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Document Details :

Title: Some Islamic Reflections on D'Costa's Vatican II: Catholic Doctrines on Jews and Muslims
Author(s): WINTER, Tim
Journal: Louvain Studies
Volume: 40    Issue: 3   Date: 2017   
Pages: 286-302
DOI: 10.2143/LS.40.3.3245493

Abstract :
This article presents a critical review of D’Costa’s work from a Muslim perspective. Beginning with the ‘continuity or rupture’ controversy, it suggests that Vatican II’s pronouncements and general ethos of engagement with Muslims are in fact in substantive discontinuity with earlier encyclical positions, and have been seen favourably by Muslims concerned to bring Catholics into better harmony with Qur’anic perspectives. D’Costa has rightly signalled the influence of Louis Massignon on the drafters of the relevant conciliar documents, and the article concludes by taking D’Costa’s reflections further, with a theological meditation on Massignon’s Christian acceptance of the Prophet of Islam, and his rehabilitation of the concept of the ‘Semitic’, as part of a larger sea-change in Christian attitudes, in both theology and liturgy, which might presage a fuller and more authentic understanding of Islamic revelation.

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