By Bruce Lindley McCormack, a noahtoly.tumblr.com
It is a great pity that the question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God has come so forcibly to the center of attention for so many (on social media especially) through ongoing controversy at Wheaton College. The nature of that controversy is well-known and does not need to be rehearsed here. I say it is a pity because the issue is a theologically profound and complex one which admits of no obvious answer. It is a question worthy of engagement by the finest theological minds in our world today precisely because of its complexity. But it is also an issue with implications not only for inter-faith relations but also for inter-confessional relations. That is to say:how we answer the question, the charity or lack of charity with which we do so could very well have an impact on ecumenical relations long after the controversy at Wheaton has come to an end. So the stakes couldn’t be higher. My hope is that all of us would learn to admit that more than one answer can reasonably be given and that is a huge mistake to assume that anyone who gives a different answer than one’s own is automatically guilty of either bigotry or a betrayal of the gospel.
Before I turn to the issue, I should say that I have had great respect and appreciation for Wheaton College for a great many years. I have lectured there twice, preached in their chapel, and benefitted greatly from the privilege of teaching an extremely high number of their graduates here at Princeton Seminary during my twenty-five years here. My respect has only been increased by the comments made in recent days by Wheaton faculty (including Larycia Hawkins!) on social media. Wheaton’s “hype” is not exaggerated in my view. It is simply lovely to see so many non-theologians who read enough theology to comment so ably on theological questions. I have been, as a result, heartbroken to watch this happening; heartbroken most especially for Prof. Hawkins but heartbroken too for faculty, students, alums – and, indeed, administrators. My goal here is to do theology well. And by “well” I mean not only theology that is academically rigorous and responsible to Scripture and the history of the construction of orthodox understandings of God but theology that serves reconciliation and peace. How we do theology can be, at times, just as important than the content if only because how we do it will decide whether it can be heard by others.
In what follows, my goal is to present what I take to be the best case that can be made on both sides of the “same God” question by one such as I (whose training is in the history of doctrine).
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Dr. McCormack’s article is excellent, as one would expect from a scholar and theologian of the first order, which he is. However, his article has, it seems to me, one glaring and crippling omission – any discussion of Allah.
The issue at hand when one asks if Christians and Muslims worship the “same God” is whether two, very distinct and particular deities (Allah and the Trinity) are, in fact, at some basic level, the same deity. To approach this issue, one must explore exactly who these Muslim and Christian deities are understood to be.
In his article, Dr. McCormack does looks carefully at the Trinity, whose essential nature Christian theologians have been debating from the beginning of the church’s history. He compares and contrasts Roman Catholic and Protestant thinking. And he looks at the “oneness” and “tri-unity” of this Christian God historically as well as theologically. All well and good, and carefully presented.
But where is his treatment of the nature of Allah as he is revealed in the Qur’an and the Hadith? The only attribute of Allah that is in any way approached in this article is his “oneness.” Yet surely the God whom Muslims worship has many more attributes than just this. And surely there are Muslim theologians whose thoughts on this matter should have some bearing on this discussion. Yet only Christian thinkers are cited in the article.
Herein lies the problem. It is the old apples to apples issue. If Dr. McCormack wishes to compare the Muslim God to the Christian God then he must go into at least some detail about who this Muslim deity is. As it is, Allah in this article is little more than a totem used to represent a kind of generic monotheist entity, not the actual God whom Muslims worship. So, instead of comparing a particular deity (the Trinity) to another particular deity (Allah), he compares a particular deity (the Trinity) to a generic monotheist concept – and Allah himself is left out.
The various monotheist deities that are known to us, Aten (Ra) of Ancient Egypt, Karta Purakh of Sikhism, Allah of Islam, Adonai Elohenu of Ancient Israel, the Trinity of Christianity, etc., are understood and worshiped as very particular and individual divine beings. An in-depth comparison of Allah and the Trinity would be have helpful. Unfortunately, Dr. McCormack failed to include Allah in his comparison.
Compounding Dr. McCormack’s failure to analyze the nature of Allah is a flawed analysis of the history of Christian thinking in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. Reading the second half of his post (The Case for Affirming the ‘Same God’ Thesis), it sounds almost as though Trinitarian thinking dropped out of the sky and fell into the statements of the Council’s at Nicaea and Constantinople. Actually, those statements only ratified what the Church already believed.
Not only the “singularity” of God, but also the deity of the Son and Spirit co-exist in the New Testament, but reading Dr. McCormack’s analysis of Christian thinking, it sounds like the deity of the three divine persons came late to the party, after the doctrine of God’s oneness was established.
Perhaps the Church, caught as it was in the midst of an intensely pagan Roman culture, focused on God’s oneness at an early stage, but the Church never rejected or even questioned the deity of Christ. Passages such as John 1:1, where we find both diversity and unity within the one God, where never forgotten by the Church.
Dr. McCormack points out that the term “person” (hypostases) remains mysterious, rather than a clearly defined concept. This simply identifies the limits of our ability to see into the divine being. We should not be surprised that God is greater than our own minds – greater than the sum total of human thought, and remains mysterious to us even as God reveals himself.
So I find Dr. McCormack’s assertion that Christian Trinitarianism emerged from an earlier oneness theology historically flawed. In the end, a clear distinction remains between the Allah of Islam and the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ by the New Testament.
I wish to affirm Clark’s assessment that Dr. McCormack’s reading of the history of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity is flawed. McCormack conflates the views of Basil and Augustine by claiming that both of them approached the doctrine of the Trinity according to a primary commitment to the concept of oneness. For Augustine, what was of first importance was the one simple nature of God and what was difficult was to understand “the three.” But Basil has a different approach (see Epistle 38). Basil begins with the biblical revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is the principle of the deity and unity of the Trinity, but the Father is never without the Son or the Spirit. However, since each of the hypostases are God, then, of course, they share the same being, which is uncreated, incomprehensible and eternal. What is primary in Basil’s approach is the “community of the essence” rather than the concept of oneness per se. It is true that the concept of oneness was prior for Augustine because he was committed to the Platonic concept of God as the Good, the one simple being. Basil and the Greek fathers were operating instead with a biblical doctrine of divine revelation even though they had to use philosophical terms like ousia and hypostasis to express it and even to convert the meaning of these terms in accord with Christian doctrine based on divine revelation so that ousia is defined as having a general meaning and hypostasis is defined as having a concrete meaning. I think McCormack wants to contend that all the fathers were bound to a Platonic concept of oneness in order to pursue his critique of what he calls the “substance metaphysics” of the church fathers.
My thought, fwiw, is that they have some of the early understanding of the Hebrew faith, some heretical understanding of the early Christian faith, but the gods they worship are legion. I don’t think they all worship the same God/god, and when they do, their lack of understanding is very problematic.
I am not sure if the question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God is an appropriate question to debate in a society of religious pluralism, and outside of the church for that matter—I do not see any possible way to discuss the “same God” thesis without committing the fallacy of equivocation in today’s society, and also if Professor McCormack utilized the space available for him to outline enough the development of the doctrine of the Trinity to apply the findings adequately to the pertinent problems in question. Having said this, I am also wondering if the “the same God” thesis alone can address the problem sufficiently without dealing alongside with the nature of “worship” in both religions. The question raises two separate concerns in one enquiry and thus the “same God” and the worship issues must be deliberated together to determine the answer properly. So I had to deal with it elsewhere in terms of difference in faith between two religions.
To discuss the “worship” please allow me to bring out the approval at the Vatican II that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. No doubt “metaphysics of the ancient church” played a role here. And the Roman church’s horizontal view of history, with a priori emphasis upon a given continuity in the life of an institute within history, could not disapprove the affirmation, I may add. But I am curious as to the reason why the Vatican II set aside its own concept and practice of worship. Regardless of the heated debates during the Reformation era, the presence, real or symbolic, of the suffering and risen Christ as the Lord of worshiping community should not be ignored by the Roman church. Rome has not allowed Protestant Christians a full participation in its worship, let alone Muslims. This exclusivity simply shows, among others, the vital importance of worship as regraded by the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, a legitimate question arises: Can any Catholic theologian affirm even after the Vatican II that Roman and Muslim worships are the same?
Secondly, Protestants are characterized by an objective vertical view of history that was used to argue against Roman accusation of schism. This view places a primary emphasis upon the way a church is continuously called into being by the Lord through the pure preaching and hearing of the Word of God, and the administering sacraments as Christ instituted them. These are called “marks” of the church in the Reformed circle. In other words, without them a congregation is not the church of God. When this is applied to Muslim community, where Christ is not proclaimed nor are sacraments administered, their gatherings are not the church of God. Besides, the trend of anti-metaphysics in modern Protestant theologies is not helping the “same God” thesis, either.
Protestant Christians worship Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God while Muslims at best respect the same Jesus as a mere human prophet. In fact, for Muslims even Muhammed is not ontologically divine and thus should not be worshiped. It would be idolatrous for Muslims to worship or proclaim Jesus Christ as Protestants have done. So another legitimate question arises: Can any Protestant theologian confirm that Protestant Christians and Muslims have the same worship?
Thirdly, to utilize the doctrine of the Trinity for a change, Catholic and Protestant Christians experience in worship (and daily life) the presence of the triune God (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, not Father God, Son God, and Spirit God). Notice here, the early Christian experience of God, who is revealed in Deuteronomy 6:4 and confessed by Israelites “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one,” in threefold way during their worship quickly found its way into the creeds of the church. This in turn led the church to formulate the Trinity. The dogma is expressed for Christians, among other things, to worship the triune God who is equal in every aspect of existence and yet distinct, not only in the divine inner life but also in Christian experience of God on earth. So here arises one more legitimate question: Do Muslims experience Father, Son and Holy Spirit in their worship as Protestant Christians do?
One has to ask these questions mentioned above before he or she determines the answer to the question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God, a question that seems to betray the discriminatory approach towards other religions that are not originated from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am not sure if such an approach by many able Protestant theologians will accomplish any real interfaith dialogue among world religions.
Dr. Park,
Of course, many would say similar things, to what I just said, about Jews and Christians. I see much basis for such remarks. It seems it is hard for everyone to keep his house in order. Many would also say that good housekeeping is over rated. As to other religions, I claim much ignorance. Western and Eastern societies have been intertwining for a long time. In my estimate, the rate of intertwining seems to have taken on exponential growth!
The question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God is the wrong question. God is One, there is no other, and as the Muslims like to say, indeed, “God is Great”.
The difference between Islam and Christianity, and Judaism to some extent, is first a question of revelation of God, and then a question of interpretation and understanding of said revelation. Is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ the same revelation of God as through the prophets of the Old Testament? We say that He is, that He is the final fulfillment of the Mosaic Law and the Jewish Prophets, and that these are made complete in Him. The Jews don’t accept that, but we Christians believe there is no inconsistency between God’s self revelation >throughinknow< of Him, this we say is wrong. Mohammed is a false prophet. As such, Islam is really an elaborate and extensive “cult”, perhaps the greatest cult of all time, centered around the teachings of a self serving charismatic war-lord.
It is fair to admit that over the centuries we Christians have fought bitter wars with each other over our own different interpretations of God’s self revelation in Jesus Christ. We regret that. We regret that Liberals and Conservatives can’t seem to agree on the interpretations and meanings of God’s self revelation in Jesus Christ even today. We have hated and mistreated our Jewish brothers for many more centuries than the Muslims have. The Jewish genocide of World War 2 is in that context and is a logical conclusion to misguided Christian antisemitism. We have been colonialists, imperialists, racists, slave traders, invaders, we have engaged in fratricide, genocide, and countless other war crimes, sometimes even in the name of Christ, and so we have much to atone for. We do not hold a monopoly on good ethical behavior to our own kind, and certainly not to our neighbors, and all of this we must acknowledge with extreme humility. To some extent we are in a worse place before the thrown of God than Islam, because we have known better, and still we sinned. Theirs is a sin of ignorance. Ours is one of intentional disregard.
But that should not deter us from the key point that we hold as Christians: That the self revelation of God in Jesus Christ, in spite of ourselves, is True, and the revelation of God through Mohammed is False.
This is a bitter sweet pill for Islam to swallow. But given their devotion to God as they have been led to understand Him, if Islam were to convert to the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ and become disciples of Jesus instead of Mohammed, they would put us all to shame. By a lot.
The bitter pill to swallow may yet be ours.
The following portion of my post got hosed: “we Christians believe there is no inconsistency between God’s self revelation >throughinknow< of Him, this we say is wrong.
It should say: “but we Christians believe there is no inconsistency between God’s self revelation to Moses and the Prophets, and His self revelation in Jesus Christ.
But is the revelation of God to the so called prophet Mohamed the same revelation of God as the revelation we have in Jesus Christ? Decidedly not! There are elements of Muhammad’s presentation of God that are consistent with the Judeo-Christian heritage, even copied from it. But there are others that are nothing more than self serving fabrication. Our polemic with Islam is not whether Muslims worship the same God Christians worship. We can freely concede, and we should, that they worship the same God as we do. They want to, they try to, and they do so to the best of their ability. But what they know of Him, this we say is wrong.
Carl,
I remember my summer of ’77 time at Bear Trap Ranch. Some of your kin were there. Also there was J. Christy Wilson. He was one of two featured speakers for the month.
He talked about his work. He talked about the power of prayer. He talked about whole cities of Islamist going to bed with one religion and waking up with another.
It reminds me of Bill Clinton’s statement of: “It depends on what the meaning or is is.
I agree with everything you have said, but with God all things are possible.
Thank you for putting into words what I could not.
Your dear friend,
Keith