Various articles…
Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? – an article by Dr. Al Mohler (original source)
A statement made by a professor at a leading evangelical college has become a flashpoint in a controversy that really matters. In explaining why she intended to wear a traditional Muslim hijab over the holiday season in order to symbolize solidarity with her Muslim neighbors, Jesus said, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (John 8:19). Later in that same chapter, Jesus used some of the strongest language of his earthly ministry in stating clearly that to deny him is to deny the Father.
Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God. Christians worship the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and no other god. We know the Father through the Son, and it is solely through Christ’s atonement for sin that salvation has come. Salvation comes to those who confess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in their hearts that God has raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9). The New Testament leaves no margin for misunderstanding. To deny the Son is to deny the Father.
To affirm this truth is not to argue that non-Christians, our Muslim neighbors included, know nothing true about God or to deny that the three major monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — share some major theological beliefs. All three religions affirm that there is only one God and that he has spoken to us by divine revelation. All three religions point to what each claims to be revealed scriptures. Historically, Jews and Christians and Muslims have affirmed many points of agreement on moral teachings. All three theological worldviews hold to a linear view of history, unlike many Asian worldviews that believe in a circular view of history.
And yet, when we look more closely, even these points of agreement begin to break down. Christian trinitarianism is rejected by both Judaism and Islam. Muslims deny that Jesus Christ is the incarnate and eternal Son of God and go further to deny that God has a son. Any reader of the New Testament knows that this was the major point of division between Christianity and Judaism. The central Christian claim that Jesus is Israel’s promised Messiah and the divine Son become flesh led to the separation of the church and the synagogue as is revealed in the Book of Acts.
There is historical truth in the claim of “three Abrahamic religions” because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all look to Abraham as a principal figure and model of faith. But this historical truth is far surpassed in importance by the fact that Jesus explicitly denied that salvation comes merely by being merely one of “Abraham’s children” (John 8:39-59). He told the Jewish leaders who rejected him that their rejection revealed that they were not Abraham’s true sons and that they did not truly know God.
Christians do not deny that Muslims know some true things about God. As a matter of fact, in Romans 1:19-20 Paul explains that all people have some real knowledge of God by general revelation, so that they are without excuse. Speaking at Mars Hill in Athens in Acts 17, Paul argued that even some of the Greeks’ own philosophers and poets gave evidence of a rudimentary knowledge of God — but this was not a saving knowledge, and the Apostle was brokenhearted when he saw the Athenians at worship.
In making her claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, the professor claimed the authority of Pope Francis, and since Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church has become ever more explicit in its teaching that salvation can come without a conscious and explicit faith in Christ. This is simply not an option for evangelical Christians committed to the authority of Scripture alone and to the Gospel as defined in the New Testament.
Francis J. Beckwith, a leading Catholic apologist and philosopher, defended the claim that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. At one point, Beckwith argued that two people could have differing knowledge of Thomas Jefferson while knowing the same Thomas Jefferson as the third President of the United States. He continued: “In the same way, Abraham and Moses did not believe that God is a Trinity, but St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Billy Graham do. Does that mean that Augustine, Aquinas, and Graham do not worship the same God as Abraham and Moses? Again, of course not.”
But this line of argument evades the entire structure of promise and fulfillment that links the Old Testament and the New Testament. Abraham and Moses could not have defined the doctrine of the Trinity while they were on earth, but they believed that God would be faithful to all of his promises, and those promises were fulfilled only and fulfilled perfectly in Christ. And, going back to John 8:56-58, Jesus said: “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad … Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
Evangelical Christians understand that, theologically, there is a genetic link between Judaism and Christianity. That is why Christians must always be humbled by the fact that we have been grafted onto the promises first made to Israel. In terms of both history and theology, there is no genetic link between Christianity and Islam. The Qur’an claims that to confess Jesus Christ as the divine Son and the second person of the Trinity is to commit blasphemy against Allah.
Hard times come with hard questions, and our cultural context exerts enormous pressure on Christians to affirm common ground at the expense of theological differences. But the cost of getting this question wrong is the loss of the Gospel. Christians affirm the image of God in every single human being and we must obey Christ as we love all people everywhere as our neighbor. Love of neighbor also demands that we tell our neighbor the truth concerning Christ as the only way to truly know the Father.
We must also understand that the most basic issue is the one Jesus answered with absolute clarity. One cannot deny the Son and truly worship the Father. There is no question that the Muslim is our neighbor, but there is no way to remain faithful to Scripture and the gospel and then claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
Three Reasons Why Christians & Muslims Do Not Worship the Same God – From: http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/12/three-reasons-why-christians-m.php
Rick Phillips
The question of religious or spiritual unity between Christians and Muslims has come up in recent days, largely in response to political debate over the danger of admitting Muslims into our country. On one extreme was the purported statement by Liberty University President Jerry Fallwell, Jr. that Christians should carry guns so as to kill Muslims. In response, Wheaton College students wrote of Christians’ obligation to pursue unity and solidarity with Muslims based on our shared human dignity. Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor at Wheaton, , has gone further by donning a Muslim headscarf and declaring not only her human solidarity but her theological solidarity with Muslims. She validated the proposition that “Muslims and Christians worship the same God.” Reacting to this statement, Wheaton College has suspended Hawkins pending an inquiry into her violation of the college’s doctrinal statement. Wheaton should be commended for acting clearly but also deliberately and fairly in this matter.
There are various issues in this debate that Christians should carefully consider and on which we may legitimately differ. But whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same God is not one of them. Let me offer three reasons why Christians must steadfastly declare that we do not worship the same God that Muslims do:
1. The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible proclaims that there is one God in three distinct persons. Jesus therefore instituted baptism “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19). Muslims vehemently deny and condemn this teaching, seeing it as a fatal compromise of its central tenet of monotheism. This means that Islam denies the deity of Jesus Christ, saying, “the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was nothing more than a messenger of God” (Qur’an, sura 4). This means that Muslims profess belief in a God who is fundamentally different from the God of the Bible in his very nature.
2. God Revealed in Christ vs. Mohammed. In her statement of solidarity with Muslims, Dr. Hawkins stated that Christians and Muslims are both “People of the Book.” The question is, of course, which book? While Islam shows a certain measure of respect to the Old Testament, it holds that God’s chief revelation came through Mohammed, a man of considerable violence. Christians believe in a God whose chief revelation is through Jesus Christ, God’s Son and the world’s only Savior, as he is presented by the prophets and apostles in the Bible. To put it mildly, there is a fundamental difference between those who look to Mohammed versus to Jesus for their belief in God.
3. The God of Grace. The God of Islam shows grace only to those who merit his approval by faith and good works. The Christian God distinguishes his grace by bestowing it upon the unworthy and defiled. Paul’s teaching that “God justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5) and through Christ’s death showed “his love for us while we were still sinners” (Rom. 5:8), is fundamentally at odds with the Muslim belief concerning God. So while Muslims and Christians both use the terminology of grace, Islam denies the grace of God on which Christians rely for their salvation.
However laudible it may be for Christians to express kindness and human solidarity with members of other religions, the one thing we must never do is deny our faith in the Triune God who is revealed through Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who alone died to free us from our sins. In denying the exclusivity of our faith, apart from all other religions, Christians are not exhibiting the love of Jesus. At the very heart of our message to the world we must always affirm – all the more so during the Christmas season – that Jesus alone is Savior and Lord. As John declared, “In him was life, and that life was the light of men” (Jn. 1:4).
Thabiti Anyabwile on the subject: original source here.
The recent move of Wheaton College to place on administrative leave one of its faculty has sparked debate about whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God. This debate recurs because of the culture’s tendency to flatten religious differences into nebulous and impersonal ideas about “God” and because of widespread ignorance of religious faith. As Stephen Prothero points out in God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World–and Why Their Differences Matter, our happily ignorant “pluralism” can in religious matters lead to car bombs exploding, bullets fired through office buildings, hostage situations at abortion clinics, and waves of genocidal violence.
Religions create a lot of problems in the world. Ignorance of religion compounds those problems. Arguing that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is often well-intended. But in a world increasingly filled with clashes between adherents of Islam and the west, this confusion is dangerous. Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God and that matters immensely!
God
Muslims hold that “God is one.” Allah has no partners and assigning partners to him is shirk, the highest blasphemy. Christians believe “God is one in three Persons.” Each Person in the Trinity is fully and eternally God. Yet there is one God. Our Muslim neighbors believe Christians are guilty of the greatest sin–making partners with God. Christians believe their Muslim neighbors are guilty of the greatest sin–idolatry.
The two views of the nature of God are irreconcilable.
Duty
Muslims believe that man’s duty toward Allah is to submit to his will. The goal of Islam is not salvation, but to bring the entire world under the rule of Allah–dar al Islam. The Christian believes that the most fundamental duty toward God–out of which obedience arises–is repentance and faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. No one knows God who does not know the Son who is the only mediator between God and man. The goal of Christianity is the salvation of sinners through the righteousness, substitutionary atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The goals of the two religions could not be more different. And because the goals differ, how we worship and how we act in the world also radically differ.
Enemies
Despite all the debates about who is or is not a “true Muslim,” it cannot be doubted that significant numbers of Muslims believe it’s permissible, even necessary, to strive in the cause of Islam. Some believe that includes violent defense of Islam. The Lord Jesus Christ teaches that Christians are to love our enemies. Christians must turn the other cheek. Christians do not wrestle with flesh and blood but with spiritual forces of evil in high places.
Because Christians and Muslims define their enemies differently and respond to them differently, we cannot be said to worship the same God.
Conclusion
I could go on. Though at many places there is a common history (both groups come from Abraham), a common vocabulary (i.e., faith, worship, etc.) and increasingly a common address in the world, we may be tempted to think there’s more in common than is truly the case. Let us not make that mistake. The differences are radical and they lead to wildly different ethics. Sobriety and charity require us to lovingly state this truth and work out the implications.
Dr. James White: Published on Dec 21, 2015
After Wheaton College disciplined a professor for wearing a hijab and saying “Christians and Muslims worship the same God,” a firestorm of protest and charges of “bigotry” descended on the college. The real problem is that no one believes in religious truth anymore—all that will be allowed is religious opinion, hence, you can’t let your opinions offend anyone! But the reality is, this question is vital, and it allows us to go much deeper into what really divides *believing* Christianity from *believing* Islam. Hopefully this brief discussion will shed some light on the topic.