Allah and Jesus: Same God?
Bob Waters has mined another golden nugget. Kudos Bob. This is a fascinating article on a very important question: Who is the one, true God? Is Allah merely the Muslim version of the Blessed Trinity? Do Muslims actually worship, believe in, and pray to the one, true God when they address their prayers to Allah? Sadly, there have been some in The LCMS who have succombed to the popular misconceptions surrounding these questions. Read on for more on this subject, from National Review Online.
Which One God?
Comparing the Muslim and Christian conceptions of God.
By Bat Yeor
With
the passing of time, hidden challenges, which for a long time had been
growing unnoticed and unaddressed, can suddenly emerge into the
full-blown light of current events with a force which seems quite
overwhelming. Today the Western world, or Judeo-Christian civilization,
shaken by jihadist terror, is being rudely awakened to theological
realities blurred for decades. From clashes of civilizations to the
jihad that is declaring to the planet its genocidal intentions,
rational discourse concerning faith is becoming increasingly fraught.
It is within this tumult and confusion that Mark Durie, an Anglican minister, has written Revelation? Do We Worship the Same God?, in which he raises a couple of fundamental questions: Who is God? Is God Allah? Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
To
answer these questions, he analyzes Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God in
Christianity and Islam. The reader is given a concise representation of
Muslim and Christian arguments. Such an endeavor needs both solid
scholarship and theological training. Mark Durie possesses both, being
a theologian and a graduate in the language and culture of the
Acehnese, a Muslim people from the north of Sumatra in Indonesia. In
addition, the subjects he addresses, in the current context, request
much intellectual integrity and courage.
But how to know the
identity of “God” in the Koran and in the Bible? The author stresses
that this profound and deep question requires engaging with the very
essence of God’s identity. With perspicacity and great objectivity,
Durie delineates the diverse aspects of his investigations, but he
warns that his book should be seen only as guidance, and not the last
word.
Durie’s questioning grows from the Koran’s statement that
Jesus is a Muslim prophet, named Isa — a prophet whose birth, life,
teaching, and death are found to be totally at odds with the testimony
of the Gospels and with Biblical theology. The Koran — which for
Muslims is the literal word of Allah that cannot be doubted — affirms
that Muhammad’s prophetic message is exactly the same as that expressed
by the Torah and the Gospels. Since there are many contradictions
between the Koran and the Bible, Muslim orthodoxy considers the
scriptures of Judaism and Christianity as falsifications of the primal
and unique Islamic revelation. It is this accusation that provided the
doctrinal justification for the discriminatory legal status of Jews and
Christians living under Islam.
In the first section, the author
provides information about and reflections upon the Muslim Jesus (Isa).
He stresses as fundamental the Koran’s teaching that Islam is the
first, primordial religion, preceding Judaism and Christianity, which
are dismissed as invalid traditions, being falsified
versions of Islam. Because Christianity and Judaism are thought to be a
corruption of the pure message of Islam, anything true in these
religions comes from their Islamic roots. Consequently, to obey their
true religion, Jews and Christians should “revert” to Islam and accept
the prophethood of Muhammad.
This implies, writes Durie, that
anyone who opposes Muhammad is not a true Christian, nor a true Jew.
Seen in this light, the Koranic verses sympathetic to Jews and
Christians refer to those who will see the light and find it to be
Islam. If Islam recognizes only itself in Judaism and Christianity, one
can wonder whether this replacement theology is not the negation of the
very principle of recognition of other religions.
Many
Christians profess that Christianity is closer to Islam than to
Judaism, because of a common reverence of Jesus/Isa and his mother
Mary. They will be astonished to learn from Durie that according to
hadiths — acts and sayings attributed to Muhammad, and endowed with
theological and legislative authority — Isa, the Muslim Jesus, will be
the ultimate destroyer of Christianity.
Durie examines the
characters of Jesus and Isa, separated by six centuries; he compares
their name and biographies and explains the differing understandings of
the prophecy in the Bible and the Koran. While Christianity accepts
Jewish Scriptures as the foundation of their belief and practice, and
as an integral part of Christian ministry, read in churches around the
world, Muslims disregard the Bible. They claim that it is Islam that is
the common heritage of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and that Jews and
Christians should work to recover this heritage. Durie comments that,
in this process, the Islamization of Jesus and the Hebrew patriarchs
and prophets destroys both Christianity and Judaism.
The
author analyses with great clarity and depth the fundamental principles
of the two religions and, in a powerful chapter that raises essential
questions, he discusses the concept of “Abrahamic Faith” that has
become so fashionable today as a framework for dialogue. This
definition, he points out, originates from the Koranic statement that
Abraham was a Muslim prophet and from Islam’s core doctrine that Islam
was the one revelation given to humanity by Allah through the Biblical
figures and through Jesus. For Durie, the many “Abrahamic Faith”
conferences throughout the world point to the Islamization of Christian
understandings of interfaith dialogue. How should Christians respond to
this claim which is a fundamental point of Muslim doctrine? Durie
develops several arguments based on a rational analysis of history and
the texts.
In his conclusion, Durie writes that profound
contrasts exist in Islam and Christianity in their understanding of the
identity of God. These have far-reaching implications, affecting
attitudes, ethics, and politics. The clarification of misunderstandings
and false assumptions, masterly exposed by Durie, is a condition to
open the way for more constructive dialogue.
Durie’s book
could not have been more timely. He offers a well-balanced analysis,
acknowledging the important similarities of the two faiths, without
ever misrepresenting the real disagreements or ignoring the hard
issues. In this time of globalization, when crucial challenges are
emerging for the West’s post-Christian societies, Durie’s reflections
provide essential and fundamental guidance that will enable Christians
to engage in a dialogue based on truth.
This is all the more
urgent now that the cultural jihad in the West is preventing the free
expression of thought and belief, and is subverting the whole ethical
foundation of Judeo-Christianity.
— Bat
Yeor is the author of studies on the conditions of Jews and Christians
in the context of the jihad ideology and the sharia law. Recent books
include: Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide and Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, both at Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
I’ve read the following good books
that are related to this subject.
via nph.net
Islam in the Crucible
Speaking the Truth in Love to Muslims
———-
the thought of Islam the true religion after Christianity – circular reasoning that crashes in on itself – because if Islam claims it comes from the Bible (and the Bible says it is final authority and only authority), Islam negates the Bible, so Islam is really negating itself.
also the thought of some religion being older than Christianity – Christianity was here before the world began! All the others are man’s religions.
I forget where I read this, but one would say Christianity is a faith where all other types of beliefs outside of Christianity are religions.
Looks to be a great book and a great study of this issue. On this subject I have heard a couple of opinions in the past couple of years. One of them came from a friend, reflecting on that section in the Large Catechism which now famously reads, “All who are outside this Christian people, whether heathen, Turks, Jews or false Christians and hypocrites–even though they believe in and worship only the one, true God–nevertheless do not know what his attitude is toward them”. While this has created some differing conclusions recently in the LCMS I think my friend’s explanation is enlightening. He claims that for Luther the variable in this sentence is not God–God is the constant. The variable is worship. There are a variety of different ways to worship the one, true God. Christianity, through the revelation of Jesus Christ, is the only religion to properly worship God unto salvation.
McCain: The problem however is that there is no worship of God apart from that worship offered in and through and because of Christ. And, that translation you cite is plainly incorrect. It does not adequately capture the crucial nuance of the now antiquated German grammatical construction, the subjunctive form, which, even if it is not subjunctive, still falls within a “contrary to fact” rhetorical device. To translate it in such a way as to make it appear Luther is flatly asserting that Luther is saying that Muslims, as Muslims, are worshipping and believing in the one true God is … well, I’m looking for a technical term here….ok, I’ve got it. It’s “nuts!” Luther nowhere ever said that Allah is in fact the one, true God, but elsewhere in various way, referred to Allah as being a false god and as the devil himself.
Schmidt: The variable that deals with worship can then be handled, once God is made the constant. There is only one God. There are plenty ways of rightly worshipping him but once again only one way of worshipping him unto salvation.
McCain: No, there are many false gods worshiped in many ways, but worship of a false god is false worship. Allah is a false god hence any worship offered to Allah is false worship, not true worship of the one, true God.
A good book on this subject is Carl Braaten’s “No Other Gospel!”. And just to wet your whistle, on page 70 Braaten writes, “Lutheran orthodoxy clearly taught a twofold revelation and knowledge of God: the general revelation of God through creation and law, and the special revelation of God through Christ and the gospel”.
McCain: But the issue is *not* knowledge, it is “worship” and “belief in” … Braaten’s quote is not about worship but about general and special revelation. It never ceases to amaze me how people try to make the issue one of natural knowledge of God when Luther is not talking about natural knowledge of God but “worship” and “belief.”
I hope these comments are helpful in this discussion.
McCain: The key to the LC II.66 passage is understanding that Luther, the master rhetorician is NOT asserting a fact, but putting forward a condition contrary to fact. To translate the German as “although they worship and believe in” is incorrect. It is translated rather “Even if…” that shows the point of Luther’s statement: he is putting forward a condition that is obviously contrary to fact, in order to make his point. Unfortunately, this nuance is lost in some translations due simply to the fact that we today do not have mastery of rhetorical devices to the extent Luther did and therefore are not attune to such rhetorical devices.
It amazes me how quickly the first article of the Augsburg Confession is passed over; I don’t think it leaves any room for the assertion that the Muslim god is the true God (the Blessed and Holy Trinity).
We thank the Jewish lady Bat Yeor for her reminder concerning the Muslim god. Let’s also not forget that the same holds for the Jewish god, despite all the talk about “Jewish-Christian civilization / values” (what does that really mean? maybe Muslims have contributed more to Western civ. than we think: Aristotle, numbers come to mind immediately, for better or worse — does that mean we believe the same God? no way!).
I think among confessional Lutherans we’d still say that Jews need to convert to the God of Adam, Abraham, Moses and Isaiah (the Holy Trinity) to be true Jews. So the Muslim arguement is similar in structure but wrong in content, obviously.
Of course, it’s less PC to say that about Jews and their god, esp. because many are deceived by the fact that Jews and Christians share a goodly number of holy writings (aka the OT). Yet when we don’t look just at words and syllables but at meaning and words together as a purposeful whole inspired by the Holy Ghost, then it doesn’t really matter whether you outright change the meaning *and* the actual words (Koran) or if you just change the intended meaning of those texts. Admittedly, the Muslim approach is more radical, but thereby perhaps also less deceptive. Just see what the so called “interreligious dialogue,” charged with deep feelings of guilt on the Christian side “after Auschwitz,” has done in most liberal (and in some Evangelical) churches who’ve adopted one form or another of Christian Zionism, that is, the faulty belief (popularized by C. I. Scofield’s famous “Reference Bible” and the “Left Behind” series) that Jews need not believe in Christ to be saved and / or that Israel can hope for restoration in the holy land, with new temple and all (there was good article on that in one of the last issues of Lutheran Witness…).
Above all, I agree with Pr. Higgins. There’s a reason why the basic Lutheran confession starts the way it does (first things first): by confessing the true identity of God. We don’t have to discuss any further with those who don’t agree, e.g., Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses: they are all hell-bound idol-worshipers, no matter how much their heart burns for some “Jesus” person. There’s so much garbage out there from deniers of the Trinity who brazenly pose as Christians (mostly Modalists: one god in three manifestations / modes of appearance) that we cannot overemphasize this article which basically spells out the First Commandment in light of the Creed. Not to underestimate the Muslim “threat,” or the need to “preach to the choir” on Islam, but I find that the so called Christians who talk alot about Jesus but change his identity are still much more deceptive wolves in sheep’s clothing for “the person in the pew”.
McCain: Good points all. St. John said it best, “He came to His own, but His own people did not receive Him.” (John 1).
Luther had this to say about Psalm 2: “Because the Father and the Son are truly one, the Father cannot be worshiped without the Son… Those, however, who deny the Son, as the Jews and the Turks do, deny also God Himself and are abominable idolaters.” (Luther’s Works, AE Vol. 12, page 70.)
Also, this: “For the Turk says he adores the God who made heaven and earth. The Jew says the same. But because they both deny that this King is the Son of God, they not only wander away from God, but also adore an idol of their own heart. For they invent a god such as they wish to have, not as God has revealed himself. But God detests them and closes His ears to their prayers…” (ibid, p 84)
Brothers
This is something I have been wrestling with for awhile is Allah, God. A lot of my Pentecostal brethren say NO! Because Muslims do not recognize Jesus as God. And Like some of you pointed out, neither do the Jews.
I believe that God and Allah are the same, The religion of Islam is false and the Jews need to either uphold the commandments to enter heaven or turn to Jesus. / SO did God honor Ishmael?
Gen 16: 11 The angel of the LORD also said to her:
“You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. 12 He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”
Gen 17: 19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. 21 But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.”
Gen 21: 17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. 18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”
19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.
Gen 28: 8 Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac; 9 so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham,
My thoughts on Islam
13″Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
15″Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
21″Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, `I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
SO salvation comes from the Lord.