On worshiping the same God: What exactly is the question?

How do we understand “worship”?

What does it mean to ask whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God? It is perhaps this word that generates most of the controversy. One prominent evangelical leader, for example, said to me that failure to clearly deny that Christians and Muslims worship the same God opens the door to universalism and religious pluralism. But is this necessarily the case?

In very general terms, worship involves holding certain beliefs about, attitudes toward, and participating in actions directed toward the object of worship. Minimally, then, for Christians and Muslims to be worshiping the same God they would need to be referring to the same God in their beliefs, speech, and activities. Whether Muslims and Christians are referring to the same God is a matter we will consider later. But let us first examine more carefully the assumption that common worship implies pluralism or universalism. Consider question (1) below:

As noted, some hold that if we admit that Muslims and Christians worship the same God then the answer to (1) must be “yes”. Now we must always be careful in making pronouncements about just who is, and who is not, acceptable to God. Indeed, Jesus warns against presumption on this issue (Mt. 7:13–23; 25:31–46; Lk. 13:22–28; 14:15–23; 18:9–14). Yet, given the teaching of Scripture on salvation, most evangelicals would respond negatively to (1). Salvation, according to Scripture, is always by God’s grace, is appropriated through faith (not the result of human works), and is based upon the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross. There is nothing in Scripture that suggests that sincere and pious adherents of other religions can attain salvation through following the teachings of those religions. So if the issue is understood in terms of question (1) then most evangelicals will answer “no”.

But the issue of the soteriological grounds for and extent of salvation must be distinguished from questions about worship of or reference to the same God. ⁶ They are not the same thing. For one thing, the concept of worship itself does not indicate whether the worshiper is in a proper, salvific relationship with God. One can worship inappropriately or worship the wrong thing. Scripture speaks of the worship of other gods (2 Kgs 17:35), worship of idols (Dan. 3:5–7; Isa. 44:15), and worship in ignorance (Jn 4:22; Ac. 17:23). The concept of worship includes a dispositional response to the object of worship which is either appropriate or inappropriate, so that even if one were to affirm that Muslims and Christians do worship the same God this by itself does not indicate whether Muslims (or Christians for that matter) are in a salvific relationship with the one true God. The Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18 were both worshiping God in the Temple (both are praying), but only the tax collector went home “justified before God” (Lk. 18:14). Furthermore, soteriological issues should be distinguished from the question whether Christians and Muslims, in their discourse or worship, are referring to the same God. Two individuals can use different terms to refer to the same divine reality without necessarily engaging in worship of that being (they might be discussing the nature of the divine being without necessarily worshiping God).

A word about terms

In pursuing our subject we are confronted immediately with the problem of terminology. American Christians tend to use the Arabic term “Allah” when referring to the deity of Islam and the English “God” when speaking of the deity of the Bible. While understandable, this is unhelpful. First, by using a familiar English term for the Christian deity while introducing a strange Arabic word for the Islamic deity, it gives the impression that these are indeed “different Gods”. But the question of a common deity cannot be settled simply by terminology. Furthermore, insisting upon “Allah” when speaking of the deity in Islam also ignores the fact that Arabic-speaking Christians prior to and after the time of Muhammad used “Allah” to refer to the God of the Bible. ⁷ Many Christians today worldwide continue to do so, and Arabic translations of the Bible use “Allah” to refer to the God of the Bible. Moreover, we must remember that the English term “God” is itself a translation of a number of Hebrew and Greek terms in the Bible for the one Creator. Insisting that “God” refers to the Biblical deity but “Allah” denotes the Islamic deity obscures these realities. In what follows I will be using “God” as a title, not a proper name. ⁸ Thus I will use the word “God” when speaking of the Supreme Being, whether in Christianity or Islam, but I will distinguish between these conceptions of deity by using “God-C” for the God of the Bible (or the Christian understanding of deity) and “God-M” for the God of the Qur’an (or the Islamic understanding of deity).

The broader context of the question

The question “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?” should be understood within the context of the global Christian community throughout the past two millennia. What we say about it should be informed not only by the witness of Scripture but also by the realities of actual Christians in many cultures as they have engaged with other religious traditions, including, but not limited to, Islam. Moreover, this issue is part of a much larger set of questions concerning commonalities and differences between the Christian faith and other cultural and religious traditions. These broader considerations become especially significant when translating Christian terms into new cultural and linguistic contexts. Similarly, in addressing the question whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God, we must consider commonalities and differences in key concepts and terms.

Successful translation requires some significant continuity in meanings between biblical or theological terms and the vernacular terms used to translate the former. In the case of terms for God, where there is a word in the vernacular with clear monotheistic meaning it is natural to adopt the vernacular term to refer to the God of the Bible. But in many cases there is no obvious word which communicates the idea of one almighty creator God. This presents a special challenge for translation.

Questions about translation were debated vigorously by Roman Catholic missionaries to China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Italian Jesuit scholar Matteo Ricci (d. 1610) made a careful study of ancient Confucianism and became convinced that early Confucianism had been monotheistic and that the deity worshiped by the Chinese as Tian (Heaven) or Shangdi (Lord on High) could be identified with the God of the Bible. ⁹ Ricci and others thus advocated using “Shangdi” for God-C. Others, including Dominicans and Franciscans, rejected “Shangdi” as inappropriate, preferring “Tainzhu” (Lord of Heaven). Disputes over terms for God became part of the notorious Rites Controversy, which affected Roman Catholic missions in China from the 1630s to 1742, with the Vatican eventually ruling against the Jesuits.

Missionaries in Korea in the late nineteenth century also became embroiled in debates over proper terms for God. After extensive debate, evangelical Protestants adopted the Korean term “Hananim” (Heavenly Being) for God (Oak, 2013: 33–83). Missionaries were initially divided over whether “Hananim” referred to a monotheistic deity, with some understanding the term as including a rudimentary monotheism while others rejected it because of its shamanistic and henotheistic connotations. However, it was eventually agreed that “Hananim” has sufficiently monotheistic meanings that it can be used to refer to God-C.

Japan, by contrast, had no monotheistic tradition, as Japanese religious traditions were explicitly polytheistic and animistic (Suzuki, 2001, 2002). Shinto, the ancient indigenous tradition, used the term “kami” to refer to an array of beings and spirits as well as physical objects that were regarded in some sense as divine. Buddhism, which explicitly denies the reality of a creator God, had no term for a monotheistic deity, so there was in Japanese at the time no word with clear monotheistic meaning. After extensive debate, nineteenth century missionaries and Japanese Christians decided to use “kami”—in spite of its animistic and polytheistic connotations—to refer to the God of the Bible, accompanying it with qualifiers distinguishing the one true kami of the Bible (makoto no kami, the true God) from the ubiquitous kami of Shinto.

Two distinct issues are implicit in these debates over translation: First, is the deity worshiped by the local population to be identified with God-C? This is an ontological question, and responses to it in the Chinese and Korean contexts were mixed. In the Japanese context the answer was “no”. Second, to what extent, if any, can we adopt vernacular religious terms to refer to God-C? In the case of Japan, even though the first question was answered negatively it was determined that “kami” could be used to refer to the God of the Bible. This is the term that Japanese Christians use today for God.

The same God?

What does it mean to ask whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Both Islam and Christianity profess to be unambiguously monotheistic, affirming the existence of one eternal God who is the Creator of everything apart from God that exists. If there is such a being there is only one such being. This suggests that God-C and God-M are identical, for there can be only one Creator of everything apart from God that exists. So if the issue is framed in terms of question (2) below then the answer is “yes”.

The term “Creator God” is what philosophers call a definite description, and since there can be only one thing that satisfies that description, the referent of “Creator God” in (2) must be the same for both the Christian and the Muslim. But this suggests a further question:

Identical in what sense? Presumably, numerical identity is what is envisioned here, so that the terms “God-C” and “God-M” denote the same singular being. For example, the referents of “Abraham Lincoln” and “sixteenth president of the United States” are numerically identical since it is the same individual referred to in both cases. Identity in this sense might be understood in terms of the logical principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, which holds that for any individuals x and y, if x and y are identical, then for any property F, x has F if and only if y has F. In other words, if x is identical with y then everything that is true of x is also true of y; x and y share all properties. This suggests a further question:

Philosopher Keith Yandell has suggested that we think here in terms of three kinds of properties that God might have—intrinsic, cosmic, and historical properties (Yandell, 2016: personal communication). An intrinsic property is a property that God has simply in virtue of existing, such as being almighty. A cosmic property is a property God has simply in virtue of having created anything, so being the Creator is a cosmic property of God. An historical property is a property God has in virtue of having acted in human history. Calling Abram, becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ, or giving the Qur’an to Muhammad would be examples of historical properties. When answering (4) it is important to think in terms of all three kinds of properties, although our focus will be upon intrinsic properties. This raises a further question:

There clearly are some intrinsic, cosmic, and historical properties that Christians and Muslims alike ascribe to God. God is said to be compassionate and merciful, to have created everything apart from God that exists, and to have revealed himself to humankind. But although there are significant areas of agreement between Christians and Muslims on the nature and activity of God, there are also fundamental disagreements over what God is like and what God has done. The sharpest disagreements concern the Christian teaching on the Incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity. According to traditional Christianity God-C has the property of being triune, or comprising three distinct persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), whereas, according to traditional Islam, God-M does not have this property. So the concept of God-C has at least one instrinsic property that the concept of God-M lacks. Thus, God-C and God-M cannot be numerically identical since they do not share all properties and the answer to question (4) then is “no”. And in reference to (5) we must say that Christians and Muslims agree on some issues but disagree on others. Although they agree that God is the one eternal Creator and that God is merciful and omniscient, for example, they disagree over whether the one God is a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. ¹⁰

Does the T-move help?

One way to support the claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God might be to argue that the concepts of God-C and God-M should not be understood as directly referring to the Supreme Being itself, but rather as penultimate symbols through which Christians and Muslims think about and respond to what is truly ultimate—a Reality beyond both God-C and God-M. This move involves a distinction between the divine as it is in itself apart from human concepts and the divine as it is understood or conceptualized by human beings. In some form or another, this is a basic distinction found within the major religious traditions and surely there is an important insight here which we must retain.

This is an example of what George Mavrodes calls the “T-move”—“the claim that the transcendent itself is radically transcended” and that “the ordinary and primary object toward which the religion is oriented … is not the final and most profound reality” (Mavrodes, 1993: 179). Mavrodes is especially interested in the ways in which this move is used by Paul Tillich and John Hick in their respective attempts to locate the religious ultimate in something beyond the God of theism. ¹¹ Might some formulation of the T-move provide an option for someone who holds that Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Taking inspiration from Hick, for example, one might maintain that although they are quite different in meaning, the concepts of God-C and God-M nevertheless can be significant symbols through which Christians and Muslims respectively think about and respond to what is truly religiously ultimate—what Hick calls the Real. Neither God-C nor God-M is the ultimate, but the concepts of God-C and God-M can be acceptable symbols through which Christians and Muslims respond to the religious ultimate. On this construal, it is not correct to say that Muslims and Christians worship the same God but rather that Christians and Muslims, as they live in accordance with their respective teachings, are responding appropriately to what transcends theism and is in fact religiously ultimate.

This is an attractive move for many, including some pluralistic Muslims, ¹² but I think it is highly problematic. ¹³ First, what positive reasons are there for concluding that this is the case? There simply is nothing in Scripture to suggest that this is the way to understand biblical language about God, and attempts to defend such theories on philosophical grounds face formidable difficulties. At the heart of the difficulties is the problem of conflicting truth claims: the religions make very different, and at times mutually incompatible, claims about the religious ultimate and the world. I see no way to take the teachings of all the religions seriously on their own terms—especially when some religious traditions explicitly deny the reality of a Creator God—and yet maintain that it is the same religious ultimate that all of them are speaking of. Moreover, this is not how orthodox Christians or Muslims understand the status of God or talk about God. While Muslims and Christians disagree over the nature of God they agree that there is nothing more ultimate than God.

Finally, if something like Hick’s model is to work there must be some significant continuity between the symbols of God-C and God-M and what these symbols “point toward”, what is truly religiously ultimate. ¹⁴ That is, some of the properties of God-C and God-M must also apply to the Real, for if none of these properties apply to it how can one maintain that thinking about and responding to the Real in terms of God-C or God-M can be appropriate responses to the Real? But, given the differences between God-C and God-M, which properties apply to the Real? Is thinking about the religious ultimate as a Holy Trinity more appropriate or accurate than denying such properties of the ultimate? In answering this question we will privilege either God-C or God-M. If, on the other hand, one insists that the Real transcends both Trinitarian properties and the denial of such properties then we are left wondering what this means.

Referring to the same God through different concepts?

In spite of the fact that ontologically God-C and God-M are not identical and that Christians and Muslims disagree on the nature of God, can we nevertheless maintain that when Christians and Muslims speak of God-C and God-M respectively they are referring to the same being? This brings us to the vexed subject of reference—what reference is, its relation to meaning, and the conditions under which a term or concept can be said to refer to an object. Discussions of reference are complex and controversial, with problems attending each of the current major theories. The most influential theories fall broadly within the so-called descriptivist model or historical-causal model, or, more recently, various hybrid models which combine features of the two. ¹⁵ Thankfully, we need not resolve the issues between the competing models in order to make some basic observations about reference.

We might begin with the obvious point that terms with different meanings can refer to the same object. In a seminal discussion, the philosopher Gottlob Frege made an important distinction between the reference (or denotation) and sense (or connotation) of terms, observing that two terms can have the same referent or denotation while having different connotations or senses (Frege, 1952). Consider the following statement:

The meanings of “Morning Star” and “Evening Star” are not the same, and there was a time when the truth of (6) was not known. We now know, however, that both “Morning Star” and “Evening Star” refer to the planet Venus (denotation); the two terms thus have the same referent although they also differ significantly in meaning or sense.

Adopting this distinction, then, the issue for us is whether we can say that Muslims and Christians are denoting the same being when each speaks of God even though the meanings of “God”, when used by the two groups, differ in some ways. We have already seen that God-M and God-C are not strictly identical, since God-C has some intrinsic properties God-M lacks. But, although the meanings of “God” in “God-C” and “God-M” are different in important respects, are the concepts of God-M and of God-C sufficiently similar so that when a Christian and a Muslim each speaks of God they can plausibly be understood to be denoting the same being?

There are several reasons for responding in the affirmative. First, as we have seen, in their respective discourses both Christians and Muslims intend to be speaking about the one eternal Creator, and if there is such a being there can be only one such being. In this sense, then, it is plausible to affirm that they are referring to the same being.

Second, it is clear from ordinary discourse that the same individual can be referred to under different descriptions. The same person can, for example be referred to as the father of Jim, the man who won the Chicago marathon last year, the chairman of the elder board, or the manager of the Toyota dealership. Some people might know him under one description but not others, but so long as the descriptions are consistent there is nothing implausible about maintaining that it is the same person throughout. In other cases the descriptions might be such that it makes no sense to say that they all refer to the same individual. “The tenth president of the United States” and “the girl who graduated from sixth grade in 2015” cannot be referring to the same individual. And in still other cases we simply may not be able to determine whether it is the same person being referred to under different descriptions.

Third, it is also possible to refer to an individual even if some of the beliefs one has about that individual are false. For example, imagine that Bob is speaking about President Abraham Lincoln but he mistakenly believes that Lincoln at one time owned slaves. Bob states, “Although he led the Union through the Civil War and even issued the Emancipation Proclamation we must not ignore the fact that as a young man he did own slaves.” The statement that Lincoln owned slaves is, as far as we know, false, but this by itself does not entail that Bob was not in fact referring to the sixteenth president of the United States in his statement. To be sure, if too many inaccurate descriptors are included in one’s statement then the referent becomes unclear. But we should reject the assumption that successful reference requires that all beliefs about the referent must be true. Should we then conclude that Muslims are, or can be, referring to the one Creator God but that they do so with some incorrect beliefs about God?

In an interesting discussion Mateen Elaas, a Christian pastor and theologian who was raised in Saudi Arabia, states, “I believe… that Muslims fall into the category of those worshiping the true God in ignorance rather than those pursuing a false god.” (Elaas, 2004: 91). Drawing an analogy with the Samaritans in Jesus’ day, Elaas says,

It would have been easy for the Jews to consider the Samaritans as followers of a false god. During Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman, she asks him whether Jews or Samaritans were worshiping in the proper temple. Here would have been a perfect opportunity for Jesus to state clearly that Samaritans followed a false god, but he refuses to do this. He does declare that greater divine revelation has been given to the Jews and that they worship God with greater knowledge, but the Samaritans worship that same God in ignorance: ‘You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews’ (John 4:22). (Elaas, 2004: 92)

Elaas also makes reference to the approach of the apostle Paul:

Even more telling is what Paul has to say about his fellow Jews who have heard the gospel and rejected it. These are individuals who have rejected Christ as the Son of God and their Messiah, and who see obedience to the law as their means of righteousness before God. Their view of the nature of God accords closely with that of Muslims today. As Paul contemplates their situation, he does not accuse them of turning to a false god but rather of pursuing the true God in ignorance. He writes in Rom. 10:1–3: ‘Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge….’ If Paul can say this about monotheistic, non-Trinitarian, Christ-rejecting Jews in his day, it does not seem a great stretch to argue that we ought to be able to say the same thing today about Muslims. (Elaas, 2004: 92)

On the other hand, although there are reasons for affirming that Muslims and Christians are referring to the same God, there are also good reasons for denying this. The main reason for doing so is the significant differences in the concepts of God-C and God-M. Can one really hold that the concepts of God-C and God-M refer to the same being when one concept includes the Trinitarian understanding of God as Father, Son, and Spirit and the other explicitly denies this? Some conclude that this disagreement is decisive and thus the concepts of God-C and God-M cannot refer to the same being (see Hausfeld, 2016). But others do not see this disagreement as decisive. Volf, for example, argues that if “we have other good reasons to believe that Muslims have a common God with Christians, then their denial of the Trinity doesn’t provide sufficient grounds to say that Muslims don’t believe in the same God.” In rejecting the Trinity Muslims “are misunderstanding the true nature of God.” (Volf, 2011: 145).

It is instructive here to note the difference there is between disputes among monotheists and disagreements between Christians and non-theists such as Buddhists. For example, Meghan Sullivan argues that the fact that Jews, Christians, and Muslims actually engage in substantive disagreement over the nature of God indicates that it is the same being that is referred to in their debate. She claims that for the debate between Muslims and Christians over the doctrine of the Trinity to be substantive “‘God’ and ‘Allah’ must refer to the same being” (Sullivan, 2015: 40). By contrast, compare the dispute between Muslims and Christians over the Trinity with the disagreement between Christians and Buddhists over what is in fact the religious ultimate—an eternal Creator God or sunyata (emptiness). The Muslim–Christian dispute is over what God is like (God’s nature) whereas the Christian–Buddhist disagreement is over whether the religious ultimate is God or sunyata—and sunyata is not a being of any kind, let alone the Supreme Being.

How much difference in conceptual content of “God” is acceptable in order to maintain that the denotation of the term when used by Muslims and Christians is the same? It is important to see that this problem of common reference, given differences in conceptual understandings, is not unique to questions about Christianity and other religions. Similar issues emerge when considering intra-Christian disputes as well. How much difference in conceptual content is permissible if we are to hold that various Christian theologians and philosophers are referring to the same God? What about the Old Testament saints, second century Christians, and sixth century Christians, with only the last group having a fully defined Trinitarian understanding of God? Were Arius and Athanasius referring to the same God? What about a five-point Calvinist and a Wesleyan Arminian? Even among those who accept Trinitarian theism we find significant disagreement: are advocates of the eternal functional subordination of the Son to the Father referring to the same God as those who deny such subordination?

We must also take into account the diversity in understandings of God found among the billions of ordinary Christians over the past two millennia, across many cultures and with varying levels of theological sophistication. We must resist a theological elitism that presumes that one can only refer to or worship God if one has a precise and fully accurate understanding of God. Do ordinary laypeople attending the local Baptist church, for example, refer to the same God as a Baptist theologian teaching in a seminary? Or what about children? Is a 10-year-old child referring to the same God as a philosophical theologian? Are Japanese Christians, Bolivian Christians, and American Christians all referring to the same God?

In each of these cases there will be both similarities and differences in the respective understandings of God. To be sure, not just any understanding of God is acceptable and in some cases we might well conclude that what a particular individual or community is referring to is not the God revealed in Scripture. But I suggest that any acceptable model of reference will nevertheless allow for considerable differences (including some mistaken beliefs) in our understandings of the nature of God. The broader issue then, becomes,

It is not easy to give a simple, definitive answer to (7). We need to allow for a certain messiness in the thought of actual communities of Christians and in the process of communication and translation from one context to another. Moreover, the contingencies of particular cases make it difficult to draw sweeping generalizations about what must be present in all instances of successful reference. It could be, for example, that what counts as successful reference is to some extent relative to particular circumstances, so that the same expectations do not apply to, for example, a 10-year-old child and a philosophical theologian when referring to God. Furthermore, in the case of two mature monotheists, surely there is a difference between someone who understands the orthodox teaching on the Trinity and rejects it and someone who either has never heard about the doctrine or has a misunderstanding of the teaching and thus rejects a caricature.

Finally, it is interesting that we are generally willing to accommodate differences in understandings of God among those who identify themselves as Christian, even if we know that not all of the perspectives can be accurate. Despite clear differences on certain points we typically acknowledge that it is the same God we are referring to. But when the issue is differences in understandings across religious boundaries then we are often much less willing to acknowledge a common referent. Differences among Christian thinkers over God’s nature are one thing; differences between Christians and Muslims apparently are something else. As we have seen, there are real differences in belief between Muslims and Christians which should not be minimized. Belief in the Trinity serves as a kind of boundary marker for Christians so that rejection of it places one outside the orthodox Christian community. But focus only upon boundary markers such as the doctrine of the Trinity can also obscure other ways in which Muslims and Christians might have significant commonalities in their understandings of God. In our hesitation to acknowledge common reference across religious traditions it is possible that we have been unduly influenced by modern notions of religion, which draw sharp distinctions between the religious and non-religious dimensions of individual and collective life and emphasize the clear boundaries between the religions, especially the “world religions” (itself very much a twentieth century concept). More fluid and multidimensional understandings of religious phenomena, which acknowledge the overlap between religion and culture and allow for greater commonalities across diverse religious traditions, might enable recognition of common reference among Christians and Muslims. ¹⁶

Conclusion

So where does this leave us? I have argued that the question “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?” does not lend itself to a simple “yes” or “no” answer. There are a number of distinct issues embedded in the question which need to be sorted out and addressed on their own terms. The comments of the evangelical scholar of Islam Dudley Woodberry seem to me to provide as clear an answer as we can expect:

Christians, Muslims, and Jews as monotheists refer to the same Being when they refer to God – the Creator God of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, and Jacob. But in significant ways they do not have the same understanding about him, even though they also agree in significant ways.” (Woodberry 2004: 37)

Regardless how we end up answering the question, in our engagement with religious others, including Muslims, as disciples of Jesus we should build upon what we have in common with others, encouraging all to embrace Jesus Christ as Lord, to mature in their understanding of God as revealed in the Incarnation and Scripture, and to worship him in biblically appropriate ways. ¹⁷