Muhammad and the Famous Cardinal Newman Quote

Cardinal Newman

The famous Anglican convert to Catholicism, John Henry Newman once said: To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.  What I’ve always wondered is why he said this as an anti-Protestant and not a pro-Catholic statement.  I even heard an Eastern Orthodox apologist use this quote which I suppose one can because Orthodoxy isn’t Protestantism and some Protestants who study church history actually do convert to the Orthodox Church.

I’ve recently been thinking about how this quote can apply to Islam.  I’ve often spoken about Surah 5’s huge blunder on the Trinity in verses 73, 75, and 116.  In a way I kind of feel a bit bad for Muhammad.  I don’t think the Hijaz was a prime location to learn theology, philosophy, or history.  Reading these verses shows us that Muhammad didn’t exactly have an elite view of absolute divine simplicity.  Of course I don’t blame him for not knowing this.  Why would I expect a 7th century Arabian to know this stuff?  I only take issue with those who proclaim him to be a prophet of the God of Abraham.

Muhammad didn’t come into contact with the Latin Christian world.  He only ever came into minimal contact with the Greek and Syriac Christian world.  At this point, the Greek and Latin church were united in Chalcedonian Christology whereas most Syriacs had unfortunately fallen into monophysitism.

By this point in history, the majority of Greek bishops came from the monastic tradition.  Contrary to propaganda coming from certain Protestants(who I won’t name here) monks were very educated.  Not too long ago I wrote about the chronicles of St. Theophanes the Confessor who was a monk in Constantinople.  Obviously the man was big into history.  Most other history of that period and that region comes from other religious chroniclers and hagiography.

It should also be noted that at this point in history, the Greek Church was highly educated.  It was far more educated than the Latin Church.  Pope Gregory the Great was a recent giant in the Latin Church but before him, there hadn’t been any significant figures since St. Augustine.  Almost all Church history came from the Greek East.  Before the time of Muhammad, the four top church historians were from the Greek church; Eusebius, Theodoretus, Socrates, and Sozomenus.

Of course the Greek Church, like the Latin church had five creeds at this point, all of them dealing with Christology.  All of this was studied in the Greek monasteries.  History has always been an important part of Christianity.  Christianity was born out of a Hebrew and Greco-Roman hybrid.  Both cultures were literate and were good at history.  Obviously there are historical books in the Old Testament.  This was built on when the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles were written.  It was further built by Eusebius and those who followed him.  Whenever the Church Fathers produced a Creed or a tract, they always looked back to the ultimate source which was Christ and His apostles.

Because of all of these details, we can say that Christianity is a historical religion.  One of the first things one person learns about Christianity is the Trinity.  This would obviously include the three persons of the Trinity.  Anyone who witnesses a baptism would realize the baptismal formula which Christ gave us at the end of Matthew 28.

Someone living deep in Arabia wouldn’t have access to any of this stuff.  There is no evidence that Muhammad ever entered a church or a monastery.  According to the late Muslim sources on his life, he had minimal contact with Christians.  I think we can modify Cardinal Newman’s quote.  To be deep in history is to cease to be a Muslim.