Even the most sympathetic medieval author could not grant rival faiths equal validity

Evidence

Islam, for the young Llull, was something positive, and Muslims’ piety and learning would lead them (with the help of Llull’s Art) to abandon their errors and embrace the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. Llull pushes admiration and appreciation of the religious other to its limits. For neither Llull nor any other thirteenth-century author (Muslim, Jew, or Christian) could simply conclude that a rival faith was as valid and salutary as his own. There can be only one true religion. Llull’s genteel philosophical politeness begins to fray as the Jewish and Muslim infidels refuse to be convinced by his arguments. He advocates compulsory Christian education for them, advocates war of conquest to force them to listen to Christian missionaries. The theater of religious debate was no longer a verdant grove, as it had been for the young Llull when he composed the Libre del gentil; it had become a dark prison. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1353

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• DEEPTHINKING: The ceiling on even the most sympathetic premodern religious tolerance is a genuinely paradigm-reaching point: admiration without equal validity, and how that admiration curdles into coercion when conversion fails.

Related

• Medieval appreciation of Islam collapsed into coercion when persuasion failed (similarity 0.88)
• Medieval Lull framed Muslim theological resistance as wilful stupidity (similarity 0.84)
• Medieval religious toleration in disputation texts was a strategic posture for Christian victory (similarity 0.83)
• A medieval Christian disputation tract could present Islam and Judaism fairly without caricature (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval religious disputation tracts almost always ended in conversion (similarity 0.82)
• Llull claimed Christianity provable from theistically shared ground with Muslims (similarity 0.82)
• Llull imagined religious unity achievable through rational proof rather than authority (similarity 0.82)
• Ramon Llull shifted to hostility only after irenic argument failed (similarity 0.82)
• Christian polemicists imagined educated Muslims as secretly doubting their own faith (similarity 0.81)
• Llull claimed learned Saracens secretly doubted Muhammad’s prophethood. (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval missionaries found it easier to attack Islam than to prove Christianity’s truth (similarity 0.80)
• Medieval Christian missionaries reconceived Muslim doctrines as partial truths to bridge toward conversion (similarity 0.80)
• Lull expected lay merchants to win theological debates with Muslims using Trinitarian syllogisms (similarity 0.80)
• Llull believed philosophical doubt could lead Muslims to convert to Christianity. (similarity 0.80)
• Llull imagined learned Muslims already doubted Muhammad’s prophethood, ripe for conversion. (similarity 0.80)