The God of Islam. False?

  • Thread starter Thread starter thessalonian
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
T

thessalonian

Guest
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Seems that saying that the Muslems worship the one God is bothersome to Catholics. But let’s take a hard look at it.

I think about the samaritan woman at the well in John 4. The Samaritans were a product of the northern captivity. They were a mix of jewish and syrian blood as I understand. They did accept the God of Israel but only as one of many gods. I am sure if one studied them he would find many errors in their theology about God. I am sure they did not believe in a trinity for instance. But when Jesus speaks to her about God, what does he say:

“The god of the Samarians is a false God”. No wait, he says:

22] You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

He does not say the god they worship is a completely false god or a demon. He simply says they do not know God whom they worship.

I asked a Muslem one time if his God was omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. His answer was yes. Creater of all things? Yes. The only God? Yes.

Now tell me, why should I tell him his God is totally false? Granted he has some errors. Alot of them. Now we are all getting hung up on the word Allah. A Hebrew word for God is Elohim. The pagans also used this word for gods. Does that mean the word is wrong? The Turks use tangray for God. It has pagan orignies as well. Deus is German I believe. Do you suppose that it originated from Zeus? Could be?

When Paul went to the Areopogus in Acts 17 he did not condemn what they new about God that was right. He even quoted their pagan sages. In him we live and move and have our being. He spoke their language and appealed to what they already understood. We don’t need to embrace islam or make it a common practice to call God Allah (though it just means God in Arabic). But it will help to appeal to what they already know.
 
A good point that some folks can’t get their minds around can they?👍
 
I’ve heard the suggestion that Allah is a demon that deluded Mohammed. There is also some evidence to suggest that Allah was an Arab pagan deity local to Mecca before Mohammed eliminated the other gods.
 
Very interesting about the pagan deity bit! What evidence (studies, histories) can be cited to support this? I’d like to bring this up next time some nutter says to me Allah and Yahweh are one and the same.
 
Caesar said:
I’ve heard the suggestion that Allah is a demon that deluded Mohammed. There is also some evidence to suggest that Allah was an Arab pagan deity local to Mecca before Mohammed eliminated the other gods.
Click to expand...
The demon would have been the angel that appeared. In Catholic teaching, if someone acknowledges one Supreme God, Creator and ruler of all, we say they are worshipping the true God. This is because God can be known and discovered through natural means as both Scripture (St. Paul in Romans I believe) and the First Vatican Council affirmed.

Allah is of course, just arabic for “God.” Muhammed was able to come to the conclusion that there is one true God. He was most influenced by Catholicism and Judaism. In fact, Hillaire Belloc calls Islam a heresy for this reason along the lines of Arianism (he actually compares it to Calvinism too in how it stripped the faith of its Incarnational aspect–Sacraments, priesthood/hiearchy, liturgy, etc.).

This is opposed to those who worship creatures (idols and the like) and those who believe in polytheism.

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:
 
Here is some additional Catholic sources on this subject;

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.’

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.

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.
 
There is also some evidence to suggest that Allah was an Arab pagan deity local to Mecca before Mohammed eliminated the other gods.
Click to expand...
My understanding is that this is basically confined to the realms of Jack Chick. Historians don’t take that view very seriously.
 
You are confusing the issue a bit. Do you object that the latins use the word Deus for God? It’s origin is Zeus from Greek and Roman mythology. French us dius, same origin. The Turks use the word Tangray. Pagan origins as well. Muhamed may well have been visited by demons who he mistook for the word Allah, which has origins in the word elohim, (el, elah, allah) as I understand it. It is simply the word God in Aramaic.

God’s laws are implanted on all men’s hearts (rom 2:14-16). One of those laws is to worship the one true God. This will manifest itself in their religions though in far from perfect ways. My point of the thread is to get to their hearts we must appeal to what they know rather than insult their beliefs, some of which may have grains or veins of truth in them, originating in the law implanted on their hearts.
 
Genesis315. Thank you for pulling those all together. I submit to the Church.
 
Here’s an exerpt from Hillaire Belloc’s book “The Great Heresies”
Hillaire Belloc's "Great Heresies":
Mohammedanism was a : that is the essential point to grasp before going any further. It began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of Christian doctrine. It vitality and endurance soon gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its rise saw it for what it was_not a denial, but an adaptation and a misuse, of the Christian thing. It differed from most (not from all) heresies in this, that it did not arise within the bounds of the Christian Church. The chief heresiarch, Mohammed himself, was not, like most heresiarchs, a man of Catholic birth and doctrine to begin with. He sprang from pagans. But that which he taught was in the main Catholic doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world_on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel_which inspired his convictions. He came of, and mixed with, the degraded idolaters of the Arabian wilderness, the conquest of which had never seemed worth the Romans’ while.

He took over very few of those old pagan ideas which might have been native to him from his descent. On the contrary, he preached and insisted upon a whole group of ideas which were peculiar to the Catholic Church and distinguished it from the paganism which it had conquered in the Greek and Roman civilization. Thus the very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God. The attributes of God he also took over in the main from Catholic doctrine: the personal nature, the all-goodness, the timelessness, the providence of God, His creative power as the origin of all things, and His sustenance of all things by His power alone.
Click to expand...
And here is a link to the whole chapter on Islam:
ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/HERESY4.TXT

I found it to be a really good perspective on Islam’s Christian roots.
 
Church_Militant said:
A good point that some folks can’t get their minds around can they?👍
Click to expand...
Without the gospel, they cannot be saved. The Koran says that Christ did not die for sinners. This is obviously in complete contradiction to the Bible and removes the necessary blood sacrifice as a substitutionary atonement.

Heb 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

They reject the God of the Bible through this word of man, the Koran. If you do not receive the Son, you do not receive the Father. They need the gospel just like the man laying in his own vomit in the back alley and we must give it to them…not compromise the truth, say they are okay, and let them flounder to sin’s punishment.
 
Caesar said:
I’ve heard the suggestion that Allah is a demon that deluded Mohammed. There is also some evidence to suggest that Allah was an Arab pagan deity local to Mecca before Mohammed eliminated the other gods.
Click to expand...
The spirit who came to him and gave him the writings of the Koran was certainly not of God…therefore, what can we conclude?
 
The spirit who came to him and gave him the writings of the Koran was certainly not of God…therefore, what can we conclude?
Click to expand...
Maybe it was God, and we’re the ones mistaken.
Maybe no spirit came at all, and Muhammed was just a con artist.
Or perhaps Muhammed was not divinely inspired, but just wanted to introduce monotheism into Arabia.
Maybe the Qur’an wasn’t cited by Muhammed, but instead invented by his followers later.
Maybe, if you go far enough, Muhammed was a Christian but his message was distorted so badly that they viewed him as a prophet in later centuries.

Et cetera?
 
EphelDuath said:
Maybe it was God, and we’re the ones mistaken.
Maybe no spirit came at all, and Muhammed was just a con artist.
Or perhaps Muhammed was not divinely inspired, but just wanted to introduce monotheism into Arabia.
Maybe the Qur’an wasn’t cited by Muhammed, but instead invented by his followers later.
Maybe, if you go far enough, Muhammed was a Christian but his message was distorted so badly that they viewed him as a prophet in later centuries.

Et cetera?
Click to expand...
The God of Islam is not just - for He is not punishing sin but sweeping sins under the rug (according to their faith). The God of the Bible is just in pardoning sinners because He gave His Son to die - to appease His wrath and be a propitiation for our sins.

Heb 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

The God of the Bible is now just and the justifier of all who believe!

Romans 3:25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;
26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
 
OneForTruth said:
They reject the God of the Bible through this word of man, the Koran. If you do not receive the Son, you do not receive the Father. They need the gospel just like the man laying in his own vomit in the back alley and we must give it to them…not compromise the truth, say they are okay, and let them flounder to sin’s punishment.
Click to expand...
Certainly we should continue to work for their conversion. But how can there be more than one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all three religions worship. Allah is defined as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Would you say that the Jews from whom we Christians get our Faith do not worship the same God? It is true that neither Muslims or Jews recognize a triune God, but all that means is that they lack a more complete understanding of God that Christian possess. I dare so even Christians are severely handicapped when it comes to understanding the mystery of the Trinity.
 
<<Now tell me, why should I tell him his God is totally false?>>

I confess there is no God but Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and Jesus is God Incarnate!

[Deus, Theos, and Zeus are considered cognates by those who know more about linguistics than I. “Jupiter” itself comes from “Deus Pater”.]
 
It bears pointing out that the Catholic position is that Islam is salvific, but rather that it is possible for someone who is a Muslim through no fault of his own to achieve salvation–he could have an implicit faith in Christ by his supernatural faith in God, manifesting itself in his complete submission to what he erroneously thinks is God’s word. Muslims do not worship creatures as idolotors do–they intend to worship the Creator.
 
Anselm defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Do Moslems worship a supreme being, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and so on? Yes, they do. Therefore, they are worshipping God. This would remain true even if Mohammed was deceived by an evil spirit and the specific revelation of the Koran contained many errors. When Moslems (or anyone else) are worshipping that than which nothing greater can be conceived, they are worshipping God.

Again, this is not to conflate Christianity and Islam, which are obviously quite different in many ways. But there are specifically Christian reasons why a non-Christian can still worship God. Some of those reasons have already been given in previous posts.
 
Dear Genesis 315: Did you mean to say “the Catholic position is not” rather than “the Catholic position is”?
 
cpayne said:
Anselm defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Do Moslems worship a supreme being, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and so on? Yes, they do. Therefore, they are worshipping God. This would remain true even if Mohammed was deceived by an evil spirit and the specific revelation of the Koran contained many errors. When Moslems (or anyone else) are worshipping that than which nothing greater can be conceived, they are worshipping God.

Again, this is not to conflate Christianity and Islam, which are obviously quite different in many ways. But there are specifically Christian reasons why a non-Christian can still worship God. Some of those reasons have already been given in previous posts.
Click to expand...
Thank you for this.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top