Replies

FK: It is simply impossible to worship the God of Abraham while denying Christ.

Hmmmm ... who or what do you suppose Jews worship?

Well, that depends on which Jews we are talking about 'cause there's lots of different kinds. :) I believe that the OT righteous surely understood the Person of Christ since Christ is all through the OT. They didn't have the details we do today, but they had enough to wait for the correct Christ.

As for the Jews of today, we know that some do believe in Christ. But of course there are others who deny the Divinity of Christ and are still waiting for a first coming. With all due respect to those people I would have to say that they worship a different God than the one Christians worship. I wouldn't know what to call it, but it's not our God. In terms of salvation they would unfortunately be in the same boat as any other non-believer, IMO. True faith must recognize the Trinity (the identity of God) or it is something other than true saving faith.

"With all due respect to those people I would have to say that they worship a different God than the one Christians worship."

I see this theory come up with respect to a number of faiths. If you profess to be a Christian you are an affirmed monotheist and cannot acknowledge the existence of any other gods regardless of how inferior. It is possible for Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus, Unitarians, etc. to be wrong about God and mischaracterize God, but they cannot change Him or alter Him.

This is not of my usual fighting remarks, just a comment from experience.

There are two way to talk to Jews and Muslims about Christian God. One is to start from the presumption that their God is our God the Father, and then go on convincing them that Jesus the Son is God also. It is not hard to get as far as agreeing that Jesus was an exceptional man, -- the Koran, after all devotes several heart-felt chapters to Him, and modern Jews readily accept, and claim as their own, Christian moral teaching. To get to divinity of Christ from that starting point is near impossible, because any logical argument you might make ends up with "Yeah, great man..."

Then you have to describe the Holy Spirit as a third divine person, and that is met with total incomprehension.

But the premise is wrong. It is, in fact not a Christian premise. This is why it does not work practically.

Here's a fulcrum question. Was God of Abraham one in three persons?

Well, there was no Jesus around. Sure there was Melchizedek and the Ram -- not Lamb -- of God that substituted for Isaac, but these are types, not hard teaching. Yet the Iconographer knew enough to depict the Trinity in the persons of three angels at Abraham's table.

The insight of this icon is that whenever one thinks of God, one thinks of Triune God. When an Aborogene puts a shriveled lizard in his pipe and smokes it to find out about God (I assume that's what they do), he is seeking the Triune God, not the Father in isolaton from the Son and the Holy Ghost.

There was a discussion here whether Allah means God. Well, it happens to mean so in Arabic, just as much as ha-El, or more often, Elohim (plural!), mean God in Hebrew (YWHW is His proper name, not the ontological name). But here's what Allah doesn't mean, it doesn't mean "the Father".

So what does it do to my and your discussions with Jews, Atheists and Muslims?

We do not have to convince them that they worship the right God Who has Trinity Partners. This is incorrect Christian theology and so it does not convince. It only convinces them that we are polytheists.

The truth is that Christ "through Whom all things were made" was there from the beginning. He was offering the Eucharist to Abraham, and He was blessing Abraham's table. The Holy Spirit was there hovering over the waters before there were waters and breaking Jacob's leg. The God the Muslims and the Jews worship is our God allright, but they do not see Him fully, so they don't worship Him right. He has no partners, He has persons inside of Him. As He always had.