Word: cragg
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Judas on the Cross? "The objective is not, as the Crusaders believed, the repossession of what Christendom has lost, but the restoration to Moslems of the Christ they have missed ... It aims not to have the map more Christian but Christ more widely known." First task, Author Cragg argues, is to erase the monumental Moslem misunderstandings of Christianity for which the Christian church itself is partly responsible...
Those misunderstandings Cragg traces to the initial fact that Mohammed had no thorough acquaintance with the Bible. He was ignorant of the meaning of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the sonship of Christ. To him Christ seemed a rival of the One God, and that Mohammed could not accept. Accordingly he reduced Christ to the status of one prophet among many and gave him a few brief pages in the Koran. Even today Moslems refuse to consider Christianity a monotheistic faith because of this early misreading of Christ. Nor could Mohammed, for whom it was unthinkable that...
...misunderstanding. Moslem scholars see in it only proof that the Christian scriptures are unreliable. The accounts of the Evangelists are, in the Moslem mind, confirmation that the New Testament does not share the validity of the Koran, which was revealed to Mohammed alone. "The assumption is immediate," says Author Cragg. "that because there are four, none of them is valid...
...only a religious faith but a communal allegiance and a social order. The Moslem's relation to God is inextricably linked with his relation to society. As a consequence, Moslems frequently upbraid Christianity for not disciplining and controlling Western civilization. Christians must impress on Islam, says Cragg, that "the Christian understanding of how man is put to rights is that it happens personally and through faith. . . . Thus the unit of Christianity [is] not society but persons in society . . . The Gospel of grace does not suppose that men are perfectible...
...Christian approach, Cragg believes, is doomed to failure unless it helps "the Moslem world to conceive of the Christian mission not as depredatory but as constructive." Cragg has little faith in approaches based on oil concessions or treaties of mutual assistance. For lasting understanding between Christians and Moslems, the West must "go deeper than interest, prudence or policy into areas of spiritual communication...