Raymund Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems
Overview
Raymund Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems is Zwemer’s classic biography of philosopher, logician, missionary, and Franciscan tertiary Raymond Lull.
Nicknamed the “Apostle to Islam,” for nearly 40 years Samuel M. Zwemer lived and worked in the Middle East, preaching the Gospel of Jesus and training hundreds of missionaries. Founder and editor of The Moslem World, Zwemer—familiar with the land, language, and people of Islam—provided a window into a growing religion and culture that few Westerners knew. Zwemer’s legacy as one of the finest Christian scholars of Islam is still recognized today.
In the Logos edition, all Scripture passages in Arabia: The Cradle of Islam are tagged and appear on mouse-over. What’s more, Scripture references are linked to the wealth of language resources in your Logos library. If you own the English and Arabic Qur’an, you can follow along with Zwemer in his analysis of Islamic doctrine and his studies comparing Islam to Christianity. This makes these texts more powerful and easier to access than ever before for scholarly work or personal Bible study.
- Examines the life of Raymund Lull
- Provides an overview of Lull’s missionary work to Muslims
- Covers Lull’s literary works
- Europe and the Saracens in the Thirteenth Century
- Raymund Lull’s Birthplace and Early Life
- The Vision and Call to Service
- Preparation for the Conflict
- At Montpellier, Paris, and Rome
- His First Missionary Journey to Tunis
- Other Missionary Journeys
- Raymund Lull as Philosopher and Author
- His Last Missionary Journey and His Martyrdom
- “Who Being Dead Yet Speaketh”
Top Highlights
“Meanwhile riches, wives, high place, and power were offered the Christian philosopher if only he would abjure his faith and turn Moslem.” (Page 109)
“It was Raymund Lull who wrote: ‘I see many knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas and thinking that they can acquire it by force of arms; but in the end all are destroyed before they attain that which they think to have. Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought not to be attempted except in the way in which Thou and Thine apostles acquired it, namely, by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tears and of blood.’” (Pages 52–53)
“Lull advanced the following propositions,* which are well calculated to strike the two weak points of Mohammedan monotheism: lack of love in the being of Allah, and lack of harmony in His attributes.” (Pages 88–89)
“The only missionary spirit of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was that of the Crusaders. They took up the sword and perished by the sword. But ‘Raymund Lull was raised up as if to prove in one startling case, to which the eyes of all Christendom were turned for many a day, what the Crusades might have become and might have done for the world, had they been fought for the cross with the weapons of Him whose last words from it were forgiveness and peace.’” (Page 18)
“The strength of Islam in the age of scholasticism was its philosophy. Having thoroughly entered into the spirit of Arabian philosophical writings and seen its errors, there was nothing left for a man of Lull’s intellect but to meet these Saracen philosophers on their own ground.” (Page 62)
A splendid illustration of the contagious vitality of Christian experience. The story is one of the most dramatic in the annals of missions.
—Chicago Record-Herald
May ten thousand times ten thousand buy and read, and thus be drawn to a life of deeper devotion to the life by which if a man lives, he cannot die.
—Union Seminary Magazine
It will strengthen your faith and quicken your zeal.
—Christian Companion
The book ought to go into the hands of every Christian in Christendom—especially of the younger—to help to rouse from apathy and to save from judgment.
—Homiletic Review
Told in Dr. Zwemer’s inimitable style, and with the scope and grasp supplied by its almost unequaled understanding of things Mohammedan, this little biography is sure to be of great value to the cause in behalf of which it was written.
—The Mission Field
There is no more heroic figure in the history of Christendom.
—Eugene Stock, Church Missionary Society
Raymond Lull was schoolman, mystic, monk; that is to say, he belonged to his century. But the spirit which dwelt in him is the undying spirit of all Christian centuries. ‘He who loves not,’ he said, ‘lives not: he who lives by the life cannot die.’
—The American Journal of Theology
- Title: Raymund Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems
- Author: Samuel M. Zwemer
- Publisher: Funk & Wagnalls
- Publication Date: 1902
- Pages: 172