“Dear Media: Stop Trying to Teach Christians Theology”

http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/31/dear-media-stop-trying-to-teach-christians-theology/

I think that this article makes a good and important basic point.  I’m quite sympathetic.  Journalists — many of them secularists — have little standing and few credentials for lecturing us on what constitutes true Christianity and real Christian discipleship.

That said, while I agree that the media should stop trying to define Christianity, I’m not very pleased with G. Shane Morris’s own attempt to do so, either:

I realize, for example, that Mr. Morris is extremely unlikely to consider me a Christian, so my responding that neither a closed scriptural canon nor Nicene trinitarianism is essential to Christianity (nor even biblical) won’t carry much weight with him.

But at least a few out there will, I think, feel uneasy at the implications of his logic:  “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same god?” he asks.  “Well, is Jesus Christ God?  You can’t answer ‘yes’ to both.”

So, plainly, he is arguing that Muslims don’t worship the same God as Christians do.

But Jews don’t believe that Jesus is God, either.

If we substitute Jews for Muslims in Mr. Morris’s formulation, we come up with this:  “Do Christians and Jews worship the same god?  Well, is Jesus Christ God?  You can’t answer ‘yes’ to both.”

Some will feel perfectly serene with a declaration that Jews don’t worship the same God as Christians, and therefore, from a Christian perspective, that Jews and Judaism worship a false God, not the real one.

I don’t, though.  And I agree with many prominent Christian theologians (and, I believe, with the leadership of my church) in believing that Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God.

Moreover, just to be perfectly clear, I don’t agree that “Islam began with a visit from a demon.”  And I’m aware of a substantial number of Christian thinkers, including serious Christian scholars specializing in the study of Islam, who would also reject that claim, no matter how confidently Mr. Morris asserts it as the Christian view.