Miroslav Volf, Professor at Yale, on the dedication page of his new book — Allah: A Christian Response, says this:
To my father, a Pentecostal minister who admired Muslims, and taught me as a boy that they worship the same God as we do.
Some of you may know Miroslav Volf grew up in Croatia/Yugoslavia, so his past is particularly suited to the content of this book.
And there is our question: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? But we need to dig deeper in answering that question: How do we answer such a question? By comparing the Muslim view of God with the Christian view of God? Or by speaking in general terms — do we both worship one God, with no other gods?
And, is this debate really about religion?
Volf’s intent is to explore the “proper Christian stance toward the God of the Qu’ran and what that response means for the ability of Christians and Muslims to live together well in a single and endangered world.” And he sees “extraordinary promise” in a proper Christian response.
Our history matters; our religions matter; and our theology matters. Some Christians today think the Muslim God and the Christian God are two different Gods. What do you think?The debate was heated when Rick Warren, evidently, used language from the Christian scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures and the Muslim scriptures when he prayed at Obama’s inauguration.
Volf: “The stronger the tensions between adherents of different religions, the more likely that their gods will be held to be incompatibly different …” (8). In turn, this permits easier turnings to conflict. The solution is not to secularize beliefs.
And this: “Muslims and Christians will be able to live in peace with one another only if (1) the identities of each religious group are respected and given free room for expression and (2) if there are significant overlaps in the ultimate values that orient the lives of people in these communities. These two conditions will be met only if the God of the Bible and the God of the Qu’ran turn out to embody overlapping ultimate values, that is, if Muslims and Christians, both monotheists, turn out to have a ‘common God’” (8-9).
And: “But can it be said of Muslims and Christians, today caught in deep conflicts, that they, too, worship the same God? Yes it can” (11).
Scot,
I have spent some time going through the Qu’ran, but am certainly no expert. How does Volf explain the uniqueness of the trinity?
This is a most complex issue! We have to look at our motives as we think it through. How do we perceive our vested interests in each of the possible answers to the question?
Then there is the question of whether all Christians worship the same God. The Gods of Calvinism and Open Theism are quite different. At what point do different understandings of the one God mean that two different Gods are in fact being worshipped?
How important is intent? If two people honestly intend to serve the true God, do misunderstandings of what he is like cancel out that good intent?
For Dave @ 1, did early Christians before the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated worship the same God?
How do we factor in Acts 17:27-28? – “God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him…(CEB).
for myself, these considerations and others, including having begun to read Volf’s book, have begun to change my mind as to the possibility that the God behind our faulty theologies might be the same. I remember in CS Lewis’s The Last Battle that a servant of “the great god Tash” is surprised to find himself in Aslan’s presence after death, recognizing in him the one he had meant to serve and thought he was serving.
PS – I love Volf’s historical background. This same conversation was already taking place in the Middle Ages!
I live in the Middle East and work among Arabs. I often have to deal with this question, not here among Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, but among Christians when I return to the States. I’ll try to give several perspectives.
1) Historical and linguistic: The Christian Arab community predates Islam, and as far as we can tell, Christian Arabs have never had a problem using Allah as a word for the one creator God. All denominations use Allah to refer to the Father of Jesus. Aramaic, the language of our Lord, has very similar words for God, and it could be argued that Arabs took the Aramaic word as their own at the dawn of Islam. In effect, Muslims took a Christian word for the creator. Early Germanic Christians, on the other hand, took a pagan word (god/gott) and baptized it into a new meaning.
Theological/psychological: There is only one God and our different conceptions of him all fall short. If you call Him Allah or God or Kami-san or Dios has nothing to do with whom we worship. To ask if we are “in fact worshiping two different Gods” is a nonsensical question. God is not God because we imagine him to be a certain way, and we do not create 6 billion different gods with our 6 billion different conceptions of God.
Communication/Missiological: When I say Allah to my Muslim friends, it does not mean the same to them as it does when I say Allah to my Christian friends. In the same way, when I say Yasuu’ (Christian word) or Isa (Muslim word), different narratives and personalities are imagined by the hearers. The actual historical person is the same. We all bring our assumptions to the table as we discuss what he is like. Miscommunication and the need to negotiate meaning is inevitable.
Finally, those who have the Holy Spirit can understand the things of the Spirit. True worshipers worship God in spirit and in truth. This reminds us that truth about who God is is spiritually discerned and revealed to us. It is not a matter of comparing a list of supposed attributes of the deity and seeing how closely they match. “Hmm…70% the same? No match, different Gods.”
It is a privilege to worship Allah with my Arab brothers and sisters, and it is a privilege to call my Muslim friends to a deeper and truer understanding of Allah by introducing them to Isa, the image of the invisible Allah.
Oops, that’s
1) Historical and linguistic
2) Theological/psychological
3) communication/Missiological
Of course much of this comes down to: “Who do you say that I am?”
There is a helpful ministry that deals with that question called Jesus in the Qur’an.
http://www.jesusinthequran.org/
My daughter happened to attend one of its conferences, and I saw a quote in the workbook (I think it was from the missions historian Stephen Neil) that talks about the similarities of the faiths, but that Islam has a “veil” over its eyes. I found that to be an interesting description as I ponder this issue.
Percival,
Would you say the following is true then, based on what you wrote above (I’m trying to make sure I understand what you wrote)
We should not say that Christians and Muslims worship different Gods, but rather that Christians believe different things to be true about that God. Or perhaps that Christians have a fuller understanding of the one true God (because of Jesus, the image of the invisible)?
The God Christians worship is YHWH and Jesus and Holy Spirit. Do Muslims worship YHWH, Jesus and Holy Spirit? Do they interchange Allah with any of those? Do they praise Yah or confess Jesus is Lord? Or would doing so be reprehensible to them.
While, unlike Christians and Muslims, Christians and Jews share the same Scriptures for the most part, do they worship the same God? I guess it depends upon what the meaning of the word “God” is. Can the Jews’ God become fully human? Can He eternally exist as Trinity? Can He have a fully-God/fully-human Son?
I think that yes, we answer that question by looking at the descriptions of each God and see how much they overlap. I think that Dave More #1 asks a good question. It seems that because of the Trinity the descriptions of each are divergent enough that I’m hesitant to say that we’re worshiping the same God.
Coming at this laterally – not all followers of Judaism believe that Christianity and Judaism worship the same God. I was intrigued recently to see a statement on a site called jewsforjudaism that Christians created a separate religion when they replaced Torah with Jesus and followed it up with the Trinity:
The Christian concept of God is not the Jewish concept of God; in essence, their God is not our God. One cannot replace Torah with Jesus and still have a reason for Judaism or truthfully call the new entity “a form of Judaism.” The respective adherents to Judaism and Christianity are part of distinct faith communities.
http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=184:is-the-christian-movement-called-qmessianic-judaismq-a-form-of-judaism&catid=74
I would expect that the God of Christianity is closer the one of Judaism than the one Islam. If Christians and Muslims worship the same God, then one would have to reject the claim of those Jews who believe that Christianity and Judaism in essence worship different Gods.
Looking forward to this. Really important!
Paul #7,
Yes.
Jeff #8
Whaaat?
Do Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians know and worship the same God? Not according to Southern Baptist convert Clark Carlton:
http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/tca_carltonrome.aspx
“Evangelicals searching for the catholic tradition must understand that Orthodoxy is not simply an alternative ecclesiastical structure to the Roman Catholic Church. The Orthodox Church presents a fundamentally different approach to theology, because She possesses a fundamentally different experience of Christ and life in Him. To put it bluntly, She knows a different Christ from that of the Roman Catholic Church.”
And he implies the same thing about Protestantism:
“When I renounced Protestantism and embraced Holy Orthodoxy I implicitly renounced Roman Catholicism as well, for Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are truly two sides of the same coin. When I abandoned the heretical notion of Sola Scriptura, I also abandoned the presupposition that Christianity is an ideology that can be derived from a text. When I relinquished my role as an infallible Protestant pope, interpreting the Bible according to my own lights, I also relinquished the fantasy that there could be another infallible pope.”
So the question is: Do [Evangelical] Protestant and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians worship the same God? Until that question can be answered with a resounding “Yes!” instead of with an “It depends” or a “No,” it doesn’t make sense to argue if Christians and Muslims worship the same God, because one hasn’t first established what God Christians worship.
Marcus #10,
If you are looking for overlap in order to make a gray question black and white, what is your necessary percentage? Or what are the deal breakers? For example, must someone believe in the Trinity to be said to worship the same God? Oops, there goes Moses and Abraham, et al. They worshiped a different God. Must the worshiper understand that God is love and loves everyone or that He is completely Holy? Sorry, none of us completely understands these things.
A doctrinal test for worship is what Jesus rejected when Jesus answered the question of the Samaritan woman about whether God should be worshiped on that mountain or in Jerusalem. Even though our litmus tests for true worship are different than the Samaritan/Jew divide, his answer to her is instructive to us.
John 4:22 You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. 4:23 But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshippers. 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
But Percival, are they worshipping in “truth”?
Is it our worship that makes our God the true God? Or is it our God who makes who makes our worship worth while?
The premise of this conversation/debate sounds like it is us humans who define who God is. I’m pretty convinced that every single one of us is wrong about something about God. So none of us really worship the true God. From there we can start interacting with other religions.
I think the better question is, “Does God accept the worship of both Christians and Muslims?”
@Adam 17.
I’m pretty convinced that every single one of us is wrong about something about God. So none of us really worship the true God.
Which might also mean, “So none of us really worship the same God.”
@Percival 15.
But what does it mean to worship God “in spirit and truth”? See, e.g., http://betterbibles.com/2010/11/22/worship-in-spirit-and-truth-john-424/
(Also see the Part II and Addendum posts/threads on the same topic there at BBB.)
Rick #16,
That is a good question. If we define truth as doctrinal correctness, none of us worship in perfect truth. Here’s how I think of it. Jesus is the Truth. When we worship God through faith in Jesus and with the intercession of the Spirit, we worship in truth. Did Moses and Abraham worship in truth? By faith, they received what they could not see or understand. It’s not dependent on our doctrinal statement or the completeness of our theology.
I am not pro-Islam in any sense. I am not saying they are close to the Kingdom of God because they are monotheistic. We know the harsh words Jesus had for his fellow monotheists at times, even though he said “We (Jews) worship that which we know.” He also called some of them children of their father Satan. On balance, I’m not sure whether religions are helpful or not when it comes to drawing people to Jesus. I usually doubt that it does.
Percival #13,
YHWH is the name of the God of the Bible. It is usually rendered in English by LORD (all caps). It is not a synonym for “God” anymore than George or Bill or Barak is a synonym for “president.” This is the God Christians worship. “Hallelujah” means “Praise Jah” or “Praise Yah” (Yah is a shortened form of YHWH). Christians believe YHWH, or Yah, is God. We also confess that Jesus (whose name in Hebrew, Yeshua, means “Yahweh saves”) is Lord, which is to say that Jesus is God. It is an essential confession about who God is. Muslims make no such confession. Indeed, although they have some respect for Jesus, they deny that He is God.
I think MatthewS raises a good point. Depending on how far you’re willing to go with it, Jews and Christians do NOT, in fact, worship the same God. We, however, claim a historical connection wherein YHWH reveals something about Himself in Christ that was not known before (That’s a terrible way of saying it, but I’m floundering for words here). The historical connections between Islam and the God of Christianity and Judaism are most definitely there. It is one thing to say that Islam is a false religion (as most would claim about Moromonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses), but it is quite another to say it isn’t the same God.
I haven’t read “Islam,” but if his other writings are any indication, Volf is probably not building a case for universalim. That nuance is extremely important to the conversation. He is building a case for ecumenicism and common ground from which Christians and Muslims can operate.
Jeff (20) – By that logic, Jews and Christians worship different gods. I think you prove too much. Islam draws its roots back to the God of Abraham. There are significant differences that shouldn’t be overlooked, but political and religious tensions aside, the Qur’an affirms this view quite specifically. Like Christianity, however, it claims to have the fuller understanding of God. You and I both agree that this is wrong, but it is what it is. They split away farther back than we do, but if trinity is the critical place of differentiation, then we have huge problems.
Volf is just talking about something that missionaries to Islamic peoples have known for ages – affirming this is the launch pad from which the argument for Jesus can be made.
I find the question, “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?” perplexing. God is God. There is only one. So this must be a question about perceptions of God, not about God himself. Do Muslims perceive God correctly? I think they have some genuine knowledge of him, but that knowledge is limited. They do not know, for example, that he is a Trinity. Israel didn’t know that either until Jesus came, and most of them didn’t accept it. I know that God is a Trinity, but I didn’t figure that out myself; it was revealed to me, and it is only by God’s grace that I could accept it. So I know that he is a Trinity. But there is so much more that I do not know about him, and I don’t even know what it is that I do not know!
So I find much of this discussion perplexing. We are all ignorant of God in different ways to varying degrees. What I know as a Christian is only what God has revealed to me thus far. It is quite possible, even likely, that Muslims have some knowledge of God that I do not have (e.g., some personal knowledge of his holiness). And I can say that in good conscience without compromising any of my Christian orthodoxy. And I can also say in confidence that the full knowledge of God is held in the person of Jesus Christ, not in my beliefs or perceptions of him.
Percival #15, thanks for the question. I probably wasn’t as clear as I could have been in my comment. I’m not thinking about it so much from a doctrinal perspective as a description perspective. Ask an orthodox Muslim how they would describe god. Do the same with an orthodox Christian? Is there coherence or contradiction? If there’s contradiction, then either they’re referring to different gods or one or both of them are wrong. I don’t really see any other option.
Marcus – That doesn’t hold. Ask an Orthodox Jew the same question.
Jeremy #22,
To a degree, that is true: If Jews do not confess Jesus is Lord, they do not really worship the same God. Paul’s message to the Jews was that Jesus is Lord. Jews who do not confess Jesus as Lord are not really confessing the God of the OT. They are branches that have gotten “broken off” of the rootstock (see Romans 11) — they are not really worshiping the God of the OT. OTOH, non-Jews, though they previously had not worshiped the God of the OT, are “grafted in” on to the rootstock — they are worshiping the God of the OT.
Muslims do not confess that Jesus is God. Since Christians do, I do not think it can be said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. The God Christians worship is the God Muslims deny.
Paul’s message to Jew and Gentile alike was that Jesus is God. It was quite offensive to many Jews and not a few Gentiles. When he preached at Mars Hill, he did not look at the Pantheon and say, “Well, brothers, we all really worship the same God.” No, he noticed the tribute “To the Unknown God” — not a God they claimed to know but admitted that they did not know who He was — and Paul preached exclusively about this one God, the unique God, the Lord of heaven and earth, and the one ordained by Him and raised from the dead. IOW, he preached Jesus. Some believed, others thought Paul a babbler.
Marcus #24,
I repeat, there is only one God so how can you say they are “referring to different gods”? What you are describing is a conceptual difference, not an actual difference. When Muslims ask me if I worship Allah I say there is only one god, the all powerful creator of the universe. This answer always satisfies them. Then we can talk about how our conception of Allah as revealed in Gospel differs from what they have been taught.
It’s a pity that Christians aren’t satisfied with that. It seems there is something more visceral behind Americans’ reluctance to accept this simple idea. Allah is not a synonym for Satan even though some of the Islamic descriptions of Him are truly satanic.
Jeremy, then how do you determine when two people are referring to the same being or object? There has to be a fairly high level of coherence in description to say that they’re referring to the same thing, and this includes description of actions, not just characteristics. Of course there isn’t a clear cut test that can be applied, but lack of a test doesn’t make a theory of description wrong.
I also don’t have a problem saying that either Jews or Christians are right about their description of God, but not both. I don’t view that as an arrogant claim, it’s just a matter of logic. Either Jesus is God or he isn’t.
If anybody thinks I am the Jeff Doles in Montana who got busted a few years back for operating a head shop, you got the wrong guy. If you think I am the Jeff Doles who is a fire chief in Peach Co., GA., again, you have the wrong God. They are not me and I am not them. We are very different people. I am the Jeff Doles with a ministry called Walking Barefoot Ministries and a blog called The Faith Log, one called Miracles and Manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and one called Further Adventures of Jeff Doles. I am the one whose books you can find at Amazon.com (shameless plug). I share the same name as those other Jeff Doles (and two or three more around the country), but I am different in many ways and have my own unique identity (there is only one of me).
The God Christians worship is the God is the one who has given us the OT Scriptures through the Hebrew prophets, and the NT through the apostles of Jesus. More importantly, He has revealed Himself in His Son, King Jesus the Messiah.
The god Muslims worship is one who has given the Koran and whose prophet is Muhammed. The God Christians worship is the one who has given His Son, Jesus, the Word who was with God in the beginning and is, indeed, God.
The god the Muslims worship — the god who gave Quran and has Muhammed as his prophet — is a god who does not exist.
There may be some similarities between the two faiths, but the deity each one worships is essentially different.
I’m reading the book now. Starting second section. Learning a lot, which is what always happens when I read Volf.
Percival #27,
Let’s do a simplified thought experiment. Let’s say that you think that the steering wheel is the round thing on the dash that you turn to control the direction of the car. Let’s say that I think that the steering wheel also controls the direction of the car, but what I call the steering wheel is a lever that also makes a light in the car light up and makes a ticking sound that you use to control the car. Are we referring to the same object?
Yes we both claim that what we’re describing controls the direction of the car and we both call it the same name, but when you get further into the description you see that different things are being described and thus even the fundamental claim that both ‘steering wheels’ control the car cannot be correct.
I am NOT anti-Islamic, and I am a biblical inclusivist (I think Acts 17:27-28 opens the gates of mercy very wide). That being said, I spent three long afternoons in dialog with an Iman over this topic. We found numerous points of agreement, but differed over one thing: the incarnation. I told Iman Kopuz, “With all the pain that I’ve seen, I could not believe in God if God did not experience human suffering. A wounded God is the only God I can worship.” He replied (respectfully) that the idea of God suffering belittles the Divine majesty–he felt a doctrine of incarnation insults God. So that was where we differed.
The god who gave the popes authority over the church is obviously living at a different address than the one who inspired Luther to nail his theses to the door. The god who gave victory to the American revolutionaries is different than the god who told Christians to be subject to the king. Your appeal to variant interpretations of divine acts in history is kind of weak.
Jeff Doles of Walking Barefoot Mission, you seem to be working very hard to obfuscate and avoid the clear arguments that have been made repeatedly here by a number of people besides myself. Maybe you agree with those Jews who say Christians do not worship YHWH. Your arguments are essentially the same.
Marcus,
What do you mean by “car”?
Jeff – Problematic analogy. You were never those guys. They are, in fact, completely different people with no contact points aside from name. HOWEVER, if I were to say there is this guy, Jeff Doles, who does a lot of stuff in ministry, blogs, and books and also likes fried mars bars, even if I’m wrong about the mars bars, I’m still talking about you. You could, of course, make the argument that I don’t really know you, which would be true. However, that’s a whole different proposition from saying I’m not talking about you.
Part of the problem in this conversation is that both sides approach the argument from fundamentally different viewpoints. One is, in essence, viewing it as semantics rather than doctrine and the other is looking only at doctrine. I would be curious to see how many on on each side have extensive (and successful) missionary experience in extremely non-Christian contexts. The common ground approach is fairly reflexive in nearly all of the missionaries I know (and became so in my own experiences), while the hard line approach is often true of those with no experience or the guys we used to have to clean up after in the field.
Again, this is not an argument about universalism. The teeth of the gospel are not pulled by saying that Islam worships the same god. The fact of Jesus still stands as central to the Christian faith. Rather, it is an argument from history and common beliefs. They are wrong, but I am not convinced that they are wrong enough to say it’s a different God entirely.
Volf – “The stronger the tensions between adherents of different religions, the more likely that their gods will be held to be incompatibly different …”
Is that the way it is? Or is it more like:
The more their gods are held to be incompatibaly different, the more likely the tensions between the adherents.
In the interests of full disclosure, I will admit that many people who come to faith in Christ out of Islam will say that they can no longer think of the god of Islam as being the same as the god of Jesus. I would not argue with them about that as it indicates the psychological distance and the psychic shock they have had to endure as a convert. Others, not so much. They just say that their understanding of God was faulty.
Sorry, Jeremy, but at least in the Arab world, the evangelistic approach that is known as “Common Ground” is widely disavowed by believers from a Muslim background. However, it remains quite popular among first-term western missionaries!
Jeremy #35,
a very wise comment. The common ground approach was employed by Paul when he spoke on Mars Hill in Athens, so it has a very ancient pedigree.
Percival #33,
The essential nature of the God the Christian worships is that He is the God who has revealed Himself in His Son, Jesus. The one true God of the Christian is the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Take away that essential point, and you no longer have the Christian faith.
It is not just a matter of variation, it is a matter of what God is in His nature and essence. There is a fundamental difference.
Luther and Calvin and Wesley and the RCC and the EO may differ on many things, but they all hold to the fundamental and exclusively Christian faith in the Trinity and the exclusively Christian confession that Jesus is Lord.
We can find common ground with Muslims in that we both believe in a God who is one and who created the universe. But that is not enough to conclude that we therefore believe in the same God.
There may be a lot of variation about non-essential things, but when there is disagreement about the essentials of a thing, then we are simply no longer talking about the same thing.
So the Christian, standing in the midst of Mecca, said: “Men of Arabia, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. What therefore you worship as Allah, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ The times of ignorance God overlooked, but know he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
It is my humble opinion that because both faiths have a common patriarch that the children learned from a common parent, a description of God. I believe that one lineage learned that God promised and delivered a Redeemer, and another lineage never adopted the belief in a Redeemer.
It is not so difficult for me to understand that following and allegiance to a deity, without the inclusion of a Redeemer, would result in a religion that demands intolerance of contrary beliefs.
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, have their roots in the Abrahamic religions , with the inclusion of Jesus as an incarnation of “God with us”, reconciling us back into His family, by sacrificing Himself for us.
Without Jesus, any religion, even though it describes itself as following God by the same name or unique names, are fairly similar.
Jeremy #35,
See my post at #39. The point is not simply that I never was any of those other Jeff Doles guys. The point is that I differ from them in essential ways. They may have some non-essential characteristics similar to mine, but that does not meant that we are therefore the same person. More importantly, the differences or variations we have between us are more that superficial — they are what make us essentially different from each other so that one cannot say that Jeff Doles of Tampa (me) and Jeff Doles of Peach Co., GA are the same person.
Since Rob Bell is currently a figure of controversy over his new book, here is a another good example. Christianity Today has posted an article about it( http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2011/02/rob_bells_book.html ), noting that the issue has gotten a lot of “tweets,” including from some who have mistaken robbell, a web designer in the UK, for @realrobbell. Shall we gloss over that and suppose, “Oh, well, we’re all talking about the same Rob Bell”?
To those who deny that Allah is God:
Do you think that Allah does not exist? Or that he is some other type of supernatural being? Or something else?
Percival (37) – Interesting. I know long-term missionaries working with Arab Muslims who report quite a different result. We may be talking about slightly different things though as my missionary language has always been very poor and my experiences is with Hindus, not the Arab or even Muslim world. I’m not talking about making a claim that amounts to hijacking (Hey guys! I worship Allah too!), but rather, as you noted, working from the point that those being evangelized can understand (your point of worshiping the Creator God)…not pulling the rug out from under them immediately, shall we say.
Part of it for me is the law of non-contradiction. A cannot be non-A in the same way at the same time. A = non-A is an incoherent statement.
Christians confess that Jesus is God; Muslims deny that Jesus is God. Therefore, it is incoherent to say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
This does not mean that we have nothing in common with Muslims in the area of faith. We do. But what we have in common is not enough to conclude that we both worship the same God. We do not. The God each worships is fundamentally, foundationally, essentially different from the other.
Jeff Doles,
But presumably we do not think that the God of Islam, the God of Christianity, and the God of Judaism all exist as real distinct individuals. If and only if they all three exist can we claim that they are ontologically different.
If we believe that God exists, then we can claim that some are in error in their understanding of God. We can claim that the God worshipped by some is a fiction with no basis in reality. But we cannot claim that they worship a “different God.”
With respect to Judaism and Christianity – to claim that that Jews worship a “different God” is to gut Christianity of its very core reality. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I haven’t studied Islam enough to truly understand the roots – but the key question is, it seems to me, one of accuracy not ontology.
It is important to ask questions like “do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?”, but the more important questions are the ones that God asks of us, like this question that Jesus asked of his followers:
“He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”….” Mark 9:29
Jeff,
By continually pointing out that there are other Jeff Doles out there, you are implicitly accepting the false idea that there are actually other gods.
First, we should clarify Volf’s intent. He makes clear in the book’s introduction that he is not talking about soteriology, but rather about political theology. So, all of the comments here that take “worship the same God” to mean something soteriological are missing Volf’s point.
For Christians, only the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ saves. Allah as Muslims conveive of God cannot save. Ultimately, if we are going to develop a Christian soteriology that in some way incorporates Muslims, it must finally name Christ as the only savior.
But the question Volf asks is whether Christians and Muslims can cooperate and live peacefully based on a shared sense that the worship and practices of each are straining towards the same object and being. That seems to me an important and worthy question to ask.
Jeff — a better analogy would be this: let’s say that I have Jeff Doles’ web and physical address right, and I know he’s written some books on faith and healing. But I don’t know what his friends know about him — he’s a fun guy or good at golf or whatever. And even his friends don’t know what his wife knows about him — his deepest secrets, his sexuality, and so on.
Are we all properly claiming to know the “same” Jeff Doles? Sure. Do I know Jeff Doles in the same way and degree as his wife? No.
Jeff (42) – I think you’ve missed my point entirely and I’m not really sure how to fix that. You’ve completely ignored the crux of my analogy. Jeff Doles in Georgia is not you, it never was you. However, we CAN, in fact, speak of you, the Jeff Doles in Florida (Love Tampa btw. Grew up in Jax) and be extremely wrong without being vulnerable to “speaking of someone else entirely.” We would have to be foundationally wrong for that to occur – You were born in Canada, you are a cat,etc. The details will need to be significantly wrong before “talking of someone else entirely” becomes an issue.
Islam is similar. They are wrong in all kinds of places, HUGE places even. However, they are talking about the one, all powerful Creator God and God of Abraham. The similarities extend far beyond that even, so it is not as simple as claiming we’re talking about different Jeff Doles. We are arguing instead about just how well we actually know Jeff.
Jeremy #44,
Sorry. I should be more clear. We certainly do try to find common ground with Muslims as we talk with them. What I was referring to was a particular highly contextualized approach that is called “Common Ground”. In that approach, people try to pass themselves off as Jesus Muslims and converts are made into another sect of Islam. It is all highly problematic and essentially deceptive. That’s what I meant. Paul’s common ground speech to the Athenians is substantially different.
David (49) – I tried to make that point earlier. I wonder how many will miss it though. I have “Against the Tide” and if you take any one essay, you can walk away with a very wrong impression of what he’s about. Soteriology is most definitely not on the table as he has explicitly stated in the past that he is not a universalist or aiming at broader inclusion.
Percival – Ah, ok, I’ve heard that referred to as “non-extraction.” Someone close to me is preparing to head into the Muslim Arab world, and he’s being taught not to do extraction. It’d be interesting to learn more about how well that actually works out in the real world.
RJS #46,
The God of the Muslim — the god who gave Muhammed the Quran — is non-existent. A god that is non-existent is ontologically different a God who actually exists. A non-existent god has no ontology.
Paul, in Romans 11, indicates that the Jews who did not receive God’s Messiah, Jesus, had departed from the OT faith. He likened them to branches that were broken off of the main stock. The root stock remained. OTOH, he likens non-Jews who receive Jesus the Messiah and confess that He is Lord to wild branches that have been grafted into the root stock. That is a bit of a twist on the grafting analogy in that it is usually the domestic branch that is grafted into the wild root stock. But Paul’s use of it the other way around emphasizes that the root stock — the faith taught in the OT — remains. For Paul, it is believers in Jesus, not deniers of Jesus, who are being true to the God the OT.
It’s nice to empathize and try to find some common ground with Muslim friends, but the God of the Bible is different than Allah I firmly believe.
Jesus and Muhammad had very different approaches in how they dealt with things. Sin and forgiveness and the deity of Christ are some areas where there are major differences that the “same” God would not promote.
Jesus forgave on the cross. Muhammad cursed the Christians and Jews in the name of his God when he was dying. It’s unlikely these two were representing the same deity.
Maybe a larger question is: What is the proof or evidence for the God of Islam and the inspiration of the Qur’an versus the God(s) of Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism, Hinduism, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, other Scriptures, etc.? If the evidence for the Muslim Allah and the inspiration of the Qur’an are pretty tenuous, then to discuss if Allah is the same God as YHWH is like discussing if Daffy Duck is the same as Jesus Christ. Just because Muslims think or believe that Allah is real or is God doesn’t make it so either in whole or in part.
Percival #48,
No, I am not accepting that there are actually other gods besides the God of the Bible. That is merely you trying to make my analogy absolute. Every analogy breaks down at some point or else it is not merely the analogy of a thing but the thing itself. You have merely pushed the analogy to where it differs from the thing.
Someone can invent a fictitious Jeff Doles, one with a nature and set of characteristics that does not exist. It would not do to say that I and that fictitious Jeff Doles are one and the same. We would not be the same at all. We would differ in an essential way: I am real, and that other Jeff Doles would be non-real. IOW, we would be ontologically different, as different as existent and non-existent.
Jeremy – the analogy about the different Jeff Doles is good, but not perfect because who you say Jeff Doles is will not determine your ultimate eternal destiny. Whereas who do you say God is does.
I would say all people have much in common, in that we all sin against God, our Creator, and He will punish us for our sins. But the God of the Bible has loving provided a way to be forgiven and still uphold His justice, whereas the God of the Quran has not.
Dopderbeck #50,
Yes, my wife knows me very well, my friends know me in varying degrees, my readers know me somewhat. You yourself know me enough to know that I am not the Jeff Doles who is the fire chief of Peach Co., GA, or the Jeff Doles who is apparently a media arts teacher in Barrington, IL, or the Jeff Doles who was busted years ago for operating a head shop in Montana.
So, if someone came up to you, and you mentioned that you know Jeff Doles, and they said, “Oh, yeah, the fire chief in Peach Co., GA,” would you say that the two of you were talking about the same Jeff Doles, that you both were talking about me?
It is not merely a difference of how well one knows me (my wife knows me best). It is the difference between knowing me and knowing one of those other Jeff Doles who are scattered around the country, or a Jeff Doles who does not actually exist at all (not to get all existential on you : )
I disagree with the premise that Christians and Muslims have to agree that we are basically worshipping the same God with different understandings in order to have peace. I think the only way we can have peace is if we all express who we really are, speak truthfully about what we believe, be respectful of other people’s perspectives, recognize and appreciate differences, and embrace diversity.
I haven’t read Volf’s book, but it seems like he is advocating the old school idea that “all the religions are basically different expressions of the same spiritual experience.” I thought we had moved beyond that.
Jeff (#61) — sure — and Volf’s argument is that the differences between Islam and Christianity in their descriptions of God and their theological sources are more like the difference between me and your wife in our knowledge of you.
For example, on one of the really biggies, the Trinity, Volf argues that Islam historically has misunderstood what the Christian doctrine of the Trinity really says — specifically that the three persons of the Trinity coinhere in one God. Thus, both Muslims and Christians believe in only one God, and the Islamic statements condemning Christians as tri-theists can be reinterpreted.
Is Volf right about this? I don’t know. While we Christians assert three persons in one being, we also are not “modalists” – the three persons really are three persons. But I at least appreciate that Volf is trying to get each side to understand deeply and fully the others’ traditions on their own terms.
And it’s important to note that Volf is not just saying to us Christians that we need to accept Islam as being the same as Christianity. Much of his argument is to Muslims — asking them to understand Christian doctrines on their own terms and not to misunderstand us.
Percival(4) points out some important contextual issues for this conversation, that complicate the picture for advocates of the “Allah doesn’t exist/is a totally different God” view.
Jeff,
for the sake of agreement, let’s take your name out of the equation.
If there was only one person named the Kwisatz Haderach and someone mistakenly thought he lived in IL, we might say, “No, the KH never lived in IL. Maybe you are thinking of someone else.” He replies, “No, the KH, the guy with the blog. He’s a fire chief,right?” We say, “Well he has a blog, but he’s not a fire chief.” etc…
Basically, you would have a conversation. That is, if you cared. If you merely wanted to point out that they don’t know much about the Kwisatz Haderach (even if you agreed there was only the one), you wouldn’t need to bother talking with the person or even listening to them. But when you want to come to an understanding, you need to get to the bottom of things and not merely be dismissive of every idea they have.
You don’t treat friends that way. If you wanted to be hostile, you would say, “You may know someone you call the KW, but I know the real KW. You must be talking about someone else.” If someone took that attitude with me, I would naturally return the feelings of hostility. Mohammad told his followers if they were in doubt about the things that he was telling them, they could ask the People of the Book. Unfortunately, after this conversation today, I would advise them to be careful about which of the People of the Book they listened to.
Dopderbeck #63,
I’m quite alright with talking about the ways the Muslim God and the Christian God are similar, just as we can talk about the way I and the teacher in Barrington, IL named Jeff Doles are similar. Lotsa room for that.
Yes, Christians and Muslims both have a monotheistic faith. We both believe that there is one God who created all. But there is a fundamental difference between the God of the Christian and the God of the Muslim. Christians confess that Jesus IS God. That is essential to the God Christians worship — if one departs from that confession one has departed from the Christian faith. But Muslims deny this very essential thing about the God Christians worship.
Christians and Muslims can certainly talk respectfully with each other about these things, and note the similarities and the differences between their beliefs. But when Muslims deny one of the most fundamental things about God, then it is apparent to me that we are really talking about two different Gods, the one who exists and has revealed Himself through the Son, and one that does not exist. We may have some religious views that are similar, but we do not worship the same deity.
Percival – I love reading your posts, because you actually live this question on a daily basis. I’ve spent a lot of time in Israel-Palestine, and am possibly preparing to return to the Middle East full-time. Is there any way that you could e-mail me @ katierholl@gmail.com. I’ve got some quick questions, and you seem pretty wise. If not, no worries. Thanks! -Katie
@Jeff 66
God has not always revealed Himself through the Son, nor does he exclusively reveal himself through the Son.
Did the God that Paul knew before meeting Jesus exist?
Percival #65,
Your comparison is about non-essential things. I can agree with that there are a number of non-essential aspects about the God of the Christian and the God of the Muslim that are similar. But when it comes down to essential things — Who is God? — the Christian confesses that Jesus is God and the Muslim denies this. We simply cannot say, on the basis of similarities, that we are both talking about the same God, when there is a fundamental and essential difference between the Christian God and what the Muslim worships. We might say that the backside of an Elephant is the same as a large gray balloon because they both share the characteristic of being large and gray. However, the differences are much more profound than the similarities.
I am all for being polite and respectful with Muslims and I am not at all for hostility. But that does not mean that we should paper over the profound differences about who God essentially is for the sake of superficial commonality. I believe it is more respectful to be clear with each other about where those profound differences are. I am like Dennis Prager in that I value clarity over agreement. To say that Christians and Muslims both worship the same God obscures the deep, essential, and vital aspect about the God Christians worship — Jesus is God.
Nikita #67,
God did not always reveal Himself through the Son, at least not in the final way He did through the Incarnation, but the God of the Old Testament IS the God who revealed Himself through the Son. IOW, the God of the OT is the God of the NT. He has always been who He is. Revelation has been progressive, but the ontology of God has not.
Jeff 70
Is it possible that someone living in 2011 has received partial revelation of God, but not the full revelation of the incarnation?
It’s good that the conversation has come around to the incarnation and to the central claim that Jesus is Lord.
To me, this is what really makes the question being asked — “do Muslims and Christians worship the same God” — perhaps the wrong question. “Worship,” after all, is at heart the right adoration of God as God is and has made Himself known. Nobody in this life fully and purely worships God. But if God has in these “last days” — to use the Bible’s terminology — most fully revealed Himself in Christ, then surely it is necessary to say that “worship” of God must involve the acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord.
As we work through this book I suspect this will be my hesitation. I want to celebrate commonalities, reduce barriers, clear away mistunderstandings, and I want to embrace Muslims as fellow human beings longing after the one true God — yet have the freedom to make the unique confession that Jesus is Lord.
Dopderbeck,
Yes, it is two different questions (or maybe 3 or 4!).
Question 1: Same god? (nonsensical question)
Question 2: Worship? (Not sure. In fact, I don’t always know if I’m really worshiping.)
Question 3: Same concept of God (certainly not)
Question 4: Why do some insist that question 1 is a real question?
signing off…
Nikita #71,
According to Hebrews 1:1-2, the God of the OT, who spoke by the Hebrew prophets, has given the ultimate revelation of Himself through the Son. I don’t claim to understand all that is revealed in Jesus the Messiah, but I do see from this passage that it has been made in Him. There is no further revelation that needed to come six centuries later by Muhammed, bringing a book and a teaching that denies the ultimate revelation God has made in Jesus the Messiah.
One question I have about this issue is why some people feel it is even necessary to say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Why should not Christians be able to sit down with Muslims freely acknowledge that each group worships a different God? “You worship this God, but we worship that God. You can tell us about your God, if you wish, and then let us tell you about our God.” Nothing hostile in that, nothing impolite about disagreeing or in recognizing the deep differences between the two faiths.
In the Bible, we do not find Israel saying to the nations, or the apostles preaching to the nations, “Well, we all really just believe in the same God.” All the cards were on the table.
@Percival (#65): “the Kwisatz Haderach”
haha – nice!
How about this.
My parents are divorced and I live with my father while my sister lives with my mother. They hate each other so they never talk.
Now, my mom’s father died before I was born, so I have never had the opportunity to know him. But my father has told me a lot about him. My mother told my sister entirely different stories about her father.
When my sister and I get together and talk about my mom’s dad, is it the same person? Yes.
I admit I have only read about 40 of the responses so far….
The God of the Bible and the Quran are not the same, nor should we tell Muslims that they are the same just to be able to present the Gospel to them, that is being deceptive. Though we can use common beliefs held by both faiths as a way of gaining a better hearing and present the Gospel against the background of what Muslims already believe. I just got through reading a short handbook on line entitled “Sharing the Gospel with Muslims”, by John Gilchrist, you can read it here:
http://www.answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Sharing/index.html
I found the handbook very informative about Islam and Christianity, and very helpful in using common beliefs as a way of sharing the Gospel with Muslims. Jesus did not die only for Christians, He died for Muslims too, we all need Jesus to be reconciled to God.
Jeff (#75) — well, but we do find the Apostles suggesting that the first generation of Christians worship the same God as the Jews, even those who rejected Jesus. And we also have Paul’s famous Mars Hill speech. So I don’t think it’s so cut and dried.
With respect to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, we have to be very sensitive to historical context, which includes our common Abrahamic roots, but also includes a history of pogroms, holocausts, and Crusades. If we can acknowledge that we are “related” in faith, we might have a greater hope of respect, tolerance and peace. So I don’t want to say — and I don’t think it’s true — that as between Christians, Jews and Muslims, we have radically different God(s). But I still want to separate this broader question of “worship” because of the final confession that “Jesus is Lord.”
DRT #77,
Unless there is some unusual family circumstance or secret, I would presume that your mother and father are both talking about the same person. However, there is a familial relationship that has been established. But suppose a stranger comes up to you, hears your mom’s father’s name and says, “Why, I knew your grandfather,” and begins to tell you a number of things that contradict your mother’s and your father’s accounts, and contradicts them in very fundamental ways. Should you presume that he actually did know your grandfather and everyone was talking about the same person? I think probably not.
Now, if we apply your example to the matter of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God, it would merely be begging the question. The question is whether there is a sort of familial relationship between Christians and Muslims. That is, if they they both worship the same God, then they are both related in a “family” of faith.
But the demonstration from your own personal experience already begins with the premise of family relationship. That is why it cannot be applied to the question at hand without begging the question. That is, we cannot beg that the premise of a familial religious connection between Christians and Jews be established so that we may then conclude that there is a familial relationship in the form of Christians and Jews worshiping the same God.
Dopderbeck #79,
In regard Mars Hill, Paul proposes to make know to them the “Unknown God.” He does not propose that, in worshiping the gods of the Pantheon, they are all really worshiping the same God he comes to proclaim. No, he sets the God he proclaim as being quite distinct from all the other gods.
What if we are not actually related in faith with the Muslims? What if the god of the Muslims is a different god than Yahweh, just as Baal and Molech were different than Yahweh (different at least in that they were non-existent while Yahweh is the Living God)? Then would it not be offensive to force upon the Church the confession, “We all worship the same God”?
I want to sensitive to the history of holocausts, pogroms and Crusades, but not at the expense of what the Church as historically confessed, i.e., Jesus is God. BTW, in speaking of worship in this context, I have meant the confessions that Christians and Muslims make about God. The Christian confession about God is very different, fundamentally different from the Muslim confession, so much so that I cannot say, with any sense of coherence, that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
Much better, I think, for Christians and Muslims to simply acknowledge that our views of God are so radically different and contradictory (Jesus cannot be God and not be God at the same time) that we are really talking about different Gods. I don’t think there is anything disrespectful or insensitive in doing that. That leaves the potential for a real, true dialogue to take place with room for respectful pushback.
Another concern I have is this: If we say the Christians and Muslims actually worship the same God, then what difference does it make that Jesus is God? Why cannot the Muslims then go on denying that confession which is so central to the Christian faith? But when both sides are clear that, not only do Christians and Muslims have different religions but they also worship different Gods, then the confession that Jesus is Lord becomes very important, and very powerful. It becomes the key issue which must addressed and not something buried under a sentiment of “ecumenism.”
Jeff#81, I don’t mean to nitpick but I have immersed in N.T. Wright. I don’t find much meaning in the phrase “Jesus is God” though I still think it is true, rather I find much more meaning in the phrase “Jesus is Lord”.
I was brought up in an environment where the focus was on worshiping this god named Jesus and that made it difficult for me to *get it*. I found much more meaning in coming to grips with Jesus is Lord, and then saying, oh, by the way, he is God too.
I think I better draw a straighter path on my last comment.
I don’t say Lord=god but it seems you may make those interchangeable. The confession that Jesus is my Lord means that he is the one who has control over me and is my master. He is the one who, I worship.
So, it is clear that the Muslim’s have a different view of their Lord, but I contend it is the same god.
I believe the confession that Jesus is Lord signifies that He is both God and King. It was not just in the context of “Caesar is Lord” that this confession has been throughout the history of the Church. The divinity of Jesus is not just an oh-by-the-way, it is essential to who He is, just as His humanity is essential to who He is. Whatever else “Jesus is Lord” means, it is is very much a statement that Jesus is God.
Inasmuch as the confession of the Church and the Christian faith has been that Jesus is God, demonstrated not only by the confession that Jesus is Lord and God, but also in the doctrine formulated as the Trinity, then it is quite incorrect to say that the Muslims worship the same God because they specifically deny that Jesus is God.
For me to say that Christians and Muslims worship or believe in the same God, I would have to deny that the historic confession of the Church, that Jesus is God, is important. Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God because Muslims do not worship Jesus but Christians do.
I’ve jumped into this stream later in the day and I’ve perused the comments. I think that Jeff (#84 a recent comment) goes to the heart of the matter. None of us can escape that Lord in the N.T. as applied to Jesus was equivalent to YHWH in the Old Testament. We must deal with the unfolding revelation of God (Hebrews 1:1 ff.). Christianity by definition is emphatically Christ-centered with Christ being equal to and the fullest revelation of YHWH. It seems that Islam, worthy as it is as a monotheistic faith, stops short of the biblical revelation. To deny the deity of Jesus is to profane the name YHWH IMHO. In view of the thread here, I am open to being shown otherwise. So, with all due respect to Volf, I am not with him on this one.
I just finished blogging through this book myself, and to be honest I found the “same God” semantics to be the only boring part. Volf does start out assuming the reader believes that all (or most) Christians and Jews worship the same god, and makes a persuasive enough case that Allah falls within that range; however, I don’t think most of the critics he’s refuting start with that assumption — he quotes Pat Robertson’s line about the “moon god of Mecca” several times — so I doubt his approach is going to change many minds. His discussion of the Trinity is interesting though.
There certainly seems to be an issue of semantics at play here. What exactly do we mean by “the same God”? And I think depending on what angle you come at the question this may dictate the conclusions that you reach.
The shared history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam would suggest that in coming from the same “roots”, as it were, each religion is wrestling with understanding the same essential deity. For Christians of course, as others have noted here, Jesus is central. The incarnation changes everything for us. But as others have noted, the Christian God understood through Jesus in the NT is indeed the YHWH of Ancient Israel in the OT… but now more fully revealed and understood.
Islam is in some ways historically connected to this deity of Judaism and Christianity – and so in that sense could be said to be an attempt (however flawed we might to consider it to be) at understanding that same deity.
If of course, we approach this from the opposite angle (as Jeff seems to be doing in these posts) we examine the conclusions of each faith tradition. And we see that there are many critical differences that would suggest to many that perhaps we are in fact now worshipping different Gods. That our conclusions are so distinct from one another that the Gods are no longer the same… From this perspective, I can understand how this conclusion might make sense.
Perhaps though, we are able to hold both these views in tension with one another. We can acknowledge that Christianity and the Muslim faith are both wrestling to understand the same deity (at least from a historical and originating perspective)… this enables us to find common ground and room for healthy dialogue with one another. Yet at the same time we can hold confidently and wholeheartedly to the fact that we believe Jesus is Lord, that He is central to a healthy and accurate understanding of God, and that He reveals the God who is Trinity.
Can we not do both?
Are you able to see yourself from a Muslim perspective? Given the choice of three categories with which to associate:
1) Atheist
2) Idol worshiper
3) Worshiper of the one true God
Where do you place yourself?
NIkita #88,
I see myself as a worshiper of the one true God. But that does not mean that everyone who sees themselves are worshipers of the one true God are actually worshiping the same God. In the Christian faith, Jesus is the one true God. But Muslims, though they are monotheistic, deny that Jesus is the one true God.
See, you have only hit upon a similarity between the two faiths, but your question ignores the essential and fundamental difference between them. The God of Christians and the God of Muslims are fundamentally different.
When I pray with my Arab Christian friends, we pray to Allah, the God of Abraham and Moses who revealed himself through the Torah and Psalms and Gospel, and most completely in Jesus.
Muslims pray to Allah, the God of Abraham and Moses who revealed himself through the Torah and Psalms and Gospel, and finally through the Quran.
We may have very different understandings of the character of this Allah, but does that mean there are really two gods called Allah?
Jeff@81 “In regard Mars Hill, Paul proposes to make know to them the “Unknown God.” He does not propose that, in worshiping the gods of the Pantheon, they are all really worshiping the same God he comes to proclaim.” but then neither did the Greeks claim that any of those gods were the God of Abraham and Moses who revealed himself through the Torah and Psalms and Gospel.
Percival, I didn’t make it to the bottom of the 90 comments, but you seem like a real man of God. You definitely have a heart for missions. I had to tweet a few quotes from you ( @usedearplugs )
I would like to throw one thing out there (to whomever it may concern – this isn’t directed at Percival). No matter what “god they worship”, they still need to be introduced to Jesus. It does make sense that we could build off of their understanding and devotion to God rather than tell them to forget everything and start from scratch.