D
DL82
Guest
Just because this argument seems to go round and round in circles, here, in the Eastern Catholic topic and in the Non-Catholic Religions topic, can I suggest a way of proceeding:
When people use the name ‘Allah’ to refer to the God of Islam, we can assume they mean a shorthand for 'the conception of God presented in the Koran and believed in by Muslims. (transcendant, not-triune, not-incarnate, with alternating justice and mercy rather than unified justice and mercy, etc.)
i.e. when people talk about ‘praying to Allah’, they would be referring to someone facing Mecca and praying in the way that Muslims pray, as opposed to somebody praying the Byzantine liturgy of the hours in Arabic.
i.e. “Arabic Christians call God ‘Allah’ too” is not a sufficient argument to prove that Christians and Muslims worship the same God if ‘Allah’ is understood to be short-hand for the deity described in the Koran.
Having established that definition, the discussion about whether Christians and Muslims believe in the same God becomes much clearer.
To take a similar analogy, the Greek theos for God has the same root in Ancient Greek as the proper name Zeus. Greek speaking Christians worship a God whom they refer to as theos but that doesn’t mean they worship the same Zeus who transformed himself into a cow to have his way with women in the pagan Greek myths.
Same word does not equal same being.
Having said all that, can we still say that Christians and Muslims believe in the same God?
When people use the name ‘Allah’ to refer to the God of Islam, we can assume they mean a shorthand for 'the conception of God presented in the Koran and believed in by Muslims. (transcendant, not-triune, not-incarnate, with alternating justice and mercy rather than unified justice and mercy, etc.)
i.e. when people talk about ‘praying to Allah’, they would be referring to someone facing Mecca and praying in the way that Muslims pray, as opposed to somebody praying the Byzantine liturgy of the hours in Arabic.
i.e. “Arabic Christians call God ‘Allah’ too” is not a sufficient argument to prove that Christians and Muslims worship the same God if ‘Allah’ is understood to be short-hand for the deity described in the Koran.
Having established that definition, the discussion about whether Christians and Muslims believe in the same God becomes much clearer.
To take a similar analogy, the Greek theos for God has the same root in Ancient Greek as the proper name Zeus. Greek speaking Christians worship a God whom they refer to as theos but that doesn’t mean they worship the same Zeus who transformed himself into a cow to have his way with women in the pagan Greek myths.
Same word does not equal same being.
Having said all that, can we still say that Christians and Muslims believe in the same God?