The Koranic concept of the word of God

John of Damascus and other early Christian writers have noted how much certain statements in the Qur'?n resemble Arian and Nestorian teachings. The present study looks at these resemblances more in detail to discover what the Qur'?n means when it calls Jesus "word of God". The Qur'?n itself understands "word" in several senses, but most frequently as God's decree. The Muslim commentators, too, commonly interpret "word" when used of Christ as the creative command by which God produced him in the womb of Mary without the help of a human father. The term then would be a title given to Jesus to show how he originated. A concluding chapter reviews the later development of "word" in Islamic theology and some of the Christians controversies about the Qur'?nic meaning of the term.