Do Christians and Jews worship the same God?

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What is the role of Jews/Judaism in Catholicism?

Do Christians and Jews worship the same God?
 
That’s a question that only makes sense to me if more than one God is considered possible. Also, rather than ask it as a question with I bivalent (yes/no) answer why not ask it as a question whose answer can have degrees and intensities, such as how similar are the Jewish and Christian God-Concepts?
 
First question is difficult.
So is the second!

But I’ll say with the second, yes and no.
 
It’s an odd question, similar to where the catechism says Muslims and Catholics worship the same God.
I think the basis for this is that there is one God and Jews, Muslims and Christians all worship one God. So, it must be the same God.
Additionally, all three religions see Judiasm as a foundation.
So, they are all worshiping the God of Abraham.

But Jesus taught us something radically different about the truth of who God is, and both Jews and Muslims reject “the Catholic God” who is a Trinity of Persons Father Son and Holy Spirit.

So, we might think they’re worshiping our God, but they don’t think they’re worshiping our God. Muslims think we are polytheists. Most Jews wouldn’t say that but they certainly don’t worship Jesus as the Second Person of the Godhead.

Same God? I guess it depends on which direction you’re looking at it, and how ecumenical you want to be.
 
kohai said:
What is the role of Jews/Judaism in Catholicism?

Do Christians and Jews worship the same God?
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Why must Jews have a “role” in Catholicism? I’m not sure I understand the question, unless you mean that Catholicism is thought to be the fulfillment of Judaism through Jesus.

The second question has been asked numerous times. The answer is, as always, YES.
 
What role do they play? The only thing that comes to mind is that they are our older siblings in faith.

Do we worship the same God? We say we do, they may not. We both profess to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and even though we have different understandings of who God is, we both recognize Him.
 
kohai said:
What is the role of Jews/Judaism in Catholicism?

Do Christians and Jews worship the same God?
Click to expand...
  1. Read Romans, Chapter 11. G-d has never been silent toward the Hebrew people for 2,000 years. He communicated with them constantly and either directly, or through prophets. 2,000 years ago, something changed. The L-rd G-d of Israel is One, the Only.
  2. Yes.
 
ThinkingSapien said:
That’s a question that only makes sense to me if more than one God is considered possible. Also, rather than ask it as a question with I bivalent (yes/no) answer why not ask it as a question whose answer can have degrees and intensities, such as how similar are the Jewish and Christian God-Concepts?
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In the ancient Jewish & Catholic traditions, although God can be thought of in abstract/intellectual terms: i.e. his qualities, more than that, God is also thought of in covenant + familial terms, in the way, for example, I identify my brother as being the son of my mother and father: Keith and Kathleen.

The God of Israel is the God of Abraham, the husband of Sarah, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, etc. [And the God of Joseph, the husband of Mary] God established covenants with each of these persons. A covenant - because it is spiritual - meets and exceeds the relationships that exists through blood. This is the God the Jews worship, and it is the God the Catholics worship, therefore, while the particular understandings of God might not be identical, Jews and Catholic worship the same God. It isn’t possible to think of a covenant/familial God in terms of degrees.

i.e., I might know my father, and a relative might also know my father, and he might have a somewhat different understanding of what he is like, but nonetheless, we are both referring to the same person. There aren’t two fathers. God isn’t an abstraction or an impersonal Deity in the way he was thought of by someone such as Octavian Caesar or Thomas Jefferson.
 
meltzerboy said:
Why must Jews have a “role” in Catholicism?
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The covenants that were sequentially established in different generations of the Hebrew people are essential to the covenant Jesus would create (and then disseminate) with his apostles. Even in the Christian New Testament, this covenant was not initially understood to include Gentiles - Peter was cold to the thought of baptizing pagans - but with Paul’s guidance, it was understood that the final covenant was universal. At the Council of Jerusalem, the apostles reached the consensus that the gift given to them at Pentecost - the ability to speak in all tongues - was the sign that their mission was global.
 
Jesus was Jewish and taught that He Himself was the fulfillment of promises made by the “God of Abraham”, i.e. the same God worshipped by the Jews. Furthermore, if one believes that there is only one God, then there could not logically be any other God, and all monotheistic religions are worshipping the same God.

However, the idea of God as the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is a Catholic concept that differs from the Jewish concept of God as most Jewish people do not accept Jesus as Messiah/ Son of God.
 
Paragraphs 63-64 in the Catechism continue:

Israel is the priestly people of God, “called by the name of the Lord,” and “the first to hear the world of God,” the people of ‘elder brethren’ in the faith of Abraham. (64) Through the prophets, God forms his people in the hope of salvation, in the expectation of a new and everlasting Covenant intended for all… a salvation which will include all the nations. Above all, the poor and humble of the Lord… as Sarah, Rebecca, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Judith, and Esther… The purest figure among them is Mary.

So yes. Just in different ways.
 
Jesus told some Jews that they did not worship God, but rather Satan.

They said therefore to him: We are not born of fornication: we have one Father, even God.
Jesus therefore said to them: If God were your Father, you would indeed love me. For from God I proceeded, and came; for I came not of myself, but he sent me:
… You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do.
… He that is of God, heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not, because you are not of God.

That’s the problem. If we worshiped the same God, Jews would worship Jesus.

“Since you don’t know who I am, you don’t know who my Father is. If you knew me, you would also know my Father.” John 8:19
 
reggieM said:
Jesus told some Jews that they did not worship God, but rather Satan.

They said therefore to him: We are not born of fornication: we have one Father, even God.
Jesus therefore said to them: If God were your Father, you would indeed love me. For from God I proceeded, and came; for I came not of myself, but he sent me:
… You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do.
… He that is of God, heareth the words of God. Therefore you hear them not, because you are not of God.

That’s the problem. If we worshiped the same God, Jews would worship Jesus.

“Since you don’t know who I am, you don’t know who my Father is. If you knew me, you would also know my Father.” John 8:19
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No wonder Jesus made them angry then. 🤷

So how do you explain the God they worship and why do we include the Old Testament in our Bible?
 
No (just to be awkward about what really is a Christian problem).
 
Yes, but Christians accept a deeper understanding of who God is: Triune.
 
davidv said:
Why not? Is there more than one God?
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I’m suggesting that these sorts of problems are only problems within a Christian context. From a Jewish perspective it’s whether Christians (or whoever) adhere to the ‘covenant of the sons of Noah’.
 
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