God’s holiness : a comparative dialogue between Reformed Christianity and Sunni Islam

Abstract

The church’s missions to the Muslim community has become predictable. When engaging with the Muslim community the age old tactic has either been to befriend the Muslim and hope that he/she will see the truth through slow and subtle exposure to the biblical Christ, or to do tract drives, whereby the Christian missionary hands out little tracts with Christian messages, hoping to initiate conversations or that in the private time the Muslim would read the tract. Not only has the Christian church been predictable in its methods or approach to the Muslim community when in missions, but has also been predictable to a large extent in the topics that are spoken about with the Muslim community. Is Jesus God? Is the Bible corrupt and has it been changed? Does the Bible teach the doctrine of the Trinity? Does the doctrine of the Trinity make sense? And so, due to the repetitive nature of methods and conversation topics the church has used over decades and even centuries when engaging the Muslim community, the Muslim community now stands prepared and educated on how to respond to and deal with the Christian missionary. This has then also occurred within the context of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland. Therefore, in light of the steady growth of the Muslim community, this dissertation provides an additional point of contact when engaging the Sunni Muslim community. This study endeavours to strengthen the Christian church’s missions initiatives, specifically in the area of apologetics and elenctics. This was achieved by exploring the theological concept of the holiness of God in and from two perspectives, namely: Sunni Islam and Reformed Christianity. The findings reveal that when properly engaging the doctrine of God comparatively in Sunni Islam and Reformed Christianity and specifically the doctrine of God’s holiness, Reformed Christianity displays a much stronger case for God than Sunni Islam. It is then on this theological strength that the researcher aims to boost the Christian church’s missions initiative.