Do Christians and Moslems Worship the Same God?

[Tomster]

In traditional Catholic teaching and philosophy the true God can be discovered by natural means without access to revelation. He is the non-contingent Creator. By it’s very essence, such a being must exist and can only be one. Therefore any person or people who believed in and adore such a non-contingent being and Creator on which all else is contingent have always been deemed to have discovered the true God. Divine revelation is needed to know of the persons of God and other truths about Him, but knowledge of them is not necessary to have knowledge of God.

No one would argue that Jews worship a different God. Likewise, St. Paul says that the pagans in Acts 17:23 are also worshiping the same God even though they do not yet acknowledge the Trinity (in the same chapter he also cites pagan poets teaching about the true God).

Acts 17:23 For passing by, and seeing your idols, I found an altar also, on which was written: To the unknown God. What therefore you worship, without knowing it, that I preach to you:

Muslims may believe falsely alledged revelations about Him, but they definitely acknowledge Him. They do not seek to worship the creature rather than the Creator as idolotors and polytheists do (who often worship beings that do not exist, but which have a contingent essence). Here are some more examples demonstrating Catholic thought on this:

St. John Damascene in his "Founts of Knowledge"

These used to be idolaters and worshiped the morning star and Aphrodite, whom in their own language they called Khabár, which means great. And so down to the time of Heraclius they were very great idolaters. From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy…He says that there is one God, creator of all things…

(notice, they are no longer idolators but are considered heretics)

Pope St. Gregory VII (11th century) to a Muslim prince: ‘Almighty God, who wishes that all should be saved and none lost, approves nothing in so much as that after loving Him one should love his fellow man, and that one should not do to others, what one does not want done to oneself. You and we owe this charity to ourselves especially because we believe in and confess one God, admittedly, in a different way, and daily praise and venerate him, the creator of the world and ruler of this world.’

The famous counter-reformation Jesuit and expert on St. Thomas, Suarez:

Thomas, however, rightly distinguishes two kinds of religious practices: there are those which go against reason and against God insofar as he can be recognized through nature and through the natural powers of the soul, e.g., the worship of idols, etc. Others are contrary to the Christian religion and to its commands not because they are evil in themselves or contrary to reason as, for example, the practices of Jews and even many of the customs of Mohammedans and such unbelievers who believe in one true God.

Suarez, Tract. de Fide Disp. 18 Sect. III

(Notice, the worship of idols is intrinsically evil because it goes against reason (the true God can be known by natural reason), yet many practices of the Muslims are intrinsically evil in and of themselves since they are reasonable acts of worship directed to the one God.)

Catechism of Pope St. Pius X : 12 Q. Who are infidels?
A. Infidels are those who have not been baptised and do not believe in Jesus Christ, because they either believe in and worship false gods as idolaters do, or though admitting one true God, they do not believe in the Messiah, neither as already come in the Person of Jesus Christ, nor as to come; for instance, Mohammedans and the like.

(again, they are not idolators but are like Jews)

Catholic Encyclopedia: As in ecclesiastical language those who by baptism have received faith in Jesus Christ and have pledged Him their fidelity and called the faithful, so the name infidel is given to those who have not been baptized. The term applies not only to all who are ignorant of the true God, such as pagans of various kinds, but also to those who adore Him but do not recognize Jesus Christ, as Jews and Mohammedans.

Second Vatican Council: 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.

See also this chapter on Islam in Hillair Belloc’s "Great Heresies."
ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/HERESY4.TXT

Muslims, like the pagans St. Paul met, worship the true God without knowing it. even though they have been misled to truths about him by a false prophet.

(of course, a Muslim in good faith and good will who desires to solely humble and abandon himself to the way, truth, and life of God for love of God alone, implicitly desires Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life and may be saved. However, one simply adores the one God while obstinately rejecting the Son of God–the way, the truth, and the life–has neither the Father nor the Son and cannot be saved.).

Thank you very much!

 

[Geremia]

Muslims, like the pagans St. Paul met, worship the true God without knowing it, even though they have been misled as to truths about him by a false prophet.

Pagans and Muslims worship devils, not the Trinity. People are taking the controversial “anonymous Christian” concept too far.

 

[porthos11]

Pagans and Muslims worship devils, not the Trinity. People are taking the controversial “anonymous Christian” concept too far.

Jews do not worship the Trinity either, but wonder if any Catholic would dare say they don’t worship the same God we do.

If one asks a Muslim which God he worships, he will say, God (Allah). If you ask him, which God, he will respond with “There is no God but God…” He will profess that he worships only the one God, which is the same thing we profess, the God of Abraham. Their understanding of him may be defective, but that does not mean they worship devils, since that is not their intention. They intend to worship the one God, and the Church recognizes that.

 

[rwoehmke]

**No, **

The Muslim submits to Allah, the absolutely transcendent ruler of the universe, in return for his mercy and beneficence. There ain’t no love between Allah and his creation.

Allah merely is the apotheosized image of an Oriental despot, emphatically not the Judeo-Christian God of love. According to German-Jewish theologian Rosenzweig, he basically repudiates the notion of Islamic culture. As a caricature, Islam is entirely sterile: “Islam never created an Islamic art, but rather took into its service pre-Islamic art … The pre-Islamic state, namely the Oriental state in its Byzantine form, made Islam into its state religion; the pre-Islamic spirit of the Koran adopted either pre-Islamic rationalism or mysticism and orthodoxy. In Europe, by contrast, in Christian Europe, there arose something new: Christian art, and a Christian state.”

Love requires the Judeo-Christian God to create the world. By contrast, “the God of Mohammed is a creator who well might not have bothered to create. He displays his power like an Oriental potentate who rules by violence, not by acting according to necessity, not by authorizing the enactment of the law, but rather in his freedom to act arbitrarily. By contrast, it is most characteristic of rabbinic theology that it formulates our concept of the divine power to create in the question as to whether God created the world out of love or out of righteousness.”

Allah’s creation for Rosenzweig is a mere act of “magic”. Muslim theology “presumes that Allah creates every isolated thing at every moment. Providence thus is shattered into infinitely many individual acts of creation, with no connection to each other, each of which has the importance of the entire creation. That has been the doctrine of the ruling orthodox philosophy in Islam. Every individual thing is created from scratch at every moment. Islam cannot be salvaged from this frightful providence of Allah … despite its vehement, haughty insistence upon the idea of the God’s unity, Islam slips back into a kind of monistic paganism, if you will permit the expression. God competes with God at every moment, as if it were the colorfully contending heavenful of gods of polytheism.”
forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/quote.gif

Did this fellow bother to consider that how one might envision God might be very dependent on ones experience of rulers and over seers? Jewish and subsequently Christian views on what God is like would have been conditioned on how the Jews experienced David and subsequent Kings of Judah. Even with God’s revelation of himself to the Jews and we Christians our own concepts of God are very limited in relation to who he really is.

 

[Genesis315]

Pagans and Muslims worship devils, not the Trinity. People are taking the controversial “anonymous Christian” concept too far.

Saint Paul said the pagans were worshipping the same God as did all those other sources I cited. Polytheists and idolators may be worshipping devils, but not those that acknowledge the non-contingent Creator.

I also didn’t say all Muslims were therefore anonymous Christians (in fact, I said the opposite.) But they potentially may be, whereas idolators cannot be.

 

[Sabda]

Pagans and Muslims worship devils, not the Trinity. People are taking the controversial “anonymous Christian” concept too far.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says otherwise.

841 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."330

Like the Jews, Muslims claim to worship the God of Abraham. Those arguements that claim they don’t worship the one true God are just like those that claim Catholics are not Christian. Think about it.

 

[Mamat]

NO! Mohammad received his so called revelation from a being in a cave that he admits tried to strangle him into submission. Some misguidedly think “the being” was the angel Gabriel which is what Mohammad was deceived into believing. Any Catholic who believes Jesus is the living word of God must know that Jesus gave us all we need and that revelation ended with the Apostles. To believe Mohammad received “new truth” from an angel sent by God is to imply that Jesus and the Holy Spirit failed. Give me a break! It was a done deal when Jesus went back to Heaven and the Catholic Church was born through the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The helper that Jesus promised came to guide God’s one, holy, Catholic Church to all truth until Jesus returns. Mohammad was either totally mad or he was visited by the “great deceiver” impersonating an “angel of light.” Satan passes off his lies with bits of truth. We fall for it everyday. Mohammad is no doubt Satan best disciple and Islam his greatest achievement. Well, at least before the invention of mass media. Now Satan can spread his lies via television and the internet with unparalleled ease. Do not be deceived! Islam is evil and can bring NO good to the world. It is Christianity’s greatest enemy. That said, there are certainly many decent Muslims with good hearts that love the god they know. Unfortunately, it is a false god and so many of the tenets and practices of Islam evil. We must pray for Muslins as well as all people separated from the true Church. Read this: catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/islam/worship.htm

 

[Dale_M]

Read this: catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/islam/worship.htm

That was written by an SSPX priest, which should raise a yellow flag concerning orthodoxy.

The holes in the article’s reasoning are apparent. The revelations claimed by Muhammed do not make his God the same as that of Judaism or of Christianity. In fact, they are errors which lead away from truth. However, Muhammed built his faith on the God of Abraham, and it is that fundamental revelation which establishes that that the three great monotheistic religions are united by the same God, despite their flawed understanding.

Here is the section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church discusses non-Christian religions. It dwells in particular on the two other Abrahamic faiths.

The Church and non-Christians

839
“Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways.”

The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People, “the first to hear the Word of God.” The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews “belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ”, “for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”

840
And when one considers the future, God’s People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah. But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.

841
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.”

842
The Church’s bond with non-Christian religions is in the first place the common origin and end of the human race:

All nations form but one community. This is so because all stem from the one stock which God created to people the entire earth, and also because all share a common destiny, namely God. His providence, evident goodness, and saving designs extend to all against the day when the elect are gathered together in the holy city.

843
The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as “a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.”

844
In their religious behavior, however, men also display the limits and errors that disfigure the image of God in them:

Very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and served the creature rather than the Creator. Or else, living and dying in this world without God, they are exposed to ultimate despair.

845
To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son’s Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is “the world reconciled.” She is that bark which “in the full sail of the Lord’s cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world.” According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah’s ark, which alone saves from the flood.334

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p3.htm

 

[EJM]

Vigis,

If you talk to some of my coworkers, they will tell you that I’m fairly smart. If you talk to my wife or kids, they can tell you that I have done some really stupid things in my day. But there is only one of me (thank God!) and my coworkers and family are indeed talking about the same person.

• Liberian

Your coworkers may think your fairly smart based on things you actually have done/said. Your wife and children may be able to tell of actual real stupid things you may have done. Both coworkers and family are speaking of truthful things about you, the same person.

Contrast that with the falsehoods of islam and the truth revealed in Jesus Christ that believers have been given and hold on to. These are not the same person.

 

[Mamat]

Muslims and Jews do believe in the one true God because there is ONLY one true God. Note that their view of that God differs greatly. The one true God desired the salvation of all and God indeed does have a plan for the salvation of Muslims and Jews. (My guess is that it is Jesus Christ! Duh!)

Muslims do claim a link to Abraham through Ishmael and the arabic people did indeed come from that line. However, the so called revelations Mohammad received from what he believed to be the angel gabriel came to that area thousands of years later and contradict most Christian truth. That is the problem not that they are connected to Father Abraham.

Jews and Muslims that truly love God as they understand Him with their whole heart, mind and soul and love their neighbor as themselves may pass through the gates of heaven that Jesus opened when He died on the cross and rose from the dead. Remember Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." When a person lives by “The Great Commandment” he is following Jesus, who opened the gates of heaven for all people, even if he doesn’t know it. Thus he gets to the Father via the saving work of Jesus Christ. Amen!

We can not condemn any group of people but we must not blindly accept that what they believe is actually God breathed.The fact is that Revelation ended with the Apostles. Period! Jesus provided the entire world with everything needed to know God, love God, worship God and obey God. There was no more for some spirit to reveal to the world! Jesus established God’s Kingdom on earth in and through the Catholic Church where the fullness of His truth is guarded by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Father is right to encourage dialogue, love and understanding among all people and that is whatNOSTRA AETATEis about. It does NOT say to deny the evil taught and practiced in any religion.That would be just as unwise as coming to believe the great deceiver does NOT exist. *Satan’s greatest achievement is to make us believe he does not exist and or that he can’t and hasn’t used even religion to promote his diabolical agenda. *God fearing Muslims can not comprehend that the religion they hold dear is the work of Satan. That does not mean however that Christians should accept Islam as being from God but we do accept that God fearing Muslims can get to heaven.