A Christian‐Muslim comparative theology of saints

It all began with an innocent question in a bible study. “Why do Catholics worship Mary and their saints? Is it not idolatry?” (p. 35). A generous but rushed response to this important question led Dr. Hans A. Harmakaptura on a journey toward this interreligious theological study on saints. Such is the way of all good and interesting research. It starts with someone's innocent question. A Christian-Muslim Comparative Theology of Saints is the publication of Dr. Harmakaputra's doctoral dissertation from Boston University. It combines several different areas of exploration that may be of interest to many readers of Dialog: the development of an “inclusive theology of saints” from a Protestant perspective, an exploration of contemporary Catholic thought on saints, and a confessional comparative theology of Protestant Christianity with various Muslim perspectives. Ultimately, Harmakaputra wants to know, “does the communion of saints include non-Christians? Is it possible for Christians to recognize non-Christians as saints? What is the theological rationale for doing so? What constitutes sainthood? What is the role of a saint?” (p. 224). What follows in the 229-page dissertation is a stimulating, yet meandering examination of many different aspects of Protestant and Catholic thought on “the communion of saints,” a review of a Muslim Sufi theologian, and inspiring reflections on contemporary Muslim and Christian practices of lived religion. Ultimately, Harmakaputra's study prompts him to develop a generous stance of Protestant Christian openness to God's grace exhibited in the lives of past and present non-Christians in today's religiously plural world. He argues that Christians can be opened to seeing non-Christians, primarily Muslim pious believers in this case, as “fellow companions” and “friends of God.” The study ends up as a progressive Protestant reflection on the sanctification of believers—Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims. Harmakaputra's primary interlocutor for his theological framework is ultimately the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. However, Harmakaputra modifies Rahner's theory of “anonymous Christians” to promote a theology of “anonymous [Christian] saints” (p. 128) who can provide encouragement for all believers, however defined, to “respond positively to God's grace” (p. 172). A Christian-Muslim Comparative Theology of Saints is divided into two parts. Part one, with four chapters, explores the views of saints and sainthood interreligiously. Chapter one examines modern Catholic theological perspectives on sainthood by Lawrence Cunningham, Elizabeth Johnson, Jean-Luc Marion, and Karl Rahner, while chapter two responds with traditional Protestant responses to Catholic views, examining two prominent Protestant theological explorations of the “communion of saints” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich. Chapter three introduces the readers to a medieval Muslim Sufi Ibn Arabī and his concept of walāya, or the “friends of God.” This is followed by the main part of the thesis, a thorough exploration of Ibn Arabī’s view of sainthood in Islam. The second part of the study, the remaining four chapters, introduces three theological constructs to support the author's position. Chapter five utilizes Karl Rahner's concept of the emanation of God's grace and the implication for non-Christians, particularly Muslims. Chapter six compares the concept of the “hiddenness” of saints in worldly matters of Ibn Arabī and Jean-Luc Marion. Chapter seven reframes the focus on saints as “companions” on the journey of belief, rather than as a hierarchy of grace imputed to individuals. The final chapter, eight, provides a practical observation and justification for this generous perspective by highlighting the concept of vox populi, or the “voice of the people.” By "voice of the people" Harmakaptura refers to the actual lived practice of communities that recognize and invoke local saints who provide identity, support, and moral encouragement in popular piety. Throughout, Harmakaputra recognizes that these theological reflections by the Catholic theologians go beyond the official canonization process of the Vatican but are still faithful to the theological realm of Vatican II's interreligious pronouncements, especially Lumen Gentium (p. 7). Originally written as a dissertation, A Christian-Muslim Comparative Theology of Saints, will offer something of interest to a variety of readers. The author provides a remarkable examination of progressive Catholic understandings of saintliness, including a resurrection of Rahner's “anonymous Christians.” In addition, the author balances this with Protestant reflections on the “communion of saints” by Bonhoeffer and Tillich, with the inevitable references and nod to Luther, of course. It is, however, this expansive exploration that loses a tightly knit cohesiveness. While Harmakaptura does provide explanation and justifications for including the voices of various theologians throughout, this is—in the end—a constructive endeavor that leads to a foredrawn conclusion. One can imagine, for example, if there was a comparison of John Calvin with Muhammad Ibn ’Abd al-Wahhabi, the famous Hanbali Sunni reformist, that there would be a completely different conclusion regarding the appropriation of the concept of malāmiyya, or saintliness. These two Protestant and Sunni iconoclasts would lead us down different theological paths. But then again, it is Harmakaputra's intention all along to explore an “inclusive theology of the saints.” Ultimately, however, most interesting for this reviewer are the continual reflections on popular piety and lived religion—vox populi—to which Harmakaputra skillfully returns throughout the dissertation. Harmakaputra introduces readers to the practical implications of the relations of indigenous communities with localized saintly figures, such as the cases of Father Frans van der Lugt, the Catholic missionary and martyr in Syria, and Abdurrahman Wahid, the Indonesian former president. Both are beloved and remembered in ritualized ways by Muslims and Christians for their acts of grace (karāmāt). It is this lived reality of Christians and Muslims who share their own localized “friends of God” that ultimately grounds the theological reflection. In this way, the study reflects other studies on the sociology of saint recognition in books like Françoise Meltzer and Jaś Elsner's Saints: Faith without Borders (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011) and Angie Heo's The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Mediation in Egypt (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018), and even Peter Brown's still classic historical study, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), all of whom Harmakaputra notes in a footnote, p. 5. It is this interreligious practice of local communities who recognize and ritualize the presence of God's grace through the memory of the exemplary if not hagiographic lives of localized saints that crosses the religious boundaries of formalized doctrine and proscribed belief. Having myself witnessed the request of a young Egyptian Muslim couple for a Coptic priest to bless their newborn child in a church recognized as a holy place where ‘Isa and Mariam (Jesus and Mary) stayed on their sojourn in Egypt, in the end it is the vox populi that provides opportunities to experience an “inclusive Christian theology of the saints.”

Brill · Citation · Library science · Sociology · Theology · Computer Science · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies