[Grem] Do Catholics and Muslims Worship the Same God?

[Emoke Greschik]

March 5, 2012 Do Catholics and Muslims Worship the Same God? Robert Spencer
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/author/robert-spencer>
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/do-catholics-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god
[image:
pope_iman]

*It certainly seems as if we worship the same God. *After all, we call God
by the same name. Arabic-speaking Christians, including Eastern Catholics
such as Maronites and Melkites, use the word “Allah” for the God of the
Bible.

*But are they the same God?*

The question is not answered by simple linguistic identity, as
evidenced by *St.
Paul’s complaint to the Corinthians: “For if some one comes and preaches
another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different
spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from
the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough”* (2 Corinthians
11:4). The “other Jesus” that was being preached among the Corinthians was
not a different person of the same name, but a view of Jesus of Nazareth
that was so radically different from Paul’s that he termed it “another
Jesus” altogether.

In the same way, it is possible that *the Qur’an and Islamic tradition
present a picture of God so radically different from that of the Bible and
Catholic tradition* that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to
maintain the proposition that they are the same Being in both traditions,
apart from some minor creedal differences.

But wait a minute. Don’t Catholics *have* to believe that Christians and
Muslims worship the same God, because the Second Vatican Council says so?
The Dogmatic Constitution on *the Church tells us that the “plan of
salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first
place amongst these there are the Mohammedans, who, professing to hold the
faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the
last day will judge mankind.*” (*Lumen Gentium* 16)

It is almost more important to clarify *what this text does not say* than
what it does. The first statement, that “the plan of salvation also
includes” Muslims, has led some – mostly critics of the Church – to assert
that the Council Fathers are saying that Muslims are saved, and thus need
not be preached the Gospel, as they’ve already got just as much of a claim
on Heaven as do Christians.

This is obviously false. This statement on Muslims comes as part of a
larger passage that begins by speaking of “those who have not yet received
the Gospel” and concludes by reaffirming* “the command of the Lord, ‘Preach
the Gospel to every creature.’*” It speaks of the possibility of salvation
for those who “through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of
Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by
their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of
conscience.”

*Clearly, then, Muslims figure in the “plan of salvation” not in the sense
that they are saved as Muslims,* that is, by means of Islamic observance,
but insofar as they strive to be attentive to and to obey the authentic
voice of the Creator whom they acknowledge and who speaks to them through
the dictates of their conscience.

*This suggests that a Muslim who refrains from suicide bombing because he
understands that it is cold-blooded murder has a better chance to be saved,
and is more clearly attuned to the promptings of the Creator within whose
plan of salvation *he finds himself, *than **does a Muslim who blows
himself up in a crowd of infidels because the Qur’an promises a place in
Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah (9:111).*

The Conciliar statement also wisely adds the caveat, all too often ignored
by the Church’s critics, that “Mohammedans” (*Musulmanos*) are “professing”
to hold the faith of Abraham. Whether or not they actually hold it is
arguable, but the Vatican Council is only noting that they claim for their
faith that it is that of Abraham, without discussing whether or not Islam
actually is an authentically Abrahamic faith.

Likewise widely misinterpreted, or at least given a weight that it was
clearly never meant to bear, is the subsequent affirmation that Muslims
“along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will
judge mankind.” Many see in this also an assertion that the Gospel need not
be preached to Muslims, or that they are already saved, for they adore the
one and merciful God. Many Catholics, including writers of some prominence,
have asserted that Vatican II, and the *Catechism of the Catholic Church*
that quotes it, teach that Catholics and Muslims worship the same God, and
then proceed as if this establishes more than it actually does, or as if it
were obvious that the Council was thus forbidding a critical stance toward
Islam or concern about Islamic supremacist advances in Europe and the U.S.

In this vein the great Catholic writer and apologist Peter Kreeft writes
disapprovingly that “many Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, do not
believe what the Church says about Islam (for example, in Vatican II and
the new *Catechism*): that Allah is not another God, that we worship the
same God.” He leaves unexplained, however, what he thinks that means
exactly, or what responsibilities or courses of action it sets out for
Catholics.

The Council document is actually saying perhaps less than Kreeft and others
of like mind would wish it to be saying. In the first place it is clearly
affirming that *Muslims, like Christians, are monotheists*, which is a
rather commonplace observation that has been noted numerous times over the
fourteen centuries of Islam’s existence. *As far back as 1076, Pope St.
Gregory VII wrote to Anzir, the king of Mauritania, that “we believe and
confess one God, although in different ways*.”

What it is asserting beyond that bare fact, if anything, can best be
ascertained by considering the passage in light of those “different ways”
to which Pope Gregory alluded. It is noteworthy that Pope Gregory doesn’t
say that the one God that he and King Anzir both worship is the same God.
All* he says is that both he and Anzir worship one God; in other words,
they’re both monotheists.* And the Second Vatican Council is not actually
making a definitive statement on that issue. It is saying that both
Catholics and Muslims adore the one and merciful God, and while that
clearly does indicate a certain commonality, there can be no doubt about
one thing it certainly* doesn’t mean: that Muslims and Catholics adore the
same God *in every particular, *for **Catholics do not believe that
Muhammad was a prophet or the Qur’an is God’s Word, and Muslims do not
believe that Jesus is the Son of God or the Savior of the world, or that
God is Triune*.

The same may be said of Jews, of course: they, along with Muslims, reject
the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the divinity of Christ, and yet clearly*
Catholics and Jews worship the same God. This, however, is because
Christianity began as a form of Judaism and is in a certain sense an
extension of it, affirming faith in the same Old Testament Scriptures, the
same prophets, and many points of belief.*

These things cannot be said about Islam, which considers itself to be less
an extension of Christianity than a rejection and correction of it, such
that Muslims even reject the Old and New Testament Scriptures as
corruptions.

In declaring that both Muslims and Catholics adore the one and merciful
God, the Council obviously did not mean that Muslims and Catholics regard
that God in exactly the same way, or that the differences were
insignificant. The Council is silent on the question of whether or not the
Muslims’ adoration is blind or informed. So *what, then, is the
Council a*ctually
saying?

*Vatican II was a large-scale attempt to restore relationships that had
been broken for centuries and build new bridges of trust *where groups had
been divided from the Church by centuries of mistrust, suspicion and
outright conflict. Consequently it emphasized common ground rather than
differences, unlike every ecumenical council that preceded it. No case,
however, can be made that its statement about the shared adoration of the
one and merciful God in any way mitigated the Church’s truth claim or sense
of its own responsibility to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, any more
than shared monotheism removes that responsibility in regard to Protestants
or anyone else, for that responsibility is reiterated in the same passage.

It is not even certain that the Council is saying that Muslims and
Catholics adore the *same *“one and merciful God.” Muslims certainly
believe that their one and merciful God is the same One whom Christians
(and Jews) worship, for the Qur’an tells them so (29:46). And whether they
know it or not, the only God actually available to receive their adoration
and hear their prayers is the Christian one. However, the differences in
how Muslims and Catholics conceive of the one and merciful God lead to the
possibility that while Muslims believe that they are worshiping the same
God that Catholic worship, the teachings of Islam itself, despite *the
Qur’an*’s insistence that Muslims worship the same God as do Christians and
Jews, actually* paints a picture of a God who is substantially different
from the God of the Bible and the Catholic Faith.*

*It is noteworthy* in this connection *that the Council speaks of “Muslims”
(Musulmanos), not “Islam,” adoring with Catholics the one and merciful God.* It
is a manifest fact that Muslim people believe that their God and the
Christians’ God is the same. It is by no means as clear that the teachings
of Islam itself about God offer a picture of the same Being who is
delineated in orthodox Catholic theology. Although Arabic-speaking
Christians generally use the word “Allah” for the God of the Bible – the
same Arabic word used for the God of the Qur’an – this *identity of name
does not require that the two Beings referred to in each book are one and
the same. It may be so, but it is not established on the basis of the
Qur’an’s declaration, or of the identity in nomenclature*.

In any case, this short passage from *Lumen Gentium* is burdened down by a
weight of assumptions. When Kreeft says that “many Christians, both
Protestant and Catholic, do not believe what the Church says about Islam
(for example, in Vatican II and the new *Catechism*): that Allah is not
another God, that we worship the same God,” he apparently assumes that to
affirm that Muslims and Christians worship the same God establishes an
important kinship between the two groups, and may even indicate that Islam
in itself is a fundamentally good thing, such that Catholics should
encourage Islamic faith and Muslim piety. Kreeft, in fact, espoused such a
view in a debate with me.

These assumptions, however, do not proceed as a matter of necessity or
inevitability from the Conciliar text. It would do no outrage to that text
if t*he differences between the Islamic and Catholic views of the one and
merciful God, and between Islam and Catholicism in general, were such that
Catholics would not wish to encourage Muslim faith or fervor.* One may
therefore take a jaundiced view of the prospects for Catholic/Muslim
cooperation and dialogue without dissenting from the Council’s teaching.

At the same time, even if the Council Fathers did mean to affirm that
Catholics and Muslims worship the same God, this would have little
significance *for the contemporary ecclesiastical or political situation,
in which Muslims are oppressing and killing Christian believers in several
countries without regard for the Qur’an’s insistence that “our Allah and
your Allah is one.*” And as for the assumption that the Council meant to
speak of a special kinship between Catholics and Muslims, Catholics have a
moral obligation to be charitable to all people, regardless of whether or
not they believe in the same God we do. Genuine charity includes a concern
for justice.

*The second Vatican II reference to Islam* comes in the Declaration on
Non-Christian Religions, *Nostra Aetate*:

*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.

While this is a bit more descriptive about Muslim belief than was *Lumen
Gentium*, as it includes the Islamic classification of Jesus as a
non-divine prophet and Islam’s respect for the Virgin Mary, it adds nothing
in terms of substance to the Dogmatic Constitution’s statements about
Muslims.* Here again we see that the Muslim linkage of Islam to Abraham is
presented not as fact, but as something Muslims affirm, or “take pleasure”
in affirming. Here again we see that they adore the one, merciful God; in
other words, that they’re monotheists.*

*That is all that Vatican II is really saying about Muslims: they’re
monotheists, they say they belong to the religion of Abraham, and they
revere Jesus, but not as the Son of God, and His Blessed Mother.*

The tone is very different, but not much in terms of substance is added in
earlier Church statements on Muslims and Islam. And as Pope Benedict XVI
has reminded us, Vatican II is not a super-council that supersedes all
previous Church teaching; rather, its teachings must be understood in light
of tradition. When it comes to Islam, the consistent focus in earlier
statements about Islam is generally not on what Muslims believe, but on
Islam as a heresy, and on the hostility of Muslims to Christians and
Christianity. In that vein, Pope Benedict XIV in 1754 reaffirmed an earlier
prohibition on Albanian Catholics giving their children “Turkish or
Mohammedan names” in baptism by pointing out that not even Protestants or
Orthodox were stooping so low: “none of the schismatics and heretics has
been rash enough to take a Mohammedan name, and unless your justice abounds
more than theirs, you shall not enter the kingdom of God.”

Pope Callixtus III, in a somewhat similar spirit, in 1455 vowed to “exalt
the true Faith, and to extirpate the diabolical sect of the reprobate and
faithless Mahomet in the East.” *Neither this statement nor that of Lumen
Gentium rise to the level of a dogmatic definition, but is it possible for
Islam to be a “diabolical sect” that at the same time adores the “one and
merciful God”? *Certainly, for it is always possible that their adoration
of the one and merciful God may be wrongly directed, marred by wrong
emphases and outright falsehoods.

Nonetheless, *many Catholics would argue* that the statements of Benedict
XIV and Callixtus III (and others like them from other popes) reflect a
very different age from our own, and that Vatican II’s statements reflect a
more mature spirit, as well as the charity toward others that Christians
should properly exhibit. And that may well be so, although it must be noted
that even though they are only fifty years old, *the statements of Vatican
II on Islam reflect the outlook of a vanished age no less than do those of
the earlier popes. For in the 1960s, secularism and Westernization were
very much the order of the day in many areas of the Islamic world.* It was,
for example, unusual in Cairo in the 1960s to see a woman wearing a hijab,
an Islamic headscarf mandated by Muhammad’s command that a woman when
appearing in public should cover everything except her face and hands. Now,
on the other hand, one may walk down the streets of the same city and be
surprised to see a woman who is *not* so attired.

This change has not been solely external. The hijabs in Cairo are but one
visible sign of *a revolution that has swept the Islamic world, or more
properly, a revival. Islamic values have been revived, including *not only
rigor in dress codes but *also a hostility toward Western ideas and
principles.* The “Arab Spring” uprisings have led to a reassertion of the
political aspects of Islam, as opposed to Western political models, all
across the Middle East. Western ideas of democracy and pluralism that were
fashionable in elite circles all over the Islamic world in the first half
of the twentieth century have fallen into disrepute.

One consequence of all this is that *the Islamic world that the Fathers of
Vatican II had in mind is rapidly disappearing. *The words of Vatican II on
Muslims must be accorded the respect that all Church teaching merits, and
obeyed to the degree that obedience is owed to all magisterial statements.
These statements must be evaluated, however, within the context of their
times. The documents of Vatican II are no less a product of their age than
the statements of Benedict XIV and Callixtus III are a product of theirs.
Just as the age of crusading knights has vanished, so also the age of a
dominant secular West striding confidently into what it terms the “modern”
age is rapidly vanishing. *This is not to devalue or denigrate the Council
in any way, but simply to see it as what it is, no more, no less: an
enunciation of certain eternal truths, to be sure, but within the context
of a number of unexamined and yet decisively influential core beliefs and
assumptions about the nature of the world and of mankind.*

Ultimately, while it may always be the Christian’s responsibility to reach
out with respect and esteem to Muslims, the hostility that the Islamic
world had always displayed toward Christendom was never less in evidence
than it was in the 1960s, and so a statement of friendship was never more
appropriate, either before or since. That situation does not prevail today,
a fact that has a great many implications for the prospects for dialogue as
well: *Western-minded Muslims who have a favorable attitude toward the
Catholic Church no longer have nearly the influence among their
coreligionists that they once had, at least in the Islamic world.*

*That is not to say, however, that we have returned to the world of
Benedict XIV and Callixtus III, when Catholics understood that
Mohammedanism, as it was then popularly styled (to the indignation of
Muslims themselves) was a heresy, steeped in falsehood and perhaps even
diabolical, and dedicated to the destruction of the Church and the
conversion or subjugation of Christians.* We are centuries away, and
separated by chasms of cultural assumptions, from the world in which it was
even possible to think of one’s faith as having enemies and needing to be
defended. Catholics of the modern age have long assumed that that world was
gone forever, and there is some reason to believe that it is indeed.

But *with Muslim persecution of Christians escalating worldwide, there is
also considerable evidence that that rough old world is returning, and may
never have been as far away as it seemed to be.*

Tagged as Allah <http://www.crisismagazine.com/tags/allah>, Catholic Church
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/tags/catholic-church>, Islam
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/tags/islam>, Robert Spencer
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/tags/robert-spencer>
  Share on tumblr
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/do-catholics-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god#>
Share
on facebook
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/do-catholics-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god#>
Share
on twitter
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/do-catholics-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god#>
Share
on email
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/do-catholics-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god#>
More
Sharing Services
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/do-catholics-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god#>
240
<http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/do-catholics-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god#>
  By Robert Spencer <http://www.crisismagazine.com/author/robert-spencer>

Robert Spencer is the author of several critically acclaimed books about
Islam, including the New York Times bestsellers *The Truth about Muhammad*
and *The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)*. He is a
columnist for *FrontPage Magazine* and the director of Jihad Watch.
--------- következő rész ---------
Egy csatolt HTML ĂĄllomĂĄny ĂĄt lett konvertĂĄlva...
URL: http://turul.kgk.uni-obuda.hu/pipermail/grem/attachments/20150712/7138704b/attachment.html