A "Same God" Miscellany

I felt sort of lonely back in December when I voiced my agreement with former Wheaton College professor Larycia Hawkins's claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God (see this post). Since then many others have stepped forward to defend the same position. Here is a sampling:

(1) For starters, Peter Walhout, a chemistry professor at Wheaton College, observed:

"[M]many Christian missionaries to Muslims have the working assumption that the Allah of Islam is, to some degree, the Jewish and Christian God of Abraham. ... Obviously any Christian is going to affirm the Trinitarian nature of God and the divinity of Jesus, contra Islam, but that does not mean the missionaries are necessarily wrong in making the assertion that the Muslim Allah still refers in some limited sense to the Christian God .... It also clearly does not mean that these Christian missionaries think Islam is an equally valid path to God and salvation–why on earth would they be risking their lives as missionaries to Muslims if they thought that?" (italics added; read the rest of Peter's excellent post here)

(2) In his post, Walhout links to another blog essay by Edward Feser, who makes the philosophical case much better and more thoroughly than I did. An excerpt:

"Similarly, it is perfectly coherent to say that Muslims are “importantly” and “crucially” wrong precisely because they are referring to the very same thing Christians are when they use the word “God,” and that they go on to make erroneous claims about this referent. That the errors are “important” or “crucial” is not by itself sufficient to prevent successful reference. And since Muslims worship the referent in question, it follows that it also is not by itself sufficient to prevent them from worshipping the same God as Christians."

If you still have questions on this issue, take a look at Feser's (very long) post here.

(3) Robert J. Priest, Professor of Mission and Anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, comments:

"[F]or most evangelicals in America, our encounter with people who are Muslim is relatively recent, relatively superficial, and all-too-often inflected by American culture-war impulses. The one category of American evangelical that has long nurtured close relationships with people who are Muslim is missionaries and mission professors .... However, these individuals, who represent the heart of evangelical gospel concern, and who represent a unique mix of professional expertise and accumulated wisdom acquired over decades of study and ministry experience, do not appear to have been adequately consulted (if consulted at all).

"I've also been struck by the idea that many American evangelical missionaries and missiologists, and perhaps the Apostle Paul himself, would be in danger of dismissal if they taught at Wheaton College, since many of us arguably have been guilty of the very thing Wheaton College is sanctioning.

 "I fear that evangelicals who wish lovingly, creatively, and entrepreneurially to establish relationships of positive witness with Muslims and others will be overly inhibited and held back by fear of fellow Christians and how they might react. ... I fear that Muslims will learn the idea that faith in Jesus requires a repudiation of Allah as evil, and that this will pose an enormous barrier to consideration of the truth and goodness of the Gospel. Many missionaries with extensive first-hand experience guiding Muslims to faith in Jesus testify that this is a missiologically problematic message to send, counter-productive to gospel witness. ..." (Quotations from pp. 1, 2-3, 31 of this pdf; HT: CT)

As for Wheaton College where this all began, the conflict with Larycia Hawkins has ended with an apparent apology by the provost who placed her under investigation, an internal acknowledgement by a faculty committee that racial discrimination may have influenced the way her case was handled, and a "mutual place of resolution" that culminated in Hawkins's departure from the school.

The Wheaton College provost, I should note, appears to hold to a position on the controversy similar to my own:

"Ontologically all monotheists affirm that there can only be one divine being, and it seems logical to me that there must be some referential overlap or similarity in the divine being that each is referring to in each of the monotheistic religions." - Stanton Jones

So what was all the fuss about?

Taxonomies of Deity: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same Allah?

The news that Wheaton College placed tenured professor Larycia Hawkins on "paid administrative leave" for stating that Christians and Muslims worship the same God surprised me. I was even more surprised as I watched a ground swell of support for Wheaton's apparent theological position among evangelical commentators as diverse as Scot McKnight and John Piper. Writing for Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer claims that the view that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is "just not what most evangelicals believe."

In this post, I will try to explain why for the last 20 years or so I have taken it for granted that--at a level of abstraction required by discussion of religions as a whole--it is correct to say that Christians and Muslims do worship the same God.

To be clear, I am not claiming that Christianity and Islam are equivalent or that differences between these two religions are inconsequential. Nor am I suggesting that Christians and Muslims hold identical conceptions of God. My basic problem is with the way the differences are phrased: Stating that Christians and Muslims "do not worship the same God" implies that Christians and Muslims worship different gods. I am concerned about this issue not only because I am convinced that it is misguided on a theoretical level to state that Christians and Muslims worship different gods, but also because such a view is positively harmful when it comes to sharing the gospel with Muslims.

(1) Terminology: On Facebook, I wrote: "Do Christians and Muslims worship the same Allah? Of course they do. If this conversation were being conducted in Arabic, there would be no debate." The point of this provocative over-simplification--aside from registering my astonishment--was to observe that the two different names (Allah, God) may lead English-speakers to assume that the names refer to two different deities. I suspect this is what has happened on a popular level in North America. Ignorance and post-9/11 political realities, more than anything else, are why many evangelicals assume that Christians and Muslims worship different gods. But Allah, in Arabic, is the generic name for God. It was used by Christians before Islam began, it appears as the name for God in standard Arabic translations of the Bible, and it is still used by Arabic-speaking Christians today. If, as I will argue, it is correct to say that, despite their fundamental differences in theology, Christians and Muslims worship the same God, it is also true that they worship the same Allah.

(2) Similarities: Muslims and Christians agree that there is one God, and both Christians and Muslims describe the one God in many of the same ways: God, according to the Qur'an, is the creator, "the Mighty one, the All-knowing" (6.96); God is "the Lord of the Universe, the Compassionate, the Merciful" (1.2-3); God alone is "the Forgiving One" (15.49), etc. Muslim theology presents Islam as the correct continuation of God's revelation to Abraham, Jesus and the biblical prophets. As a result, when Muslims and Christians talk about God, they share a common starting point in a way that a Christian and a Hindu devotee of Krishna do not.

(3) Differences: To be sure, there are also significant differences. Built into Islam is a rejection of the deity of Jesus. From a Muslim perspective, Christians have fallen away from the true religion into tri-theism. For their part, Christians insist that any conception of God's oneness that denies God's self-revelation in Jesus is fundamentally distorted. These different conceptions of God must not be minimized. I would happily sign off on Wheaton's College's "Statement Regarding Christian Engagement with Muslim Neighbors":

While Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic, we believe there are fundamental differences between the two faiths, including what they teach about God’s revelation to humanity, the nature of God, the path to salvation, and the life of prayer.

(4) Different Conceptions vs. Different Gods: Nevertheless, the fact that Christians and Muslims have different ideas about the nature of God does not mean that they worship different gods. In this context, "different conceptions" is a meaningful statement; "different gods" is not:

• Since both Christians and Muslims affirm that there is one God and that this God exists, we are talking about a concept with a real referent, not some abstract quality. Francis Beckwith explains: 

Because, according to the classical theist, there can only in principle be one God, Christians, Jews, and Muslims who embrace classical theism must be worshipping the same God. It simply cannot be otherwise.

• If Muslims who deny the deity of Jesus do not worship the same God as Christians, it follows that Jews do not worship the same God as Christians either. This is at the heart of the issue theologically: Denying that Christians and Jews worship the same God leads either to a Marcionite distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New or to a strong supersessionism that requires us to imagine Jews, en masse, becoming idolaters at the incarnation. (I exaggerate for effect.) Suffice it to say that you don't find the apostle Paul accusing his fellow Jews of idolatry. Instead, he says "they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" (Rom 10:2). Different conceptions of the one God do not mean that the object of worship is different, and a fuller revelation of God's identity does not render earlier revelation obsolete--just incomplete.
• Is it not the case that Christians too operate with false conceptions of God? What is to stop Calvinists from declaring that they worship a different God than Arminians, or Protestants than Catholics? Where do we draw the line--and why are we drawing it?

Instead of denying or minimizing the broad overlap in Christian and Muslim views about God, it is far better, in my view, to follow the example of Jesus in John 4, and Paul in Acts 17, and say "What you worship as unknown (or, in this case, partially known) I proclaim to you" (Acts 17:23; cf. John 4:22).

If you are interested in further reading on the subject, I recommend the following short articles written by Christians with years of experience working with Muslims:

• Carl Medearis, "Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?"
• Jerry Rankin: "Do Muslims & Christians Worship the Same God?"

On Religious Motivation in a Secular Age

In a speech yesterday to the "White House Summit on Countering Terrorism," the president of the United States said:

“Al Qaeda and ISIL and groups like it are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam...We must never accept the premise that they put forth because it is a lie. Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders. They are terrorists.” (Source: ABC News)

I'd like to think that what Obama really meant was that ISIS does not represent most Muslims or is not regarded by most Muslims as a legitimate form of Islam--but that is not what he said (though see here for more measured comments). What Obama did say should concern all religious people, regardless of their particular religion, because his remarks could be taken more broadly to imply that "religion" has no explanatory power. In a secular world, religious beliefs must be reduced to some other, more real economic, political, or social motivation. Those who claim to be motivated by their religious beliefs are really driven by something else, or they are simply incomprehensible. Religious people are irrational. They are crazies, terrorists.

But it turns out that people still act on the basis of their religious beliefs. Faith commitments prompt some people to abandon lucrative careers to serve the poor, winning the grudging praise of Nicholas Kristof. And faith commitments prompt other people to commit acts of brutality. We will not understand the crusades if we are unwilling to grant that the crusaders were motivated, at least in part, by religious motivations. And we will not understand ISIS if we are not willing to take seriously the religious beliefs that motivate them. To label someone a 'terrorist' is to fail to understand.

My thinking on this point has been influenced by Graeme Wood's generally excellent essay, "What ISIS Really Wants," in The Atlantic, which Obama really should have read. An excerpt:

"The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers....But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam. ....Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal." (Do read the whole thing.)

However, if ISIS has deep roots in one form of Islam, it is important also to recognize that it is not the only legitimate form of Islam, as if authentic Islam leads naturally to terrorism--and here I react against the view of Bernard Haykel, whom Wood quotes:

"Many mainstream Muslim organizations have gone so far as to say the Islamic State is, in fact, un-Islamic. It is, of course, reassuring to know that the vast majority of Muslims have zero interest in replacing Hollywood movies with public executions as evening entertainment. But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition.”"

Outsiders--perhaps especially Christian outsiders--too often assume that the more "literally" a Muslim tries to practice his religion, the more authentic he is. But setting aside problems with the term literal (see AKMA), a religion is in general what its practioners do, not what outsiders say it should be. And a good case can be made that "literal" fundamentalist Islam is a product of Western influences (i.e., assumptions about what a sacred text should do and how it should be read) just as much as forms of Islam that seem more amenable to Western cultural norms.