Posted on 12/04/2006 10:22:38 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Which One God? Comparing the Muslim and Christian conceptions of God.
By Bat Yeor
With the passing of time, hidden challenges, which for a long time had been growing unnoticed and unaddressed, can suddenly emerge into the full-blown light of current events with a force which seems quite overwhelming. Today the Western world, or Judeo-Christian civilization, shaken by jihadist terror, is being rudely awakened to theological realities blurred for decades. From clashes of civilizations to the jihad that is declaring to the planet its genocidal intentions, rational discourse concerning faith is becoming increasingly fraught.
It is within this tumult and confusion that Mark Durie, an Anglican minister, has written Revelation? Do We Worship the Same God?, in which he raises a couple of fundamental questions: Who is God? Is God Allah? Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
To answer these questions, he analyzes Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God in Christianity and Islam. The reader is given a concise representation of Muslim and Christian arguments. Such an endeavor needs both solid scholarship and theological training. Mark Durie possesses both, being a theologian and a graduate in the language and culture of the Acehnese, a Muslim people from the north of Sumatra in Indonesia. In addition, the subjects he addresses, in the current context, request much intellectual integrity and courage.
But how to know the identity of “God” in the Koran and in the Bible? The author stresses that this profound and deep question requires engaging with the very essence of God’s identity. With perspicacity and great objectivity, Durie delineates the diverse aspects of his investigations, but he warns that his book should be seen only as guidance, and not the last word.
Durie’s questioning grows from the Koran’s statement that Jesus is a Muslim prophet, named Isa — a prophet whose birth, life, teaching, and death are found to be totally at odds with the testimony of the Gospels and with Biblical theology. The Koran — which for Muslims is the literal word of Allah that cannot be doubted — affirms that Muhammad’s prophetic message is exactly the same as that expressed by the Torah and the Gospels. Since there are many contradictions between the Koran and the Bible, Muslim orthodoxy considers the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity as falsifications of the primal and unique Islamic revelation. It is this accusation that provided the doctrinal justification for the discriminatory legal status of Jews and Christians living under Islam.
In the first section, the author provides information about and reflections upon the Muslim Jesus (Isa). He stresses as fundamental the Koran’s teaching that Islam is the first, primordial religion, preceding Judaism and Christianity, which are dismissed as invalid traditions, being falsified versions of Islam. Because Christianity and Judaism are thought to be a corruption of the pure message of Islam, anything true in these religions comes from their Islamic roots. Consequently, to obey their true religion, Jews and Christians should “revert” to Islam and accept the prophethood of Muhammad.
This implies, writes Durie, that anyone who opposes Muhammad is not a true Christian, nor a true Jew. Seen in this light, the Koranic verses sympathetic to Jews and Christians refer to those who will see the light and find it to be Islam. If Islam recognizes only itself in Judaism and Christianity, one can wonder whether this replacement theology is not the negation of the very principle of recognition of other religions.
Many Christians profess that Christianity is closer to Islam than to Judaism, because of a common reverence of Jesus/Isa and his mother Mary. They will be astonished to learn from Durie that according to hadiths — acts and sayings attributed to Muhammad, and endowed with theological and legislative authority — Isa, the Muslim Jesus, will be the ultimate destroyer of Christianity.
Durie examines the characters of Jesus and Isa, separated by six centuries; he compares their name and biographies and explains the differing understandings of the prophecy in the Bible and the Koran. While Christianity accepts Jewish Scriptures as the foundation of their belief and practice, and as an integral part of Christian ministry, read in churches around the world, Muslims disregard the Bible. They claim that it is Islam that is the common heritage of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and that Jews and Christians should work to recover this heritage. Durie comments that, in this process, the Islamization of Jesus and the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets destroys both Christianity and Judaism.
The author analyses with great clarity and depth the fundamental principles of the two religions and, in a powerful chapter that raises essential questions, he discusses the concept of “Abrahamic Faith” that has become so fashionable today as a framework for dialogue. This definition, he points out, originates from the Koranic statement that Abraham was a Muslim prophet and from Islam’s core doctrine that Islam was the one revelation given to humanity by Allah through the Biblical figures and through Jesus. For Durie, the many “Abrahamic Faith” conferences throughout the world point to the Islamization of Christian understandings of interfaith dialogue. How should Christians respond to this claim which is a fundamental point of Muslim doctrine? Durie develops several arguments based on a rational analysis of history and the texts.
In his conclusion, Durie writes that profound contrasts exist in Islam and Christianity in their understanding of the identity of God. These have far-reaching implications, affecting attitudes, ethics, and politics. The clarification of misunderstandings and false assumptions, masterly exposed by Durie, is a condition to open the way for more constructive dialogue.
Durie’s book could not have been more timely. He offers a well-balanced analysis, acknowledging the important similarities of the two faiths, without ever misrepresenting the real disagreements or ignoring the hard issues. In this time of globalization, when crucial challenges are emerging for the West’s post-Christian societies, Durie’s reflections provide essential and fundamental guidance that will enable Christians to engage in a dialogue based on truth.
This is all the more urgent now that the cultural jihad in the West is preventing the free expression of thought and belief, and is subverting the whole ethical foundation of Judeo-Christianity.
— Bat Yeor is the author of studies on the conditions of Jews and Christians in the context of the jihad ideology and the sharia law. Recent books include: Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide and Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, both at Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
That, my FRiend is exactly the fact. Absolutely astounding.
Ahmadinejad is kinda like the Anti-John-the-Baptist too, paving the way, making ready for the 12th Mahdi who will come (crawl) up out of the well (pit) where he has been hidden (kept) until the appointed time... YIKES!
-Bruce
In the end, as it is said in the NT, "every knee shall bend, every mouth proclaim that Jesus is Lord". That means at the end of the age all will have to accept that Jesus is God.
I'm sorry to argue with you. If I'd have known you were full of years of Catholic doctrine instead of an open mind to facts I would not have got into this discussion with you at all. Every one knows you can't argue with the brain washed. 2000 years of belief in something wrong does not make it a reality. Transubstantiation for instance.
HAHAHAHA... as you say, you can't argue with someone not open to facts. May God bless you.
No. All three Faiths are monotheistic. All three faiths worship one God who created everything out of nothing. All Three Faiths know God has a divine Nature but not all Three Faiths understand there exists three persons in that Divine Nature
Maybe Jesus spoke those words (repeatedly? Where does the Bible say that?) because He had emptied Himself of His Divinity to experinence in His human nature the consequence of sin.
Can't speak for the local Padre but considering we Catholics don't marginalize Books with which we disagree (James, Apocrypha and Deuterocanonicals) and discount the Words of Jesus at The Last Supper as an empty ritual, I think I'll take our 2,000 years of understanding and development over this Johnny-come-lately.
Again, I know many graduates from DTS and respect their knowledge. However, I also know from my conversations with them that DTS starts from the perspective that the Catholic Church is wrong... and seeks an alternate explanation. That's not how you FIND truth... it's how you INVENT it.
The Bible was written in those languages, no?
*Do you think he had access to the original autographs?
Of course your local Padre knows better than the biblical scholars
*Oh, yes. I agree. After all, we wrote every single word of the New Testament. We wrote it and we decided what texts, among the MANY circulating, would be included in the Canon of Scripture and which texts would be excluded from the Canon of Scripture. The Church established by Jesus (matt 16:18,19) preceeded the New Testament.
Isn;t it Common Sense the authors of a work would know it better than those who were not the authors?
Actually Catholics did NOT write the Bible. It was already written and they only copied the old writings. It was originally written in Hebrew and Greek.
Acts 7...Who said: Ye men, brethren, and fathers, hear. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charan.
Romans 9...And not only she. But when Rebecca also had conceived at once, of Isaac our father
1 John 2..I write unto you, fathers, because you have known him, who is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one.
I can't argue with you brain washed catholics so let me just say that if you accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, you are headed for eternal life. All the other catholic blah blah blah means nothing. It has always been used to control the masses. And usually if you didn't grasp it you were burned at the stake. Henry the VIII and Martin Luther were the best things that ever happened in Europe. (although Henry did it for other reasons)
The Muslims don't believe in a Trinity. They have reason not to. In the Koran Ch 5 line 72-73 Allah slaps down the Christian idea of a Trinity.
.Here is the line-<
> "5.72": Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah, He is the Messiah, son of Marium; and the Messiah said: O Children of Israel! serve Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Surely whoever associates (others) with Allah, then Allah has forbidden to him the garden, and his abode is the fire; and there shall be no helpers for the unjust.
"5.73": Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third (person) of the three; and there is no god but the one God, and if they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve.
Here are more translations of that line debunking any idea that there is a trinity involved. If you believe in a Trinity you are not a Muslim since they worship a different God that you do.
005.073 YUSUFALI: They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.
PICKTHAL: They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no Allah save the One Allah. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.
SHAKIR: Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third (person) of the three; and there is no god but the one Allah, and if they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who disbelieve.
So in Islam it is one God no Trinity involved. And that comes from Allah himself via the Koran.
If you are praying to a God that has other divine persons involved, you are praying to a different God than Allah. - tom
* I was born a catholic so I only needed a light rinse
Martin Luther... the best things that ever happened in Europe...
*Here's you boy, Luther....
"We concede -- as we must -- that so much of what they the Catholic Church say is true: that the papacy has God's word and the office of the apostles, and that we have received Holy Scriptures, Baptism, the Sacrament, and the pulpit from them. What would we know of these if it were not for them?"
Sermon on the gospel of St. John, chaps. 14 - 16 (1537), in vol. 24 of LUTHER'S WORKS, St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 1961, 304
* Yes. I understand that. That was sorta my point :)
Muslims pray to the same God as we do. They just have a less-developed idea of who God is due to many factors. Their doctrine about God is objectively heretical (not that they know that. If they did then it would be formal heresy)
However, they pray to one soverign God who is the author of all Creation as they, in their limited way, understand Him.
I will post an arguement to you you may find helpful
Henry VIII: Left the Church because the Pope wouldn't split that which God had joined under the false pretenses under which is was petitioned. This is the same Henry VIII that wrote Assertio Septem Sacramentorum in defense of Catholic Doctrine and the primacy of the Papacy against Luther when the Church wasn't at odds with him. This is the same Henry VIII that was first called "Defender of the Faith" by Pope Leo X... note, it wasn't about the Church of England.
Fair weather friends... You can have them.
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