Switching Sides?
Perhaps, being a Chicago crowd, they knew some of the things that 52.5 per cent of America prefers not to know. They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America. They know that one of his alarmingly close associates, a state-subsidised slum landlord called Tony Rezko, has been convicted on fraud and corruption charges. ~Peter Hitchens
I don’t know how many other people outside Chicago know these things, but I would be willing to bet that if all Obama voters knew his close ties to the Daley machine and his relationship with Tony Rezko they would not be very troubled. That may be more bothersome in its way than mass ignorance, but I think Mr. Hitchens here mistakes their lack of response to Obama’s cues for some cynical acknowledgement of the less glamorous details of the man’s career. It was, I suspect, silence kept out of deference to the President-elect combined with amazement that he had, in fact, won. Mr. Hitchens is falling into the trap of believing the hype about Obama, but interpreting it in a negative way. I suppose I might be inclined to the same interpretation, if I believed it, but I don’t. It is important to bear in mind that Obama’s election may be historic in certain respects, but it is not nearly as significant as his foes fear and his friends hope. As I have been stressing all year, the thing that disturbs me about Obama is not that he represents some dramatic change in American politics, but that he represents depressing, miserable continuity:
If you have a high opinion of the Washington establishment and bipartisan consensus politics, Obama’s election should come as a relief. If you believe, as I do, that most of our policy failures stretching back beyond the last eight years are the product of a failed establishment and a bankrupt consensus, an Obama administration represents the perpetuation of a system that is fundamentally broken.
The more provocative parts of Hitchens’ article have drawn rebukes from Alex Massie and Clive Davis. Hitchens wrote:
Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving its own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part Muslim [bold mine-DL], suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.
Mr. Hitchens invests Obama’s election with far too much importance and credits it with representing some significant break with what came before it. At the same time, he lavishes praise on pre-Obama America in grossly exaggerated terms that imitate American anti-European rhetoric that portrays the Old World as a deep, yawning chasm of godlessness ringed by nothing more than mosques and (godless) Frenchmen. Yes, he acknowledged that things had been getting worse over the years, but he seems to treat Obama’s election as a kind of tipping point, when it is much more likely to be a tremendous disappointment to those who think it means “that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war.” Having heard this claim, the comedian here would say, “You mean America is finally going to start defending traditional societies, settled peoples and real cultural and political diversity?” If America “switched sides” at some point in the past, it was decades ago.
Until Obama’s victory, America was “totally committed” to preserving its national sovereignty? Where have I been? I was under the distinct impression that successive administrations for the last twenty years or so have led the United States into free trade agreements and the WTO, ignored border security, fought multiple wars in the name of the credibility of the United Nations, and more or less openly encouraged the flouting of our immigration laws. With total commitment like that, who needs betrayal?
America was unabashedly Christian? Under an administration that was at pains to stress that Muslims and Christians worship the same God (theologically speaking, this is nonsense), that ignored the plight of Near Eastern Christians that it helped to exacerbate with its wars, and that quashed the recognition of the genocide of the Armenians to satisfy Ankara’s blackmail demands, to name just a few episodes, America has been anything but unabashedly Christian for quite some time. Let’s not even mention prevailing American attitudes toward Russians in Chechnya and Serbs in Kosovo in the previous decade. On the other hand, the world is still significantly Christian with over two billion Christians worldwide.
‘Under an administration that was at pains to stress that Muslims and Christians worship the same God (theologically speaking, this is nonsense) . . .’
The nonsense is yours. Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the God of Abraham.
No, they don’t. Christians worship One God in Trinity revealed through the Incarnation in Christ. Muslims clearly do not worship that God, and their scripture makes a point of saying so. They take pride in having an utterly different understanding of God. That’s fair enough, but that means that they worship a very different deity. Take your Karen Armstrong ecumenism where someone is daft enough to believe in it.
Christians worship One God in Trinity revealed through the Incarnation in Christ.
So you would also deny that Jews and Christians worship the same God? I find that difficult to reconcile with the words of Christ himself as recorded in the Gospels.
Take your Karen Armstrong ecumenism . . .
I’ve never heard of her. My opinion on this matter is from my own reflection, having read the Bible and the Koran.
According to the Old Testament book of Exodus, Yahveh identified himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (3:6)
According to the Gospels, Jesus preached in the name of this same God.
In the Koran, Muhammad claimed to speak for the God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.
To deny the Trinity, as Jews and Muslims do, is to believe something different about God, not to believe in a different God.
. . . where someone is daft enough to believe in it.
You’re incivility disappoints, Mr. Larison.
They know Obama is the obedient servant of one of the most squalid and unshakeable political machines in America
Obama doesn’t seem to be anybody’s obedient servant, as far as I can tell. He seems to advance through institutions and cultivate relationships with powerful people, and then move on up the ladder, leaving former associates behind as he advances (ask Rev. Wright). And while, as a Chicago native, I’m well-aware of how corrupt politics are in my home city and home state, I have a sneaking suspicion that Peter Hitchens has no clue, and “knows about” the Daley Machine in the same way he might “know about” Al Capone and deep-dish pizza. Any weapon to hand, I suppose.
As I have been stressing all year, the thing that disturbs me about Obama is not that he represents some dramatic change in American politics, but that he represents depressing, miserable continuity
I agree with you for the most part, and don’t expect anything more than DC-consensus policies from Obama. But, at least in foreign policy, I think that such policies, competently executed, would be a huge improvement over what we got from the Bush Administration. That’s not because Obama’s so great, but because Bush and his administration represent an even more vicious and supremely irrational fringe element of the DC establishment.
I’m wondering if you agree, or if you think that Obama, in foreign policy, will not be a marked improvement over Bush (and over a hypothetical McCain Administration).
“To deny the Trinity, as Jews and Muslims do, is to believe something different about God, not to believe in a different God.”
If you think so, I would suggest that that you don’t appreciate the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity. Muslims believe that Trinitarianism implies polytheism, and they strongly reject that polytheism in their belief that they have remained faithful to the original Abrahamic revelation. I see no reason to credit them with beliefs that they would say they do not hold.
If you don’t want “incivility” (i.e., strong disagreement), don’t describe my views as nonsense without much better reason than you’ve given here.
Christians believe that God became incarnate and dwelt among us. Muslims believe that this is absolute blasphemy. That disagreement conveys two very different beliefs in two very different sorts of deities. I don’t have so much disrespect for Muslims that I pretend they don’t believe what they say they believe.
Arians claimed that they followed Christ, but they did not believe in Christ God, which means that the Christ they followed was very different and false. I assume that theological differences actually mean something.
. . . don’t describe my views as nonsense . . .
I was merely echoing your own use of that word.
You haven’t answered my question. Do you contend that Jews and Christians worship different Gods? If so, how do you reconcile that with the Gospels? I can cite chapter and verse if you like.
Daniel, you’re not losing your equanimity, are you?
I agree with your post that the Obama election is being oversold, but I do notice more and more people falling apart in various ways since that election.
As to “the same God,” I doubt most Christians worship the same God. Certainly Jerry Falwell and I never did, and I suspect you have your own long list of candidates for false-God worshippers even within whatever you count as Christianity.
Do Jews today believe that Christ is God Incarnate? The question practically answers itself. Please, cite chapter and verse. I would like to know the verse where Jewish authorities agreed with Christ when He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” I would be interested to know the verse where most of these authorities (apart from, say, Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea) recognized that Christ is the Son of the God of Abraham and, indeed, is the God of Abraham. There is no question that Church teaching holds that the Psalmist and the Prophets foretold the coming of Christ, and there is no question that Israel prefigures and anticipates the Church.
To keep saying that all of these religions worship the God of Abraham is the sort of argument that might just as easily be applied to the Baha’is. At first glance, this sounds plausible, but the theological contradictions between them show this claim to worship of the same divinity to be false.
“Daniel, you’re not losing your equanimity, are you?”
I lose patience with arguments that belittle theological differences and treat them as essentially meaningless. This is the sort of argument that pretends to show respect to different religions by devaluing their own statements about what they believe.
So Christians and Jews worship different Gods. I’m intrigued. Which God did Jesus worship? To which God did he pray?
If he worshiped/prayed to the Christian God, that seems to suggest that he worshiped/prayed to himself, insofar as he is an incarnation of that God. But it seems odd to claim that he worshiped himself at the Passover supper, or that he prayed to himself at Gethsemane.
If he worshiped the Jewish God…well that seems to complicate his relationship to the religion that worships him.
I guess the question that these others lead to is, do Christians worship the same God Jesus worshiped?
Please trust that no disrespect/incivility is meant, only sincere curiosity.
I grew up in Indianapolis and have visited Chicago off and on for many years and have friends who’ve relocated there. I’ll tell you, as a proud Midwesterner, it pains to see what the Daley machine has done to Chicago. It’s become a beautiful, world-class metropolis on the verge of hosting the Olympics. Then when I look back at the crumbling streets of my home town, I can only wonder what might have been had the Windy City chosen the more honest and effective leadership of men like Stephen Goldsmith (R) rather than Richard Daley and son. So many lost opportunities, but I know America’s Second City will find it’s stride again soon. It could be another Cleveland, Detroit, or St. Louis if only it sets its mind to be such.
Daniel, without being civil or taking sectarian sides, you’re just plain wrong. As Tomlin says, Muslims, Jews, and Christians all maintain that they worship the same God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they just have differences about the nature of that God. Your claim that this means they are actually worshipping different Gods has no meaning outside your own subjective beliefs, in that I could argue that Jesus was short, ugly, dark-skinned palestinian, and you could hold up a different picture of him from some Russian Icon, and say that we are actually worshipping two different people, not the same Christ, but this would not make it so. It would simply be that we have a different image in our mind of how Christ appeared, and perhaps even what he said, or meant, and create divisions based on that, but I think it’s taking that division to ridiculous lengths to insist that we actually worship a different deity. In the same way, Muslims, Jews and Christians all have different ideas about the nature of the God of Abraham, and how he functions, and who is the authority through which he speaks, etc., but that doesn’t mean that they actually worship different Gods. They worship different interpretations of the same historical God, and different lineages of that God, but it remains the same historical deity regardless of the differing interpretations.
Yeah, “tenacious,” and Mussolini made the trains run on time. That’s one hell of an argument.
btw, I’m not at all arguing that the differences, theological and otherwise, between these three Abrahamic religions are insignificant. Obviously they are not. But they are still Abrahamic religions, and they purportedly derive their beleifs from the same basic tradition, and the same deity, which they have very different ideas about and claims to. What they have in common is actually greater than the ways in which the differ. Unfortunately, one of the things they all have in common is an almost fanatical belief in their own exclusive righteousness and infalibility, and the heresetical nature of their rivals. This is one of the problems with Abrahamic monotheism, the incredible hostility it generates towards others, especially those within the same tradition with slightly different views. It’s the narcissism of minor differences writ large.
Andy,
Making the trains run on time wasn’t the problem with Mussolini. Killing and imprisoning his rivals and invading other countries was the problem with Mussolini. I don’t think the Daley machine has committed those kinds of crimes, so the comparison is pretty desperate.
Relentless corruption is the problem with the Daley machine. The comparison is apt.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic church Christians and Muslims worship the same god. Here is what it has to say on the subject:
“The Church’s relationship with the Muslims: “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”"
Relentless corruption is the problem with the Daley machine. The comparison is apt.
How, specifically, do you think the Daley machine’s corruption has harmed, and is harming, the people of Chicago? That’s not a rhetorical question–I can think of quite a few ways the machine has been bad for the city. But this discussion will probably be more productive if we stick to facts, instead of comparing the mayor of an American city to a mid-20th century Italian fascist who used poison gas against Ethiopian civilians. That comparison is many things, but “apt” isn’t one of them.
My point is simply that justifying the Daley family’s corruption on the grounds that the city looks swell is like saying Mussolini’s evils are justified by the fact that he made the trains run on time. It’s idiotic.
I’m sure “tenacious” would be just as willing to compliment Guliani (R) for helping New York look nicer. Right, “tenacious”? Because I’m sure you aren’t just a hack for corrupt Democrats…
At least in the West (which I know won’t necessarily cut much weight with you), the idea that the Christian God, the Jewish God, and the Muslim God are in some sense “the same God” has a long history. Even Gregory VII used the phrase “Christians and Muslims adore the same God” in a letter to the King of Mauritania. The idea that synanagogues are “a place where is God is praised” appears in medieval legislation on Jews as a reason why such institutions should be tolerated. The Catholic Church has always made a distinction between Jews and Muslims on the one hand and true “pagans” (a term never applied to Jews or Muslims) on the other. Maybe the Eastern Orthodox Church has a different understanding, which I respect, but the idea is not a pure product of 20th/21st century p.c.
Let me clarify. If there is one God, and He is the God of Abraham, anyone who professes to believe in the God of Abraham is in a very narrow sense worshipping “the same God,” but according to Church teaching–whether Catholic or Orthodox–the other Abrahamic religions have only part of the truth about God and therefore have imperfect, incomplete knowledge of Him. To say simply that all these religions worship the same God implies an identity in their confessions of faith about God, which are at the heart of worship, that simply isn’t there.
Confession of faith is inextricable from worship; how people praise God in worship is tied to their confession of faith. If these religions teach significantly different things about Who God is, as they do, they are effectively praising and worshipping very different divinities, even though, of course, there is only one God to Whom that worship could possibly be directed.
To answer the other question, of course Christ prayed to the Father, Who is the God who revealed Himself to Israel.
There was a twelfth century controversy in Byzantium over a question related to this, and the pragmatic compromise for facilitating the conversion of Muslims to Christianity allowed that they did not have to reject the “solid” (holosphyros) deity they had worshipped prior to their conversion. The emperor’s position that Muslims and Christians worshipped the same God was flatly denied by the Church at the time, but the anathema the convert had to use against the “solid” deity was eventually removed. The Byzantines anticipated the argument in Pope Benedict’s Regensburg address long before Manuel II in the 15th century in their view that the rejection of the Trinity deprived God of His Logos.
Disagreement about the nature of God directly affects how and Whom believers worship. To say that there are fundamental disagreements about Who God is between two or more religions but that the worship being offered up by all of these is to the same God is to state a contradiction.
Don’t bother with Hitchens! As a Briton and a viewer of Question Time I can tell you he’s a doomy hack.
And most anything, ‘theologically speaking’, is nonsense.
A couple other points. If theology is first and foremost prayer, and definitions of faith derive from prayer, it really is theologically meaningless to say that religions worship the same God when they are not praying to the same one.
Historically, Abrahamic religions all appeal to the same origin and tradition, but theologically their divinities are not the same. They may be similar, but then anyone familiar with theology understands that similarity and sameness are not equal.
A couple other points. If theology is first and foremost prayer, and definitions of faith derive from prayer, it really is theologically meaningless to say that religions worship the same God when they are not praying to the same one.
I think we’re starting to go in circles here. From a Byzantine theological standpoint you may be correct, but I’m not sure that’s the proper starting ground.
By your definitions, it would be absurd to say that Zeus and Jupiter were the same god, since prayer, worship and theology were different, yet educated Greeks and Romans would have agreed that they were, in fact, the same god (and, moreover, that the Egyptian Amun was the same god also). Then again, Greco-Roman civilization was always more comfortable with the idea of a single deity having different aspects than Christian theologians were. The Athenians had seperate temples to Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias, with different liturgy, rituals, and images of each, yet they would have been confused at the argument that they worshipped two different goddesses.
So I disagree with your premises. Sure, the Trinity is important, but I don’t think 3 out of 100 random Christians picked off the street could give a theologically rigorous definition of the doctrine of the Trinity.
For the average Christian, the significant difference between Islam and Christianity is that Christians believe Jesus was God and Muslims do not. That leaves as an open question whether Allah and God the father are two aspects of a single deity.
To answer the other question, of course Christ prayed to the Father, Who is the God who revealed Himself to Israel.
Thanks. My offer of chapter and verse is rendered moot by this concession, but since I did offer I will cite my favorite example – John 4:19-23. From the New International Version:
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. ”
Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
Jesus identifies his God not only with the God of the Jews but of the Samaritans, even though they ‘worship what you do not know’.
Daniel, might I point out that your arguments are heading dangerously close to Voltaire’s dictum that “Man created God in his own image”? While it is certainly true that in a certain practical sense, because Muslims, Jews, and Christians each see their God in different ways, and pray to him differently, they are worshipping different Gods, this presumes that human beings, through their own efforts at knowing and relating to God, actually “create new Gods” in t he process, according to their efforts. If we are to take, on faith, that the Abrahamic tradition started out with one God, where exactly did these new Gods come from? Where did the Christian Trinitarian God come from? Was he invented by Christians, or is this just a further elaboration of the same, original Abrahamaic Deity? Likewise, where did this “Muslim Deity” come from, if not from the same Abrahamic Deity giving a new revelation to Mohammed?
Well, there’s a number of possible explanations. The Devil could have created these “alternative Deities”. Or man may have done so in his own imaginative creativity. Or maybe man’s imaginative creativity is the Devil. Any one of these particular sects could accuse the other of falling prey to the Devil, while asserting that only they have the one, true, and complete understanding of the Deity. Or it’s just that there’s one Deity operative here, and men have very imperfect ways of understanding Him, such that no one has got it quite right. But your own arguments suggest that there are actually different deities which correspond to each of these sects, and that only one of them is the original Abrahamic Deity, whereas the others came from, well, God knows where. Need I point out that this seems rather self-serving and also unlikely? It even undermines the very notion that a real Deity actually exists behind any of these human traditions, if we can create new ones simply by worshipping that original deity in a different fashion.
So I disagree with your premises. Sure, the Trinity is important, but I don’t think 3 out of 100 random Christians picked off the street could give a theologically rigorous definition of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Are these the same self-professed Christians who are not observant, do not go to church every Sunday, etc.? We should be a bit more fair in our hypotheticals…
As for a theologically rigorous definition of the doctrine of the Trinity–how much rigor are you looking for? I would think most observant Christians could at least affirm that there are Three Divine Persons, but one God, and that the Three Divine Persons are not identical with one another.
Of course, there is only one God, and an imperfect or false understanding of God does not actually create a new one. The reality that there is only one God Whom we can worship does not necessarily mean that it is theologically valid to say that different religions worship the same God. If they did, the revelations and teachings they received would not be mutually exclusive. God would not reveal Himself in the flesh in one place and then tell people in another place that this is impossible and blasphemous. There are such things as false prophets.
Let’s approach this from another angle: do Mormons worship the same God? They would say that they are Christians and that they do, but saying it doesn’t necessarily make it so. That is where theological distinctions become essential to making sense of any of these claims. If someone says, “I believe in the God of Abraham,” that’s a good start, but that can’t be the end of the discussion.
Lowest-common-denominator ecumenism, which is what is behind so much discussion of the “Abrahamic faiths,” is one of the most dangerous and obnoxious trends in religious thought out there today.
Daniel,
While I’m highly sympathetic to non-dual notions of “One God”, I’m not so keen on deistic notion of “one God”. The Abrahamic faiths are clearly based on the notion that there exist many Gods, but only one of them is the “true” God. The notion that no other Deities even exist is not really part of the Abrahamic tradition. The battle between Moses and the Pharaoh was over whose God was strongest, not whether the Egyptian God even existed. So the monotheistic tradition of the Abrahamic faiths is not, at least originally, based on the notion that there is only one God, but that there is only one true and greatest of all the Gods. So when you say that Muslims worship a different God, it points immediately to the notion that they must worship one of these lesser deities, and not the supreme deity.
We can certainly admit that polytheism exists, and that some people worship the Abrahamic God, and others worship Gods from an entirely different tradition, such as Zeus or Athena or Krishna or Wotan. But to suggest that people within the Abrahamic tradition actually worship a different God is simply wrong, because they don’t. That doesn’t mean there is no differentiation with the Abrahamic faiths, however. I would certainly include Mormonism as an Abrahamic faith, even though I would not consider it a form of Christianity, just as I don’t consider Christianity or Islam to be forms of Judaism. And yet, they all worship the same Deity.
There is, of course, a non-dual view of all the Gods, whether they be from a monotheistic or polytheistic tradition, as mere “faces” of One Universal Divinity, but I don’t think that’s what you are referring to. That would be more akin to a Vedantic viewpoint, and yours is clearly Christian. There’s a school of Vedanta, the Vishnuadvaitins, for example, that sees Krishna as the only true God, but that when anyone is worshipping any Deity, regardless of the tradition or name, they are in reality worshipping Krishna, without their knowing it. A Christian could see things this way in relation to their God, and come to similarly tolerant conclusions about other religions. But few do, and instead we more often get this very “jealous God” syndrome, in which heresy is more important than love.
“To answer the other question, of course Christ prayed to the Father, Who is the God who revealed Himself to Israel.”
So Jews and Christians worship the same God?
It sounds like you’re saying that Jesus prayed to the same God to whom Abraham prayed. If so, how can you also claim that Muhammad does not pray to the same God to whom Jesus and Abraham prayed, when he said (and Muslims daily say): “O God, send your prayers and blessings on Muhammad and the people of Muhammad just as you sent your prayers and blessings on Abraham and the people of Abraham.”
If Jesus can pray to the God that revealed himself to Abraham, why can’t Muhammad, especially when the non-trinitarian, non-incarnational God of Islam seems much closer to the non-trinitarian, non-incarnational God of Judaism than either seems to the trinitarian, incarnational God of Christianity?
We might be within our rights to say that Muslims/Christian/Jews of all stripes worship one and the same God, are all “Children of Abraham” etc, but defining “God” down to some base, common-denominator level doesn’t really tell us anything either about the theological claims of the faiths or the lived experience of the believers; it is a way of running away from required exegesis in order to make nice and go along to get along. It might be be prudent at an inter-faith cocktail party, but otherwise useless.
Greetings, Mr. Larison and others. A comment and a question. The comment first: As an atheist, I am finding this conversation absolutely fascinating. It is a pleasure to see many intelligent people making difficult and complex arguments for varying views on an important subject about which far too many people espouse committed but unthinking opinions.
I would like, however, to ask a completely unrelated question that arises from the same orginal posting. If, as you contend, Barack Obama is not going to implement any substantive change in government, then I would be very interested in knowing who you think would have been truly divergent from the status quo of the political system as it has been enacted since Reagan, at least. Clearly McCain would not have been, as his views jived with Bush in almost every respect. You may have written on this subject previously and could possibly direct me to some of those columns? (I only started following this blog about six or eight weeks ago.)
Thank you.
It’s interesting that those raised as Christians who have left the faith sometimes approach this problem from the opposite direction. Adams in his one of his letters to Jefferson noted that he had been in great pain lately and had been tempted to join Calvin in the cry of “How long, O God!” to which Jefferson indignantly replied that he did not believe in the God of Calvin.
I don’t know as much about Muslim (or Eastern Orthodox) theology as I perhaps should. What is meant by a “solid” God? Do Muslims (like Mormons) believe that God has a body?
Do Muslims (like Mormons) believe that God has a body?
Traditional Sunni theology – Asharite and Maturidi – have always staunchly refuted any attempt to impute corporeality on the Divine.
There have been divergent opinions, usually couched in the language of anthropomorphism and tied to dogmatically literal readings of scripture (references to God seeing being read as necessitating organs of sight or eyes; references to God being seated on the throne being read as necessitating a body that can sit on a throne.) But these literal readings were never dominant and have usually been challenged by a more traditional/orthodox theologian whenever they did appear.
In light of this, I was confused by Mr. Larison’s reference to a solid God in the context of appeasing Muslim converts.
Daniel,
I think you’re mistaken about Christians/Muslims believing in different Gods, as opposed to believing different and incompatible things about one and the same God.
This goes back to a general problem from the philosophy of science and philosophy of language. Imagine that some medieval peasant says, ‘the world is flat.’ Someone today says ‘the world is round.’ Now, we might conclude that they must be talking about different entities when they talk about the world. After all, one of them thinks it’s a flat thing, another thinks it’s a round thing. So they must be talking about different things.
But this just seems on the face of it weird. The normal thing to say would be that these two people disagreed about the shape the very same thing, the world.
Notice their disagreement still means something. One is saying that the world has a property, and the other is saying it possesses an incompatible property. This is huge.
Likewise, theological differences are still meaningful. But they are meaningful disagreements about God, not disagreements about two different Gods.
BTW, something like this has to be true in order for their to be any meaningful disagreement. If you accept disagreement means we are talking about different entities as a general principle, we quickly wind up in a very extreme and batty sort of post-modernism, which I presume you’d want to avoid.
DBake: I like your formulation in some ways, but I fear it could be abused to accommodate polytheists and pagans (e.g., Hindus, ancient Greeks) who clearly do believe in a different God. Personally, I think your argument in most solid ground with the Jews. I find it hard to say that a modern Orthodox Jew who believes just what the Jews of the Old Testament believed does not worship “the same God” as Christians who have the Old Testament in their Scripture, even though the fullness of truth has turned out to be somewhat different. Muslims seem to me to be a middle case. They claim to believe in the God of Abraham (unlike Hindus etc.), but they do not recognize the same Scriptures as Christians (unlike Jews). Mormons and post-Christian Deists like Jefferson would also be middle cases in my opinion.
P.S. Pedantry – in the Middle Ages, it was known the world was round. (Peasants might not know, however.)
P.P.S. for Mr. Levin: Apparently “holosphyros” or “soild” does not mean that God has a body, but that God is inseparable and not three persons.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22holosphyros%22&aq=f&oq=
I meant to say, “I think your argument is on most solid ground with the Jews.” The “is on” somehow got smushed together.
Hi Daniel –
You are a terrific expositor of the very clear and established position of both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy on this topic. From the Church Fathers and beyond, the position you have explained has been clearly stated and substantiated. Rival interpretations have been anathematized through Church history. The reaction you have received by many well meaning posters illustrates for me how endemic happy talk ecumenicalism is and how insidious its effects has been. In believing they are all the same, then why believe in any one more than any other. Equality dilutes the reality…
I really don’t grasp how saying that the Abrahamic faiths worship the same God is “ecumenical happy talk”. I think quite the opposite: it explains the tremendous hostility between each of these faiths, in that they are rivals for the favor of the same God, and thus feel greatly threatened by one another. It’s certainly true that many basic tenets of each faith are incompatible with one another, and it’s not easy to see how one God could have created such contradictory revelations, so it’s also understandable that the only real result of facing the facts is that, regardless of their claims, one or all of these faiths are full of shit in their basic claim to represent the true teachings and path of this “one God”. Which is why so much of the doctrine of each of these Abrahamic faiths is devoting to explaining why their rivals are wrong, and they are right, about the nature of this “one God” and his revelations to mankind. Just don’t pretend that pointing out the simple fact that all the Abrahamic faiths claim to worship the Abrahamic God is either wrong or in support of ecumenical happy talk. It’s a superficial and pointless diversion from a simple attempt to be accurate about what the Abrahamic faiths have in common, and what differentiates them. Worshipping the same God is both something they have in common and something that separates them and creates hostility between them.
It seems that Daniel is probably not reading this thread anymore, but if he (or mjk) is: Would he say that Jews and Muslims worship the same God? Both claim to worship the God of Abraham, and neither group believes in the Trinity or Incarnation. Is the correct answer to this question a strange Venn diagram in which Jews and Christians worship the same God, Jews and Muslims worship the same God, but Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God? Odd as that seems, I think one could make a case for it.
I didn’t read all the earlier comments carefully; I see Samuel Levin already made a point similar to mine.
“God would not reveal Himself in the flesh in one place and then tell people in another place that this is impossible and blasphemous.”
Final comment: I never claimed this, and I don’t think anyone else did. The question is not whether all four (including Mormonism) religions are true (obviously not) but whether the ones that are false are putting false words in the mouth of the true God or are worshipping a different entity. If I believe that George Washington chopped down the cherry tree, do I believe in a “different George Washington” than the one in strictly historical accounts? I would say not. So is attributing actions and statements to the God of Abraham that He never performed or said replacing him with a different God, or simply making false statements about the same one?
The argument that a non-Trinitarian God cannot be the same God is a strong argument, but the argument from contrary revelations is weaker, because telling lies about someone does not mean thinking of him as a different person.
More to the point: how about “It’s a superficial and pointless diversion” simply asserting that the “Abrahamic faiths” pray to the same God. To be frank, Daniel has already responded to your assertion better than I ever could…but, it appears you remain unconvinced…It is quite simply very superifical to assert that all monotheistic religions worship that same God. It is far more nuance than that — and unfortunately, the medium of the blog may not be the most appropriate space for such an exchange…
mjk,
I actually think this blog is a good place for these rough arguments. As for it being a “superficial and pointless diversion” to say that Abrahamic faiths pray to the same God, it depends on whether you care about simple facts, or are more concerned with theological implications. I don’t think you or Daniel have made a single convincing argument that the God the various Abrahamic faiths pray to is a different God, only that their conception of that God is different enough as to make their religions incompatible. If all you care about is asserting that Islam and Christianity, say, are incompatible, what we are pointing out is that it isn’t necessary to claim that they actually worship different Gods to make that case. They can be worshipping the same God and still be incompatible in their approach and conception of that God.