Religion without a covenant

Another holiday, and another Islamist atrocity. If reports so far are to be believed, the perpetrator in New Orleans was, once more, a recent convert seeking to prove his credentials by waging war on the infidels – meaning Christians, Jews, atheists, idolaters, and Muslims either apostasising or not sufficiently zealous. Since that includes most people in New Orleans, the indiscriminate slaughter is seen to be a feature, not a bug. It’s maybe not for nothing that in Genesis 16:12 the angel of Yahweh prophesies that Ishmael “will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”

As in every such case, the fact that “the usual ideology” is to blame has been noted. At the Daily Sceptic this has been expressed in cancellation-avoiding ways, in such phrases as “It’s always the Buddhist monks” or “Those bloody Methodists are at it again.” But amongst the “Abrahamic religions” I think there is one particular theological fundamental that differentiates Islam from Judaism and Christianity and helps to explain things, and that is that Islam alone is non-covenantal. Explanation follows, taking the historical origins of all three as a given for the sake of argument.

In the Bible, Hebrew religion arose because God called one particular man, Abram, into a special and mutual relationship with him – not merely as a prophetic mouthpiece. As we read in Genesis 12, God made a promise – unconditional – to Abraham of many descendants, a land, and his own presence as blessing. A global purpose is hinted by the promise that Abraham will be a blessing to many peoples. The sign of the covenant was circumcision, and the promise was, for the most part, hereditary. In the New Testament Paul points out from Genesis 15:6 that the one requirement on the human side was faith, and it was by faith or the absence of it that Israel prospered or perished. But the covenant itself, established by the God who does not lie or abrogate his words, was irrevocable.

To oversimplify things, this promise was renewed and modified, through Moses, to the people of Israel which had arisen because of that promise. God’s contribution was the decisive rescue of his people from Egypt, their establishment in Canaan, and the giving of the torah by which, in faith, they could live lives pleasing to Yahweh and so prosper. All of these things were expressions of God’s chesed, or covenant-love, to a particular people he had himself created out of love.

It seems to me that modern Judaism is still uncertain about how they are to be a blessing to the whole world, other than by the undoubted moral influence of torah and the expected coming of a Jewish Messiah. But it has never been by aggressive proselytism amongst the gentiles, from whom true converts have always been few. The 1st century BC rabbi Shammai is even reputed to have told gentiles that learning to keep the law was too difficult for them.

Christianity, by contrast, was from the very first a missionary faith. Jesus’s first task was to call Israelites back to Abraham’s covenant from spiritual exile, through repentance and faith in him as the Messiah who had conquered sin, death and the devil through the Cross. But as his Spirit prompted first Peter, and then Paul and others, to reach out to gentiles as well, this was seen as the fulfilment of the promise to bless all nations through Abraham. In fact, as Paul’s expositions make clear, the Gospel message was that, through the Israelite Messiah, even non-Jews could be received into the Abrahamic covenant by faith in Jesus.

To add a bit of detail, whilst God’s covenant with Abraham was permanent, the broken “codicil” covenant with Moses was replaced by a new covenant sealed with Messiah’s blood, for both Israelites and gentiles equally. In either case, entry to the covenant was through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus, as God become flesh, the physical sign being water baptism, and the divine response being the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit.

If we accept a Christian view of salvation history, then God’s invitation to Abraham to respond to his special grace in covenant had now been extended not only to the children of Jacob, but to all the descendants of Adam. Since the gospel, then, is nothing but the call of Christ to those chosen particular individuals given him by the Father (John 17:24), just as Israel was likewise a particular people chosen and called, there is no more place for trying to coerce people to become Christians than it would have made sense for Jews to force people to pretend to be from one of the twelve tribes.

Now, that such coercion has sometimes been attempted is not in doubt, particularly after Christianity became the State religion of the Emperor Constantine. But in terms of the covenant of Christ, it makes no sense because coercion is not grace, and cannot generate saving faith. And you certainly can’t force someone to be chosen by God. Whilst imperialism and colonialism muddy the waters, then, the Church down the centuries has appreciated the truth of covenant more than we often recognise, and whenever forced conversion of Jews or pagans reared its head, there were bishops with better doctrine who decried the practice.

Much of what we would see as religious coercion was then seen as church discipline to restore sheep perceived to be already within the covenant through infant baptism, but straying to their own and others’ detriment. Augustine must bear some of the blame for setting this attitude in motion against the Donatists, but the fact is that it is at most a questionable interpretation of a faith which, at its core, taught that the saints are a remnant chosen by God’s grace, through faith, to become part of God’s catholic (small “c”) people, salt and light in an unbelieving world that was to be won solely by love and good works.

Islam, by contrast, has no concept of covenant that I have ever discerned. Muhammad taught that God had made unilateral demands on every individual of every race (rather than to chosen Israel), through prophets he had sent to every nation, to whose diktats all people were required to submit. Muhammad, as the last and greatest prophet, and the only one whose teachings had not been perverted, delivered teachings to be obeyed and warnings to fear, not promises to be cherished by faith leading to love of God.

Hence there is no covenant people in Islam, because God makes no promises and purchases no deliverance for particular people. He just demands universal submission to the various requirements of Islam. Praxis may lead to faith (for psychologically we come to believe that which we habitually do), but need not arise from it, for fear or social compliance achieve the same end. Hence conversion by the sword is perfectly legitimate, and only need be as sincere as compliance with the pillars of the religion demands. Apostasy is a change of praxis, and because it is visible rebellion against Allah, is in the Quran punishable by death. So is idolatry (in many cases historically obviating the need to attempt conversion), as is refusal to show humiliation and capitulation to Islam by Jews or Christians, by not paying the jizya and accepting dhimmi status.

But with no real sense of a covenant-people (apart, in practice, from the concept of “the Arab Nation”), correct praxis is everything, and there is no theological basis for tolerance of diverse views even within Islam. Sunni, Shia, Ahmadiyya, Sufi, Yazidi are as likely to be regarded as unbelievers worthy of death at the hands of other Muslims as are Bahais or Buddhists. The Munich Christmas murderer claimed to have had to leave Saudi Arabia because he was a Shia, before he was an atheist (and before he revealed himself as a jihadist).

All three religions believe in final judgement. Most Orthodox Jews, as I have said, await the coming of Messiah for God to judge the wicked and relieve their own unjust suffering. Christians, following the lead of Christ, accept suffering as even more fundamentally reflective of godliness, and likewise look to the return of Jesus the Messiah to end injustice supernaturally. We are taught to love our enemies, and to leave vengeance to the Lord. Both faiths are about exercising virtue amid the hostility of a world harried by Satan and his minions.

Islam, though, has as its goal the eradication of evil in this age through the eradication of all that is not Islam, by Muslims. If that involves war against “persecutors,” violent imperialism, oppression of unbelievers (and notably their women, especially sexually), lying even to the point of public disavowal of Islam if it furthers Islam (the principle of Taqiyya), or solidarity with even criminal Muslims against unbelievers, so be it. In the unlikely event that one of the sects established a worldwide and stable Caliphate, success would be marked by the peace of universal observance of Islam, however much it was maintained by fear, and however much resentment, unbelief and corrupt character boiled under the surface.

In other words, there is no covenant people of God in Islam, but only those who observe the demands of the dominant sect, and those who are disobedient to them and so are accursed. Those demands, in some sects, include the performance of jihad. And even then salvation is not guaranteed, for Allah is not to be tied down by promises.