Law, Justice, and Grace: Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) on the Gospel’s Relation to the Torah

Jon Hoover

doi:10.46586/er.13.2022.9466

Abstract

 Early and medieval Muslim anti-Christian polemicists do not present a uniform account of the Gospel’s relation to the Torah, and polemical concerns drive the positions they adopt. This article focuses on how Damascene theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) responds to a provocation originating in the Christian Paul of Antioch. Paul argues that God sent Moses the law of justice and Christ the perfect law of grace, implying that the Qurʾān is not needed, at least not for Christians. Drawing on Islamic legal categories and invoking Sufi theological ideas, Ibn Taymiyya counters that the Torah and the Gospel contain both justice as obligation and grace as recommendation, with obligation more prominent in the Torah and recommendation in the Gospel, as part of a prophetic history leading up to the Qurʾān, which contains both in perfect balance. With this, Ibn Taymiyya provides a more extensive and sophisticated account of the Torah-Gospel relation than his predecessors.

Highlights

And medieval Muslim polemical writings against Christianity are replete with arguments [1] for Jewish and Christian corruption of the meaning of the Bible and its very text.1 For example, the early polemicist and Christian convert to IslamAlī ibn Rabbān al-Ṭabarī (d. ca. 245/860) analyzes Christian misunderstandings of the scriptural terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ and identifies mistakes and contradictions in the biblical text in his Refutation of the Christians (Al-Raddalā al-Naṣārā) (2016a)
This article focuses on how Damascene theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) responds to a provocation originating in the Christian Paul of Antioch
Drawing on Islamic legal categories and invoking Sufi theological ideas, Ibn Taymiyya counters that the Torah and the Gospel contain both justice as obligation and grace as recommendation, with obligation more prominent in the Torah and recommendation in the Gospel, as part of a prophetic history leading up to the Qurān, which contains both in perfect balance

Summary

Introduction

And medieval Muslim polemical writings against Christianity are replete with arguments [1] for Jewish and Christian corruption of the meaning (taḥrīf al-manā) of the Bible and its very text (taḥrīf al-lafẓ). For example, the early polemicist and Christian convert to IslamAlī ibn Rabbān al-Ṭabarī (d. ca. 245/860) analyzes Christian misunderstandings of the scriptural terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ and identifies mistakes and contradictions in the biblical text in his Refutation of the Christians (Al-Raddalā al-Naṣārā) (2016a). 728/1328), for example, cautions in his massive refutation of Christianity, The Correct Response (al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ), against alleging corruption of the extant Bible to avoid accidently rejecting a report of authentic revelation He still maintains that the Christian religion is the product of scriptural misinterpretation and human innovation (bida) and that the Bible itself is not entirely reliable (Ibn Taymiyya 1999a, 2:368–3:52; Hoover 2012, 836, 840).. Al-Ṭabarī examines the Torah-Gospel relation later in The Book of Religion and Empire when confronting the criticism—probably of Christian origin—that the Prophet Muḥammad contradicted himself by confirming the two previous revelations in word but rejecting what they said in deed. As we will see further below, Ibn Taymiyya elaborates a more complex approach thanks to the goading of Paul of Antioch

Paul of Antioch and The Letter from the People of Cyprus

Conclusion