Peter the Venerable refuted Muhammad by classifying prophets rather than defining him out.
Evidence
This wider view of prophethood, within which it was not possible to exclude Muhammad by definition, indicated another and more effective direction of attack, which brought Peter the Venerableâs thought closer to that of his contemporaries and successors, and to an argument more securely set in Christian tradition. It proceeded, he himself said, from a ânew starting-pointâ. This was to classify prophets as good and bad; the good as either universal or particular, the bad as either true or false. Universal prophets are those who foretold Christ; their supply was now naturally dried up. Particular or personal prophets foretell particular things, but the Qurâan contains no such prophecy. Bad prophets were those whose life was reprobate, their teaching false, like the prophets of Baal. It is obvious where Muhammad was to fit into this classification, although the author failed to develop this part of his argument. Peterâs attack on Muhammad as wicked and as false thus represents two elements in the systematic attack put forward by Pedro de Alfonso. A great deal of Peterâs argument consisted in setting the claims of Islam beside the story of the Hebrew prophets, to show the two to be inconsistent; this was also in line with the Risadlah, with Pedro de Alfonso and with the wide Christian tradition, and excluded Muhammadâs claims, not by definition, but by requiring particular qualities in the prophet and his prophecies. â Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 402
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Explains the fourfold classification of prophets (universal, particular, true-bad, false-bad) as a medieval argumentative scheme.
Related
- Medieval Christian polemic schematized prophecy tests to reject Muhammad empirically, not by definition (similarity 0.91)
- Medieval anti-Islamic polemics tailored their prophetic tests to condemn Muhammad (similarity 0.80)
- Muhammadâs core leadership claim falls within Thomasâs prophetic definition. (similarity 0.79)