Do We Worship the Same God?

Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Dialogue

Miroslav Volf

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781467436571
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Often the differences between the three Abrahamic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- seem more obvious than their commonalities, leading to the question "Do we worship the same God?" Can the answer be "yes" without denying our differences? This volume brings Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophers and theologians together to answer this question, offering rare insight into how representatives of each religion view the other monotheistic faiths. Each of their contributions uniquely approaches the primary question from a philosophical perspective that is informed by the practice of worship and prayer. Concepts covered include "sameness" and "oneness, " the nature of God, epistemology, and the Trinity. Do We Worship the Same God? models serious-minded, honest, and respectful interreligious dialogue and gives us new ways to address an ongoing question.

Do Muslims and Christians Believe in the Same God?

Reza Shah-Kazemi

“Some god direct my judgment!”

The Prince of Morocco in
The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene VII

This is the supplication made by the prince as he is about to take the test that has been set for winning the fair Portia’s hand: to rightly guess which of the three chests contains her portrait. Shakespeare may well have been engaging in a playful irony by having the Muslim prince make this supplication. For he must have known that a central tenet of the Islamic mandate was, precisely, to put an end to polytheism. The prince’s supplication, though, helps us to see quite starkly the contrast, or rather incommensurability, between polytheism and monotheism: within the first system of belief, there are many gods from which to choose, while the second asserts that there is but one God from whom to seek help and guidance. We should see in the light of this contrast that it is illogical if not absurd to give anything other than an affirmative answer to the question put to us: “Do Muslims and Christians believe in the same God?” If, instead, we were to ask Christians and Muslims the question: Do you believe in one God — in a unique, ultimate Reality from which all things emerge, to which all things return, and by which all things are governed?, the answer would be: of course! If both parties agree that there is only one God, and not many from which to choose to believe or not believe; and if both parties affirm that they believe in God, then the conclusion follows inescapably: Christians and Muslims do believe in the same — the one-and-only — God. “A false god has no existence in the real world,” St. Paul tells us, and goes on to affirm: “there is no God but one” (1 Cor. 8:4). The Qurʾān states the same simple principle in the following verse, one of many that restate the first part of the basic creed of Islam, lā ilāha illaʾLlāh, “no divinity but God”: “There is no God but the one God” (5:73; emphasis added). The Qurʾān then makes explicit the logical concomitant of this oneness, as regards fellow believers in this one God, by telling Muslims to say to the Christians and Jews: “Our God (ilāhunā) and your God (ilāhukum) is one” (29:46). Fellow monotheists, however much they may disagree about other matters, are as one with regard to the One: they all believe in God as such, as opposed to believing in such and such a god.

However, once we move from this straightforward monotheistic postulate and enter into theological discussion of the nature of this God in whom all monotheists believe, we encounter major problems. The most insurmountable of these are generated by the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity: Is Jesus God incarnate, and if so, to what extent does this incarnation enter into the definition of the essential nature of God? Is belief in the Trinity an essential condition for authentic belief in God? One kind of Christian position, based on orthodox dogma, can be conceived as follows:

1. We affirm one God, but this affirmation is articulated in terms of a belief in a Trinity of three Persons: Father, Son, and Spirit.
2. This belief constitutes an essential element of Christian belief in God.
3. Anyone who does not share this belief cannot be said to believe in the same God.¹

Such a position not only answers negatively to the question posed — Muslims and Christians certainly do not believe in the same God — it will also elicit from the Muslim side a correspondingly negative answer: we agree with you, they will say to the Christians, we do not recognize our God, Allāh, in the divinity you describe, so we cannot believe in the same God.

It would seem that our answer to the question whether Muslims and Christians believe in the same God must therefore comprise both positive and negative elements; it has to be both yes and no: “yes,” objectively and metaphysically, and “no,” subjectively and theologically. But the objective, metaphysical “yes” outweighs the subjective, theological “no.” In other words, Muslims and Christians do indeed believe in the same God, insofar as the ultimate referent of their belief is That to which the word “God” metaphysically refers: the transcendent Absolute, ultimate Reality, the unique source of Being. However, when this same Reality is conceived by human thought, and this conception is framed in theological discourse, with reference to the attributes and acts of this Reality — such as Creator, Revealer, Savior, and Judge — then fundamental differences between the two systems of belief will be apparent. These differences will remain in place for as long as — and insofar as — we remain conceptually bound by the limits of theology; but they can be resolved on the higher plane of metaphysics and the deeper plane of mysticism — planes that are not constrained, doctrinally as regards metaphysics or experientially as regards mysticism, by the limitations of theology.²

We will aim to substantiate this argument with reference to two chief sources: the revealed data of the Qurʾān, and the inspired data of the metaphysicians and mystics of both Christianity and Islam. The Qurʾān — and the Sunna or Conduct of the Prophet, which is an eloquent commentary thereon — provides us with compelling evidence that the supreme Object of belief and worship is God for both Muslims and Christians, even if the conceptions of God held by Muslims and Christians diverge and, at points, contradict each other. The perspectives of such mystics as Ibn al-ʿArabī in Islam, and Meister Eckhart in Christianity, help to reveal the manner in which these divergent subjective conceptions of God fail to infringe upon the objective one-and-only-ness of the Absolute believed in by Muslims and Christians. The Absolute referent of the word “God”/“Allāh,” then, is one and the same when our focus is on the transcendent Object of belief, rather than the human subject adhering to the belief: if the word “belief” be defined principally in terms of the divine Object rather than the human subject, then our answer to the question posed must be in the affirmative.

We cannot of course ignore the subjective side of the question, for “belief” implies both things, an object and a subject; but even here, we can answer affirmatively, if the belief of the human subject be defined more in terms of spiritual orientation than mental conception, focusing more on the inner essence of faith than on its outer form. This determination to focus on the essential elements of faith within the subject, rather than the relatively accidental features of conceptual belief, reflects our concern with what is most essential in the divine Object of faith — namely, ultimate Reality — rather than derivative, dogmatically expressed aspects of that Reality. Muslims will not be able to affirm belief in “the Trinity” any more than Christians, on the plane of theology, can unequivocally affirm belief in what Muslims call “Allāh”; for this term has come to imply complex theological beliefs articulated in terms of a whole myriad of premises, assumptions, and foundations, the acceptance of all, or most, of which is necessary for the theological affirmation of belief in Allāh. If, however, attention is directed away from the theological definition of Allāh, and to its supratheological or metaphysical referent — that ultimate Essence (al-Dhāt) which is absolutely ineffable and thus unnameable; and if, likewise, we look beyond the theological definition of the Trinitarian conception of God, and focus instead on its supratheological or metaphysical referent — the “superessential One,” to quote St. Dionysius, to whom we will turn later — then we shall be in a position to affirm that, despite the different names by which the ultimate Reality is denoted in the two traditions, the Reality thus alluded to is indeed one and the same. And we are justified in referring to this Reality as “God,” “Deus,” “Theos,” or “Allāh,” or whatever term stands for this Reality in any language, as long as it be made clear that we are not implying thereby all the theological ramifications of these different terms. Rather, we are using these terms to denote their ultimate transcendent referent.

This essay is composed of three parts: the first begins with a discussion of the Qurʾān, and proceeds to address the debates and polemics generated by the Trinitarian conception of God in Christianity. Here it will be seen that the very nature of theological debate renders it all but inevitable that fundamental disagreements about the nature of God will prevail, overshadowing or even undermining the elements of commonality in beliefs held by Muslims and Christians. The second part then shifts to the plane of metaphysics, beginning with discussion of an act of the Prophet, an act of great symbolic significance, which resolves the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, the Qurʾānic affirmation that the God of the Muslims and the Christians (and the Jews) is one and the same; and, on the other, the Muslim repudiation of the Trinity. The mystics of the two traditions help us to arrive at a position of divine “objectivity,” a conceptual point of reference derived from a spiritual perspective sub specie aeternitatis, a point of view from which the unique metaphysical Object of belief takes priority over the theologically divergent, subjectively variegated conceptions of that Object. Finally, in part three, we return to the plane of theology in the context of contemporary interfaith dialogue, and evaluate the extent to which the well-intentioned efforts of Muslims and Christians to affirm that we do believe in the same God might benefit from the insights of the mystics, by maintaining a clear distinction between the level of spiritual essence, on which there can be agreement, and that of theological form, on which there is — and should be — respectful disagreement.³

1. Qurʾānic Revelation and Muslim-Christian Theological Disputation

The key theological controversy to be addressed here is, quite evidently, that surrounding the Trinitarian conception of God: Does the Christian belief in a Trinitarian God necessarily imply for both Christians and for Muslims that Christians believe in a God quite other than that believed in by Muslims? The Trinity, expressing the belief that God is one and He is three; together with the Incarnation, expressing the belief that God became man, was crucified, and rose from the dead, thereby liberating humanity from sin — these beliefs fly in the face of the central tenets of Muslim faith. The most fundamental aspect of the Muslim creed is centered on an affirmation of divine oneness (Tawhīd), one of the most important Qurʾānic formulations, and one that explicitly rejects that which lies at the core of Christian belief, the idea that God could have a “son.” Chapter 112 of the Qurʾān, titled “Purity” or “Sincerity” (Sūrat al-Ikhlās), reads as follows:

Say: He, God, is One,
God, the Eternally Self-Subsistent;
He begetteth not, nor is He begotten
And there is none like unto Him.

There is evidently a theological impasse here, a fundamental incompatibility between the respective conceptual forms taken by belief in the same God. Even if Christians retort to the above verses by denying any kind of carnal relation in the “sonship” of Jesus, insisting that the sonship in question does not occur in time and space, but is an eternal principle, of which the historical Incarnation is but an expression,⁴ it is nonetheless clear that the Qurʾān emphatically rejects the idea that “sonship” — whether physical, metaphorical, or metaphysical — should form part of any creedal statement regarding God. In other words, it rejects the validity of ascribing to Jesus the status of “son of God,” and in so doing rejects a belief that constitutes a cardinal tenet of Christian faith. Likewise, in relation to the Trinity: the Christians are instructed by the Qurʾān to desist from all talk of threeness in relation to God: “Say not ‘three’; desist, it would be better for you. God is but one divinity (innamā Allāh ilāh wāhid)” (4:171).

One God: Qurʾānic Affirmations

Alongside this critique of certain aspects of Christian belief, the Qurʾān also contains a large number of affirmations, implicit and explicit, that the God worshiped by the Christians (and Jews) is none other than the God wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Same God? The Perspective of Faith, the Identity of God, Tolerance, and Dialogue
• Christians, Muslims, and the Name of God: Who Owns It, and How Would We Know?
• The Same God?
• God Between Christians and Jews: Is It the Same God?
• Do Muslims and Christians Believe in the Same God?
• Do We Worship the Same God?
• Contributors