Worshipping the Same God

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Jan 2016

“Christians and Muslims worship the same God,” said a professor at a Chicago area Christian college.  Wheaton College professor Larycia Hawkins accused the college of trying to fire her for comments she made concerning her beliefs and those of Islam. 

Hawkins was quoted as saying, “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book…And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”  Professor Hawkins was photographed wearing a hijab which she said was a sign of her solidarity with Muslims, whom she felt were persecuted in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting and the terror attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Mali.  Hawkins told reporters last month that her actions were “motived by a desire to live out my faith.”

Wheaton College said it placed Hawkins on administrative leave in December because of theological statements “that seem inconsistent with Wheaton College’s doctrinal convictions, which she voluntarily agreed to support and uphold when she entered into an employment agreement with the college.”

The liberal arts college upholds the principles of Evangelical Christianity.  Hawkins has worked for the college for nine years.

Analysis:

If Professor Hawkins worked at a Catholic college, she might be able to get away with her proclamations and demonstrations of solidarity with Islamism.  However, most Protestant faiths, to the extent that they consider the matter at all, regard Allah as an idol.  The God of Christian Protestantism is no idol.  As is shown through Natural Theology He must exist.  Consequently, on the Protestant view, it is impossible for Christians and Muslims to worship the same God.  Professor Hawkins must be wrong, on the Protestant view.

It is quite true that the position of the Roman Catholic Church is that Muslims and Christians in the generic sense of monotheism worship the same God.  However, no close, serious analysis of the issue, as the Catholic Church is capable of, has been forthcoming from the Vatican to validate the veracity of that position.  For example, by ‘same’ the Church does not specify whether it is same in the sense of numerically, specifically, or generically.

Were the Pope to declare for the Protestant position, there is no telling the fate of Christians who live in Muslim lands.  There may be evangelical, political, and practical reasons for the Roman Catholic Church to hold the position it does, and it would be unprofitable to develop an intellectually rigorous study in support of the position.

Islam denies the divinity of Jesus, though it recognizes Him as a prophet.  The theological purpose of Jesus’s mission on earth remains a mystery to Islamic scholarship.  And Islamic scholarship finds no reason to solve that mystery, partially because they believe that Mohammed was right and there is no need; and partially because it could be dangerous to investigate.

In short, the actual reason that Jesus’s mission on earth remains an unexplored mystery to Islamic scholarship is that Islamic scholarship is not serious scholarship.  Islam having rejected Hellenic reasoning and with it the Law of Non-contradiction, Islamic scholarship lacks the tools - as it lacks the inclination - to find out why Jesus was put on earth by God, as they recognize He was.

Islamic scholarship would have to address the fact that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead.  His crucifixion was a public event, and the fact of his resurrection was a public fact, testified to by many witnesses and accounted in the bible.  The facts of Jesus’s ministry on earth and especially of his resurrection were never recanted by any witnesses even as some of them were tortured to death.

All these facts and events being public, there is more certitude in the resurrection of Jesus than there is in Mohammed being dictated the sentences of the Koran by an angel, which were entirely private events, witnessed by no one.

Given the death pact that exists among Muslims for apostasy, it would be too dangerous for a Muslim to reason his way to a discovery of Jesus’s mission on earth even if he had the intellectual tools to do so.  Nevertheless, it remains a cowardly stain on Islamic scholarship for its failure seriously to reconcile the facts of Jesus Christ with their beliefs concerning Mohammed.

My own view concerning whether or not Muslims and Christians worship the same God differs from that of Protestantism and from main-line Roman Catholic teaching.  On the basis of what Muslims say about Allah, I have demonstrated that the being Muslims worship as Allah cannot be the creator of the universe.  The God of Christianity, on the other hand, is the creator of the universe.  The two beings cannot be the same numerically or specifically, unless the Muslims are mistaken in what they say about Allah.

Muslims, like Christians, are monotheists, holding that there is only one God.  From that perspective, Christians and Muslims are in agreement, and if one is prepared to ignore a lot of details it could be held in a general and attenuated sense that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, as the Roman Catholic Church officially holds.

I am not prepared to ignore those details.  Specifically, when I investigated who Allah was, I found an unmistakeable parallel between the devil that tempted Jesus in the desert and the angel that spoke the sentences of the Koran to Mohammed.  I reached the tentative conclusion that the angel who called himself Gabriel was in fact the devil, and the Allah whom Mohammed and Muslims were to worship was the self-same devil.  The reward the devil offered Jesus was rejected; that same reward was offered Mohammed and his followers and they took it.  Islam is correct that there is only one God, but the being they worship isn’t it.

Much evil is seen in Islam, and much evil has been done for the sake of Islam.  By their work ye shall know them.  The practical testimony of the spread and practices of Islam seem to confirm there is more devil in Islam than God.

Regardless of whether this position is tenable or not, one cannot hold that Christians and Muslims worship numerically or specifically the same God because Christians worship perfect goodness and Muslims (by their own admission) do not.

Professor Hawkins is factually wrong in saying that, like her, Muslims are people “of the book.”  Muslims are not people “of the book.”  The people “of the book” are Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.  The expression “people of the book” was an Islamic invention to differentiate people whose religious beliefs, while monotheist, were antecedent to Islam, and were now superseded.  Being monotheist spared Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians some of the rigors of not being Muslim that were not spared pagans and polytheists.

As an adherent of Evangelicalism, which she is supposed to be as a professor at Wheaton College, Professor Hawkins is wrong to hold that Christians and Muslims worship the same God because, on the Protestant, view they do not.

Professor Hawkins might be able to get away with wearing a hijab and saying things in solidarity with Islam for a while at a Roman Catholic institution, though I suspect not for long.  For before long we will likely hear that Professor Hawkins has fallen so in love with Islam that she converted to that faith.

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