![\"Wetterhorn,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/06\/800px-5337_-_Grindelwald_-_Wetterhorn.jpg\")
<\/a>I think that Bernie Sanders acquitted himself well upon hearing the news that one of his followers had opened fire upon a group of Republican senators and congressman harmlessly gathered for a baseball practice:<\/p>\n
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http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/politics\/washington\/la-na-essential-washington-updates-read-the-statement-sen-bernie-sanders-1497457939-htmlstory.html<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n He said what he should have said, and he said it eloquently. \u00a0And I have no doubt that he was and is sincere.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n However, Senator Sanders didn\u2019t do so well earlier in the week:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBernie Sanders Shows How Religious Ignorance Breeds Progressive Intolerance\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBernie Sanders Shows the Left\u2019s Refusal to Coexist With Traditional Believers\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018They Reject Christ, They Stand Condemned\u2019: What Sanders Probably Heard\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The article to which I link immediately above reminds me of an episode in my own life. \u00a0Some years ago, there was a controversy in an online Jewish periodical somewhere about the Latter-day Saint practice of vicarious temple baptisms on behalf of the dead, which, in some cases, had involved Jews in general and victims of the Nazi holocaust in particular.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I entered into that controversy, making arguments that I still hold to in that regard. \u00a0Somebody \u2014 I think it was a Jew, but it may have been an apostate ex-Mormon provocateur (one or two of whom had joined in the discussion, though not necessarily in order to further dispassionate clarity) \u2014 commented, with some sense of outrage, real or feigned, that I seemed to believe that Jews could not be saved without Christ.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I responded that I believed precisely that \u2014 not only with regard to Jews but with regard to everybody else, whether Buddhist<\/a>, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, or Christian \u2014 as have the vast majority of Christians over\u00a0the past, oh, two thousand years or so.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Unjustly but quite unsurprisingly, I\u2019ve been accused ever since then, on the basis of that comment, of being an anti-Semitic bigot. \u00a0(I must have sinned horribly in the antemortal world to be cursed with the poor quality of critics that I enjoy, but so it goes.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n There is something of that kind of misplaced outrage in this case, as well. \u00a0Or so it seems to me.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That said, I want to register publicly, as I\u2019ve done on numerous occasions before \u2014 here<\/a>, for example \u2014 my complete disagreement with the claim that Muslims worship a different God than Christians do.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I even responded with several posts to, and at the time of, the firing of Larycia Hawkins from Wheaton College over this issue. \u00a0Here are a couple of those posts:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It would be inaccurate to say that my vote would count for nothing at Wheaton College, near Chicago. \u00a0On the contrary: \u00a0With regard to theology, my vote, coming from\u00a0a Mormon, would almost certainly\u00a0do substantial damage to anyone or anything receiving\u00a0it.<\/span><\/p>\n But I do want to publicly say, for what it\u2019s worth, that I stand with Larycia Hawkins: \u00a0Muslims, Christians, and Jews do indeed worship the same God.<\/span><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.deseretnews.com\/article\/865644951\/Larycia-Hawkins-6flabbergasted7-by-Wheaton7s-move-to-fire-her.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n As it happens, I also seem to stand with Pope Francis, whose\u00a030 November 2015 remarks<\/a>\u00a0at the\u00a0Central Mosque of Koudoukou, in Bangui, in the Central African Republic,\u00a0appear to presume\u00a0that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. \u00a0And, if that\u2019s the case, he was simply reaffirming the 1964 \u201cdogmatic constitution\u201d\u00a0Lumen Gentium<\/em>, issued under Pope Paul VI, which\u00a0said of Muslims that \u201ctogether with us they adore the one, merciful God\u201d (II.16).<\/span><\/p>\n And I seem to stand with such Protestant theologians and scholars as the late Montgomery Watt of the University of Edinburgh, the late Anglican thinker Kenneth Cragg, the late Annemarie Schimmel of Harvard, Yale\u2019s Miroslav Volf, and too many others to name.<\/span><\/p>\n And I seem to stand with the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, which, in a 1978\u00a0statement regarding God\u2019s love for all mankind, specifically mentioned Muhammad as one of \u201cthe great religious leaders of the world\u201d who received \u201ca portion of God\u2019s light,\u201d and affirmed that \u201cmoral truths were given to [these leaders] by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m in good company.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n David French, for whom I have great respect and with whom I typically agree \u2014 he and his wife even headed up \u201cEvangelicals for Mitt\u201d during both the 2008 and 2012 primary and general election seasons \u2014 says \u201cNo\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/428763\/christians-muslims-same-god-wheaton-college<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019s wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n Francis Beckwith, who has a lengthy history of sharp criticisms of Mormonism, says \u201cYes\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.thecatholicthing.org\/2015\/12\/17\/do-muslims-and-christians-worship-the-same-god\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Professor Beckwith is right on this question. \u00a0As is Pope Francis. \u00a0As are many other theologians and scholars.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ll dispose of the most obviously false argument immediately, one that, to his credit, Mr. French doesn\u2019t make: \u00a0Some in the West mistakenly believe that\u00a0Allah<\/em>\u00a0is the name of a foreign deity like Zeus or Apollo or Ahriman, peculiar to Muslims and definitely not referring to the God worshiped by Christians. \u00a0I\u2019ve written on this\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n I have to admit to being puzzled by David French\u2019s citation of the Protestant theologian R. C. Sproul: \u00a0\u201cTo Muslims, god \u2018is a single person, transcendent. The God Christians worship, on the other hand, is the maker of heaven and earth. He is one being and transcendent.'\u201d<\/span> But the difference that French and his sources take to be the crucial point\u00a0is that, in Islam, God is \u201cone,\u201d whereas in mainstream Christianity he\u2019s \u201ctriune\u201d \u2014 somehow simultaneously one single God in the three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n Well, of course, that\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0a difference, and no small one.<\/span><\/p>\n And deciding when two views of x, or two ways of doing y, have diverged widely enough to have created\u00a0two distinct x\u2019s or two separate y\u2019s is always a judgment call. \u00a0When, exactly, did the Latin of the Iberian Peninsula cease to be Latin? \u00a0When did that subsequent language become Spanish and Portuguese? \u00a0Precisely when, in evolutionary biology, does a new species emerge? \u00a0Is Swiss German a different language than standard German, or is it just a dialect of (and within) German? \u00a0On what date did Dutch cease to be a German dialect and become its own language? \u00a0If John has a beard, does it cease to be a beard if Jane plucks out a hair? \u00a0How about ten hairs? \u00a0How about a hundred? \u00a0A thousand? \u00a0Exactly when can it be said that John no longer has a beard?<\/span><\/p>\n
But the Qur\u2019an, too, portrays God as \u201cthe maker of heaven and earth.\u201d \u00a0I haven\u2019t counted, but I\u2019m guessing that he\u2019s described that way at least a hundred times in the text. \u00a0He did it in six days. \u00a0He planted a garden and put Adam and Eve in it. \u00a0And so forth. \u00a0And, according to Islamic theology, God is every bit as \u201ctranscendent\u201d as Christians have ever made him out to be, if not far more so.<\/span><\/p>\n