Do all "monotheisms" worship the same God?

[pnewton]

Jesus also says: “No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6)

That sentence does not necessitate that the person knows that though. Since this is a Catholic site, I will simply point out that the Church teaches that both Jews and Muslims worship the same God. That should be sufficient for a Catholic. The fact that they are wrong about some things also should not be an issue, as I do not doubt that we too know very little of the reality of God.

I note that half the stuff in the first post is not monotheism.

 

[harshcshah]

No, only those who claim to worship the God of Abraham. Even then, the Muslims and Jews do not properly worship Him for they refuse to recognise Our Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord.
It is written:
2 The people will put you out of the meeting place. Yes, the time is coming when someone will kill you and think he is working for God.
3 They will do these things because they do not know my Father nor me. (St. John 16:2-3)
In this passage Our Lord speaks of those who persecute Christians, I think one would be correct to interpret this passage as applying to all those who refuse to obey God’s commandments, and one of them is to worship Him. Yet, without recognising Our Lord Jesus Christ as God of the universe they refuse to pay proper reverence due to Him. They attempt to worship the True God but their prayer misses its mark, Dr. Taylor Marshall had this to say of Muslim worship which I think is also applicable to contemporary Jewish worship too:

First, one can adore rightly be adoring the right object (Trinity) and adoring in the right manner (approved liturgy, sacraments, approved prayers and forumalas). This would be the adoration that Catholics offer to the glory of God.
Secondly, one can direct adoration in the right direction but not understand the target. For example, if you shot an arrow down range but your had poor eyesight and could not see the target, then you might shoot in the right direction without seeing the destination. You shot the arrow at the proper target but you don’t see, know, perceive, or understand the target. Moreover, in this case, the bow would be too weak to get the arrow to the destination. The arrow would fall short.
This “blind archer with a weak bow” is Islam. They shoot their arrow in the right direction (toward the “God of Abraham”), but they do not understand the target and their bow is too weak because their bow lacks the power of grace.
So the Muslim “adores the one true God,” just as a blind archer “shoots at the one true target.”
Yet the Catholic “adores the one true God,” as well-practiced archer who can see the target and has a powerful 70 pound bow stringed with grace! Through Christ, our adoration is carried to heart of God.
Link - Do Muslims Worship the Same God as Christians? Debate over Vatican II's Lumen Gentium and the Catechism - Taylor Marshall

Now, you may say this: what of the Jews who were unaware of the Blessed Lord before He came to this earth?
I think they worshipped correctly according to the revelation they had. However, modern Jews and Muslims possess the knowledge of the Lord Jesus and still refuse to worship Him. Plainly, this means they do not worship correctly.
I hope this is of help to you.

 

[fide]

Since this is a Catholic site, I will simply point out that the Church teaches that both Jews and Muslims worship the same God. That should be sufficient for a Catholic.

also, for @EndTimes, @ otjm, and probably others…
I suggest you all read Bp. Athanasius Schneider, Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age. He goes into this issue in much detail, several times in different places in the book, all in ways that require a strong Catholic faith to follow. He believes that there were poorly written documents that need to be revisited, and clarified. “Imprecision” is a word we all have been subjected to, increasingly, in recent times, from the highest places in the Church - and imprecision is not acceptable in a Church sent to make disciples of the one Lord Jesus Christ. We need to make precise, the one true Faith. I’ll quote, from his book (adding bold for emphasis):
————————————

To state, as the Council did in Lumen Gentium n. 16, that Muslims adore together with us the one God (“nobiscum Deum adorant”), is theologically a highly ambiguous affirmation. That we Catholics adore with the Muslims the one God is not true. We don’t adore with them… Islam rejects the Holy Trinity. When the Muslims adore, they do not adore on the supernatural level of faith. So even our act of adoration is radically different… Precisely because we turn to God and adore Him …, and we do this with supernatural faith. However, the Muslims do not have supernatural faith. I repeat: they have a natural knowledge of God. The Koran is not the revelation of God, but a kind of anti-revelation of God, because the Koran expressly denies the divine revelation of the Incarnation, of the eternal divinity of the Son of God, of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, and therefore denies the truth of God, the Holy Trinity.

This ambiguous affirmation of the Second Vatican Council must be corrected. This affirmation is not infallible and was not meant by the Council to be such. In some way, we can accept the affirmation of Lumen Gentium, but then we must give a long explanation. Of course, when a person sincerely adores God the Creator—as I assume the majority of simple Muslim people do—they adore God with a natural act of worship, based on the natural knowledge of God, the Creator. Every non-Christian, every non-baptized person, including a Muslim, can adore God on the level of the natural knowledge of the existence of God. They adore in a natural act of adoration the same God, whom we adore in a supernatural act and with supernatural faith in the Holy Trinity. … The affirmation of the Second Vatican Council should have been written more precisely, in order to avoid misunderstandings. …[if rewritten precisely] it would have avoided wrong applications in interreligious dialogue and wrong teachings in so many theological faculties and priestly seminaries in our days.

Schneider, Bishop Athanasius. Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age (pp. 76-77). Angelico Press. Kindle Edition.

 

[fide]

Y’all might want to read Nostra Aetate for starters.

Please read my post #23 - I tried to get you referred to on it, but I don’t think it “took”. Bp. Scheinder’s book discusses this document as well, and concludes the verbiage is not acceptable - but is imprecise.

 

[EndTimes]

lso, for @EndTimes, @ otjm, and probably others…
I suggest you all read Bp. Athanasius Schneider, Christus Vincit : Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age. He goes into this issue in much detail, several times in different places in the book, all in ways that require a strong Catholic faith to follow. He believes that there were poorly written documents that need to be revisited, and clarified. “

Since he said that and since I’m versed on Vat II - I don’t believe him.

 

[kapp19]

This topic requires many distinctions.

A:, B, C, and D say: “I know the man behind this curtain, he is a great thinker.”

A thinks George Washington himself is behind the curtain. B thinks Jefferson is behind the curtain. C thinks a statue of George Washington is behind the curtain. D thinks a statue of Jefferson is behind the curtain.

They all know that a great thinker is what is behind the curtain, but they mean this in diverse ways (equivocally/univocally), with diverse realities indicated.

-K

 

[EndTimes]

This topic requires many distinctions.

A:, B, C, and D say: “I know the man behind this curtain, he is a great thinker.”

A thinks George Washington himself is behind the curtain. B thinks Jefferson is behind the curtain. C thinks a statue of George Washington is behind the curtain. D thinks a statue of Jefferson is behind the curtain.

They all know that a great thinker is what is behind the curtain, but they mean this in diverse ways (equivocally/univocally), with diverse realities indicated.

-K

That confuses rather than clarifies.
Can you speak more plainly?

 

[ReaderT]

Since he said that and since I’m versed on Vat II - I don’t believe him.

Nostra Aetate says, “[Muslims] adore the one God … the Creator of heaven and earth”, but how can they when they reject Christ “through Whom all things were created” (Nicene Creed)?

 

[EndTimes]

Nostra Aetate says, “[Muslims] adore the one God … the Creator of heaven and earth”, but how can they when they reject Christ “through Whom all things were created ” (Nicene Creed)?

Nostre Aetate is part of the Magisterium - so therefore it’s on the money

Muslims accept JESUS Christ Way Way Way more than say Non-Christian Jews.
and his Virgin mother Jesus

Allah is akin to the First Person of the Trinity

 

[EndTimes]

Lol - that is a howler about Allah and the Person of the Father.

I’ve heard howler monkeys in the wild…

Vat II - Nostre Aetate

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God , living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

 

[fide]

If you can invest in his book, I recommend reading him. I studied the documents too, years ago - but, for reasons of prejudice, I missed a lot: I wanted to find only the good in them, and I did - but I unconsciously overlooked the imprecision therein and the potentials for misunderstandings in the wording. And the imprecise wording has, today, resulted in problems. I have since read that the progressive/“conservative” (not the best word) divisions in the committees of the Council resulted not always in one “compromised” consistent viewpoint expressed in the documents, but sometimes in a mere mixing in of two conflicting viewpoints. The result of that is not good - either “side” can now find justification for their conflicting perspectives in “the Council”.

The secular parallel, called to my mind in thinking about this, is the US annual Federal budget resulting from the perspectives of the progressives and the conservatives: to get a budget that each side will agree on, both sides get their priorities included in the final budget - and thus we are always overspending and going deeper in debt because a true compromise is impossible: the two side are too far apart. This cannot continue, but it has for some time now. We are building a national future like a house of cards, with no end in sight.

The two “sides” in the Church show this same irreconcilable conflict: contradiction, with no end in sight.

The Bishop has a clear eye on this problem. He’s worth listening to.

 

[ReaderT]

Nostre Aetate is part of the Magisterium - so therefore it’s on the money

Church history is full of councils that were later rejected - this has been a consistent part of Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiology for thousands of years. But if you believe it’s valid, we can still misinterpret what it’s saying.

Also, we still haven’t addressed this problem: Nostra Aetate says, “[Muslims] adore the one God … the Creator of heaven and earth”, but how can they when they reject Christ “through Whom all things were created ” (Nicene Creed)?

Allah is akin to the First Person of the Trinity

Allah in the Quran makes clear he has no Son. The First Person of the Trinity would never do that.

The Bible says that those who reject God the Son cannot have God the Father: “Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also” (I John 2:23)

 

[kapp19]

Yes… they howl!

So the NA quote is fine, but there is no identity of Allah with the Father. Would recommend getting that out of your head ASAP. It is really off base. The Father exists in relation to the Son - the Father is Father only with the Son. To think of “God” as “Father” is not the same as “the Father.”

I will leave my thought puzzle to your own puzzling. The point is to show how people can be talking about the same thing and still not talking about the same thing in a concrete case.

-K

 

[EndTimes]

Church history is full of councils that were later rejected

So you say.

Vat II stands.

Anything else?

 

[englands123]

Well put Otjm

 

[ReaderT]

ReaderT:

Church history is full of councils that were later rejected

So you say.

This is a clear part of Church teaching. Councils have been later repudiated by Popes:

Second Council of Ephesus - Wikipedia

See also the Council of Hieria (repudiated by Second Council of Nicea), Council of Sirmium, the Synod of Pistoia, etc.

 

[EndTimes]

This is a clear part of Church teaching. Councils have been later repudiated by Popes:

en.wikipedia.org

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Second Council of Ephesus​

The Second Council of Ephesus was a Christological church synod in 449 AD convened by Emperor Theodosius II under the presidency of Pope Dioscorus I of Alexandria. It was intended to be an ecumenical council, and it is accepted as such by the miaphysite churches but was rejected by the Chalcedonian dyophysites. It was explicitly repudiated by the next council, the Council of Chalcedon of 451, recognised as the fourth ecumenical council by Chalcedonian Christians, and it was named the Latroc Both …

See also the Council of Hieria (repudiated by Second Council of Nicea), Council of Sirmium, the Synod of Pistoia, etc.

So?

Vat II remains … and is widely used in further Magisterial Docs…

Anything else?

 

[fide]

Time will tell.

[1Ki 20:11 ] And the king of Israel answered, “Tell him, ‘Let not him that girds on his armor boast himself as he that puts it off.’”

 

[Dovekin]

Time will tell.

[1Ki 20:11 ] And the king of Israel answered, “Tell him, ‘Let not him that girds on his armor boast himself as he that puts it off.’”

When a competent magisterial authority rejects Vatican II, you can take this stance. As it is now, it applies more to yourself than to @EndTimes. (If you live in Kazakhstan, I may need to modify that some.)

This particular statement on Islam from Vatican II is very precise. Muslims believe in the one God who created the Heavens and the Earth. They reject the Son “through whom all things were created.” When they adore the Creator, they adore the same Creator we adore even if they do not acknowledge the Son’s role. It is an awkward position, but not imprecise.

Bishop Schneider’s remarks may help clarify the precision of the language, though throwing up a smokescreen of imprecision makes it more difficult to do that. It just makes it seem like he wants to change what the Church teaches, instead of teaching it…

 

[Niblo]

Muslims believe in the one God who created the Heavens and the Earth

Yes.

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