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divine in nature. This contravened the church’s teaching that Christ was both
fully human and fully divine. Monophysite teaching was branded heresy at the
Fourth Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, a major watershed that led to the first
serious and permanent rupture in the body of the church—and the permanent
breakaway of what are today called the Oriental Orthodox or Monophysite
churches. Significantly Monophysite views were particularly strongly embraced
in Syria, the Levant, and Egypt, all centers that resisted the power and authority
of Constantinople, and also in other more distant places such as Armenia and
Ethiopia.
Still other variations on the theme of Jesus’s nature created other heresies.
Ebionism was a first-century Jewish-Christian sect that revealed the pervasive
influence of Judaism: it regarded Jesus as a prophet rather than divine, in
rejection of Paul’s vision (and directly parallel to Islam’s vision of Jesus today).
Eutychianism argued that while Jesus possessed some human elements, the
divine elements were dominant. Much of the controversy over this issue
therefore related to Mary: Was she the Mother of Jesus as God? Or Mother only
of Jesus in his human aspect? Her title in Greek differed accordingly.
Typically, theological dispute over these issues was bolstered, or even
sparked, by geopolitical interests: Eutychianism was closely linked to a quest by
the city of Alexandria in 433 CE to confirm its status as the second most
important Christian city after Constantinople, a position that was equally sought
by its rival Antioch, which promoted a more orthodox view of Jesus.
Docetism argued that Jesus’s body was a physical illusion and that he only
seemed to die; he was, in reality, a pure spirit who could not die. This belief was
also linked to the notion that material in the world was inherently evil, and thus

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God or His Son could not be material. Islam, believing that Jesus was only a
physical being and not a divinity, shares the view that Jesus only seemed to die
on the cross, but was saved by God and taken to heaven.
Pelagianism derived from an obscure monk who may have been from the
British Isles. He denied the central church teaching of “original sin”—the belief
that mankind was inherently sinful from the original sin of Adam and Eve. The
problem with the denial of original sin is that it undercuts the need for salvation
solely through faith, as taught by the church. The view was thus declared
heretical in 416 CE. Islam, too, denies the validity of original sin and of
mankind’s inherent sinfulness.
Monotheletism unsuccessfully sought to forge a tortured compromise
between competing churches in Alexandria and Constantinople over whether
Jesus’s acts represented one single divine spirit or the cooperation of both human
and divine wills. While seemingly abstruse, this doctrine had almost a purely
political basis in seeking to heal the splits in the Eastern Church brought about
by the Monophysite heresy. In the end, however, this compromise formulation
was rejected. Politics trumped theology.
The details of these heresies are astonishing for what they reveal about the
broad range of complex, detailed, and legalistic interpretations of the nature of
Jesus. And all of this occurred primarily before the emergence of Islam. Islam
must obviously be viewed as part of this context of debate over Christology.
Nor could any discussion of heresy be complete without mention of a few
modern insights into these controversies. Power may possess the prerogative to
determine what is and is not heresy, but heresy doesn’t always mean something
new on the scene. The fascinating work of the German theologian Walter Bauer
in the late nineteenth century examined the evolution of early Christian doctrine
and reached the conclusion that what we consider today as “heresy” actually
often reflects the very earliest Christian understandings of the nature of Jesus.
He argued that, in fact, it was the church itself that introduced newer
interpretations of theology in later centuries, established new orthodoxies,
sometimes altering the original Christian beliefs and even the texts themselves.
These interpretations were driven by the later institutional and political
imperatives of the church to declare earlier understandings to be “heretical.”
These views have recently been further propounded by the influential scholar
Bart Ehrman, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Indeed, we still find considerable flexibility in the theological interpretations
of a few smaller branches of the Abrahamic faiths. For example, doctrines of

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continuous revelation of God’s word characterize the approach of Quakers, the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Pentecostal, and
Charismatic Christians, as well as the Baha’i. According to these precepts,
revelations from God never cease and are available to succeeding generations to
receive the word on an individual or communal level. These ideas are gaining
broader currency over time. The Baha’i, among others, espouse a doctrine of
“progressive revelation,” including the ongoing emergence of prophets of God
through time to reveal his word; these progressive revelations are designed for a
humanity whose own understanding of God deepens and changes. Different
historical conditions thus require different revelations in the human quest for
greater precision in their understanding of the Divine.
Islam falls into many of these same patterns. The collapse of the first Islamic
dynastic caliphate, the Umayyad, in 750 CE was driven by two key issues,
among others: it had a power base in the very Arab city of Damascus and was
being challenged by the rising power of the Abbasids, who represented the
interests of Baghdad and its Iraqi-Persian culture. Furthermore, the Abbasids
represented the demand for voice of newer non-Arab Muslim converts, who
were excluded from equal power and rights under the Arab Umayyads. These
caliphates thus rose and fell on regional and political grounds, not theological
ones.
The role of power in religion continues to be recognized to our day. Take the
comments of the Shi’ite mufti of Tyre in South Lebanon as recently as June 2009
over the issue of the disputed elections in Iran, in which he came into conflict
with the leader of Hizballah. Sayyid Ali Amin said that the Lebanese Shi’ite
Hizballah movement was attempting to stop discussion of the thesis of clerical
rule in Iran, because challenging this ideology would undermine Hizballah’s
own power in Lebanon. “This is the biggest proof that [clerical rule] is not part
of religious beliefs, but it is a power and political ideology,” he said.
Furious debate over theological issues in the end is essentially a debate about
underlying political interests of the state. By the time Islam came along, it was
no longer the theology that mattered to the region but the shift in power and
territorial control to a new rival state institution. It was politics as usual in the
Middle East. Frictions among state, power, ideology, and heresy would continue
to interact for centuries to come.
But the really critical factor for our present argument is the fast-rising tension
between the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Western Church. As we will see
in the next chapter, Islam, as a new geopolitical force, inherited not only much of
the anti-Westernism of cities within the Eastern Empire in rebellion against
Constantinople but also some of the latent anti-Rome views that grew over time

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within the Byzantine Empire itself. While Byzantium drew its deepest identity
from the belief that it was perpetuating the true tradition of the Roman Empire, it
increasingly came to view the Western Church as a geopolitical rival whose
power was ultimately as threatening to Byzantine power and identity as Islam
itself. The Middle East was thus quite capable, without Islam, of developing
aversion to the West.

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CHAPTER THREE