THEO5357 · Theology

Debating Religion: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue and Dispute

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

This course is a history of interreligious polemic, disputation, and dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims from antiquity to modernity. The course not only highlights points of difference among the traditionsfrom abstruse theological doctrines, to competing interpretations of scriptural passages, to ad hominem attacks on religious founding figuresbut also the ways in which the practice of disputation played a formative role in the development of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The course focuses specifically on interreligious debates and dialogues, both real and fictional, although we also consider broader polemical themes as expressed in treatises. Finally, the course considers epistemic shifts that allowed for the transition from interreligious disputation to interfaith dialogue in recent decades even as it highlights the lines of continuity between the two.