The question is often phrased, “Do we worship the same God?” These two questions are not exactly the same, but they do overlap, and they both squeeze many questions into one:
Linguistic: What do the words “God” or “Allah” themselves mean? Where did we get them from? Does it matter that English speakers inherited the work “God” from the name of a deity worshipped by teutonic tribes, or that Allah was part of a pre-Islamic Arab pantheon? Should it impact our answer that Arabic speaking Christians referred to God as “Allah” before the rise of Islam, and have continued to do so up to the present? In light of history, etymology and widespread misuse of the name “God” in Western cultures, should English speakers be comfortable addressing Yahweh as “God” or would we be wiser to limit ourselves to biblical titles.
Theological: Do the attributes of Allah in the Qur’an and of YHWH / Elohim / Theos in the Bible overlap sufficiently that a normal person would recognize these as varying portraits of the same Creator God? Where is the line between disagreeing with someone, maybe sharply, about the nature of God and concluding that we worship completely different Gods? By analogy, if my brother and I argue about what our father is really like, at what point will I conclude that we are not talking about the same person, but about different people altogether, and that perhaps this is not my brother at all but an imposter who has invaded his body?
Christological: When I worship Jesus as the incarnate third person of the Trinity, must my Muslim friend condemn me as an idolater? When my Muslim friend rejects the divine Sonship of Jesus, is his idea of God merely incomplete and inadequate, or is it so entirely false as to be unrecognizable to me?
Soteriological: Is my Muslim friend’s sincere service to and devotion to Allah true and acceptable worship, such that it is in some sense “saving”, or does it ultimately lead away from God? Similarly, can my Muslim friend see my worship of God in Christ as worship that God finds acceptable or will I be condemned as an idolater? Can we distinguish between worship as seeking God, and worship as finding him?
Ontological: Are God and Allah references to real, and independent, ontological beings, like Aslan and Tash in the Narnia stories, such that one is the Creator God, and the other is an evil deity?
Common sense: When I talk about God with a Muslim friend, will it seem obvious and natural to us to assume that we are talking and disagreeing about the same being, or does it seem more natural to assume that we share nothing and must explain everything? Will it seem most normal to talk about “my God” and “your Allah”, or to talk about one Creator God?
Each of these questions involves multiple questions, and each set of questions is worth a long conversation in itself. We need not assume that the answers to all of them are the same. When we combine all of these questions into a single question, and insist on a single yes or no answer, we cheat ourselves of rich discussion and of clear thinking.
Astute readers (no doubt all of you) will complain that I have not answered any of these. That’s your job, not mine.
Your final set of questions led me to wonder if there is an analogous discussion about the name Jesus, which might be clearer. “My Jesus” and my friend’s “Jesus” are not the same, but we seem to have less confusion there… maybe because Jesus seems more concrete?
Thanks for creating in me a pondering, even if it’s irrelevant to your points. 🙂
I don’t think I’ve ever seen all the problems so well summarized in a single text.
A good starting point for the Christian point of view would be arguably the two most important names of God: “He who is”, Yahweh, ὁ ὤν in the Septuagint (and reflected in NT books like Revelation), and “Father.”
These names are central to the Christian view of God. I guess a good question would be if these are Qur’anic and Islamic, as well (I imagine “the Existent One” in an Aristotelian sense would exist in Islamic philosophy).
One might argue that if Elohim and Theos were not identified as Yahweh and the “Father” of Israel and of Jesus Christ, then these words would cease to have meaning for Christianity. Ancient Greek philosophers have a tendency to think that everything has a bit of divinity (θεῖον) in it. Elohim is a plural noun, if I’m not mistaken, that is, it comes from a pagan background.
“Father” is the principle of all Christian prayer and communion with God, and of formal, orthodox Christian confession, i.e. the Nicene Creed: “I believe in one God, the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Even Christ is understood always in reference to the Father: he is the eternal and natural Son of the Father, whereas we are said to be sons and daughters of God only through Jesus, the “only-begotten” Son.
I imagine the hair-splitting principles of Trinitarian theology could be really frustrating for Muslims, as they often are for Christians. Christians simply have the experience of Christian worship, which is the context in which this theology makes sense (praying to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, “who cries out, Abba Father!”) But this brings us back to a fact you mentioned earlier: classical Islam believes in the eternity of the Qur’an, which is a theological statement that raises similar questions. Perhaps these are questions that Muslims aren’t encouraged to meddle with, just as Christians aren’t encouraged to be too inquisitive about Trinitarian belief. However, perhaps in the spirit of “Greek philosophical seeking” that characterized the Trinitarian controversies of the 4th century, we should seek to explore these parallels with honesty and rigor. If the Qur’an is eternal and uncreated, what is its relation to Allah? Is it his thought, in some way? Christians have always understood the Logos to be the “mind” of God in some sense (for this, see St. Gregory Palamas’ interesting defense of Christianity addressed to Muslims).
What might be stated about the peculiarities of Christian theology vis-a-vis the Islamic doctrine of the Qur’an’s eternality, is that Christianity insists on the nature of personhood. The Logos was a “person” before the Incarnation, not just after. The personal character of God is reflected in these same crucial Christian names for God: “I am who I am” – which expresses the deep mysteriousness of “personhood”; and “Father” – as he relates to creation and is deeply related to the Son. But at the same time, personhood takes on a transcendent meaning, which expresses a sort of infinity and boundlessness. Thus, when we talk about God as a person, it’s not anthropomorphism. Christianity has the boldness to say, on the contrary, that human beings ‘made in the image and likeness of God’ are a kind of theomorphism which God established, not us. (I stole most of this from Kierkegaard, who has nice reflections about the person as a “mystery” and “inner sanctuary”, and personhood as the best category for understanding faith and the relationship between God and human beings.
Very helpful. I will clearly need to say something about God as Father.