The same God?

[NinjaSnark]

The heretical sect that is said to have had the most profound effect on Islam were the Ebionites, an early Jewish-Christian sect with all kinds of peculiar beliefs that have at least some analogue in Islam. The Ebionite heresy was popular in and around Arabia prior to the coming of Islam, and the Wikipedia page on the Ebionites mentions that Waraqah ibn Nawfal, the cousin of Muhammad’s first wife Khadija, was an Ebionite priest. It is assumed that it is through the connection to this man, as well as whatever connection there was with Sargus Bahira (Christian and Muslim sources disagree on the nature of their relationship), that Muhammad and hence Islam developed certain particular views of Christianity and certain Christian(-related) individuals

Basically, when it comes to Islam’s view of Jesus and Christianity, it is wrong because its source material is heretical.

dzheremi- You are, as always, a great source of information. Thanks for sharing!

 

[dzheremi]

Oh, thank you, NinjaSnark! I just realized I’ve been calling you NinjaShark until just now. My apologies. I may be filled with information, but reading comprehension? Forget it! Apparently there’s some part of my brain that really wants there to be someone out there in CAF-land who shares the attributes of both ninja and shark…it’s probably the same part of my brain that has stored old “Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey” sketches for future use…

Anyway, as Hesychios pointed out, Arabia at the time of Muhammad was a bit of a desert (no pun intended), so heresies that would have rightfully died or at least been suppressed elsewhere lived on for a long time there. It’s kind of hard to imagine how such things would not have had an effect upon Muhammad, but that’s what modern Islamic apologists would have us believe. Interestingly, it was not always like this. The modern idea that Islam emerged in/as a theological bubble of pure monotheism surrounded by pagans is deeply ahistorical, and contradicted by both the Qur’an (see for instance Surat al-Buruj for the retelling of the Christian martyrs of Najran, or the many mentions of the Jewish people of Arabia,in e.g. Surat al-Maeda), and later Islamic sources (e.g., Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, b. 704 AD, on Christianity in Najran) and non-Islamic ones (e.g., Benjamin Tudela’s 1165-1173 travels among the Jewish communities of Arabia). There are quite a number of “History of Christianity in _____” (place that is now “Islamic”) books that can provide further information on the effect of non-Islamic religions and peoples on early Islam, too, though those generally involve a fair bit of filling in historical blanks, as Islam has done remarkably well at indoctrinating its converts with a certain pre-conversion amnesia (e.g., though M. Ibn Ishaq was the grandson of a Christian man who was brought to Medina as a slave after one of the early Muslim conquests, Ishaq nonetheless collected the material that was to form the basis of the biography of the Muhammad known as the Sira, and is well-remembered for his place in the history of Islamic hagiography), and non-Muslim primary sources on the early Islamic period are understandably thin and largely ignored. This situation is complicated by the reality that the early Christians seem to have viewed Islam as another in a long line of Christian heresies rather than its own religion, so they were slow to grasp the finer points of its theology, instead placing it within the apocalyptic tradition wherein the rise of Islam is explained as a means of divine punishment for the Christians’ own sins and laxity rather than the coming of the “true” religion that everybody embraced willingly, as the Muslims would have us believe (see Griffith’s “Syriac Writers on Islam and the Religious Challenge of Islam” for more on this).

 

[hn160]

Then the God of Transubstantiation is different than the God of Consubstantiation. They both can’t be the same. The God in your mind would be different than the one in others and the determining factor would be intellectual correctness. The God that instituted seven Sacraments is not different than the one that instituted two, but those two Sacraments are a source of God’s Grace in the level of truth those who believe in the “God of two Sacraments” posses.

God exists outside of our concepts and where these concepts agree with the Truth that is in God and comes to us from God, wherever these concepts may find a home, the Muslim mind, the Hindu mind, the Jewish mind, then they are in union with this truth about God. These truths lead to a union with the source of all Truth, God, and they are a source of grace for that person or group.

In that Protestants have the love for Jesus and the Bible, these truths are a source of grace for them. Muslims have a veneration for Mary, although not the fullness of the knowledge of Her that Catholics have, but in that She appeared at Fatima, Portugal, (the name of a daughter of Muhammad), it can be seen as Her showing us as being a path of evangelization based on the level of truth Muslims already posses.

Catholics should hold on to the truths we are given but we must not use the differences with others as a separation. We must lovingly reject the false and even more lovingly accentuate the grace-filled truth. This in itself would be a grace-filled endeavor.

First of all, you have a mindless argument when it comes to Communion with Lutherans, Catholics always want to use reason to explain something that Christ said, but Lutherans always take Christ at His Word when He said “This is ,”. Your Catholic catechism is just plain wrong when it says that Muslims and Christian worship the same God and that worshipers of non-Christian faiths can come to the Triune God without Christ, Muslim see Christ as a prophet, nothing more and Muhammad as the greatest and last of the prophet. As far as I am concerned, the Devil gave Muhammad the Koran and the Muslim faith, Muhammad certainly killed enough people to convert the Middle East from Christianity to be Muslim.

 

[Stylites]

Your Catholic catechism is just plain wrong when it says that Muslims and Christian worship the same God and that worshipers of non-Christian faiths can come to the Triune God without Christ, Muslim see Christ as a prophet, nothing more and Muhammad as the greatest and last of the prophet.

Well, if you think that Muslims do not worship the one true God because they don’t believe in the Holy Trinity then you will have to also claim that Jews do not worship the one true God either, and good luck with that.

 

[dzheremi]

The Jews, the Jews, always the Jews! If the majority of the Jews had followed Jesus as they should have, would Muhammad still be excused? I think this is an abuse of the Jews. One that Muslims are all too keen to use against Christianity and the truth of the Word of God and the Holy Bible, I might add. I have seen even in my own short time here on CAF people who converted from Catholicism to Islam, thinking it only a hop, skip, and jump away via the bridge built by CCC 841. So I burnt it down within myself, and would suggest you all do likewise. Better to reform yourselves than to sink down into the mud and come up with your eyes toward Mecca.

 

[MartinJordan]

First of all, you have a mindless argument when it comes to Communion with Lutherans, Catholics always want to use reason to explain something that Christ said, but Lutherans always take Christ at His Word when He said “This is ,”. Your Catholic catechism is just plain wrong when it says that Muslims and Christian worship the same God and that worshipers of non-Christian faiths can come to the Triune God without Christ, Muslim see Christ as a prophet, nothing more and Muhammad as the greatest and last of the prophet.

The CCC seems “plain wrong” about this but only if one looks at it in face value. I understand that the quote here in the CCC is actually taken from a previous document which is the Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, and also other documents such as Nostra Aetate 3 and Dominus Jesus . Therefore, there’s more to this in the whole context from where it is written.

Note also there is no mention of Muhammad in this CCC statement.

Blessings,

MJ

 

[hn160]

Well, if you think that Muslims do not worship the one true God because they don’t believe in the Holy Trinity then you will have to also claim that Jews do not worship the one true God either, and good luck with that.

There is no problem there, do the Jews worship the Triune God and they worship the Father, Christ and the Holy Spirit, if the answer is no, then it is not the same God.

 

[MartinJordan]

There is no problem there, do the Jews worship the Triune God and they worship the Father, Christ and the Holy Spirit, if the answer is no, then it is not the same God.

Both the Jews and Islam worship the same God in the context that they both believe God is mankind’s judge on the Last Day.

MJ

 

[NinjaSnark]

Oh, thank you, NinjaSnark! I just realized I’ve been calling you NinjaShark until just now. My apologies. I may be filled with information, but reading comprehension? Forget it! Apparently there’s some part of my brain that really wants there to be someone out there in CAF-land who shares the attributes of both ninja and shark…it’s probably the same part of my brain that has stored old “Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey” sketches for future use…

HAHAHA! I am profoundly sorry that I did not make myself NinjaShark instead- that is an epic screen name.

 

[hn160]

Both the Jews and Islam worship the same God in the context that they both believe God is mankind’s judge on the Last Day.

MJ

That still doesn’t make it the same as the Christian God. That just makes them Monotheist. That is all that we have in common.

 

[mardukm]

I believe Catholics and non-Catholics should be careful about the assigning the phrase “we believe in the same God as the Muslims” as the official teaching of the Catholic Church. CCC 841, repeating the teaching of Vatican 2, is very specific in what ways that the Muslims share belief in God with Christians:
(1) God Who is the Creator;
(2) God Who is merciful;
(3) The God in Whom Abraham believed;
(4) God Who is One;
(5) God Who judges mankind on the Last Day.

These are the ONLY ways that the Catholic Church affirms we share belief in God with the Muslims.

It is rash for Catholics and non-Catholic polemicists to claim that the Catholic Church teaches that we (as Catholics) believe in the same God as the Muslims without qualification.

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[meltzerboy]

Both the Jews and Islam worship the same God in the context that they both believe God is mankind’s judge on the Last Day.

MJ

There is a belief–not universally shared–in Judaism that it is Man who judges himself on Judgment Day by reviewing his own life; G-d, however, passes sentence; and Satan executes the sentence. (Judaism’s notion of Satan differs totally from that of both Christianity and Islam.)

 

[Stylites]

There is no problem there, do the Jews worship the Triune God and they worship the Father, Christ and the Holy Spirit, if the answer is no, then it is not the same God.

Then you will need to inform Jesus of this.

And it came to pass, that, after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers. And seeing him, they wondered. And his mother said to him: Son, why hast thou done so to us? behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my father’s business?
-Luke 2:46-50

. . .and . . .

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the chairs of them that sold doves: And he saith to them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.
-Matthew 21:12-13

If the criteria for false-god worship is whether some worshippers call or inspire others to do acts of terror then Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic writings ought to be considered as well.

 

[hn160]

Then you will need to inform Jesus of this.

. . .and . . .

If the criteria for false-god worship is whether some worshippers call or inspire others to do acts of terror then Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic writings ought to be considered as well.

You are really trying to be poetically correct.

 

[agent_grey]

No two practicing religious people worship the same God. If you reject the Quran you do not worship their God. If you are mentaly instable enough to believe in scriptural innerancy then you worship a false God. Of which there are many.

The root of the problem is the concept that a book is the word of God. The moment an individual takes such a path they have abondoned the true God and have begun the invention of an Idol that exists solely in the mind of the inventor.

 

[thegame_786]

Either Muslims offer worship to a false god or false worship to the true God. Since they are monotheists, it is probably the latter. However, only Catholics offer true worship to God through the Mass. False worship, whether offered by Protestants, Jews, Muslims, etc. is objectively evil and offensive to God as a violation of the First Commandment (though not always subjectively sinful since it is often done out of ignorance).

So what can we know:

• Muslims believe in one God, which is correct.
• Muslims offer false worship to God, which is objectively offensive to Him rather than pleasing.
• Muslims have false knowledge of God, erroneous opinions.
• Muslims are severed from God through the sin of unbelief.
• Muslims cannot know God in any way at all.

Now, this only concerns those who formally adhere to the Muslim religion. Those who are actively seeking God, ready to abandon the errors of Islam, are more like unbaptized Catholics because they are open to the truth and may even be considered to have implicit Baptism of Desire. On the other hand, those who formally have embraced Islam have closed themselves off from the truth and salvation by accepting the lie of Islam. But those who are still open-minded, can be converted to the Catholic Faith and be saved.

So thus with regards to the OP, it seems that Muslims have the same God, they just don’t know Him, have many errors regarding Him, blaspheme the Son and the Holy Ghost and offend Him through false worship. However, there do remain good people who are externally Muslims while internally are seeking the true God.

False worship…thats blasphemy.

But seriously I can understand your point. Muslims are misguided therefore they are praying in the wrong manner to God which means our prayers are not accepted.
But if i am Gods child then does it matter how i pray. If my son does something good, then I accept it even if he is too dumb to do it rightl. Surely this can happen in Christianity as it is taught that God is our loving father. Just a thought i had

 

[Earnest_Bunbury]

No two practicing religious people worship the same God. If you reject the Quran you do not worship their God. If you are mentaly instable enough to believe in scriptural innerancy then you worship a false God. Of which there are many.

The root of the problem is the concept that a book is the word of God. The moment an individual takes such a path they have abondoned the true God and have begun the invention of an Idol that exists solely in the mind of the inventor.

**CCC 104 In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, “but as what it really is, the word of God”.67 “In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them.”

CCC 135 “The Sacred Scriptures contain the Word of God and, because they are inspired, they are truly the Word of God” (DV 24)**.

I understand that you mean that Jesus is the Word and that we are not a religion of the “book”, but some would (and possibly will) take this the wrong way.

CCC 108 Still, the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book.” Christianity is the religion of the “Word” of God, a word which is “not a written and mute word, but the Word is incarnate and living”.73 If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures."

We make mistakes when we divide what God works to unite. Dwelling on that which divides us will keep us from the source of all unity that is God. This does not mean there are no errors or that there is any other way to God than Christ, but it is in all sinners a false god of some sort of our own making and it is God Who gives us the theological virtue of faith.

 

[dzheremi]

But if i am Gods child then does it matter how i pray. If my son does something good, then I accept it even if he is too dumb to do it rightl. Surely this can happen in Christianity as it is taught that God is our loving father. Just a thought i had

That’s not really the case, though. In addition to this idea that we are children of God (which by the way, you should look up in the Bible sometime, i.e., John 1:12; it involves belief in Christ, which you do not have as a Muslim), the Bible contains all kinds of instructions on how to pray and how not to pray. See for instance: Matthew 6:6, Luke 11:2-4, but also Matthew 6:7, Ecclesiastes 5:2, etc.

 

[Earnest_Bunbury]

False worship…thats blasphemy.

But seriously I can understand your point. Muslims are misguided therefore they are praying in the wrong manner to God which means our prayers are not accepted.
But if i am Gods child then does it matter how i pray. If my son does something good, then I accept it even if he is too dumb to do it rightl. Surely this can happen in Christianity as it is taught that God is our loving father. Just a thought i had

NOSTRA AETATE 3. 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.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.

… Besides, as the Church has always held and holds now, Christ underwent His passion and death freely, because of the sins of men and out of infinite love, in order that all may reach salvation. It is, therefore, the burden of the Church’s preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.

The family of God here in the Church is united to the Family that is God and it is up to the members of the Church to demonstrate the truth of the Cross and the saving power of Christ. All who search for the greater Truth of God comes to Jesus. The truth of our being servants of God and His being One that the Muslims know can be the beginning of seeing the fullness of truth that affirms life, abundant life (John 10:10), and that ceases to divide.

 

[thegame_786]

That’s not really the case, though. In addition to this idea that we are children of God (which by the way, you should look up in the Bible sometime, i.e., John 1:12; it involves belief in Christ, which you do not have as a Muslim), the Bible contains all kinds of instructions on how to pray and how not to pray. See for instance: Matthew 6:6, Luke 11:2-4, but also Matthew 6:7, Ecclesiastes 5:2, etc.

The best way to pray is to prostate in front of God. I’m certain I’ve read passages in the Bible where this is how Jesus says to worship God although I can’t give quotes. But thats not the point. My point is that as Gods child I can’t be punished for praying to God sincerely even though I am misguided. I can say that about Islam because we have an "evil, imperfect " god. But the christian God is full of love so surely punishment is out of the question. Otherwise it would be fair to say that the Christian God is as evil as the Islamic God.