Why start there? You start there in order to get the answer you want. Why do you want that answer so badly?
Muslims, after all, don’t start there (in the relevant sense). They don’t claim that God was unknown before the Qur’an came along. They claim that the Qur’an is the fullest revelation from the God who was revealing himself ever since the beginning. It is therefore irrational and unjust to define the “Islamic God” solely in terms of the Qur’an.
It is far more accurate, as well as more charitable, to say that Muslims falsely believe that God revealed the Qur’an than to say that they falsely believe their god (who revealed the Qur’an) to be the true God.
Exactly. So that is all that matters for us to distinguish the Christian God from the God of Islam. The Christian God has done no such thing.
If I worshiped the Christian God as the exterminator of millions of Jews during WWII, would I be worshiping the same God?
So let us not bring charity in to the issue. With respect to the truth, speaking the truth is Charity. Your last sentence is what I highlighted as perspective before in my posts.
In the sense of how people evaluate similarity, the Muslim God is not similar to the Christian God in major aspects. So this entity, called Allah, while having the some similar properties of the Christian God, has other properties that differentiate him from the Christian one.
So to say that both refer to the same God is rather weird definition of similarity if you ask me.
Right, but that’s not a very reasonable way to look at it for the reasons I gave above.
We need to keep coming back to the parallel with the Jews, little as folks on your side of the debate want to do so
. We don’t, as Christians, claim that the true God was utterly unknown before Jesus was born. That’s Marcionism, even leaving aside natural revelation. We claim that He wasn’t fully known. It would be unreasonable for a Jew to dismiss our identification of our God with the God of Abraham and the creator of the universe and say, “Christians worship a false god who is the Father of Jesus.” Rather, it would be appropriate for them to say (as they do, in my experience, say), “Christians mistakenly believe that the one God, the God of Israel, is Triune and sent His Son Jesus into the world to save us.”
I am not even sure why you are comparing Jews with Muslims. The God of Jews is actually the one true God. When the Jews say that God destroyed Sodom, that is not fiction. It is true. When Jews say that God gave the ten commandments, it is not fiction, it is true.
But when Islam says that God gave them the Qur’an, that is a false claim. So I don’t see the similarity between Jews and Muslims.
The only claim I can see you make is that Jews don’t accept Christ. But what I would like to point out is that though they don’t accept, what they have as Divine Revelation is 100% true. They just don’t want to believe in the extra bit of revelation that came after.
In the Muslim case, none of which they have is Divine Revelation.
Part of the problem here, first of all, is that phrases like “follow Christ” and “know God” have connotations referring to someone’s spiritual condition. A person who holds the beliefs you describe isn’t following Christ’s footsteps or Christ’s true teachings. But if such a person believes that the historical Jesus of Nazareth, who is also the Son of God, taught these things, then it is more accurate to say that such a person falsely ascribes these things to Jesus than that such a person isn’t talking about Jesus at all.
I think we are once again going in to the territory of perspective. If you perceive the concept of ‘following’ as merely what one states outwardly, then sure. All the power to your claim.
But in actual sense, I don’t think such a way of perceiving is accurate. I can construct the most blood thirsty God and then ascribe the name God of Abraham. For then to you to say that ‘hey we both follow the same God’ I feel is problematic and stretching this concept of ‘follow’ rather thin.
Now I think that your equation of Islam to Nazism is nonsense. I think there’s a lot more in common between Islam and Christianity than that from an ethical and spiritual point of view, and that most of the stuff people hold against Islam can be found in Christianity and/or the Bible (though arguably with some safeguards that don’t exist in Islam). But that isn’t the point here. Even if your analogy were accurate and not the offensive travesty it is, your argument would fail.
Maybe you didn’t get my point.
I am simply showing you the inherent problem in your reasoning. You want to claim that since some properties are shared, or that they claim to follow the God of Abraham, they follow the God of Christianity. I just showed you how ridiculous such an argument would be.
If I define a God with 90% Christian properties and then add on Nazism to it, and worship and spread the teachings, I wouldn’t be following the God of Christianity. Not even in the Biblical sense of the word ‘following’ do I qualify to claim such a thing.
So your insistence, other than simply saying, its a ‘travesty’, ‘uncharitable’ has not really shown any actual reasoning or acceptable definition of ‘following’ to warrant me or anyone to rethink their position.
What I think you are confusing is the Catholic Teaching. The Catholic Church teaches that they
claim to follow the God of Abraham. So they are trying and intend to so for that they have been credited. But by no means do they
actually follow the God of Abraham. To claim as such destroys the foundations of Christianity
