What’s Wrong with the World

I'm no Islamic scholar, but it seems to me from reading the shelf of books on Islam in my library that from its beginnings Islam was an attempt to literally rewrite history. Mohammed didn't have a fundamental problem with what he saw as "the religion of the book", which he understood only partially but perhaps better than some of his biographers imply. What he had a problem with was that Arabs weren't the chosen people in that story of salvation history.

As with a lot of topics you can learn a great deal by reading people who are sympathetic to Islam, not just the polemicists against. It was from Karen Armstrong of all people that I first learned that Islam sees the recitation of the Koran during the Salat ritual as stepping into the Real Presence of Allah: as a knockoff of the Christian Eucharist, with the recitation of text replacing transubstantiation, with hearing and submitting to the Divine Presence as replacement of literally eating and drinking the Divine Presence. Islamic rituals first involved facing Jeruslam; only later did the practice change to facing Mecca.

I have a hypothesis, unpopular with some of my less sacramental protestant friends, that this is the origin of the Christian form of sola scriptura: that Geoffry Chaucer brought the idea of sacred-text-as-sacrament back to his presumed friend John Wyclif from the Moors. (Chaucer apparently acted as some sort of secretary to Wyclif's patron John of Gaunt). Certainly Martin Luther heaped praise upon the Turks [corrected -- Z], sponsoring a translation of the Koran and writing various praises of Moslem practice as contrasted to contemporary Christian practice. While his motives were doubtless polemical, it is intersting how in a war of ideas polemics can turn into principles.

Whatever one thinks of my personal interpretations and hypotheses on particular matters, the Jihad at bottom is from its very inception a war against the truth: it entails first lying about and then overwriting and obliterating Judeo-Christian history.

The eradication of historical memory and its traces is an atrocity, a crime against (some portion of) humanity. Though it does not surprise me, given the Islamic conviction that the historical elements (and this, not exclusively) of all religions/cultures other than Islam are deliberate fabrications intended to divert man from the true path. As they perceive the matter, then, they are eradicating the memory/evidence of a lie. This, at a minimum, would be the justification at the deepest theological level. This is an obscurantism more thoroughgoing than anything in even the most hidebound Protestant fundamentalism - Hey! All you need is the Koran! - but, unlike the former, one that tends to come with guns and bombs.

Here's a link I've been meaning to make more widely known:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzYwMDNjZDRiMTRkODUyMTQ1ZWYwMjA4OWI3NjYwMTM=

Bat Yeor, in reviewing a book on the subject, talks about the Muslim revision of Jewish and Christian biblical history. People who think it's so sweet that Jesus is considered a prophet by Islam might want to think again. The basic idea is to rewrite and co-opt the Christian and Jewish scriptures to make them manifestations of the Muslim God.

The strongest resemblances seem to be between Islam and Judaism, including of course the kosher rules. (Jews, however, do not teach their children to trash the school classroom when pigs are discussed in a unit on farm living. This did happen with a bunch of Muslim fourth graders in...Norway or Sweden or one of those countries.) And the anti-Semitism is enormously strong in Islam. An inherited hatred, one might almost say.

As to the theory about Chaucer, I'd tend to think Chaucer himself had too much of a sense of humor to get involved in any such heavy theological changes. I didn't know that about Luther, though, and am sorry to hear it.

As to the theory about Chaucer, I'd tend to think Chaucer himself had too much of a sense of humor to get involved in any such heavy theological changes.

Well, I wasn't trying to shoot Wyclif's messenger; I was just pointing out who he was.

Zippy, I'm just gratified to learn that I'm not the only one out there who believes that Sola Scriptura originated with those sympathetic, for whatever reasons, to Islamic practice.

And as for the resentment that fueled the imaginations of Mahomet (love the archaic spelling!), well, imagine what a Nietzsche could have done with them, had he not had such a low estimate of Christianity.

I'm gathering this is pure speculation about Wycliffe and sola scriptura? Or did Wycliffe praise this aspect of Islam or something?

I'm gathering this is pure speculation about Wycliffe and sola scriptura?

It is thin and circumstantial: if I had a smoking gun then this would be more than a speculative hypothesis. We know that Wyclif referenced the partial translation of the Koran by Peter of Cluny, and that he makes (according to e.g. Herbert B. Workman's John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church) frequent references to Mohammed and the Islamic conquests, and to Mohammed's "forgeries". There is little doubt in my own mind that the Reformer's objections to Islam were about content, not about posture toward sacred texts as such, where both the Moslems and the Protestants are like each other and unlike the Papists.

Wyclif's interests seem frankly political for the most part, with theology in an instrumental role. Interestingly enough I agree with a great many of the political positions he takes. Where he goes wrong I think is in attempting to enlist theology in the manner that he does.

Luther is another matter. I have a quote of Luther's buried somewhere where he compares the Turks favorably against Christ Himself.

"There is little doubt in my own mind that the Reformer's objections to Islam were about content, not about posture toward sacred texts as such, where both the Moslems and the Protestants are like each other and unlike the Papists."

There's probably a lot of truth in that, just considering Protestantism from its positions today. But my own guess would still be that sola scriptura was an idea the reformers came up with on their own. For that matter, I would endorse a carefully qualified and modified version of it myself, but that's probably a topic for another day. (I wish I could remember the way my friend Eric put it--something like "contingent sola scriptura" or "a posteriori sola scriptura," some phrase like that, which I liked.)

Zippy wrote: "It was from Karen Armstrong of all people that I first learned that Islam sees the recitation of the Koran during the Salat ritual as stepping into the Real Presence of Allah: as a knockoff of the Christian Eucharist, with the recitation of text replacing transubstantiation, with hearing and submitting to the Divine Presence as replacement of literally eating and drinking the Divine Presence."

The two could be described in comparable ways, but I think this is more a function of the emergence of the Sunni, anti-Mutazila view that the Qur'an is the "uncreated Word" rather than a direct derivation from Eucharistic theology and practice. My guess would be that a recitation of the Qur'an (which can itself be translated as recitation) would also have a strong element of symbolic or ritual re-enactment of what was understood as the original revelation(s). As I have seen it put in different books on Islamic theology, this view places the Qur'an in virtually the same relationship with God as Christians believe Christ to be with the Father.

There might be points of similarity with respect to "simplicity" of worship and emphasis on scripture that could have attracted late medieval dissenters and early Reformers to certain aspects of Islam. However, I think we would also have to understand Luther's refusal to endorse a crusade against the Turks in the light of his rejection of indulgences and his rejection of many of the established sacraments, which would necessarily entail skepticism about crusading indulgences and the entire idea of war as an act of penance. I suppose some incidental influence from the Islamic world cannot be entirely ruled out, but I would have to argue that Lollards, Hussites and early Reformers are different parts of a reaction against very high church liturgical practices, scholastic method, devotional cults and feasts, as well as expressing some of the same ideas as the conciliarists in their challenges to papal authority. Those challenges, of course, became acute in the 15th century.

Once some learned churchmen ceased to believe that these things were necessary and efficacious, the push to "get back" to what they imagined was Apostolic "simplicity" was tremendous. It is worth noting, as MacCullough does in his history of the Reformation, that northern Europe was a place where the teaching of Purgatory, for instance, was tremendously important. This is one of those counterintuitive points that contradicts the impression that northern Europe was somehow groaning under an alien and oppressive system that it was just waiting to cast off. Incidentally, English and German nationalists like that version better, but it forces us to ignore that the practices and institutions that came under such sharp critique during the English and German Reformations were, if anything, perhaps even more popular and more meaningful to northern Europeans than to their southern brethren. MacCullough writes: "So the difference between attitudes to salvation in northern and southern Europe may explain why Luther's first attacks had so much more effect in the north than in the south. He was telling northern Europeans that some of the devotions which most deeply satisfied them, and convinced them that they were investing in an easier passage to salvation, were nothing more than clerical confidence tricks. This message was of much less interest of relevance in the Mediterranean lands, which had not paid so much attention to the Purgatory industry." (p.15) It was only when Reformed theologians began arguing that many of these practices were useless for salvation that these regions abandoned them and turned to what seemed to be the only remaining source of reliable authority in Scripture. The embrace of sola scriptura was, in this sense, a consequence of changing attitudes towards liturgical and sacramental life as much as it was the cause of the rebellion. The emphasis on scriptural text had also become all the more important in the later middle ages as more and more churches had regular preaching about Scripture.

(I wish I could remember the way my friend Eric put it--something like "contingent sola scriptura" or "a posteriori sola scriptura," some phrase like that, which I liked.)

Material versus formal sufficiency perhaps? Even we papists are willing to play along with material sufficiency, I am led to understand, but I don't know all the standard dance moves in contemporary Catholic-to-Protestant apologetics so I'd probably get voted off the island if I tried to reproduce them here.

(My cynical take is this: formal sufficiency means "whatever you must know to be saved can be deduced from this text under some magisterium- and tradition-independent hermeneutic". Material sufficiency means "whatever is supposed to be in the Canon, is in the Canon".) =8^]

Thank you Daniel, I was hoping you might chime in with your specific background and knowledge on the subject.

Thanks, Daniel. That far more knowledgeable explanation rather confirms my fairly instinctive idea that primitivist movements of reform come up from time to time and don't need to get their ideas from a different religion. I know some people personally who I suspect would be entirely capable of inventing the notion of sola scriptura off their own bat--reinventing the wheel, as it were--just as a part of an overall primitivist yen to "get back" to something "purer."

But, I should add, not only do they not use guns and bombs, they also don't bulldoze archeological sites.

The whole subject of where ideas come from is interesting and far from uncontroversial, and certainly Christianity has had its own iconoclastic and violent stages. (I don't for a moment suggest that the reformation, peasant revolt, wars of religion, etc. would have occurred absent the corruptions in the Roman Church. It is absolutely something that the Roman Church in many ways brought upon itself, just as the current dhimmitization of Europe is self-inflicted; not in the sense that Europe is literally becoming Islamic through conversion of individual Europeans, most of whom are not serious enough as individuals to take that sort of step, but in the sense that the Islamicization of Europe would not be proceeding apace without European complicity through its own failures).

When it comes to Wyclif I don't know of any direct quotes where he suggests that Christians should emulate Islam in practices and approach to doctrine (though not the content of doctrine). It is interesting that the reformation arose concidentally to the reformers learning details about Islam. But coincidence doesn't mean much in itself, and Daniel's understanding is without any question more fact-dense than my own.

When it comes to seeing Islam as preferable to Papism, Luther can speak for himself:

"From this book, accordingly, we see that the religion of the Turks or Muhammad is far more splendid in ceremonies -- and, I might almost say, in customs -- than ours, even including that of the religious or all the clerics. The modesty and simplicity of their food, clothing, dwellings, and everything else, as well as the fasts, prayers, and common gatherings of the people that this book reveals are nowhere seen among us -- or rather it is impossible for our people to be persuaded to them. Furthermore, which of our monks, be it a Carthusian (they who wish to appear the best) or a Benedictine, is not put to shame by the miraculous and wondrous abstinence and discipline among their religious? Our religious are mere shadows when compared to them, and our people clearly profane when compared to theirs. Not even true Christians, not Christ himself, not the apostles or prophets ever exhibited so great a display. This is the reason why many persons so easily depart from faith in Christ for Muhammadanism and adhere to it so tenaciously. I sincerely believe that no papist, monk, or cleric or their equal in faith would be able to remain in their faith if they should spend three days among the Turks. Here I mean those who seriously desire the faith of the pope and who are the best among them." -- Martin Luther, preface to the Tract on the Religions and Customs of the Turks, published in 1530.

As I said above I expect that Luther's purposes were polemical; but it is some polemic that can draw a comparison to Islam and find "even Christ himself" lacking. (N.b. it might be interesting to see alternate English translations of this passage, if any exist.).

And it is difficult to avoid a comparison between this and the modern-day liberal surrender to Islam, in its hatred of all things connected to Western Christendom, under the rubric of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

That Luther quotation is really appalling.

I'm glad Daniel mentioned that "uncreated" word notion in Islam, which seems to pretty clearly set Muslims well beyond anything ever imagined by any sola scriptura Protestant. Even these latter have a very robust understanding of the human -- inspired by the Holy Spirit, of course -- authorship of Scripture. Sola scriptura does not denigrate translation the way orthodox Islam does with the Koran. This for the simple enough reason that the actual grammatical structure, linguistic idiom, etc., of the Bible is not fancied to have divine origin in the precise manner it was written. This notion in Islam seems to open up all manner of problems, especially in light of what we have learned about language.

The Luther quotation is _so_ bad that I really do not believe any translation could make any difference, as long as the one given is reasonably accurate, which we can assume. I haven't seen much to equal it. A polemical purpose is no excuse. One assumes he meant what he said, regardless.

I agree with Paul that Protestant views on Scripture are not the same as a notion of the Bible as "uncreated."

I will try to resist descending too far into tu quoque. It does seem to me nowadays that the more "dhimmi" comments from Christians are coming from Catholics. Perhaps I've just been unlucky in what I've seen, though. In England (to give but one example) there is some priest who is so taken with the positive attitude of (some) Muslims towards the Virgin Mary that he's built an interfaith "Mariam house" on church property for...I don't know what sort of activities. Interfaith Muslim/Christian dialogue of some sort. But it's pretty obvious they aren't missionary activities in any normal sense. And I have read an appalling story of an Italian priest who told a Muslim woman who came to him wanting to convert that she should go back and be a good Muslim! There is nearly a horror among some Catholics of anything like straightforward kerygmatic missions work or proclamations. Tiny Muskens and "let's all call God Allah" is just a particularly egregious example.

I have my own theory as to the origins of this, and it's partly Vatican II but not entirely. Briefly, I think that there has been too little willingness all along to acknowledge the importance of something like Apostles' Creed-level Christianity or "mere Christianity." The older, hellfire version of this is that everyone who is not in communion with Rome is at least very probably going to hell. The new, nice-guy version is that, hey, now we believe that even if you're not in communion with Rome you could be going to heaven, so Protestants and Muslims are more or less in the same boat--just missing the "fullness of the truth" in different ways. Naturally, this leads to downplaying the problems with Islam. The common factor here is pretty clear. And unfortunately I've run into these attitudes in people who ought to know better.

Purely anecdotal, but when I was still doing Catholic forums and a muslim turned up, I noticed that the debate style was very much identical to the debates with fundamentalist Christian's. The thought of a living, authoritative Church simply didn't register. It got quite revealing when a fundamentalist would have a go at the muslim--a battle of the proof texts with lots of triumphalist ideological bluster.

But it's possible to be a non-Catholic, even a "fundamentalist" of sorts, and to be an evidentialist. Certainly if one is what is known as a presuppositionalist one's version of apologetics will be uncannily similar to that of Muslims. In other words, no real apologetics at all. I believe John Warwick Montgomery has made this point explicitly. But evidentialism has a long and illustrious Protestant history.

Here's an interesting blog featuring an excerpt from Luther's writings in which he says, among other things: "Thus the Turk is, in truth, nothing but a murderer or highwayman, as his deeds show before men’s eyes," which, in the post's author's words "only served to confirm to him that their religion was in fact demonic, a worldly manifestation of pure evil." Of the Koran he (Luther) says: "When I have time, I must put it into German so that every man may see what a foul and shameful book it is...From this anyone can easily observe that Mohammed is a destroyer of our Lord Christ and His kingdom, and if anyone denies concerning Christ, that He is God’s Son and has died for us, and still lives and reigns at the right hand of God, what has he left of Christ? Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Baptism, the Sacrament, Gospel, Faith and all Christian doctrine and life are gone, and there is left, instead of Christ, nothing more than Mohammed with his doctrine of works and especially of the sword. That is the chief doctrine of the Turkish faith in which all abominations, all errors, all devils are piled up in one heap." (I recommend the whole post.)

On this page, a Lutheran one, we find out that Luther believed the Muslims were Gog and the Papacy Magog.

Sometimes Luther was right. Other times he leaves me Agog.

Paul:
I'm glad Daniel mentioned that "uncreated" word notion in Islam, which seems to pretty clearly set Muslims well beyond anything ever imagined by any sola scriptura Protestant.

Karen Armstrong uses the same terminology in describing Salat. If sola scriptura protestantism abandons sacramentalism for a logocentric spirituality, Islam goes a step further and literally replaces sacramentalism with logocentrism. It is in the nature of the Jihad to overwrite reality with a new reality. (That this is attributable to deliberate human agency on the part of some specific conspirators is very doubtful, I think. But it isn't any less a true feature of Islam for that.)

Lydia:
It does seem to me nowadays that the more "dhimmi" comments from Christians are coming from Catholics.

More then a fair share, I agree. We are all Lutherans now, after a fashion.

Bill:
On this page, a Lutheran one, we find out that Luther believed the Muslims were Gog and the Papacy Magog.

That sounds about right. To Luther, as I understand it, the Moslems were infidels because they had the wrong Scripture, and the Papists were infidels because they treated the Magisterium as having the authority of Scripture. But the Moslems were far more pious, far less corrupt, better people-as-people with better culture and practice as culture and practice. The self-hating Westerner, with a love-hate relationship to Islam as the Other, has a long pedigree.

IIRC Mohammed himself first suspected that the revelations he was receiving were coming from a demon. As a general rule of human experience, sometimes first impressions are right.

Mohammed himself first suspected that the revelations he was receiving were coming from a demon.

Why doesn't this get more play in the press (as in CNN's recent God's Warriors), especially the religious press, and in the Muslim world at large...aside from the fact that bringing it up could get you killed?

It could be wrong. I don't recall where I read it, thus the IIRC.

Here is a reference (not online unfortunately) from my personal library, where Mohammed suspects that he might be acting as a tool of the devil and contemplates suicide, FWIW:

"Notwithstanding such consolations, [Mahomet's] distress was sometimes insupportable, and he repeatedly meditated suicide. What if all this were but the simulation of divine impulse, the stirrings of the Evil one and his emissaries? Was any crime so awful as to forge the name and authority of God? Rather than expose himself to a risk so terrible, he would anticipate the possibility by casting himself headlong from one of these wild cliffs. An invisible influence appeared to hold him back. Was it a divine influence? [sic] or might not even this be also diabolical?"

From Life of Mahomet from Original Sources by William Muir, page 45, New Edition [Abridged from the first edition in four volumes], published 1878.

Well, to be fair to Luther, those other quotes don't sound very dhimmi. So I guess it was really "exalt the Muslims to bash the Catholics." Sheesh.

As for "logocentric" Protestantism, I hafta say that in my lexicon "logocentric" is always a compliment. But I take the point. I would stress, though, that devout Baptists and other evangelical Protestants are (some of them) at least as likely to oppose personal pietism to sacraments as to oppose Scripture to sacraments. So, for example, I was trying to explain my view of the Real Presence to a dear friend of an Assemblies of God background. I said to him, "In my view, Christ meets us there, when we partake of the bread and wine." And he said, "Well, on our view, he does that every day, right here." He didn't mean principally Bible reading, as I took him. He meant in prayer and personal devotion.

I really need to read that Muir book. Hard to find, though. I'll probably have to take out a subscription at the Emory library again . . .

I think it was Chesterton who declared that one thing he really held in bitterness against the Reformers was that they launched their revolt at the almost the peak of Turkish menace, when the Crescent had never seemed so triumphant. Now Chesterton was of course given to some unfair polemics against the Reformers, but this one always hit home for me.

Paul, it's on Google books in the form of "full view." This means you can download it for free. It's a scan. Go to google book search and look for that title and author and it comes right up.

Well I'll be durned: there it is. Thank you, Lydia. The notion of reading a book of such length in online form staggers me, and is probably beyond my powers, but as tool of reference this is great.

Of course, the hypothesis that dissident scholars and intellectuals, bringing back from the Moors some of the doctrinal peculiarities of Islam, might have influenced the eventual formulation of sola scriptura is not a theory of origination so much as speculation about an additional - if remote - contribution. History is not necessarily a field in which Occam's razor is a preferred analytical tool; causality is complex, fluid, multiform.

Was it entirely coincidental that nominalistic doctrines flourished in the West in the wake of the reception of (some of) the works of Aristotle (and others) from Arabic sources, the denouement of a period of intense controversy over epistemology, method, the relationship of philosophy and revelation, the doctrine and nature of God, theories of language, and so forth - and that those nominalistic doctrines themselves, as I believe Benedict XVI himself has observed, bear no slight resemblance to the corresponding Islamic doctrines? Was it, furthermore, entirely coincidental that Protestantism found congenial this nominalistic milieu, that it at once contributed to the emergence and development of Protestant theological distinctives, and enabled Protestant intellectuals to articulate a theoretical basis for opposition to the Roman Church and her sacramentalism, which opposition had many causes? Was it entirely coincidental that the fullest elaboration of this tendency within Protestantism - Calvinism - so exaggerated its conception of the will of God, its logocentrism, and its antisacramentalism, that scholars have ever since perceived in it a grim resemblance to the teaching of Mahomet?

These resemblances and philosophical overlaps could be nothing more than a series of extraordinary coincidences; many scholars locate the impetus for the development of nominalistic doctrines in a renewed - and exaggerated, of course - appreciation of the singularity and uniqueness of the individual, itself a civilizational movement with multiple sources. However, to suggest that tendencies immanent to Western civilization could have originated such notions, of themselves, is not to suggest that they did so. History is not logic; the Reformation was a perfect storm of historical confluences, not a simple causal chain.

Still less is this to suggest that Protestantism is Islam for Christians, a transcription of Mahometan doctrine into a new idiom. Even the more nominalistic and voluntaristic - could we just say, "positivist"? - Protestantisms, such as Calvinism, possess an abundance of theological resources which keep them orbiting within a Christian solar system. No Christian doctrine of God, however voluntaristic, given the mystery of the Incarnation, among other things, ever could duplicate the loveless severity of the Mahometan doctrine of God. No Christian doctrine of Scripture, language, and knowledge ever could replicate, given the doctrine and person of the Word, the Mahometan conception of the Qu'ran; in Christianity, you're pretty much stuck with analogy, however much you might fight it; the notion of uncreated language is never going to fly.

In the end, though, the resemblances of nominalism, and nominalist elements of Protestantism (though happily, many Protestants avoid and eschew them, as for example, in rejecting antisacramentalism) to Islamic doctrine allow one some room for speculation, though the questions may well be unanswerable.

Certainly if one is what is known as a presuppositionalist one's version of apologetics will be uncannily similar to that of Muslims.

Yes, though some presuppositionalists attempt a sort of transcendental, Kantian, conditions-of-possibility sort of demonstration; often, however, this assumes an absurd aspect, as in some presentations I have heard: predication, they might argue, is logically impossible save upon the presupposition of the Christian doctrine of God, and not just any old Christian doctrine, but Calvin's. Don't inquire as to how this is supposed to work, because it doesn't. The assumption seems to be that one either opts for Calvin's doctrine or accepts a 'particle storm' metaphysic, or an ontology of randomness and chaos. It might confound someone who still clings to his old edition of Language, Truth, and Logic, but that is about the limit of its efficacy.

Just out of curiosity, Lydia, what significance does that Assemblies of God type fellow then attribute to the scriptural passages that clearly indicate that the eating of bread and wine is a commandment to kept as part of one's "personal devotion?"

Zippy, I wasn't doubting you. I was being a little facetious or ironic or something along those lines. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't.

Well would you look at that. Here is the very page itself.

Bill, the problem was that I was doubting me, as in I had a "gee, I know I read that somewhere, but I hope it wasn't just in a blog comment somewhere" moment.

Funny that the "Mohammed almost killed himself because he thought he was being deceived by the Devil" thing doesn't see the light of day on our oh so informative and unbiased cable TV.

History is not necessarily a field in which Occam's razor is a preferred analytical tool; causality is complex, fluid, multiform.

True. Whether Wyclif's theology was or was not significantly influenced by Mohammed is a question of fact, but it isn't the sort of question of fact amenable to positive demonstration. Newton might have in fact stood on the shoulders of giants, but explicitly which giants and which shoulders with respect to which ideas isn't especially amenable to a final, settled, simple answer. Once something of particular moment happens, the vast majority of the facts simply fall off the back of the truck. It is doubtful that even Wyclif himself, if asked directly in say 1383, could have given a straightforward and accurate answer about the influence of Islam on Lollardy.

No Christian doctrine of God, however voluntaristic, given the mystery of the Incarnation, among other things, ever could duplicate the loveless severity of the Mahometan doctrine of God.

From a certain perspective Mohammedism looks like it is centered around a reaction against the scandal of the Eucharist: the scandal of pitiful men first crucifying God and then eating Him.

(And yeah, I've read that Newton's comment was supposed to be ironic, an expression of pure hubris in denying what it states; but that doesn't mean it was false in fact.)

Wow. We have some night owls around here.

From a certain perspective Mohammedism looks like it is centered around a reaction against the scandal of the Eucharist: the scandal of pitiful men first crucifying God and then eating Him.

Too right. René Girard (Violence and the Sacred, The Scapegoat, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World) speaks of "negative imitation" that loves and loathes a model/rival. One can easily trace the ways that Islam was nearly nothing but founded in doubling rivalry with Judaism and Christianity from the outset.

Well, gee, while I was peacefully asleep, everybody's been talkin'. Good to see all the action, chaps.

Paul, I wouldn't want to read a whole book on the computer, either, but I guess you can get used to sitting on a couch with a laptop on your knees, and if you download the whole thing to your own computer, I think it goes faster.

Zippy made the comment that Islam is trying to replace one reality with another but that this needn't be due to anyone's conspiring. I want to point out that there must be _some_ degree of cognitive dissonance when we're talking about marble pillars, good-sized pieces of 2000-year-old wall, lamps, and coins. These are, after all, physical facts. I suppose if you go in with a bulldozer you don't have to look at physical facts too closely, but there's something particularly scary-weird about groups of people who deny hard data when it's right under their bulldozer treads. It's to my mind a good deal more weird as a sheerly human matter than denying theological truth, though perhaps not entirely unrelated.

As to whether Wyclif could have told you anything objective about Islam's influence on his own ideas, I imagine he could have told one a good deal. Sure, sometimes influences are hard to figure out even in oneself, but if he'd always hated Islam passionately and could remember distinctly the etiology of his own notions about Scripture (as one sometimes can), as well as pointing out dissimilarities to the Islamic view, that could help. I was once accused of plagiarizing a brief satire piece that was published on Cybercast News Service, and my defense was 1) that I could remember very clearly when I had thought of the idea, 2) that I had as far as I knew never seen the piece I was supposed to have plagiarized, and 3) that the idea was the kind of thing that several people might easily have thought of independently. These sorts of arguments are very relevant and often can give us a good handle on issues of influence in the history of ideas, as well. But of course we can't talk to Wyclif, now.

Bill, my Assemblies of God friend is a memorialist. This makes it all pretty easy. Yes, we're supposed to eat bread and drink wine as a Christian ceremony, but it's just a memorial. If he were a Baptist he'd probably have a slightly stronger ecclesiology. I imagine (though I haven't asked) that my ex-AG friend does his bread and wine memorial service at home, whereas Baptists are insistent that you have to go to church for it.

Maximos, you're right about presuppositionalism and the "transcendant" aspect. The "condition for the possibility" phrase is often on the lips of a true Van Tillian, and sometimes does get pretty amusing. The successor to presuppositionalism, of course, is Reformed epistemology, which is far more sophisticated. Alvin Plantinga, after all, is a real philosopher, a pro. And the externalism he is getting hold of is very much current in the secular philosophical world and practically invites a Christian use thereof, as internalist Richard Fumerton pointed out with great amusement in an article in Phil. Christi. Moreover, you can be both an externalist and an evidentialist, and it's always been a bit surprising to me that Plantinga isn't. You could take it that we have good reason to believe in Christianity by way of our ordinary "faculties" that go into other historical investigations. Still, I'm more than a little tempted to point out that Plantinga's resolutely anti-evidentialist approach in Warranted Christian Belief _could_ probably be analogized to Islamic apologetics, in an updated version of Montgomery's critique of presuppositionalism.

...but there's something particularly scary-weird about groups of people who deny hard data when it's right under their bulldozer treads.

I agree. This is the deny-destroy-and-overwrite-reality aspect of the Jihad.

As to whether Wyclif could have told you anything objective about Islam's influence on his own ideas, I imagine he could have told one a good deal. Sure, sometimes influences are hard to figure out even in oneself, but if he'd always hated Islam passionately and could remember distinctly the etiology of his own notions about Scripture (as one sometimes can), as well as pointing out dissimilarities to the Islamic view, that could help.

A creative person will almost never admit, even to himself, when he is swiping ideas from something he hates. That is the relevance of the Newton "shoulders of giants" comment. Newton's comment to Hooke was sarcastic: he didn't really mean it. Hooke and Newton (a very arrogant man and very reluctant to attribute any good ideas to others) were rivals, and Hooke was rather short in stature. But that context is generally lost today when that quote gets used.

I've not had the opportunity to paw through a bunch of Wyclif's original letters, etc. Perhaps someday I will, though it isn't the sort of project that motivates me much. But I don't know why we should resist the idea that some of his theological ideas, very similar to Islamic ones, may have come in part from Islam.

Well, ten years or so have elapsed since I read anything in Reformed epistemology, and Warrant and Proper Function particularly, so the lineaments of the philosophy are hardly in the forefront of my mind. But it seems a curious notion of proper function that does not accommodate actual historical evidences: what could it mean to state that one's faculties were functioning correctly in arriving at a belief, if that belief contradicted demonstrable facts. Eg., a Muslim might have no reason to believe that his cognitive faculties were malfunctioning when he came to believe that X occurred in Jerusalem, but wither proper function if the evidence that X did not occur is literally under the treads?

It is astonishing, I suppose, that considerations of this sort can lead one to the conclusion that the time spent reading 600 pages of Plantinga was, perhaps, not well spent.

Plantinga's claim in WCB is that the historical evidence for Christianity is poor. He has an elaborate and probabilistically incorrect reason for thinking this. Hence, he thinks, we need instead to rely on a different faculty--the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit--for the specific historical belief that Jesus died and rose again. We can (I presume he wd. say) rely on ordinary faculties to conclude that Napoleon or Caesar did this or that.

I s'pose he wd. say that the Muslim who finds out about the archeological evidence has a "defeater" for his normal tendency to trust his Palestinian teachers on questions of Jewish history.

Zippy, as for why I'm hesitant to think that Wyclif got an idea of sola from Islam--my major reason is that it seems to me sola, in many different versions, is so easy to think up on one's own. So the likelihood on "no influence from Islam" is quite high, and the independent evidence for "influence from Islam" pretty well non-existent, so why believe the conjecture?

...my major reason is that it seems to me sola, in many different versions, is so easy to think up on one's own.

From our present perspective, I suppose. About eight hundred years elapsed from the first major adoption of it to the second, so it isn't clear that it was as obvious to the medievals; and that second adoption took place just as the religion which gave rise to the first came into serious intellectual contact with reformers looking for a theological justification for their political views. It is a circumstantial story to be sure, at least as far as Wyclif personally is concerned, but hardly implausible.

I suppose that Plantinga would have to say that a Muslim in those circumstances would have a 'defeater' for his propensity to trust his Palestinian propagandists. What I ought to have said was that warrant is a rather weak form of epistemic 'obligation'; a Muslim who has never been confronted with the disconfirming evidences may be warranted in continuing to believe in Islam, but justification is another matter altogether. Elaborate defenses of the weaker condition seem to be, well, wastes of time and intellect. Warranted Christian Belief, from your characterization, strikes me as profoundly mistaken; that reliance upon the "internal witness of the Holy Spirit" entails no end of mischief: "Don't you just feel that it's true?" is an "epistemology" I've observed employed by cult groups, and even by Mormons. In other words, what is the point of relying upon something any old sect could claim for itself? In any event, not having read the book in question, I've already a strong disinclination to consider it, even as a negative case study in epistemology and apologetics.

Yes, the most common version of your objection is the so-called "Great Pumpkin objection" to the notion of warrant: Since warrant is an externally-defined idea, we have no way to distinguish from the nature of the evidence between Christianity and Linus's belief in the Great Pumpkin. _If_ the Great Pumpkin exists and has designed Linus to believe in him, and if Linus's faculties are functioning properly, then he could have warrant for believing in the Great Pumpkin. Now, one possible answer from the Plantingian is that Linus is led by his devotion to have _false_ beliefs--the Great Pumpkin in fact doesn't show up in the pumpkin patch on Halloween night. One of the requirements for warrant is that the faculty in question be reliable, i.e., truth-conducive. So the Plantingian can say that Linus's beliefs can't be warranted, since they always turn out false. But the problem with this response is that you can't say for certain that in the long run the Great Pumpkin will continue not showing up. Perhaps in a few years he'll start, and in the end Linus will have more true Great Pumpkin beliefs than false ones. Also, Linus might be a statistical outlier. Maybe considering the human race as a whole, the Great Pumpkin belief-producing faculty is truth-conducive. Plantinga's response, as I recall, is that when the Great Pumpkin doesn't show up Linus has a defeater. But "defeater" is also defined in terms of design plan. So if the Great Pumpkin has designed Linus to be stubborn, then he actually _doesn't_ have a defeater.

Isn't epistemology fun? :-) We even got to have "Great Pumpkin" in the index to our otherwise highly dull and overpriced (without our consent) book. Or maybe it was "Pumpkin, Great."

Yes, that summation certainly takes me back to the autumn term of 1996, when I was taking a course in epistemology from an evidentialist. I, being a convinced Plantingian at the time, offered all of the standard rejoinders sketched here, right down to the design plan objection: we're just designed to manifest faith in the absence of evidence, just as our revelation teaches us.

Well, whether articulated by an overzealous undergrad, or a professional philosopher, it still looks like begging the question.

I am so ashamed. :)

In any event, Routledge really did overprice your book! Did they imagine that only librarians and specialists would be ordering copies? They do have a tendency to do that, though: Routledge, Blackwells, Oxford, and Cambridge all have an (inconsistent or intermittent) policy to price even paperbound volumes of certain philosophical works way out there in the stratosphere.

Concerning the origins of sola scriptura, tow points:
First, intellectual life at the time had getting back to the original sources as a dominant theme. Everybody knew that the texts had to be purified from the corruptions introduced in intervening history. It seems to me rather more likely that Luther was influenced by the humanists' trying to get back to the original classical texts.
On a less abstract plane, the other reason sola scriptura could really take off was that printing technology made the idea of everyone reading scripture on their own a lot more plausible than it had been earlier.

The idea though isn't that Wyclif, Chaucer, and John of Gaunt sat in a smoke-filled room and said "gee, we need a new doctrine to provide theological support for our political programme, and the way the Mohammedans approach their written canon could be very helpful here." History, as Maximos said so pithily, isn't logic.

For example Wyclif used the words "mawmet" and "mawmetry" - Mohammed and Mohammedism - almost exclusively to refer to idols and idolatry; this despite the fact that Mohammedism is almost defined by its iconoclasm. The proposal isn't that Wyclif or Chaucer were some sort of specific Typhoid Marys, let alone intentional Typhoid Marys. Rather it is like the claim that AIDS originated in Africa. When for eight hundred years an idea is confined to a particular civilization (one without a printing press by the way), and that idea conveniently shows up in a different civilization just as those civilizations start to actually gain some understanding of each other and at a time when that doctrine is convenient for certain political purposes, the prima facie explanation is that the second civilization got the idea from the first.

How one feels about all that depends on how one feels about Islam, sola scriptura, etc. But if history isn't logic on the one hand, it doesn't care about our feelings on the other.

I don't agree that that is the "prima facie explanation." Not by a long shot. It seems to me perfectly plausible that the Protestant notion of sola scriptura (which, as several other people have pointed out, bears only minimal resemblances to the Muslim attitude toward the Koran anyway) should have shown up on its own. When we are really talking about a communicable disease, caused by a virus, it has to be caught. Ideas don't have to be caught; they can be dreamt up independently. Happens all the time.

But suppose the idea is very closely related to other ideas that are already in common currency, such as that the great classical texts were corrupted by monks and copyists and now need to be rediscovered by going back to the originals? If intellectuals are already determined to go back to the original pure sources in one area, it's hardly surprising that the notion starts showing up elsewhere. If you can explain cultural phenomena in one civilization in terms of internal developments, it isn't clear why you'd need to posit borrowing from another civilization.

And the Muslim view of the Koran really isn't that close to sola scriptura, e.g. it is assumed that of course Muslims need expert opinion to interpret the Koran correctly, hence the massive apparatus of Muslim jurisprudence.

Of course, if sola scriptora is the appropriate lens through which to view the Sacred texts of scripture, it shouldn't really matter where the idea came from, should it?

(I mean, that's sort of what ss does with regard to the Sacred text itself... isn't it?)

Knowing Brandon, I sense a bit of irony. There's actually some non-ironic truth in the comment, whether intended or not. If some variety of the doctrine of sola scriptura is correct, it should be evaluated on its merits. The genetic fallacy is, after all, not a fallacy for nothing.

But no, that isn't what ss does with regard to Scripture itself. Do we have to go through all of that?

I don't agree that that is the "prima facie explanation." Not by a long shot.

Well, I should preface this with the following, at which Brandon hints:

If I were an ss protestant then this discussion wouldn't bother me in the least. I would just see it as beside the point. If ss is a revealed doctrine then it won't be amenable to some reductive historical understanding in terms of its origins, and any such reductive account will miss almost all of what is important. Think of trying to explain the Eucharist as an historical development: I may have to account for it, but I don't (probably) have to account for it in the same way that I account for Napolean's loss at Waterloo. I have to account for it as doctrine. There are doubtless various relations between doctrine and history, and those relations will differ depending on one's particular account of revealed doctrine. But one cannot explain love strictly by appeal to DNA without missing almost all of the point.

Not being an ss protestant, though, the historical origins of ss are of interest to me. It seems to me that once we've premised that ss is historically analyzable in the same way that (say) democracy as a political idea is analyzable, that gives us three possibilities.

1) SS was a tabula rasa invention of the reformers, with absolutely no influence on the development of the idea coming from Islam.

2) SS was a direct swipe from Islam: smoky room, Wyclif/Chaucer/JofG explicitly recognized it as the Mohammedan doctrine w.r.t. the Alcoran and decided to apply it to the Christian Canon for political purposes.

3) Somewhere in between Islam having absolutely no influence at all on the idea and SS being explicitly swiped from Islam for worldly purposes by a conspiracy.

It seems to me that (given the premise that the causality under discussion is amenable to a reductive historical understanding at all) the prima facie right answer is (3). That leaves plenty of room for dispute over how much influence, the nature of the influence, etc. But given that the subject of the origins of ss is the kind of thing amenable to historical inquiry (which one might dispute), #1 and #2 both seem highly unlikely at least on the surface. That leaves #3 as the prima facie answer.

Well, no. Craig has already pointed out other influences that have nothing to do with Islam. If there were historical origins for such ideas, they needn't be Islamic at all. This is sort of like saying that either the American founders got the idea of inalienable rights from ______ (fill in the blank with some group that had a sort of similar idea with a lot of differences, whom the founders thought of very negatively anyway, and whose ideas they would have thought of as foreign), or else it was a tabula rasa idea with _no_ prior influences.

Myself, I see no reason why it couldn't have been what you call "tabula rasa," but the false dilemma does need to be pointed out.

Also as to "being bothered" or "resisting," well...to be honest, the idea seems to me wildly implausible. I do tend to resist theories I think wildly implausible, but not because of being "bothered" by them.

There is also, it seems to me, a tendency to gloss over the very real differences, which others besides myself have pointed out here, between the two senses of being tied to a book, considering everything to come from "the book," and so forth. I think the resemblance is more superficial than anything else and that the inclination to accept a shaky historical thesis about origins may be in part a result of overestimating the actual resemblance. Conversely, then, one reason for thinking the historical thesis implausible is that one realizes the differences between the ideas and prefers not to see them brushed aside.

I think the resemblance is more superficial than anything else and that the inclination to accept a shaky historical thesis about origins may be in part a result of overestimating the actual resemblance.

Could be. I tend to see similarities and suspect commonality in historical origins in other ideas that other people believe to be utterly distinct or indeed polar opposites. E.g. I see National Socialism and Communism as being branches on the same historical tree despite the implacable enmity between them. I see Marxism as postmodern because it uproots the formal creed of liberalism from the very tradition which gave it meaning, resulting in freedom and equality under Marxism meaning the opposite of what they meant under classical liberalism in terms of private property. etc, etc. I think Newton though brilliant really did stand on the shoulders of giants, despite being an arrogant ass and attempting to accrue maximal personal credit, forever attenuating his objective merits to those of a brilliant adolescent. I think the Moslems were the first major textual positivist movement, and that eight hundred years later the Protestant Reformers became the second.

But that is just me, and this isn't the first time I've held a minority point of view. Doubtless it won't be the last.

Yes, Lydia, some mild irony was intended. St. Thomas says: never mind who said what, but to commit to memory that which is true. In this thread, it seemed to me that there was some intellectual resistance to this idea that the Reformers might have had Moorish influence. But, if you really believe in ss, then it seems that it shouldn't matter where the idea came from. Albert and Thomas "Christianized" the writings of non-Christian works Aristotle and Plato (at least, according to what I've read) by putting them in the proper context; they were viewed by some of their contemporaries as being influences by the pagan philosophers, but I don't see anything wrong with that. If God really intended the Scriptures to be read in the way that the Reformers devised, then I don't see why the non-Christian influence should be a concern. (I think it was Moses who got advice from his non-Jewish father-in-law with regard to the setting up levels of governance).

However, in my experience with sola scriptora (which was limited to a non-Denominational Protestant Campus Christian Fellowship), the Scriptures were sort of viewed as a complete package, without any concern being given to how they were collected. And I think this mindset is more prevailing in American Christianity (even Catholicism) than you seem to think; this is why the "Gnostic Gospels", or the Gospel of Thomas can have any appeal, because of the idea that the history of the Church was not guided by God, and therefore there might have been some "left out" sayings of Jesus, and there might be "more" to the early Church than we are lead to believe. (Dan Brown capitalized on this sentiment). But if you view the development of the Cannon as just part of the doctrinal development of the Church, and trust that God did not allow the Church to "get it wrong" with regard to the integral elements of the faith, then those sorts of attacks on the fabric of Christianity have no appeal.

So, I suppose that when you say sola scriptora, you are meaning a different thing than I am. But I think that my understanding is pretty close to the understanding given in Calvin's 5 whatever-they-were's.

Zippy,
The difference between a proposed relationship of Communism and Nazism on one hand, and a relationship between Protestantism and Islam on the other, is that there is great deal of evidence by which the former hypothesis can be tested, and little if any for the latter. I am no expert on this subject, or any other, but based on what has been presented here, it seems the best an proponent of the view that early Protestants received inspiration from Islam can present is supposition and speculation, the plausibility of which is largely dependent on one's preconceptions. It's pretty thin stuff, in other words. Now, this could all change tomorrow, based on the discovery of new documents which provide a "smoking gun" of sorts - in their absence, we have a whole battery of well-attested and traditional explanations for the Reformation, and this theory of Islamic influence on the proto-Reformers will continue an unpromising avenue of investigation.

But if you view the development of the Cannon...

Heh, heh. Well, the Midevil Church might have been developing cannons to use against the Turks, but the development of he canon was something different altogether.

(101 weighs to get buy you're spell chequer...)

Thanks, Cyrus!

Brandon, I probably should have been clearer. When I demurred about the claim that ss involves (something like) not caring where Scripture came from, I was referring to God, not the Church. That is to say, Protestants of course _do_ care where the Bible came from in the sense that it's important to them that it was inspired by God. So in that sense, its origin is important, because it has a much lesser degree of authority and is just a bunch of people's stories, historical pieces, and opinions, otherwise. But you're certainly right that they don't believe (nor, I should admit, do I particularly believe) that the Holy Spirit must have guided the Church in putting together the canon. (I'm more open to the idea that He was involved when they put together cannon to repel invaders. Grin.)

Again, my resistance to the theory here about Islamic influence is based on 1) the fact that it seems to me incorrect and exceedingly implausible, 2) the fact that it seems both to arise from and to encourage a mistaken view of Protestantism as far more similar in its theology than in fact it is to Islam, which is an important error and should be responded to.

But you're certainly right that they don't believe (nor, I should admit, do I particularly believe) that the Holy Spirit must have guided the Church in putting together the canon.

But then how can you be sure that the canon is complete? I.e., how do you combat the idea that the Gospel of Thomas should've been included? (Or the Book of Mormon, for that matter? Or the Epistle of the Great Pumpkin?)

Note that I haven't actually seen a copy of the Epistle of the Great Pumpkin... I do have the book "The Gospel according to Peanuts", but that particular epistle was left out.

:)

When I ask: But then how can you be sure that the canon is complete?, I am not trying to degrade the thread into an apology for sola scriptora, but rather to refer to a problem that the Muslims have with regard to the Koran. In fact, an Army reservist I know who was diffusing IED's in Iraq for a year said that different versions of the Koran publishd by different sects of Islam had various verses left out. Translation of the text isn't allowed, but omission seems to be standard practice. I haven't heard this anywhere else, so I would be interested to see if any of you know anything about it. I think that without a proper sense of how the particular inspired texts were selected, and a trust in God through out the entire process is essential to prevent such abuses. "I got it from an angel in a cave", the claim that Mohammad and John Smith both make, just doesn't quite cut it, in my book.

Oh, and:

(I'm more open to the idea that He was involved when they put together cannon to repel invaders. Grin.)

Have you read about the Battle of Leptano? I'm sure He was.

(It's sola scriptura not scriptora.)

One uses reasonable criteria of probable authorship either apostolic or by people who were near to the apostles, which is what the people (aka "the Church") did in the first place. Not that you have to re-create their work. You can treat the Fathers, etc., as having presumptive historical authority (just in the sense of probably knowing what they were talking about) without believing in special divine involvement.

This is a type of distinction often lost on fundamentalist Protestants who think that you can't have any reason to think the gospels even more or less historically reliable unless you start with the _assumption_ that they were divinely inspired. The notion of treating them for purposes of historical discussion in the first instance as historical sources never occurs to them. Similarly, I sometimes think that the notion of treating the early church and the Church Fathers as probably having some historical facts straight (e.g., about who wrote which books) without believing in a specially Holy-Spirit-guided Church with a big capital C never occurs to some Catholics.

The difference between a proposed relationship of Communism and Nazism on one hand, and a relationship between Protestantism and Islam on the other, is that there is great deal of evidence by which the former hypothesis can be tested, and little if any for the latter.

The evidence for the latter is older, to be sure, and thinner. But there isn't any doubt that Luther in particular viewed Islam as a chastising rod against the Papists, and that he specifically admired Mohammedan religious practice as againt the Papists. N.b. that (unless I missed something) the Preface is one of his first public statements on Islam. That he had to change his tone in response to public pressure isn't any more surprising than Hillary Clinton changing hers.

If sola scriptura is doctrine inspired by the Holy Spirit then reductionist historical analysis is at best moot. But if reductionist historical analysis isn't moot, and possibly even if it is, then the notion that the reformers weren't influenced in the tiniest iota by Islam on matters of praxis in general and sola scriptura in particular is highly implausible. Protestant iconoclasm was probably also influenced at least in some small degree by Islamic practice. Luther effusively praises Mohammedan religious practice in the quote I provided above; Wyclif's intellectual culture was steeped in Islam enough that the commonplace words used for "idol" and "idolatry" were "mawmet" and "mawmetry". To disbelieve that there is any connection whatsoever is to rationalize away the evidence before my eyes.

I am not laying claim to some dispositive story of cause and effect. Rather I am observing that the proposition that there was no influence or connection whatsoever is manifestly implausible.

(It's sola scriptura not scriptora.)

It's also Lepanto, not Leptano. Mea culpa; spelling never was my strong suit.

This is a type of distinction often lost on fundamentalist Protestants ....

These are the ones that I've had experience with.

Similarly, I sometimes think that the notion of treating the early church and the Church Fathers as probably having some historical facts straight (e.g., about who wrote which books) without believing in a specially Holy-Spirit-guided Church with a big capital C never occurs to some Catholics.

There are plenty of Catholics who aren't sure how doctrine is developed, or even that there are distinctions between the types of teachings of the Church. (Heck, there are plenty of Catholics who get their understanding of Catholic doctrine from Newsweek articles... and as far as they go, Ken Woodward isn't the worst journalist to be listening to). And I agree that the Church Fathers probably had historical facts straight; I read somewhere a while ago that some Scripture scholars are starting to think that Matthew might have been the first Gospel written down, and not Mark. (From what I understand, Matthew was placed first in the NT Canon because it was thought at the time to be the first one written, but since then people have said that Mark was actually written first, which is what I think you'll find in the footnotes of most Bibles nowadays). So now people are saying that the Early Church might have been right after all!

I would, however, be one of those Christians who thinks that the Holy Spirit works in a lot more than we give Him credit for. So, yes, the idea of men putting together the canon of scripture without inspiration from God doesn't sit well with me.

That [Luther] had to change his tone in response to public pressure isn't any more surprising than Hillary Clinton changing hers.

I don't think, in all the comparisons that I have seen made of Mrs. Clinton, that I have ever seen this one.

Yes, patristic evidence is very strong that Matthew was the earliest. Written, btw, in Aramaic, which is a weird thought: Before Matthew was put in the canon it looks like there was some translator--possibly just some ordinary bloke without any strong sort of inspiration moving him--involved putting it into Greek. We have no Aramaic manuscript. AFAIK, the "scholarly" opinion that Mark was first has been more the result of a developmentalist assumption than of external or reliable internal evidence. And patristic evidence is evidence. Indeed, as a scholarly matter, it has far more to commend it than theories made under the influence of higher criticism.

If you are going to use a _weak_ sense of "inspiration from God," then it could be all over the place. I might be in some weak sense "inspired" in writing a blog post. (Not that I have any particular blog posts in mind.) And, more seriously, a writer of a great novel who humbly did his best to honor God in its writing might have been guided in a fairly weak sense. But I think the sense of divine guidance for the Church in forming the canon is supposed to be something fairly strong, which I do question.

Zippy, it seems to me that Wyclif's use of "mawmetry" for idolatry counts _against_ your theory. If Wyclif thought of Muslims as idolaters (and believe it or not, I sort of see why he might reasonably say that, Muslim iconoclasm notwithstanding), then how likely was he to have borrowed ideas from them? More particularly, how likely is he to have thought of them as giving him the good idea of iconoclasm?

I'm not quite sure how to partition something like Divine inspiration into a "weak" and "strong" form, so I'm not sure how to answer. But, given the context you use them in, we disagree about this point, because I do believe the work of concatenating various texts into one tome that will be handed down for at least the next 2000 years as the inspired text of Scriptures from which billions of Christians would take their understanding of God, would have to have been "strong"ly inspired.

But there isn't any doubt that Luther in particular viewed Islam as a chastising rod against the Papists, and that he specifically admired Mohammedan religious practice as againt the Papists.
A view with ample scriptural precedent, in that Israel's enemies were frequently described as God's chastisement. Which is to say that throughout Jewish and Christian history, the triumphs of infidel enemies, and the Turks were doing quite well for themselves in the 1520s and 1530s, have been the occasion for calls to reform and repentance.

That he had to change his tone in response to public pressure isn't any more surprising than Hillary Clinton changing hers.
Or perhaps, since Luther was immensely prolific and also given to intemperate outbursts which he sometimes retracted, he may have spoken in haste, or subsequently changed his mind. Though I'm not a Luther scholar, either. My lack of expertise is wide-ranging.

Wyclif's intellectual culture was steeped in Islam enough that the commonplace words used for "idol" and "idolatry" were "mawmet" and "mawmetry". To disbelieve that there is any connection whatsoever is to rationalize away the evidence before my eyes.
I don't actively disbelieve in any connection. There simply isn't enough evidence to support the claim. Just supposition and plausibility. The fact that Wyclif used "mawmetry" for "idolatry" can just as easily, more persuasively to me, be used to make the case that ? Your speculation isn't prima facie implausible, and may be well-attested for some reformer at some time. It just doesn't seem to be for Wyclif. If you could make a fully-fleshed argument for Islamic influence on the Reformation, I'd be interested, but the onus is not on skeptics to prove a negative - that no reformer was ever influenced by his knowledge of Islam. The 15th and 16th century Church was quite adept at providing reasons for one to doubt its claims. Every other Canterbury Tale seems to involve a corrupt Church official carrying on in a fashion reminiscent of Jim Bakker, and of course the revelation in 1440 that the Donation of Constantine was a medieval forgery could not have bolstered the Church's authority. The list could go on. I'm a lukewarm enough Protestant to think that the Reformation was a disaster, but realistic enough to recognize that the Rennaissance Church was in many respects its own worst enemy.

Lydia:
If Wyclif thought of Muslims as idolaters (and believe it or not, I sort of see why he might reasonably say that, Muslim iconoclasm notwithstanding), then how likely was he to have borrowed ideas from them? More particularly, how likely is he to have thought of them as giving him the good idea of iconoclasm?

This may be a prejudice, but seems to me that being an analytic philosopher may carry with it certain disadvantages when looking at history. In particular the expectation seems to be that smart and creative people proceed in developing their ideas in a rational, internally coherent, fully self-aware manner in which influences are fully explicit and receive fully explicit assent. In other words, the expectation seems to be that history develops in a positivist or at least analytic manner. Although I claim no expertise in the history of ideas, in my far more microcosmic experience managing very bright and creative people that sort of development-of-thought is very much the exception rather than the rule. I think I've actually never seen it happen that way; though positivist after-the-fact justifications are commonplace. In particular you don't seem to be accounting for what occurs when someone swipes an idea from someone he is supposed to shun, from a competitor, etc. That (again) was the relevance of bringing up Newton.

Cyrus:
Your speculation isn't prima facie implausible, and may be well-attested for some reformer at some time. It just doesn't seem to be for Wyclif.

I agree with that, though I think the case with Luther is more explicitly cut and dried. (A sure sign of this is the claim that he probably didn't mean what he actually said, as a counter to the evidence). That is, I haven't shown anything to directly implicate Wyclif, which is why I have all along characterized the case as circumstantial. The circumstantial evidence is suggestive though.

... to think that the Reformation was a disaster, but realistic enough to recognize that the Rennaissance Church was in many respects its own worst enemy.

There you go again, asserting something with which I am in perfect agreement. :-)

Well, but all that the "mawmet" thing shows is that Wyclif had some knowledge of Islam--and a rather biased and faulty one, at that. I mean, so what? One thing an analytic philosophy background does for studying the history of ideas is that it makes one rightly, in my view, skeptical of leaps from, "Hey, look, so-and-so _knew about_ such-and-such that you might not have thought he knew about," to "Gee, isn't this suggestive of the possibility that his ideas were _influenced_ by such-and-such?"

It's an interesting thing after hundreds of years to find evidence that A--who lived far away from the center of B--did in fact know about B. But I think people just get over-excited about such surprising facts. I had a beloved professor in graduate school who was always trying to argue that Edmund Spenser had been influenced by the Greek fathers. A _huge_ proportion of his evidence, which he considered to have enormous weight, was the sheer fact that the Greek fathers were available to Spenser. Again, this was a somewhat surprising thing and not one that most people would have known. But in itself it says virtually nothing about influence.

If we're to talk about modern-day parallels, think of all the millions of ideas that you and I know about that don't influence us to agree with them or swipe or borrow them in the least. In the "information age," if we argued the way we tend to do about older people, we'd think everybody was borrowing everything from everybody, simply because people have access to so many things.

I had a beloved professor in graduate school who was always trying to argue that Edmund Spenser had been influenced by the Greek fathers. A _huge_ proportion of his evidence, which he considered to have enormous weight, was the sheer fact that the Greek fathers were available to Spenser. Again, this was a somewhat surprising thing and not one that most people would have known. But in itself it says virtually nothing about influence.

Suppose the cases were truly parallel. If:

(1) The only significant source of a specific idea for 800 years had been the Greek fathers;

(2) Intellectuals prior to Spenser, unfamiliar with the Greek fathers, had not adopted it or come up with it on their own over that 800 year period: the idea was completely foreign to Spenser's intellectual context as a matter of recent history, despite the antiquity of the idea;

(4) Spenser became familiar with the Greek fathers;

(5) Spenser was primarily a political actor and had a strong political motive to adopt the specific idea; and finally

(6) Spenser adopted a version of the idea.

...then while I agree that it is not dispositive, as a circumstantial matter the most obvious explanation definitely isn't "Spenser came up with the idea completely on his own, drawing nothing either consciously or unconsciously from the Greek fathers".

I get the sense that I am being asked to ignore the bloody glove or the irreduceable complexity in front of my eyes. No, I can't prove that the idea didn't arise by purely random mutation and natural selection (at least not yet). But it doesn't follow that random mutation and natural selection is therefore the best explanation.

The trouble is, it doesn't seem all that complex to me. I think that's a big part of the difference between us. To me, the idea that (to take a very simple version) a teaching magisterium is _not_ needed isn't some strange oddity that requires an enormous amount of explanaion when someone thinks of it. And I think the others' comments on the interest at the time in original languages and translation, the greater availability of the text to the layman, and so forth are all very apt. As Cyrus has emphasized, it's not as though the Reformation has been heretofore without an explanation. And Catholicism itself teaches that what is being developed is the deposit of faith, so the Scriptures have a special weight there, too. Recall that the irreducible complexity (or bloody glove) are supposed to have _low_ probability on alternative hypotheses. That is not all of the argument but it's an important part of it. I get the feeling that perhaps you think this argument stronger than it is because you think any version of sola so bizarre and weird that you think it improbable for it to come up in people's minds.

Recall that the irreducible complexity (or bloody glove) are supposed to have _low_ probability on alternative hypotheses. [...] I get the feeling that perhaps you think this argument stronger than it is because you think any version of sola so bizarre and weird that you think it improbable for it to come up in people's minds.

I think sola scriptura (which isn't _merely_ the rejection of a particular magisterial authority or a particular tradition, nor is it _merely_ an attempt to get clean original sources for sacred texts; the Eastern Orthodox are not sola scriptura protestants) is fundamentally an incoherent and highly unnatural idea, yes, and that it only seems natural to (some) moderns because of the positivist commitments in modernism.

Also, it seems to me that if it is an obvious idea then the 800 year gap between the Moslems adopting it and the Reformation has to be explained, and it seems to me that none of the proposals can even begin to bear the burden of that explanation. Were the Moslems really that much more advanced than the Christians for nearly a millenium? Unlike the Bible, the Koran actually does self-referentially assert a sola doctrine explicitly about itself as a self-contained book, or at least arguably so, e.g.

We did not leave anything out of this book. [6:38]

We have given them a scripture that is fully detailed, with knowledge, guidance, and mercy for the people who believe. [7:52]

This Quran could not possibly be authored by other than GOD. It confirms all previous messages, and provides a fully detailed scripture. It is infallible, for it comes from the Lord of the universe. [10:37]

In their history, there is a lesson for those who possess intelligence. This is not fabricated Hadith; this (Quran) confirms all previous scriptures, provides the details of everything, and is a beacon and mercy for those who believe. [12:111]

Shall I seek other than GOD as a source of law, when He has revealed to you this book fully detailed? Those who received the scripture recognize that it has been revealed from your Lord, truthfully. You shall not harbor any doubt. [6:114]

The "greater availability of the text to the layman" seems to me to be question-begging: the Wyclif translation was made available because of sola scriptura, not vice versa. The motivation for translating it in the first place was to break from magisterial authority and place trump-authority in the text-qua-text, and thereby de-facto in the new Christian Imams. Gutenberg printed 180 bibles, and everyman wasn't literate and couldn't read it anyway. Microevolution doesn't explain abiogenesis.

It really does remind me of Darwinist abiogenesis: I'm supposed to accept - as a Roman Catholic who does not believe sola scriptura to be an inspired doctrine, which therefore means that it is amenable to historical understanding - a post hoc non-explanation of a singular and strange event rather than granting any credence to the far more obvious (though circumstantial) explanation.

Well, I don't see it that way at all, of course. "New Christian Imams," forsooth. Sheesh.

Again, I think you have to look not at the gap between Islam and the reformation but at the history of the West itself. Why think of that gap as something that needs to be explained rather than thinking of the fact of magisterial authority and its continuation as something that needs to be explained? Speaking for myself, I see nothing strange at all in the continuation of magisterial authority nor in its eventually being set aside. I'm neither calling Muslims "more advanced" nor speaking of the reversion to the ordinary man's interpretation of Scripture as a "development." It was a change, back to a simpler way of viewing things, a way that might occur to anybody but at that time for _many_ reasons gained currency. It was an understandable change, as the weight of church authority before was an understandable thing, too. Think, for a parallel, of the notion of religious liberty. It's not like we need to agonize and ask ourselves where people in the 17th and 18th century "caught the virus" of the notion of religious liberty. But at the same time one can see that a lot of things had to come together for the idea not simply to occur to this man or that but to become intellectually current in England and Europe. For goodness' sake, as Cyrus says: It's not as though there have never been histories of the Reformation or of the previous centuries written before! And human history is scarcely a physical process, so the analogy to a physical process is very inapt.