A Fuller Affirmation of Muhammad?

I found Clinton Bennett’s description of different Christian positions vis a vis Muhammad intriguing and occasionally troubling. I wish to focus this post on the latter reaction, particularly with regard to Bennett’s description of his own views toward the end of the essay. Bennett claims, evoking the apophatic language of “paradox,” that “unity and Trinity may both be equally true about God’s nature, although neither may represent the whole truth.” Thus, God can become “incarnate” as both a person and a book, with the relationship between the two being “mysterious,” and thus grounded in the mystery of God.

This seems like an abuse of the language of mystery and paradox, which the scriptural claims of both religions would object to. The Islamic scriptures takes a decidedly dim view of the characteristic Christian doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. The Christian scriptures affirm in a range of places the finality of Christ. Bennett’s resort to the language of “paradox” does not seem to take the scriptural claims which either religion would make seriously; rather, it appears to presuppose an external, human category (paradox or mystery) in order to relativize the respective truth-claims of Muslims and Christians. At the risk of seeming unsympathetic, it hardly seems like a “fuller affirmation of Muhammad” to effectively assert that the religious truth claims of Islam can be effectively brushed aside by an appeal to divine transcendence. One wonders what Christianity and Islam would look like if Bennett’s view were a fair representation of the history and theological traditions of either.