It is hardly realized today that there are two distinct branches in Christianity, each of which is capable of constituting the Christian Church in the absence of the other. These are two distinct congregations of a single church when both are present. We are speaking of the Jewish Congregation of the disciples and the Gentile Congregation of Paul. Both are identical with regard to a pursuit of the three loves: God beyond compare, neighbor as self and fellow Christian more than self. But they differ in that the Jewish Congregation complies with the Jewish law, as Jesus himself did, unless that law contradicts the three loves in a specific situation, which the disciples reported that Jesus did on occasion, e.g., healing on the Sabbath. Paul’s Gentile Congregation has no law beyond the three loves, and its total concern is expediency, especially with regard to doing good deeds.

The original Jewish Congregation died out with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and all that was left was the Gentile Congregation. Immanuel Kant makes the case that the Gentile Congregation lost its spiritual identity in its effort to win not only gentiles but also Jews for converts and as a result became Jewish in spirit, i.e., in the institution of both a priesthood, rituals, holidays and a canon of laws, e.g., not to eat blood products and a new worship day of Sunday. As a result of this gradual transition to a Jewish style appearance the Gentile Congregation became the Jewish Congregation in spirit and remaining gentile only in a DNA sense. This was thoroughly accomplished once Constantine made Christianity the state religion, for now many laws were needed to encourage the Christians to become good citizens, and the Church was all too ready to oblige in its own way with its own laws in support of this new order.

Therefore by the time of Mohammed, the entire conception of Paul’s gentile Christian had been lost for hundreds of years and Mohammed dealt then with a Church of a Jewish spirit and Jewish frame of mind. And so he was quite right in his criticism of the Christian religion as it was constituted. It was Jewish in spirit and yet it had corrupted the teachings of Jesus by adding new commands and laws and rejecting others. For example now it was acceptable to eat pork (a corruption of the life led by Jesus in his Jewish context, for he always obeyed the law if not in conflict with the three loves), while it was unacceptable to eat fish on Friday (or something like that). If the Church had remained Jewish in a material sense, which was the way that Jesus and the disciples had lived, then these changes would not have been made. And so indeed Mohammed was correct in accusing the Christian Church of a corruption of the Jewish law as understood and recognized by Jesus. It was Jewish in spirit but failed to mimic the first Jewish church at Jerusalem. [See appendix on the disappearance of the gentile congregatdion.]

But then of course Mohammed would have been much enlightened if he had known of the history of the church and the demise of the Gentile Congregation. For if the division had remained and the Jewish Congregation not have vanished, it would have been clear that the Jewish Congregation would be doing what Jesus did and taught (to his Jewish listeners), for the Gentile Congregation would have been present to furnish a continuing contrast, i.e., no laws, for all non-Jews.

Thus Mohammed cannot be faulted by the Christians for his misunderstanding. He condemned the corruption of the gentile Church through the Jewish mind set (but which went for new laws), and in this he was quite right (in the sense that it was a corruption from the way Jesus lived). He just did not know of the basis for this illusion, namely the illusion that what he witnessed was the Christian Church and not also at the same time the Jewish Congregation in gentile garb (gentile adherents and neo-Jewish mind set). He looked at the Church and saw only the Jewish Congregation and so identified the Church with this congregation. It was like seeing a mirage and taking it for real.

But for the work of Constantine and a desire for vain doctrines on the part Augustine, Mohammed could have seen this: instead of a fetish-bound church, mocking the original church at Jerusalem with inane pronouncements and superstitions, he could have seen a pure gentile church where anything goes, and where the intention is to do good and where these good intentions are marshaled and coordinated by the church for the good of mankind, i.e., an expedient unification of many bodies with a single spirit of good intentions. That’s what he could have seen if the Gentile Congregation had not been captured by the Jewish spirit. And then he would have seen that the revelations had already been completed and nothing more was required than to convince the world of what it means to be in Christ, as a gentile.

The revealing of the Gentile spirit began with Martin Luther and continues today, but has not yet been accompished in the various protestant churches. Mohammed was unable to appreciate this phenomenon for he, like all of the world, was victim to an illusion, much as Paul and Mohammed both saw the stars hanging on a great sky ceiling of the earth.