One God for all

me | me

[mfreddy]

Today my local newspaper had a nasty response to a LCMS pastor's claim that Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same god. The author goes on to say "This is contrary to all the sources I've seen, which explain that Jews, Christians and Muslims do indeed worship the same god, in what is termed the Abrahamic tradition. Perhaps he is confused my the term "Allah" (Arabic for "the lord"), not understanding that it is a different name for God, not the name of a different god." The letter closes with a personal attack on the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.

Can anyone help me understand what the philosophical differences between the three religions and provide me with information to refute the letter if untrue?

Given the nasty nature of the letter and the attack on the Church I feel strongly compelled to at least investigate whether a response is warranted.

[Cultural Jihad]

God is by definition beyond definition.

A man once had three sons. The youngest called out to his Father by saying "Ba." The middle son called him "Daddy." Only the eldest son addressed him properly as "Father." And yet the Father knows whenever any of his children are addressing him.

[Delta-Boudreaux]

There are enormous differences in Islam and Christianity.

Islam does not adhere to the Trinity. They deny that Jesus was God Incarnate. He was only a prophet to them (and I guess a liar about other things,)

Islam views Allah (interpreted as 'God Almighty') as a God who is distant and not approachable. He is fickle in his mercies (Perhaps if an Islamic person does something enormously brave in the name of Allah, he will be guaranteed heaven.)

The morality of Islam vs Christianity is enormous. They have a lust view of heaven. To gain 72 virgins for their own "super-natural" pleasue. Which basically means to them, sex-slaves.

Islam does not serve the God of Christianity. Christianity and Judiasm is much closer due to obvious reasons. Christianity has its roots in Judaism and therefore the view of the character and nature of God Almighty is the same. The understanding of Who is Messiah is... well that is a different story.

[hsszionist]

The Elohim of Avraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Creator of the Universe, not the godlet allah. The Creator states that He does not change. His Torah reflects his nature. And in turn His Messiah is a reflection of his nature. What day is set apart to honor Him as Creator, which day is the Islamic holy day. Which feasts are a reflection of the redemption of mankind, which festivals do the Islamic observe. Jerusalem is the Creators chosen city, which city does Islam hold sacred.............Islam worships a false god, a pagan god.

[mfreddy]

Interesting website, thanks for the link. I think I could spend about a week there.

[Romulus]

No wonder they live in the middle ages.

So the whole point of orthodoxy is prosperity?

Ya know...every Christian on earth used to live in the middle ages.

[Romulus]

Allah is NOT God.

"Allah" is the word for "God" used by Arab Christians.

[Cultural Jihad]

"Alleluia"

[ValerieUSA]

Arab Christians need better teachers then.

[mfreddy]

OK, I think I'm getting it. The most obvious differences lie between Christianity and Islam. I'm still a little fuzzy on the Jewish philosophy, however. Is it the Jewish belief that Jesus was a prophet, or just a good carpenter?

[Cicero]

The New Testament is appended to the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, and sees itself as the fulfillment of Hebrew Scripture and prophecy. The two parts of the Christian Bible are entirely compatible.

That is NOT true of the Qran. It changes many of the details in the Bible, and simply cannot be reconciled with the Jewish and Christian accounts. Yes, the Qran takes Abraham to be the original Patriarch, but it traces a different genealogy from there. It recognizes Jesus as a "prophet," but not as the greatest prophet, and not as the Son of God or the Second Person of the Trinity.

So, in a word, Allah is NOT the same God as the Jewish and Christian God, Who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God who preferred Ishamael and Mohammed, not the God who is not a Trinity, and not the God who condoned the kind of militancy and treachery represented by Mohammed himself, let alone millions of his followers.

But all such explanations will fall flat arguing with people who don't believe in God themselves. They simply don't understand what the word "God" means.

[Romulus]

Arabs were Christians when your ancestors and mine were worshipping trees and rocks. I don't think Arab Christians need any lessons from us in naming God.

[rdb3]

That makes absolutely no sense at all.

[rdb3]

No, that's exactly FALSE!

No need for misinformation here.

[Romulus]

The early Church was shot through with christological heterodoxy. Eusebius of Caesarea was probably Arian, and thus a denier of Christ's divinity. Are you saying Eusebius's god is not the Christian God?

Wouldn't it be more useful simply to think of the Koran as the last and most successful of the apocryphal revelations?

[pcl]

The god of the jews and muslims are essentially the same. The christian god started out as the jewish god but he evolved. He evolved into a three segmented god. The only way the christians could logically assign godhood to Christ was to make him the son of god. The third element, the Holy Spirit was the christian accommodation to that which everyone innately knows, God is within us all.

I find it rather ironic that some Christians reject evolution but accept an evolved god.

[RnMomof7]

No we do not worship the same God..There was a thread many weeks ago on the moon god..explaining the differences..but it must have been pulled..

They are pagans with a pagan god.

[RightOnline]

"How about this? No two men believe in the exact same God."

What in the hell are you talking about??? While I'm at it, what planet do you hail from?

[Rockyrich]

I just posted a related article (Turn The Other Cheek - NOT) by Hal Lindsey (@ 7:00p), http://www.hallindseyoracle.com, where he provides some comparisons of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. He wrote the article to a paster that was critical of his support for our country's war on terrorism.

[mfreddy]

Could you provide me with a chapter and verse where I can read this story? Thanks

[Cultural Jihad]

Stylites (Pillar Saints)

Stylites were solitaries who, taking up their abode upon the tops of a pillar (stylos), chose to spend their days amid the restraints thus entailed and in the exercise of other forms of asceticism. This practice may be regarded as the climax of a tendency which became very pronounced in Eastern lands in the latter part of the fourth century. The duration and severity of the fasts then practised almost pass belief, but the evidence is overwhelming, and the general correctness of the accounts preserved to us is no hardly disputed. Besides the mortification of the appetite, submission to restraints of all kinds became at this period an end in itself. Palladius tells us (ch. xlviii) of a hermit in Palestine who dwelt in a cave on the top of a mountain and who for the space of twenty-five years never turned his face to the West. St. Gregory of Nazianzus (P.G., XXXVII, 1456) speaks of a solitary who stood upright for many years together, absorbed in contemplation, without ever lying down. Theodoret assures us that he had seen a hermit who had passed ten years in a tub suspended in mid air from poles (Philotheus, ch. xxviii).

There seems no reason to doubt that is was the ascetical spirit manifested in such examples of these which spurred men on to devise new and more ingenious forms of self-crucifixion and which in 423 led Simeon Stylites the Elder (q. v.) first of all to take up his abode on the top of a pillar. Critics, it is true, have recalled a passage in Lucian (De Syria Dea, cc. xxviii - xxix) which speaks of a high column at Hierapolis to the top of which a man ascended twice a year and spent a week in converse with the gods, but scholars think it unlikely that Simeon had derived any suggestion from this pagan custom, which certainly had died out before his time. In any case Simeon had a continuous series of imitators, more particularly in Syria and Palestine. St. Daniel Stylites may have been the first of these, for he had been a disciple of St. Simeon and began his rigorous way of life shortly after his master died. Daniel was a Syrian by birth but he established himself near Constantinople, where he was visited by both the Emperor Leo and the Emperor Zeno. Simeon the Younger (q. v.), like his namesake, lived near Antioch; he died in 596, and had for a contemporary a hardly less famous Stylites in St. Alypius, whose pillar had been erected near Adrianople in Paphlagonia. Saint Alypius after standing upright for fifty-three years found his feet no longer able to support him, but instead of descending from his pillar lay down on his side and spent the remaining fourteen years of his life in that position.

St. Luke the Younger, another famous pillar hermit lived in the tenth century on Mount Olympus, but he also seems to have been of Asiatic parentage. There were many others besides these who were not so famous and even women Stylites were known. One or two isolated attempts seem to have been made to introduce this form of asceticism into the West but it met with little favour. In the East cases were found down to the twelfth century; in the Russian Orthodox Church it lasted until 1461, and among the Ruthenians even later. There can be no doubt that for the majority of the pillar hermits the extreme austerity of which we read in the lives of the Simeons and of Alypius was somewhat mitigated. Upon the summit of some of the columns for example a tiny hut was erected as a shelter against sun and rain, and we hear of other hermits of the same class among the Monophysites, who lived inside a hollow pillar rather than upon it; but the life in any case must have been one of extraordinary endurance and privation. Probably the best justification of these excesses of austerity is to be found in the fact that, like the great renunciation of St. Melania the Younger, they did, in an age of terrible corruption and social decadence, impress the need of penance more than anything else could have done upon the minds and imagination of Oriental Christians.

HERBERT THURSTON
Transcribed by Michael C. Tinkler

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV
Copyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Source: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14317b.htm