corresponds also to the situation that it is a manual for defensive argument rather for attack. The Moslems held the upper hand, and we may imagine that often they would attack the beliefs of Christians or try to persuade them to the acceptance of Islam. It is to supply the Christians with answers to these attacks and arguments that the little hook was composed.

The Dialogue centres round two main questions — the freedom of the human will and the Divinity of Jesus Christ. In regard to the first the Saracen does not seem to have any very well-defined position of his own. He seems concerned rather to involve the Christian who denies that God is the author of evil and therefore maintains that man has freewill within limits, in difficulties which imply a limitation of God's power. The argumentation is to our minds primitive on both sides. But at any rate the questions of the Moslem show a much more naive conception of the problem than the answers of the Christian. He seems almost to be sitting at the Christian's feet for instruction. Nor is that altogether due to the fact that it is from the Christian controversialist that we learn his arguments. His questions are real questions such as, with the Qur'an in his mind, a Moslem would naturally ask. He already shows the tendency to emphasise the supreme and continuous creative power of God which ultimately triumphed in Islam and which was strongly present in it from the first. But we can quite well conceive that in trying to raise difficulties for the Christian on this subject he found himself involved in questions

for which his own mind had no satisfactory solution, and that the arguments of the Christian were not without effect. As a matter of fact we know that it was on this very subject, and in Syria, in the time of the Omayyads, that the first theological discussions arose in Islam. We hear of a sect of Qadarites who held that man was endowed with a certain amount of Qadar, "power" or "freewill". I think we may assume that these discussions with Christians were thus early beginning to have influence upon the thought of Islam just in process of formation.

The other question is even more interesting. The position assigned to Christ must have seemed to the Moslem easily assailable. On the basis of the Qur'an it must have seemed to him little removed from idolatry. But brought into contact with instructed Christian thinkers he must have found himself transported into a field which he did not understand. "If", says John, "you are asked by a Saracen: What do you say Christ is? say to him: The Word (Logos) of God." John is conscious that this is a wily answer, for he adds that he does not think there is anything wrong in it, for Christ is called the Word in Scripture as well as Wisdom and many other things. Then the Christian is to ask the Moslem 'What is Christ called in his own Scriptures?' and to refuse to answer any more questions until he replies. For he will be bound to reply that Christ is referred to in the Qur'an as "the spirit and word of God".¹ Then the Christian is to