I'm a little behind on my topical musings, but I want to address a little dust up at Wheaton College not long ago. A professor there was fired for stating that Christians and Muslims worship the same god. There was quite a response from various corners of Christendom, sometimes a very angry response:
hell no, we don't worship the same God! Most of the Christian denial of identity between the Muslim & Christian views of God hinges on the differences between the New Testament and the Koran. Let us stipulate, without poring over the details, that the Koran and the New Testament say very different things about the nature of God. Some Christians (and perhaps some Muslims as well) would conclude from this that the "God" discussed in each of these books is not the same entity. What is often ignored in these discussions is that the God described in the
Old Testament is also very different than the God of the
New Testament. Although there have been sects, like the Marcionites, who took a position that they were in fact different, the majority of Christians take for granted that the same God is being referred to in all the books of the bible, plus the apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, Church Fathers etc. This is a reasonable assumption to make, since Jesus, Paul and everyone else who wrote or was quoted in the New Testament operated under this assumption. The fact that God, in the Old Testament, is portrayed as an angry, jealous, rule-making tribal deity, while in the New Testament he is the merciful and loving father figure who tells us to turn the other cheek, is not something that is often dwelt upon. In the Old Testament he often urges his people, a formerly nomadic tribe, to commit what we would nowadays call genocide to acquire territory, while his son Jesus preaches a more universal doctrine, and tells his followers to love their neighbors. Theologians devote a lot of time to reconciling these differences, not to mention the contradictions and discrepancies within the Gospels themselves.
The three great monotheistic faiths, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all trace their beginnings to Abraham, and before him to Noah and Adam. Christianity and Islam are both referring to the founders of Judaism and the Hebrew bible and the God described therein as their foundation and as their God. All three are talking about the same God, but are saying different things about him.
If we are going to conclude that Muslims and Christians are worshipping a different God because their respective holy books describe him differently, and their followers view him differently, then logically we would have to conclude that Christians and
Jews are worshipping different Gods. Take this a step farther and note that there is great variety among Christians. All accept the bible, especially the New Testament, as their holy book, but interpretations vary wildly. Think back to the 2012 Presidential election, where it was suggested that Mormon Mitt Romney would not receive votes of "real" Christians. I was once part of a Christian sect that viewed the bulk of Christian denominations as "not real Christians"; most mainstream Christians returned the favor. I recall seeing Catholicism described, in a history textbook published by a Christian University, as a "false religion".
Of course this is not to say that, in the view of Christians, that is Islam is equally "correct" or true, or that Christianity is equally valid in the eyes of Muslims, but that they both have very different views about the same entity, the same God. When I was growing up, there was no question about whether Muslims were worshipping the same God as Christians, but over the last dozen years, anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of terrorist acts perpetrated by self-identifying Muslims, has spurred people to find as many differences between themselves and "the other" as possible.
Perhaps spending less time searching for differences and more time looking for common ground might result in less hatred.
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