Allah and our God the same God?

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I’ve always had a problem with this even with what the Cathecism says.

The Quran denies the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. If I call God Allah, will I not be denying these two truths myself? Personally, I find Catholics (in areas where Allah is NOT the native word for God) calling God “Allah” quite excessive.

I once read this letter from a priest in a far-off Muslim province in the Philippines. He was so enamored with his Muslim neighbors, he said that he no longer desired to evangelize them in the Catholic Faith. This made me so sad. (However, I realize it’s quite dangerous to evangelize in Muslim territory. Perhaps there’s something else going on beyond what I can discern. Who knows?)

I’ve also heard some Catholic priests say they love Allah in public. But everytime I hear it, I feel quite disturbed and wonder if they’re not becoming like the priest in the letter above.

In this matter, I’ve read that sometimes Catholics have to give up “advantages” in reaching out to others outside the Faith. But I wonder if giving up those advantages can be detrimental to our Faith and that of the Faithful who surround us.
 
Benedicter: God is God, and if you don’t believe this, than you’re making God into your own image, which is idoltry. Believe what the Church teaches about Muslims worshipping God, the one and only God, whom we Christians also worship, and whom the Jews also worship. If you don’t believe what the Church teaches, than you’re committing heresy - and you’re in danger of idoltry as well, for you’re molding the Lord into a man-made image.

Reynardus: Just because the Muslims don’t believe in the Trinity or the Incarnation dose not mean they worship another god. The Jews don’t believe in these mysteries either, yet do they worship a false god? Or was it God who gave them the Commandments, who told Abraham to sacrfice his son Isaac, who spoke to Moses and all the Prophets, who made a Covenant with the Isrealites?
 
Nickkname said:
Benedicter: God is God, and if you don’t believe this, than you’re making God into your own image, which is idoltry. Believe what the Church teaches about Muslims worshipping God, the one and only God, whom we Christians also worship, and whom the Jews also worship. If you don’t believe what the Church teaches, than you’re committing heresy - and you’re in danger of idoltry as well, for you’re molding the Lord into a man-made image.

QUOTE]

You are way off line. What the Church says is that they with us worship the One God and that Muslims ‘profess’ the faith of Abraham. So what can be agreed is that some aspects, creator, transcendent etc at the levels which agree that neither are pantheist and so on. But it is not enough - revelation is everything. Jesus has been revealed to us as God, who came to fullfill the covenants of Judiasm by creating the New Covenant. The revelation of Islam cannot be true nor can it be from God as it contradicts Jesus as God, as the final revelation in fact almost everything. So from a revelatory point of view to say as you did was wrong. You cannot confirm God in Islam as revealed as you contradict Jesus as revealed in Christianity. The statement you made would work in Islamic theology as Islam in their opinion has always existed. If you say you worship the God of Islam you can say you also worship the God of Judaism etc as a faithful Jew and Christian do precisely that - worship the God of Islam. A Muslim can say that as all true revelations are Islam. By saying you worship the God of Islam you are saying that true Christians and Jews are Muslim. Confusing but true. They claim Islam from Adam and Eve.

Go to the Gospel of John 4. Here Jesus meets the woman from Samaria. Who worships the One God but has a different revelation in terms of the Temple and aspects of the Law (rejecting the Talmud). Jesus says “If you knew the gift of God” v 10. She says “Sir, I see you are a prophet.” v 18. He says “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” v 22.

So here I say that for Jesus it was not enough to all say we worship One God. His emphasis was revelation (as the Church’s is). This is the important distinction, revelation is distinctive, is divisive. It is simply not enough and cravenly weak theology to go around saying without qualification we all worship the same God. It is incomplete and confusing for many. The Church nowhere at all says the word ‘same’ though at the broad outline we agree God is one God.

I would rather lose my head than say I worship the God of Islam.
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Reynardus said:
I’ve always had a problem with this even with what the Cathecism says.

The Quran denies the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. If I call God Allah, will I not be denying these two truths myself? Personally, I find Catholics (in areas where Allah is NOT the native word for God) calling God “Allah” quite excessive.

I once read this letter from a priest in a far-off Muslim province in the Philippines. He was so enamored with his Muslim neighbors, he said that he no longer desired to evangelize them in the Catholic Faith. This made me so sad. (However, I realize it’s quite dangerous to evangelize in Muslim territory. Perhaps there’s something else going on beyond what I can discern. Who knows?)

I’ve also heard some Catholic priests say they love Allah in public. But everytime I hear it, I feel quite disturbed and wonder if they’re not becoming like the priest in the letter above.

In this matter, I’ve read that sometimes Catholics have to give up “advantages” in reaching out to others outside the Faith. But I wonder if giving up those advantages can be detrimental to our Faith and that of the Faithful who surround us.
Click to expand...
Your instincts are spot on. Have confidence in them. Standing by revelation is divisive. It might even cost you your life, as our persecuted brother and sisters know. Our relativist culture keeps looking for the soft spot on which we can agree. ‘They say peace where there is no peace. We are the same where we are clearly different.’
 
benedicter said:
Nickkname;3663445:
Benedicter: God is God, and if you don’t believe this, than you’re making God into your own image, which is idoltry. Believe what the Church teaches about Muslims worshipping God, the one and only God, whom we Christians also worship, and whom the Jews also worship. If you don’t believe what the Church teaches, than you’re committing heresy - and you’re in danger of idoltry as well, for you’re molding the Lord into a man-made image.

QUOTE]

You are way off line. What the Church says is that they with us worship the One God and that Muslims ‘profess’ the faith of Abraham. So what can be agreed is that some aspects, creator, transcendent etc at the levels which agree that neither are pantheist and so on. But it is not enough - revelation is everything. Jesus has been revealed to us as God, who came to fullfill the covenants of Judiasm by creating the New Covenant. The revelation of Islam cannot be true nor can it be from God as it contradicts Jesus as God, as the final revelation in fact almost everything. So from a revelatory point of view to say as you did was wrong. You cannot confirm God in Islam as revealed as you contradict Jesus as revealed in Christianity. The statement you made would work in Islamic theology as Islam in their opinion has always existed. If you say you worship the God of Islam you can say you also worship the God of Judaism etc as a faithful Jew and Christian do precisely that - worship the God of Islam. A Muslim can say that as all true revelations are Islam. By saying you worship the God of Islam you are saying that true Christians and Jews are Muslim. Confusing but true. They claim Islam from Adam and Eve.

Go to the Gospel of John 4. Here Jesus meets the woman from Samaria. Who worships the One God but has a different revelation in terms of the Temple and aspects of the Law (rejecting the Talmud). Jesus says “If you knew the gift of God” v 10. She says “Sir, I see you are a prophet.” v 18. He says “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.” v 22.

So here I say that for Jesus it was not enough to all say we worship One God. His emphasis was revelation (as the Church’s is). This is the important distinction, revelation is distinctive, is divisive. It is simply not enough and cravenly weak theology to go around saying without qualification we all worship the same God. It is incomplete and confusing for many.
Click to expand...
The Church nowhere at all says the word ‘same’ though at the broad outline we agree God is one God.

I would rather lose my head than say I worship the God of Islam.

This is the last time I’m going to say this: Muslims worship God. They don’t worship the God of Islam, they worship God.
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By saying Muslims worship the God of Islam, you’re saying God is divided against himself.

The Muslims adore God. So God is the God of Islam. He was not invented by Mohammed, nor was he changed by the words of the Qu’ran, nor is he a false god who is self-divided. He is God, the Eternal One; he is the Supreme Being, above all that is and could be. Muslims adore God because they believe in him, he who is the only living God, he who is the one God, he who is who he is. They believe in one God, who created all that is and who will judge mankind on the last day - and this is what God is, the Creator of all things and the Judge of mankind, and because this is what God is, logically the Muslims adore with us the only God. So yes the God of Islam is the same God of Judaism is the same God of Christiantity - we believe in one God, the same God, God himself, but we worship him in different ways: the Jews and the Muslims as the One and the Christians as the Most Holy Trinity.
 
Finally, just because the Jews believe in one God, and not in the Trinity, dose not make them worshippers of a false god. For it is God himself who gave them the Covenant. Now, is God divided against himself? No, of course not! So whoever says that the God of Judaism is a false god are making the weakest possible case against the Jews - and by attacking our older brothers, they also attack us as well.

Granted, whenever a Jew, Muslim, or Christian turns from God to a false god, they don’t worship God still but worship a false god. God is not a false god - he is the living God. Yet even in such a case, it dose not mean that Judaism, Islam, or Christianity are false religions - for to judge a whole religion based purely on the merits of its believers, excluding the teachings and practices of the religion (even if the believers do not believe or practice them), is erranous and fallacy.
 
Nickname, you seem like a closet Muslim. Do you believe God Himself sent down an angel to reveal the “truth” to Muhammad? And do you believe that “truth” which is printed in the Qu’ran came from the one true God? If your answer is “no”, then who do you think it came from?
 
Thread has been pruned of off topic posts.

Please remain on topic with your posts.
MF
 
myfavoritmartin said:
Maybe the question is this then…

Let’s say that we all have the same god in mind when we worship. It’s not, therefore, the case that one of us worships the God of the Hebrew Bible and some other of us worships a firebreathing giant turtle or Krishna.

But what if each of us defines that god differently?

For example, and hypothetically, one says that he demands his people kill all non-believers or doesn’t save anyone eternally regardless, and he’s an ascended human being who once was like ourselves. The others of us say that he is a spirit, wants us to forgive our enemies, and that he loves his creatures so much that he provided for us an eternity of bliss with him.

Are all these people worshipping the same god just because all are aimed at the same one taken from human history?

Mormons say they worship the same god, the God of Abraham too.

So, we must look past the words used, and into the meanings that are poured into those words, which clearly defines the god of Islam is NOT “one and the same” God of the Holy Scriptures and historic Christian faith.
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myfavoritmartin said:
Do Mormons, for example, follow the same leader we do…if they use the same name for Jesus (as they do) while defining a totally different being with a totally different nature, experiences, teachings, etc.?

I’m inclined to say, “no.”

So also with Allah, who started out as a pagan deity and only later had the reputation of Jehovah attached to him by Mohammad.
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???
 
Theologians of all three religions would agree God has certain key properties:
  1. Oneness/unicity
  2. Goodness, wisdom and power
  3. Omnipotence and omniescence
  4. Is the creator of the world and of humanity
  5. Is personal and desires a relationship with humanity
  6. Is to be worshipped in ritual and prayer
  7. Is infinite and transcendent
What Christians would disagree with Jews and Muslims is the doctrine of God being a Trinity of Persons, and Jesus being God incarnate. In thousands of years of interaction, these religions have not budged on these principles, even if now they are less aggressive and hostile to each other than in the past (with the exception of fundamentalist strands in the three religions).

Yes, they all worship the same Being, but do not hold the same theology of God.
 
e61iuser said:
I see. So “Allah” is not God’s proper name then?
Click to expand...
“Allah” is the True Object/Subject of worship; “ilaha” is any object/subject of worship.

Thus, “Allah” is the proper name of the True Object/Subject of Worship.
 
e61iuser said:
I see. So “Allah” is not God’s proper name then?
Click to expand...
.
It’s a grammatical contraction for God with the indicative contained in the structure of the word, which makes any attempt at saying it plural grammatically incoherent, it’s a proper name in the sense that it is signifying God and no god but God, but not in the sense of God actually having a proper name like in the Jewish tradition
 
wth1257 said:
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It’s a grammatical contraction for God with the indicative contained in the structure of the word, which makes any attempt at saying it plural grammatically incoherent, it’s a proper name in the sense that it is signifying God and no god but God, but not in the sense of God actually having a proper name like in the Jewish tradition
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That just flew right over my head.

A bit more clearly please?
 
SedesDomi said:
“Allah” is the True Object/Subject of worship; “ilaha” is any object/subject of worship.

Thus, “Allah” is the proper name of the True Object/Subject of Worship.
Click to expand...
But I thought God revealed His true name to Moses as YHWH?
 
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