Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?

Do Muslims worship the same God as Christians? has quickly become the most viewed post on my blog and by some distance. This is a re-written and abbreviated version of the earlier post. 

Some think it “bizarre” to deny that Muslims worship the same God as Christians. Others phrase the question differently and ask “Is the God of Muhammad the Father of Jesus?” to which the answer is “Of course not.” What are some of the things we should consider here?

“Allah” is Arabic for “God” and has been used by Arabic speaking Christians from before Muhammad was even born but “Allah” was also used by pagans to refer to the moon-god worshipped in Mecca. Just because the same word is used to refer to two entities does not mean that they are the same.

But, it could be argued, “God” (capitalised, distinguished from “god”) refers to someone unique, the Creator of heaven and earth, the only one to be worshipped as God. Is not this the one whom we praise and to whom we direct our prayers whether we are Christians or Muslims? It is certainly not possible that there are two of this sort. God is one of a kind. “God” (capitalised) cannot take a plural.

The difficulty is that God is characterised in the Quran in ways which do not merely diverge a little from the God worshipped by Christians but are significantly different. The portrayals of “God” in Bible and Quran overlap but there are also big contradictions that go to the heart of who God is. At best only one of the portrayals can be true.

If their God is the same, either Muslims or Christians (or both) bear false witness about him. Those who affirm the truth of the Quran cannot but deny that the Christian Scriptures accurately testify to the truth about God; those who affirm the Christian faith cannot but question the characterisation of God in the Quran.

The question is how significant these divergences are. Consider this: Allah-who-does-not-beget and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be the same person. The God-who-became-human is not the God to which Muhammad testifies. The God-who-lives-in-Christians-by-His-Spirit is not God as recognised in the Quran. The God of which the Quran speaks is not tri-une and therefore cannot be Love, Love-among-persons-from-all-eternity.

So the question is whether these ways in which I have just described God are secondary to a more basic idea of a Deity that is the grand architect of the universe or whether they are fundamental to how we must speak about God.

In truth, I believe God is essentially Love, essentially Trinitarian. It is the fact that he created the universe which is secondary. If that is so, the Allah to which the Quran bears witness may be better described as a fictional character (loosely) based on a real person.

Studying Theology

“Theology is primarily speaking about God; but, since God is by definition not available for inspection as an object in the laboratory, this entails speaking about the imprint of God on human lives – and thus what humanity looks like when exposed to an active, intelligent transcendent reality. Many who study theology may not believe for sure that this sort of language describes a real state of affairs in the universe rather than just a state of affairs in the human mind; but they study because the images of humanity and its world that come from such language remain fertile, provocative and significant at many levels.

For those who do believe, for whom the biblical languages and the history of religious reflection and action still represent a world to inhabit, theology has the added excitement of being the exploration of a relationship more comprehensive and transforming for human beings than anything else.”

The Right Reverend Dr Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, in a letter dated 26th November 2009 commending the first issue of The Oxford Theologian. He expresses “the conviction that what is done here in the name of theology really has the capacity to help build that critical and creative spirit without which no culture can live – and, for those of us who do think it’s about a reality greater than the human mind alone, the capacity to open us further to a transfiguring grace, a worship of intellect and heart together.”