| Posted December 29, 2020 | By Matthew Bennett | Categorized under Missiology and Theory |

It was August in 2013 just before dawn. My colleague and I were awake and wandering the streets of Alexandria, Egypt before the sun, eager to witness the annual Islamic celebration of ‘Id al-Adha. The four-day festival begins at sunrise with the ritual slaughter of an animal in commemoration of Ibrahim's near sacrifice of his son at God's command (cf. Genesis 22 and Qur'an 37:99-111). We expected a gruesome and bloody scene. What we did not expect, however, was how the blood would be used by ritual participants and passersby.

As pools of blood trickled out from the piles of limp carcasses in front of makeshift butchers on the side-streets of Alexandria, the residents of the apartments also began to trickle out to dip their hands in the blood. Returning to their apartment buildings, these same residents began making bloody handprints around the door frames of their homes. Curious about this phenomenon, I asked one of my well-educated Muslim friends to explain the ritual to me. He explained it away as a superstitious belief stemming from upper Egypt meant to ward off bad luck and envy.

When I alluded to seeing echoes of the Passover in the bloody handprints my Muslim friend was excited to see the potential historical-theological connection with the Bible and contemporary practices among his Muslim neighbors. However, despite the common use of blood tied into the Passover and the commemoration of Ibrahim's story involving a ransoming sacrifice, my friend-along with Islamic theology at large-vehemently denied the blood a role in achieving atonement. As a Christian, this whole scene provoked multiple questions about atonement, blood, forgiveness, and sacrifice in Islam. What I discovered is that there are at least four major differences between a biblical and qur'anic conception of atonement that have impeded communication over the last 1400 years of Christian-Muslim dialogue.

A Lexical Barrier

The first such barrier exists in the word "atonement" itself. As it turns out, the Qur'an and the Arabic Bible both employ the word kaffara in various places. In the Arabic Bible, this word is used to translate the Hebrew concept carried by the word kipper. The root of this word is found in the Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur: the Day of Atonement. This holiday is prescribed in detail in Leviticus 16 where the high priest is required to perform a complex ritual on behalf of the people that results not only in the corporate forgiveness of sins, but also the cleansing of impurity.

From the perspective of the Qur'an, the word kaffara can be best understood as an act of divine expiation. Rather than propitiation or cleansing, the qur'anic usage indicates that kaffara refers to God's willing dismissal of sin in order to effect forgiveness. Sin is not removed. Rather it is covered over and overlooked. This atonement is accomplished by a direct act of God himself in response to human repentance and through acts of piety. One such act of piety in Islam is the annual sacrifice in the Bible and in the Qur'an presents a second barrier to understanding.

A Ritual Barrier

While my colleague and I witnessed the annual ritual slaughter of sacrificial animals, the role of sacrifice within Islam is also different than the sacrifices prescribed in the Levitical law of the Hebrew Bible. Whereas the Hebrew Bible connects the sacrificial process to atonement by way of substitution and representation, the Qur'an is interested in sacrifice as rehearsal and remembrance.

‘Id al-Adha, then, is the ritualized performance reenacting the submission of Ibrahim and his son to God's command. It serves merely as an act of piety which demonstrates the worshipper's desire to imitate their faithfulness. Elsewhere the Qur'an is adamant that neither the blood nor the meat of the sacrifice reaches God. Qur'an 22:37a makes this explicit, saying, "Neither their flesh nor their blood will reach God, but the reverence from you reaches Him." The fact that sacrifice is unrelated to the presence of God living among His people points to the third and fourth barriers to understanding: a different story that begets a different worldview.

Narrative and Worldview Barriers

Ultimately, looking at the concept of atonement through the lenses of the Qur'an and the Bible, a different way of understanding the world emerges. Whereas the Bible speaks of atonement as the means by which God's holy and righteous presence might dwell among his people, the Qur'an does not envision such an intimate relationship between God and humanity. As a result, the story that the Qur'an tells-and the worldview that emerges from this story-need not remove the presence of impurity and guilt in humans because the full presence of God is forever transcendent and at a distance.

The biblical narrative and worldview, however, is everywhere concerned to depict a God who would be "God with us." From the tabernacle to the incarnation; from Pentecost to the New Jerusalem, the biblical portrait of God is one that shows him drawing near to commune with his creation. The biblical difference regarding God's proximity produces a more substantial problem for sin-stained and guilty humans. The solution for this problem-atonement-then takes on different characteristics than it does in the Qur'an. Highlighting these differences, my recent book Narratives in Conflict: Atonement in Hebrews and the Qur'an proposes that the book of Hebrews is uniquely suited to communicating a biblical view of atonement to Muslims by overcoming lexical, ritual, narrative, and worldview barriers.