Do Christians and Jews and Muslims Worship the Same God?

Bill Vallicella has another post, this time defending the position that Jews and Christians worship the same God.  This too is worth reading by Bill.

Ed Feser, contra Vallicella, argues that Muslims and Christians worship the same God (though his argument is not without a significant qualification).

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

I haven't had time to weigh in on the recent controversy at Wheaton College over placing a professor on leave for saying that Christians and Muslims worship the same god.  Thankfully, I don't have to because Bill Vallicella has weighed in and says all and more that I'd want to say in his post and then in the comments section.  A number of the comments are good.  In particular a distinction I've mentioned to friends is addressed, namely that between successfully referring to God and successfully worshiping God.

For what it's worth, my view is that it is possible for a Muslim (and others) to successfully reference (depending on the context) and worship God.  But to say that Christians and (all?  most?) Muslims worship the same God is misleading and unhelpful.

Bill also links to Dale Tuggy who has a roundup of hyperlinks and commentary on the Wheaton affair.

This is speculation, but I suspect that the professor was not fired only for this comment about Muslims and Christians.  There is almost always much more to the story when someone is fired.  I would be shocked if she did not have a history of pushing the line internally at Wheaton.

Can Bugs Talk?

Sam (six-year-old): Dad, can bugs talk?

Me: No.

Sam: Why not?

Me: They don't have a language.

Sam: Are bugs like dolphins?

Me: Dolphins seem to have a language. Bugs are more like robots.

Sam: Robots can talk.

Me: Bugs are like non-talking robots.

Sam: Oh.

The God of Christianity and the God of Islam: Same God?

Interesting Thoughts from the Maverick. Here is an excerpt:

One morning an irate C-Span viewer called in to say that he prayed to the living God, not to the mythical being, Allah, to whom Muslims pray. The C-Span guest made a standard response, which is correct as far as it goes, namely, that Allah is Arabic for God, just as Gott is German for God. He suggested that adherents of the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) worship the same God under different names. No doubt this is a politically correct thing to say, but is it true?

Our question, then, is precisely this:  Does the normative Christian and the normative Muslim worship numerically the same God, or numerically different Gods?  (By 'normative Christian/Muslim' I mean an orthodox adherent of his faith who understands its content, without subtraction of essential tenets, and without addition of private opinions.)  Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic.  So if Christian and Muslim worship different Gods, and a monotheistic God exists, then one is worshipping  a nonexistent God, or, if you prefer, is failing to worship the true God.

1. Let's start with the obvious: 'Allah' is Arabic for God.  So if an Arabic-speaking Coptic Christian refers to God, he uses 'Allah.'   And if an Arabic-speaking Muslim refers to God, he too uses 'Allah.'  From the fact that both Copt and Muslim use 'Allah' it does not follow that they are referring to the same God, but it also does not follow that they are referring to numerically different Gods.  So we will not make any progress with our question if we remain at the level of words.  We must advance to concepts.

2. We need to distinguish between our word for God, the concept (conception) of God, and God.  God is not a concept, but there are concepts of God and, apart from mystical intuition and religious feelings such as the Kreatur-Gefuehl that Rudolf Otto speaks of, we have no access to God except via our concepts of God.  Now it is undeniable that the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God partially overlap.  The following is a partial list of what is common to both conceptions:

a. There is exactly one God.
b. God is the creator of everything distinct from himself.
c. God is transcendent: he is radically different from everything distinct from himself.
d. God is good.

Now if the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God were identical, then we would have no reason to think that Christian and Muslim worship different Gods.  But of course the conceptions, despite partial overlap, are not identical. Christians believe in a triune God who became man in Jesus of Nazareth.  Or to put it precisely, they believe in a triune God the second person of which became man in Jesus of Nazareth.  This is the central and indeed crucial (from the Latin, crux, crucis, meaning cross) difference between the two faiths.  The crux of the matter is the cross. 

So while the God-concepts overlap, they are different concepts.  (The overlap is partial, not complete.) And let's not forget that God is not, and cannot be, a concept (as I am using 'concept').  No concept is worship-worthy or anyone's highest good.  No concept created the world.  Whether or not God exists, it is a conceptual truth that God cannot be a concept.  For the concept of God contains the subconcept, being that exists apart from any finite mind.  It is built into the very concept of God that God cannot be a concept.

It is clear then, that what the Christian and the Muslim worship or purport to worship cannot be that which is common to their respective God-conceptions, for what is common its itself a concept.

We could say that if God exists, then God is the object of our God-concept or the referent of our God-concept, but also the referent of the word 'God.' 

3. Now comes the hard part, which is to choose between two competing views:

V1: Christian and Muslim can worship the same God, even though one of them must have a false belief about God, whether it be the belief that God is unitarian or the belief that God is trinitarian.

V2:  Christian and Muslim must worship different Gods precisely because they have different conceptions of God.  So it is not that one of them has a false belief about the one God they both worship; it is rather that one of them does not worship the true God at all.

There is no easy way to decide rationally between these two views.  We have to delve into the philosophy of language and ask how reference is achieved.

Read the rest and learn something.

Kids, Language, and Football

My one-year-old somehow can pick out anything football related.  It's like a miracle.  "Tackle!"  That is his universal word for football player, football game, football, etc.  As far as I can remember, I only introduced him to the word "tackle" when he runs at me and tackles me when roughhousing.  But somehow he picked up that this is what goes on in football.  One day as I was watching football he came in and said, "Tackle!"

I have five kids and it still never ceases to amaze me with each one how they develop their native language.  It's not too difficult to understand how one can learn a second language or third or fourth language, but learning a language with no language is mystifying.

Typically, we think that children learn the meaning of terms by ostension--by some sort of pointing children learn what is signified by the sign or word.  Some of the first books we read to our kids are picture books with shapes, objects, and colors.  You point to a red truck and say "red truck," point to a red ball and say "red ball."  Eventually the kids learn to see what is in common when the word "red" is used and the like.

But then (to borrow from Quine) how do children learn my meaning when the range of possible meanings seems underdetermined by the objects pointed to?  I point to a rabbit and say "rabbit."  "Rabbit" could mean that furry animal which is alive (what you and I MEAN by rabbit!), it could signify undetached-rabbit-parts, the space that is always inhabited by a rabbit, the outside of a rabbit, and so forth.  Or take "walking."  I could walk around the room and say "I am walking."  But how does one recognize walking from hurrying, taking 50 steps, sauntering, moving, and the like?  How does a child recognize that anyone who has walked farther than I have when I have said "I am walking" is also walking?  How is it possible that language gets started?  Yet children seem to automatically (or at least very quickly) understand what I mean be the term.

I am reminded of Augustine's Confessions where he describes his own learning of a language as a child (1.6.8)

A Puzzle About (Biblical) Interpretation

Context, context, context.  It is said that to know the meaning of a verse in the Bible, one has to know the surrounding context.  One has to know the meaning of the immediate context (the several verses before and after the one in question) and the broader context (e.g. the book it is written in, etc.)

How, then, does interpretation ever get started?  For simplicity sake let's reduce the Bible to three books and each book to four verses (the numbers don't matter to see the puzzle--and let's suppose that each verse is a single sentence).  Suppose we focus on the first book and verses 1, 2, 3, and 4 (which, we're supposing, are all of the verses).  In order to understand the meaning of 1, we must understand the meaning of at least verse 2 (and perhaps verses 3 and 4).  But to understand the meaning of 2, one must understand the meaning of at least 3 (and presumably 1 as well).  But to understand the meaning of 3 we must understand 2 and 4.  But to understand 4....  And thus we have a potentially vicious hermeneutical circle. It won't help to appeal to our understanding of books two and three since the same problem applies to each of the books as well.  To understand the meaning of anything it seems that one must already understand the meaning of everything.