Page 6 - Moravian Messenger March 2019

Is the Qur'an Divine Revelation?
A Perspective from John Amos Comenius
With over 100 published titles to his name, John Amos Comenius was one of the more prolific authors of the seventeenth century. For example, his major publication on teaching a new language, Janua Linguarum Reserata (Gateway to Languages Unlocked), had over one hundred editions and was widely adopted in schools throughout Europe. His contribution in the field of educational philosophy is particularly noteworthy but his contribution to interfaith dialogue has only recently been discovered. iHe was born in Nivnice, Moravia, on 28 March 1592, orphaned at the age twelve and lost his extensive inheritance through the Bocskai invasion from Hungary. These factors may have influenced the unity-seeking approach for which he is renowned.
After his early education Comenius undertook preparation for the ordained ministry in Germany, which included a brief stay at Heidelberg. He began his pastoral work in the Moravian Church at the commencement of the Thirty Years War and soon realised that a new initiative was needed for the reformation of the era in which he was living. From 1616 onwards Comenius became involved in the economic and social crises that devastated his country. His approach to the crises was to raise Christian awareness to the problems and to propose solutions that gave priority to ensuring unity in the nation. iiIt was in his exposition on issues of unity in the Christian Church and the world community that he addressed issues relating to Islam.
His fundamental view was that if there is unity in God's creation, then it was imperative that Christians dialogue with others who have different claims about divine revelation. He said it would be foolish of us to dismiss beforehand any claim to revelation without first assessing it according to agreed criteria. Christians who believe divine revelation is confined to what is given in Jesus and expressed in the Bible, struggle with how to assess the claims to divine revelation that followers of Islam make. In this article we will look at the criteria Comenius developed to assessing claims to revelation which, for example, Muslims make about the Qur'an.
Revelation without Discrimination
An important issue for Christians today, as indeed it was for Comenius, is whether they can regard the Qur'an as revelation from God, in the same sense in which the texts of Bible are received as revealed. Coming to terms with the issue of revelation (what Muslims refer to as wahy) is particularly significant because despite decades of Christian-Muslim dialogue, the central issue of the acceptance by Christianity and Islam of each other as authentic revelations has not been settled.
Although Comenius regarded the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and all that flows for that as being pre-eminentiii he could not dismiss the claims of others before considering them. He argued that the revealed nature of the Qur'an should be looked at in terms of how God speaks to the human community. ivComenius cautions anyone to dare to reject any one of these books as a hoax.v For him, revelation is God's handiwork and it
would be perilous for anyone to wish to stand in God's way. For someone to immediately reject the claim that others have a revelation in a book from God, though different from our own, is to run the risk of refusing to listen to the voice of God. He said:
[Refusing to listen to what God is believed by others to have said] imposes blindness upon God. In other words, he imagines God as a blind, deaf, and dumb idol or a cruel tyrant who perhaps watches our downfall and destruction with a smile of indifference and certainly does not intervene as He might. Since no one could wish for such an absurd God, the idea would be unthinkable, and when one hears that books are being circulated in God's name, one would wish them to be truly divine so that we may listen to God. This is the first point on which we must agree, that some books must exist in which the voice of God himself is recorded, no matter how far we have to go to find them.vi
It is for this reason that he gives all books claiming the status of a divine message from God the benefit of the doubt. However, since sacred scripture is the voice of God to human beings, and since there were several books claiming divine status, infallible criteria must be established to ensure against deception. He said, “we must first and foremost agree upon criteria or signs which may enable the divine books to be certainly and infallibly distinguished from others.”vii
In making the call for these criteria, Comenius steps beyond the polemic of his day and addressed himself to the wider interfaith context that we are facing today. However, one can see a tension in Comenius' attitude to books of possible divine origin. On the one hand, he wanted to guard against bestowing on some questionable book the honour that is due to God's word. On the other hand, however, he believed that we were to live in fear and trembling and be cautious about making pronouncements about any book that is believed by anyone to represent the voice of God. This tension, though, was unavoidable because he fundamentally believed that God reveals himself to all human beings and that everyone, by virtue of his/her make-up, is able to receive God's revelation.
Harmony is Revelation
In addition to the belief that God speaks to the individual, Comenius also believed that everyone, in all nations of the world, not only has a desire for truth but also has the capacity for finding it. In other words, the human being is able to receive and understand the revealed will of God. His argument for revelation without discrimination can be summarised as follows:
(1) In addition to revelation in the human mind and the world of nature, God has given us important information and warnings for our salvation in sacred scripture.
(2) If words of warnings (i.e. divine books) are forthcoming, other than have been received in the Christian sacred
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