The ill-founded claim of the Cardinal (that dialogue is hindered by Muslim belief that the Qur’an is the very speech of God (exalted)) clearly suffers from being stuck in a double bind: First, the bind of misunderstanding and misrepresenting Islamic teachings regarding the Qur’an. Second, the bind of misrepresenting, through false contrast, the Catholic doctrine on Christian Scriptures. Let me explain how this double bind works.

The Qur’an, is the very discourse (kalam) of our Exalted One God (Allah), as revealed to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and as faithfully preserved through uninterrupted communal transmission (tawatur). The Qur’an is eternal (qadim) in essence, origin, and as essential divine discourse competence (kalamullah as kalam nafsi). It is, however, also historical in its unfolding, as revelatory performance (kalamullah as kalam lafzi), and was revealed to the Prophet (peace be upon him) in intimate engagement with the historical and living circumstances and events of the Muslim community (tanzil and tanjim). (For more on this, see Al-Insaf and Al-Tamhid of Imam Abu Bakr Al-Baqillani, d. 1013 CE).

Muslim scholars have always based their interpretations and exegeses of the Qur’an on the bases of several historical and philological sciences, including the science of the ‘circumstances of revelation’ (asbabulnuzul), the science of the history of the Qur’an (tarikhulqur'an), and the sciences that carefully study the linguistic modes familiar to the Arabs around the time of revelation (ulumulugha). Muslim scholars developed a comprehensive apparatus of historical-critical-linguistic methodologies for understanding the Qur’an (ulumulqur’an). (For more on this, see Al-Itqan of Imam Jalaluddin Al-Suyuti (c. 1445-1505 CE).

Muslim scholars were always aware of the fact that the activities of interpretation, understanding, and exegesis (of God’s eternal discourse) are forms of human strenuous striving (ijtihad) that must be dutifully renewed in every believing generation. Solemn belief in the eternity and divine authorship of the Qur’an never prevented Muslim scholars from dealing with it historically and linguistically. On the contrary, belief in the revelatory truth of the Qur’an was the very motivation for spending life-times in close scholarly study of God’s discourse. (For more on this see Jami’ Bayan Al-Ilm of Imam Ibn Abd Al-Barr, b. 978 CE)

Massive libraries of interpretative and exegetical discourses, theological, juridical, ethical, and spiritual were worked out by the successive generations of Muslim scholars from the earliest times and up to today. It is precisely on the basis of their solemn belief that the Qur’an is the very speech of God that Muslim scholars, through the ages, dialogically engaged Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Buddhist, and even skeptical and naturalist scholars. All the major manuals of Muslim theology be they Maturidi, Ash’ari, Mu’tazili, Ja’fari, Isma’ili, or Ibadi, exhibit remarkable broadness of vision and actively engage the beliefs of Philosophers, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus and Buddhists.

Interestingly, the exegetical Muslim historical-critical-linguistic apparatus, in synthesis with ancient Talmudic methodologies (such as the hermeneutic rules of Hillel and Rabbi Ishmael), was transmitted through Sephardic Jewish scholars like Hasdai ben Abraham Crescas (c. 1340 – 1410/1411 CE) and Baruch de Spinoza (1632 – 1677) to the earliest Protestant hermeneutical masters (like Johann August Ernesti (1707 – 1781)). The ‘High Criticism’ and ‘Historical-Critical Method’ that stemmed from Protestant Reformation Hermeneutics were directly influenced by Spinoza’s ultimately Andalusian Talmudic Hermeneutics, which was steeped in the Qur’anic Hermeneutics of Andalusian Muslim scholars.

It is also interesting to note that the methodologies and conclusions of the Protestant High Criticism were, for several centuries, rejected by the Catholic Church. This rejection was most systematic and explicit in Pope Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus (1893) and Pope Pius X’s Anti-Modernist Pascendi Dominica Gregis (1907).

Under the tremendous pressures of Protestant biblical scholarship, the Catholic Church finally, but only grudgingly, partially, and conditionally accepted some aspects of the historical-critical method. Pope Benedict XV did start this process of conditional acceptance in Spiritus Paraclitus (1920), but it was not until Pope Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritus (1943) that Catholic scholars were finally allowed to catch up with the advanced state of Protestant biblical studies.

Thus, it is quite ironic that Cardinal Tauran now accuses Muslims of an imaginary theological/hermeneutical closure that is more appropriately attributable to the Vatican’s own pre-1943 closure to historical-critical methodologies.