The Same God 7

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.

Volf’s quest is to build a theological basis for peaceful co-existence and peaceful cooperation among Muslims and Christians, and his quest is to contend that the God of the Christians and the God of the Muslims is the “same” God.

The questions: Is the God of Islam a God of love? Are Islam and Christianity comparable when it comes to God as a loving God?

I got a nasty comment the other day and trashed it. The point of the commenter, whom I had not seen at this site before, was that the Muslim God was a God of hate. I didn’t want to get into a tussle with the commenter, nor did I want to get on someone’s list for having hateful comments, so it wasn’t posted. But I don’t think person’s claims are unusual in the USA among Christians.

When it comes to God and love, many of us think, Christianity’s at the top of the list.

Volf, without denying significant differences between Islam and Christianity, argues this is wrong-headed. Here are the basic stereotypes that seem to be at work in the Western perception of Islam, and we can skip from Dawkins to ordinary Christians to find these:

1. Arbitrary will and wrath vs. reason and love.
2. Demanding unconditional submission vs. free response of faith.
3. Enforcement of harsh, unbending laws vs. love of neighbor and love of freedom.
4. Hostile toward infidels vs. love for one’s enemies.

On God’s love … Volf knows there’s differences when it comes to emphasis and language, but the Sufi masters, who have influenced Islam deeply, routinely talk of God’s love. The Muslim God is full of generosity, and Volf speaks of language for God like “The Merciful” and “The Compassionate” and “The All-Forgiving” and “The Benevolent” and “the Loving.”

Furthermore, while it is often said that Christianity focuses on God’s love as the surrounding context for God’s justice, this is sometimes claimed not to be true of Islam. But Volf knows this text in Islam: “My mercy precedes (or prevails over) My wrath.” All but one of the Qu’ran’s 114 chapters begin by invoking God as “Most Generous, Most Merciful.”

So there are four commonalities:

1. God loves.
2. God is just.
3. God’s love encompasses God’s justice.
4. Humans should love the neighbor as themselves.