st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

"
98
ST.
JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
John of Damascus, or one of his disciples, might have
argued with a Mahometan of his time. It should be
stated that, while the substance of the various argu
ments is given above, an effort has been made to
string them together more connectedly, and to soften
off abrupt transitions. The latter part of the section
in the "De Hseresibus Liber" consists of an invective
the immoral conduct of Mahomet himself, in
against
the marriages he contracted, and the precepts
in the
Koran by which he strove to screen his own delin
quencies while permitting indulgences to others.
The special reference is to the subject-matter
of the
4th Sura, and to the story of Zeid s wife, alluded to
in Sura xxxiii. The monstrous legends also found
in the Koran, or in the writings of its expounders,
are held up to ridicule such as that of the she-camel,
;
spoken of in the yth Sura, which drank up whole
rivers, and could satisfy a whole tribe with its milk.
In this instance, perhaps, the commentators have
more to answer for than the Koran itself.
The least satisfactory feature, as some may think,
in the aspect of religious controversy here presented
to us, is the playing on words for it scarcely
deserves to be called by any better name. It seems
a childish dilemma in which to place an opponent,
to make him own that, if Christ, the Word of God,
were not uncreated, there must have been a time
when God was Wordless and Spiritless.
We miss, also,
what might fairly have been expected from the great
champion of image-worship," a of the
justification
limits within which the Christian might lawfully avail
himself of images or symbols, as a help to devotion,