The Muslim scholars in their 2007 open letter to the Christian world (“A Common Word between Us and You”) and the response (the Yale Covenant) signed by three hundred Christian leaders identified two areas that were supposed to be common ground between Muslims and Christians: the commands to love God and to love one’s neighbor.[1] However, the truth or falsity of this claimed common ground can only be determined after a thoughtful examination of the nature of the Islam’s Allah and the Christian God of the Bible and their respective teachings and commandments with regard to love.
In other words, the evidence of any common ground between the two religions must ultimately be found in the natures of the respective Gods. If there are essential similarities in the most important aspects of the natures of Allah of the Quran and the God of the Bible, it would appear that there may be areas of common ground in the religions of Islam and Christianity. Likewise, if their natures are radically different, no common ground can exist.
Muslims claim that what can be known of Allah is found in the Quran written by Mohammad in the seventh century. Christians claim that God revealed himself through the divinely inspired writings of a number of men in both the Old and New Testaments recorded over a 1600-year period. Christians also claim that God can be known through His creation and the operation of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men and women. However, the written record of the Quran and the Bible will serve as our basis for determining the existence of common ground.
In examining the nature of God and the meaning and application of love as expressed by these natures, two questions must be answered in the affirmative if we are to determine there is common ground between Islam and Christianity. First, do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Second, are the Islamic and Christian understandings of love the same? The second question will be addressed in Part III.
Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?
Many claim that Islam’s Allah and the Christian God are really the same God. As one well-known television talk show hostess infamously claimed, all roads lead to the same God. In addressing this question, the Yale Center for Faith and Culture responded to a number of questions and criticisms following the publication of the Yale Covenant. Their response to the question as to whether Allah and the Christian God are the same was presented in two parts.
First, the authors of the Yale Covenant assert that the God of the Bible may also be called “Allah” because it is merely the Arabic word for God. The second part of the response addressed the question of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God. The signers of the Yale Covenant identify what they believe to be many similarities in the two religions’ views about God. Each claims to worship the one true God, that he is the creator of the heavens and the universe, is merciful and compassionate, rules the universe, and guides the affairs of mankind. They both believe that their God will judge all people at the end of history, that God sent prophets into the world to guide God’s people, and that both the Quran and the Bible were written by men who were divinely inspired. But the Yale Covenanters also acknowledge the two Gods are unlike with regard to the Trinity and the “Person of Jesus Christ whom Christians see as God’s ultimate self-revelation.”[2]
Ultimately, the Yale Covenant’s responders do not answer the question as to whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. However, they claim that in spite of important differences, those differences are “similar to the differences between Judaism and Christianity, and few Christians today would assert that Jews are worshipping a different god or an idol.”[3] But to compare the differences between Islam and Christianity as being similar to the differences between Judaism and Christianity is ludicrous. Christians almost universally do not view the Old Testament as hostile to the teachings of the New Testament which is a record of the completion of story of God’s plan for mankind following the creation and the Fall found in the Old Testament. The Bible and the Quran could never be bound together as one book because they describe two completely different Gods and two different blueprints for mankind on this earth and in eternity.
The God of the Quran and the God of the Bible are superficially similar in certain ways but vastly different in the most fundamental and important aspects of their natures. Perhaps the most important differences are determined by an understanding of the very essence of who they say they are. The Bible reveals God in His Trinitarian form in the first chapter of Genesis, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” [Genesis 1:26. KJV] [emphasis added] Where verse 26 establishes the plurality of the Deity, verse 27 reinforces the unity of His divine essence. God is three persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) but one divine being having a single divine nature. The Trinitarian nature of God will be discussed in greater detail in Part III.
Islam denies that God (Allah) is Triune but an “absolute unity, utterly without differentiation within himself” as such differentiation would diminish his greatness. In Islam, to suggest there is differentiation is to commit the greatest possible blasphemy.[4] “They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.”[5] [Sura 5:76, Quran]
Islam also denies that God became incarnate because Allah would never stoop to the level of his creation by becoming human.[6] Islam teaches that those who claim that God became incarnate are blasphemers. “They do blaspheme who say: ‘Allah is Christ the son of Mary.’ But said Christ: ‘O Children of Israel! worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.’ Whoever joins other gods with Allah,—Allah will forbid him the Garden, and the Fire will be his abode. There will for the wrong-doers be no one to help.” [Sura 5:75] But the gospel of John states that, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” [John 14:6. KJV] In Islam, Jesus is not God but a prophet.
These verses from the Quran and the Bible have unquestionably presented a starkly different image of the true natures of the two Gods. If they have such vastly different natures, there can be no common ground of any significance between Islam and Christianity. One must be the ultimate Supreme Being that transcends all of creation and the other a false God, and the religion of the false God leads to pain and despair in this life and eternal damnation thereafter.
Yet, the Yale Covenanters state that, “We believe that Muslims and Christians share enough in their perspectives about God to serve as the foundation for a meaningful and constructive dialogue between them.” Apparently, the responders are not concerned with objective and eternal truth but merely “perspectives” that will lead to dialogue because “…we share enough common understanding of the true God to sit down at the table and discuss both our areas of agreement and disagreement in regard to God.”[7]
But we must look to the pithy writings of A. W. Tozer for wisdom and clarity regarding the motives and mindset of the defenders of the Yale Covenant. “When men believe God they speak boldly. When they doubt they confer. Much religious talk is but uncertainty rationalizing itself; and this they call “engaging in contemporary dialogue.”[8] [emphasis added]
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] “A ‘Common Word’ at Yale: Frequently Asked Questions,” Yale Center for Faith and Culture, http://faith.yale.edu/common-word/common-word-yale-frequently-asked-questions (accessed April 27, 2016).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Abdu H. Murray, Grand Central Question – Answering the Critical Concerns of Mayor Worldviews, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2014), p. 166.
[5] All quotations from the Quran are from the textless edition of the English translation of the Holy Qur-an: A. Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the Illustrious Qur-an, Published by: Dar AHYA Us-Sunnah, Al Nabawiya.
[6] Murray, Grand Central Question – Answering the Critical Concerns of Mayor Worldviews, pp. 166-167.
[7] “A ‘Common Word’ at Yale: Frequently Asked Questions,” Yale Center for Faith and Culture.
[8] A. W. Tozer, Man – The Dwelling Place of God, (Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: WingSpread Publishers, 1966, 1997), p. 126.
