In dialogue with Muslims, though, it is never profitable
to get into a ‘‘Scripture error match.’’ Many of these
perceived errors are based on assumptions and
presuppositions. In any case, Catholics should guard against
the temptation to equate the Bible and the Koran, however
favorable the comparison may be to the Bible.
As many Christians have remarked, the closest analogy
to the Koran, as understood by Muslims, is not the Bible but
the Person of Jesus Christ, the Word of God. No list of Bible
contradictions, however superficially compelling, should
damage the faith of a Catholic. Our faith is not in a book,
but in a Person and in the Church He founded. The Bible
did not make the Church; the Church compiled the Bible,
and a Catholic should draw not just upon the Bible but upon
the entire Tradition of the Church in explaining and
defending his faith.
51. Has Islamic belief or doctrine
changed over the centuries?
Not in any significant way. The simplicity of Islamic
theology makes largescale doctrinal upheavals (on the scale
of the early Church’s Christological controversies, for
example) unusual in Islam. But this is not to say that there
have been no doctrinal disagreements in the Islamic world.
One of the first and greatest of these was not originally
a disagreement over doctrine but, in many ways, has
evolved into one. After Muhammad died, the Muslim