To: agrace
"Bringing up the fact that the Jews deny Jesus is God each time a comparison of Allah and Jehovah is attempted is simply a diversion and does not matter to the question at hand."
Not at all. It is simply holding Jael consistent to her own standard that Islam is an "antichrist" religion because it denies the divinity of Jesus or that He came in the flesh. If one wishes to hold to such a standard, then it must be applied consistently, rather than on a pick-and-choose criteria for what religion that Jael happens to like at the time. And applying Jael's standard (not the Bible's, and unless Jael has a direct hot line to the Almighty I feel that we should separate the two) does indeed render Judaism a religion of an antichrist.
"One can compare Allah with the OT YHWH or Allah with the NT Jesus Christ and determine that Allah resembles neither."
That depends very much on one's point of view. The fact that Muslims are entirely wrong-headed about the nature of God (as I believe that Calvinists are as well) has nothing to do with which God they are worshipping. They claim to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By applying some scholarship, we can clearly see that, regardless of how skewed a perception they may have of Him, that this is Yahweh, our own God.
"First, the mention must be made of the fact that Islam denies the accuracy of both texts (OT and NT), while at the same time, irreconcilably professing respect for "the Book" and "people of the Book," ie Jews and Christians. Mohammed taught that both texts were corrupted, the originals distorted, changed, things omitted and the original message lost."
Indeed. However, he noted that there were theological truths to be found in those texts, which is the only logical opinion that he honestly could have given that he borrowed heavily both from canonical as well as apocryphal material when compiling the Qur'an.
"That alone raises the notion that the three faiths do not worship the same God, even if only addressed from the Muslim's perspective - how can any Muslim believe that the Christians and Jews are accurately worshipping Allah if they don't even know for sure what He is really like, due to the fact that their scripture has been corrupted and changed?"
Ah, you have reached the crux of the matter. _Accurate_ worship is not the same thing as worship. Muslims of course believe that they are worshipping Allah the way that Allah desires to be worshipped, however they don't exclude the possibility that the People of the Book are worshipping Allah, abeit inaccurately. I feel that the correct ("orthodox") Christian position should be the reverse of this, not entirely different from the Christian stance on Judaism.
Christians readily accept that Jews worship the same God that we do. However, we believe that they have a misperception of the true nature of God because they do not accept the Trinity, the New Covenant, and the divinity of Our Lord. However, whatever their theological errors or misperceptions, Jews are still worshipping the same God as Christians. I see no reason for this same standard not to be applied towards Islam.
Regarding the list you provided as to the theological differences between the Christian God and the Muslim Allah, let me just say that I do not defend the Islamic conception of the Deity, which I believe to be in error. But I do not see misunderstanding of the nature of the Deity as being the same thing as not worshipping the Deity altogether.
Just to draw the point home, let me use the example of John Calvin. Were he alive today, he and I would have quite a few rather apparent differences of opinion about the nature of God. However, this in no way prevents me from acknowledging that the God John Calvin worshipped is the same God that I worship. We simply disagree over the proper perception of that God.
"To suggest that Christians and Muslims worship the same God (regardless of what Allah means in Arabic, which is a trivial point) is to deny both the Koran and the Bible."
I agree that the definition of Allah in Arabic is a trivial point, but Jael brought up the often-used charge that Allah was at one point a Meccan deity so as to prove that Muslims "really" worship some pagan moon god. This charge makes remarkably little sense IMO, as there are millions of Arab Christians who also say "Allah" in their prayers and nobody accuses them of polytheism. That and the fact that there are a number of rather marked differences between Arabian paganism and Allah, not the least of which being that the latter is conceived of as transcendant. If it were otherwise, the Meccan leadership would never have tried to kill Mohammed to begin with.
"Bottom line - if we believe the Bible, we must deny the Koran. And vice versa. If we believe in Jesus, we must deny Allah. And vice versa."
I agree, but here again I think you're creating an unnecessary friction between the two faiths. I can recognize that Jews worship the same God as you and I while simultaneously denying the authority of the Talmud, just as I can acknowledge that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church worships the same God as I without adding 1 Enoch to my Bible's canon. Using the same criteria, I can readily accept that Muslims worship the same God that I do while believing that the Qur'an is completely bogus.
A similar line of thought exists within the Muslim perception of Allah. I believe that the Jews worship the same God that I do despite the fact that they deny the divinity of Jesus and I see no reason not to think the same about Muslims.
A misperception about the nature of God does mean that one does not worship Him.
To: Angelus Errare
First, to get it out of the way, the verse that was originally cited is the following (no doubt you are familiar, just repeating for the sake of my post) -
1 John 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
Adding the articles "an" or "the" (as was done in previous posts) before antichrist distorts the point, imo. The word antichrist simply means against the messiah. Are Jews against the Christian messiah? Absolutely. They of course do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah; therefore, according to John, they are anti-----Christ. But they are of course not THE antichrist, the prophetic extrapolation of the word taken in a modern sense to mean the end times villian worshiped by the world. One additional note - as Jael pointed out, Jews do not deny the Father, so it can maybe be argued that they do not fit the specific criteria of antichrist as in the verse. And of course, you and I disagree as to whether Muslims do.
That said, back to Allah vs Jehovah - how different do two things have to be before they are defined as different? I see no valid means to call Allah the same as the God of Christians. If one acts differently than the other, if one teaches differently than the other, how are they at all the same? In fact, that's a good question - based on the Koran and the Bible, I'd be interested to see references from each that indicate that Allah and God are at all the same.
It is not about Islamic perception vs Christian perception, and a comparison between Calvinists and Muslims is a poor one. First of all, the issues dividing Calvinists from say, Arminians, are that of interpretation of the same text. Not so with Islam. The Koran and the Bible are two different texts with widely divergent teachings.
To further explain, answer this question - do you, despite your disagreement with some of what John Calvin taught, believe that both he and you are bound for heaven based on your shared views of the gospel and the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ?
If your answer is yes, can you say the same for Muslims?
304 posted on
12/17/2002 2:25:47 PM PST by
agrace
To: Angelus Errare
Nice spin. But it won't wash.
308 posted on
12/17/2002 4:27:40 PM PST by
Jael
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