a recurring theme for Cragg over the years, so much so that it is the primary focus and indeed the title of Christopher Lamb’s important 1997 study of the life and writings of Bishop Cragg.[10] More than faintly echoing the conviction of earlier generations of missiologists writing about Islam, Cragg insists that if Islam is to be relevant in the contemporary world, it must “baptize change into its spirit.” It must also be acknowledged, of course, that Cragg’s style of response did change over the years. As Andreas D’Souza remarks, whereas his earliest writings sought to describe Muslim shortcomings, this critical approach gradually gave way to a more sympathetic one as he sought common ground for a better understanding between Christians and Muslims.”[11] As he moved to reframe his critique in a positive rather than a negative way, Cragg is generous in his suggestions of ways in which Islam can learn and benefit from the insights of Christian theology. Often he puts his ideas in the form of a kind of re-interpretation of some of the basic tenets of Islam so that they are more compatible with his own Christian persuasion. He tries to prove, for example, that incarnation is not such an alien idea in Islam after all, and that perhaps one could argue that the Christian sense of God in Christ has much in common with the Islamic sense of divine self-revelation. “…is there not a Christian sense of God in Christ truly compatible with the Islamic awareness of divine unity? And, conversely, is there not an Islamic sense of Christ compatible with the Christian understanding of divine self-revelation?”[12] While in reality it has not been seen this way, he argues, in essence or at least in potential, it could be true. Cragg bases his thesis on a reconsideration of the nature of prophecy and the status of revelation. Christians and Muslims, he argues, share in the profound belief that prophecy is essential to the relationship of divine and human. He tries to argue that the very nature of Muhammad as prophet seems to point to God’s commitment to what he calls a righting of the situation of humanity,[13] which of course coincides with the Christian persuasion that Jesus as the Christ has provided the means for that righting. He locates the crux of the issue in the nature of man (surely Cragg must be one of the last to be forgiven for not using gender inclusive language), suggesting that to see prophecy as ‘the ultimate’ may in fact not do justice either to the reality of the human situation or to the nature and being of God. He justifies this assumption by his reading both of the gospel and by the Qur’an itself. Focusing on the greatness of God, which he says should be for both Christians and Muslims “the most congenial of obligations, the most reconciling of tasks,”[14] he then reverts to his Christian rootedness and puts the onus on Muslims. “Why, then, this Islamic reluctance for the measure of divine sovereignty which the Gospel draws from the same premises about creation and Lordship?”[15] One is reminded of Professor Doolittle’s famous query, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Why, Cragg seems to suggest, can’t Muslims be more like Christians? It is clear that the Prophet Muhammad, he says, while of course not himself divine, nonetheless exemplifies along with other prophets the fact that God has wanted to communicate with humanity. As if using his rhetorical skills as a weapon against the possibility that God’s word to Christian and to Muslims could somehow be different, he exclaims, “Need there be sundering controversy, or necessary alienation, if another household of faith should see the same inviolability of origin and authoritativeness of means assured by these very criteria in another dimension?”[16] Christians and Muslims agree on the question of the divine source of revelation and its locus in the human recipient. We just understand the way in which human and divine interact differently, he says. While Muslims draw a sharp distinction between divine and human, Christians bring divine activity and human aegis together in the specific revelation that was Jesus the Christ. “Is this really a different world of discourse from the Islamic?” Cragg tries to persuade himself that it is not. “In criteria of both divine and human things in their feasible ‘association,’ doubtless yes! But in heart of conviction, that God reigns against all challenge, and reigns through human ‘sentness,’ surely no!”[17] The very fact of “sentness,” as in the case of Jesus, provides what he calls a potentially recognizable affinity that is beneath and beyond everything else, no matter how insurmountable the differences might appear to be. Truth, he argues in “The Singer and the Song” (1993), must be understood through the medium of personality. While this does not happen with Muhammad in the Qur’an itself, it does seem to take place in the traditions of Islam. In any case, he says, the Prophet actually does become a vehicle for revelation in the very process of prophecy. “We are in no way proposing here to read incarnation into Islam,” he insists, certainly with regard to the Muslim understanding of the human-ness of Muhammad. “But,” he cannot help but add, “it cannot be excluded from what prophethood may entail.”[18] Once again he struggles with the reality of what Muslims hold to be true, and the intense desire to express the possibility that his Christian convictions about the divine-human connection may find some venue within the structure of Islam. My Christian theological students find this kind of argumentation fascinating and provocative. Some of them agree with the critics who over the years have accused him of not truly finding commonality but only forcing a Christian interpretation on Islam. “One is left with the impression that Cragg’s purpose is to contrast the truth of the New Testament and of church doctrine concerning Christ the son of God with the errors, or, at best, the half-truths of the Qur’an and Muslim tradition,” reflects Mahmoud Ayoub. “Cragg attempts to read the Qur’an in Christian terms without real justification.”[19] Others are persuaded with Cragg that God does not intend to perplex and confound and thus they applaud and appreciate his efforts to find some kind of reconciliation of what might appear to be basic incompatibilities. Whatever their response, they recognize not only Cragg’s wealth of knowledge of things both Christian and Islamic, but his incomparable skill at posing the question and proposing the answer, as well as the depth of seriousness with which he tries to make sense of God’s communications with humanity. A doctor of ministry student at Hartford Seminary recently remarked on how moved she was to hear Cragg’s commentary in the Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation video “Towards Understanding Islam.” It was clear from his remarks, she noted, that Bishop Cragg’s lifetime experience in Christian-Muslim dialogue compels him to acknowledge that the important thing is not trying to see others as “like us,” but appreciating them for who they are.[20] Yet the evidence from his writings also clearly evidences his difficulty in doing precisely that. In Jesus and the Muslim (1985), for example, he says that while Christians and Muslims obviously agree that God is One, we differ in the ways in which we see that one-ness manifested. So, he concludes, we should no doubt leave the matter there “as being irresolvable for lack of agreed categories.” But despite his best efforts, in fact he can’t seem to leave the matter at all. “Perhaps,” he ventures, “we may be able to mediate into the Islamic sense of divine sovereignty over human will the Christian sense of divine sovereignty through human will.”[21] Again he asks, Why shouldn’t Christians simply leave the matter there, living and letting live? Why should it bother us that Muslims do not understand and accept Jesus in the same way that Christians do? Is not the task too difficult, the obstacles too huge, and the deterrents too formidable?[22] Cragg would seem to be putting forth a kind of three-fold argument in favor of simply leaving the matter there, as he puts it. (1) The task is too hard, the problems too difficult to overcome. (2) We should be willing to settle for simply appreciating the other. (3) Muslims should not be asked to capitulate to Christian criteria just for the sake of right or better relationships, as he insists in Returning to Mt. Hira’ (1994). “Too much confusion has resulted from Christians generally assuming that the ‘salvation’ question is the right, or only, one to ask….”[23] But the temptation to take up the task anyway seems repeatedly to be too great. “A world in which Jesus and the New Testament were effectively muted,” he concludes in Jesus and the Muslim, “would scarcely be well served.” God’s love for us has proved that truth must be served, and that is the truth “as it is in Jesus.”[24] As another Hartford Seminary student observed after reading many of the writings of Kenneth Cragg: the great problem for Professor Cragg seems recurringly to be that he finds it impossible to do what he says he most wants to do: stand back and not be judgmental. He seems caught in the tension between lamenting what is missing in Islam, suspending confession in order to ‘hear’ the truth of the other, and trying to reconcile the faiths by seeing them both through the lens of his own Christo-centrism. In many ways Kenneth Cragg is one of the most difficult of the Christian theologians to read: his knowledge of Islam is vast and he has written at great length and depth; his use of the English language is so elegant that it is easy to get caught up in his dazzling rhetoric; and he ‘seems’ so right, as my students will testify, both because of his powers of persuasion and because his conclusions are compellingly attractive to the Christian who both wishes to profess a traditional understanding of God in Christ and to be sensitive to the Muslim understanding. For one, like Cragg, who wants desperately to believe that God will not reveal one thing to one community of believers and something different to another, the appeal of Cragg’s interpretation is enormous. There is no question that Cragg’s many years of intimacy with Islam and Muslims have enriched his ways of being able to express his own belief about God in Christ. Many who have been deeply involved in interfaith engagement will say that the experience has deepened their own faith, made them better Christians or better Muslims. It might be argued that his intimacy with and profound understanding of Islam have made Kenneth Cragg a better Christian. His long and intense experience with Islam seems to have resulted not in his seeing things differently, but in seeing them more clearly and more deeply. To study the role of Muhammad as prophet, he says in Christ and the Faiths, and to reckon in an existential and intensive way with his role in the Qur’an, can help bring us to what he calls “the vital clue within the New Testament.” Cragg consistently returns to an insistence on the personal dimension of the divine-human relationship, saying that the more we get some distance on what is being said in scripture, the more we can see that prophethood is not merely message-bearing but that it actually takes on the form of personality. Thus, “pondering capabilities in revelation in cross-reference between Christian and Muslim scriptures, we see how the prophetic might pass into the filial, the words into the Word, message into personality, and a sending mission into an incarnate presence.”[25] This highly seductive pressing of the boundaries of reasonable interpretation has not only convinced Cragg himself, despite his own self-caution, but carries a tremendous appeal to his Christian readers. Yes, he seems convinced, and yet an absolute certainty of the rightness of his own interpretations always seems to elude him. Perhaps most seductive of all of Cragg’s ruminations, or at least I find it to be so for myself, is the persistence of his theme of perplexity. It is no surprise, then, to see that he gives to one of his more recent works the title Troubled by Truth (1992). In this quite stunning set of biographies of persons who over the years have attended to the matter of Christian reflection on Islam, Cragg again reveals his own wonder that it is so difficult to build solid bridges across the two faiths. Acknowledging the pioneering and still unrivaled work of Constance Padwick in her classic study Muslim Devotions,[26] he struggles again with the question of whether commonalities are real or only imagined. “Do the differing auspices and associations of the common themes matter, or not matter?” he demands. Yes! He concludes, they do matter, whether one is talking about Jesus and Muhammad, scriptures, or devotional practices. “What then is to be done?” he queries. Reflecting in the light of Padwick’s work the concern that seems to ripple through all of his own writings, he asks what may be the most poignant of all of his many questions: “Was Muslim Devotions just a venture in Christian wistfulness – ‘hoping it might be so’ about an impossible vision of affinity?”[27] Bishop Cragg’s style and emphases have changed to some extent over the years, and a careful reader will find a clear line of development in his argumentation. His compelling desire to alleviate confusion has never wavered, however, and while he acknowledges that the struggle for truth is difficult and complex (“…perplexity may well remain the first lesson of inter-faith encounter”[28]), he seems resolved never to give up the effort to discover that. Whether or not one is willing to follow him fully to his own conclusions, the journey through his theological odyssey is greatly rewarding. I encourage my students to assume for themselves the enticing invitation that Kenneth Cragg actually makes to Muslims to consider the theological connectedness between Christianity and Islam: “The invitation…is only to think realistically about themselves and their world, and to open to perhaps ‘unthinkable’ perspectives about God.”[29] [1] David Kerr, “Christian Witness in Relation to Muslim Neighbors,” Islamochristiana 10, 1984, p. 27. [2] Christopher Lamb, The Call to Retrieval. London: Grey Seal, 1997. [3] Kenneth Cragg, Muhammad and the Christian. A Question of Response, London: Oxford, 1984, p. 11. [4] Muhammad and the Christian, p. 10. [5] Muhammad and the Christian, p. 11. [6] “I myself have been accused – unjustly, I believe – of ‘doing violencce’ as Dr. Charles Adams puts it, to the historical reality of the Islamic tradition….forcing it into categories of interpretation and meaning drawn from a different historical stream of piety and experience.” Cragg, Muhammad and the Christian, p. 12, referring to Charles Adams, “Islamic religious tradition,” in L. Binder, ed., The Study of the Middle East, New York: Wiley, 1971. [7] Kenneth Cragg, Sandals at the Mosque, New York: Oxford, 1959, p. 104. [8] Kenneth Cragg, Alive to God. Muslim and Christian Prayer, London: Oxford, pp. 17-18. [9] Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret, London: Oxford, 1970, p. 262. [10] See note 2. [11] Andreas D’Souza, “Christian Approaches to the Study of Islam. An Analysis of the Writings of Watt and Cragg,” Bulletin of the Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies 11, 1992, 34. [12] Kenneth Cragg, “Islam and Incarnation,” in John Hick, ed., Truth and Dialogue in World Religions: Conflicting Truth Claims, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974, p. 126. [13] Muhammad and the Christian, pp. 127-8. [14] Muhammad and the Christian, p. 134. [15] Muhammad and the Christian, p. 137. [16]“Islam and Incarnation,” p. 132. [17] “Islam and Incarnation”, p. 133. This balance is a recurring theme in Cragg’s writings, as in his declaration that “our answer to the question whether God in the two faiths is the same God has to be Yes! And No!” Kenneth Cragg, Alive to God. Muslim and Christian Prayer, London: Oxford, 1970, p. 18. [18] Kenneth Cragg, “The Singer and the Song: Christology in the Context of World Religions,” in Robert F. Berkey and Sarah A. Edwards, Christology in Dialogue, Cleveland: Pilgrim, p. 195. [19] Mahmoud Ayoub, review of Jesus and the Muslim in Journal of Ecumenical Studies 24/449, Summer 1987, p. 315. [20] “…there is an obligation to ‘concede’ pluralism, not only de facto but also somehow de jure – in terms, that is, of the right of others not to start where we start, nor to conclude where we conclude. If we can do so we shall be divested of the need to ‘engineer’ subtle, and unconvincing, theories of how our denominators – theistic, christological, salvific, eschatological – can be applied to other ‘universes of belief’.” Kenneth Cragg, “Holding Faith and Conceding Pluralism: A Christian Position,” in Paul Mujzes and Leonard Swidler, eds., Lewiston, PA: Mellon, 1991, p. 175. [21] Kenneth Cragg, Jesus and the Muslim. An Exploration, London: Allen & Unwin, 1985, p. 290. [22] Jesus and the Muslim, p. 295. [23] Kenneth Cragg, Returning to Mount Hira’: Islam in contemporary terms. London: Bellow Publishing, 1994, 123. [24] Jesus and the Muslim, pp. 295, 269. [25] Kenneth Cragg, The Christ and the Faiths. Theology in Cross-Reference, London: SPCK, 1986, p. 75. [26] Constance Padwick, Muslim Devotions. A Study of Prayer Manuals in Common Use, London:SPCK, 1961. [27] Kenneth Cragg, Troubled by Truth. Biographies in the Presence of Mystery, Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1992, pp. 70-71. [28] Troubled by Truth, p. 262. [29] Mt. Hira’, p. 123.
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