[Questioner] Yeah good morning and thank you.
I've been kind of a bystander, witness, to a long-standing chatter on
Facebook over the question of whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the
same God. And I've yet to hear a good biblical answer to that question.
[Craig] This has become hugely controversial.
Last year Wheaton college, my alma mater,
dismissed one of its faculty members because she said that Muslims and
Christians worship the same God and she was not able to defend her position
apparently or explain it adequately theologically for the college to feel
that they could keep her on the staff.
Well this brought down on the college enormous bad press and heaps of abuse
even many Christian theologians say that the college was wrong, that Muslims and
Christians do worship the same God and that it was incorrect
what the college did. Now I have addressed this issue in one of my
questions of the week on the website
probably about a month or two ago
so if you go to the the website look at the questions of the week for about a
month or two ago
there's one on "Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God." And without wanting to
get too complicated let me say that the way that question is phrased raises all
sorts of difficult philosophical questions about what it means to refer
to the same thing because we can refer to something under a false description.
For example, I could say
that man in the corner drinking a martini is my uncle.
But it turns out that he wasn't drinking a martini it was water and yet I am
referring to the same person under a false description and so the claim is
well maybe Muslims are worshiping the same God but under a false description of
who God is. And that raises in all sorts of philosophical problems of what it
means to refer to the same thing and how do you successfully refer.
I think the question is better reworded by saying is the concept of God in Islam
the same as the concept of God in Christianity.
Do we have the same understanding of God, and there I argued that they are worlds
apart. That the concept of God in Islam and Christianity is very very different.
And one of the principal ways in which they are different is that the Muslim
concept of God, I believe, is morally defective.
It is a morally defective vision of who God is. As the greatest conceivable being
a morally perfect being.
God must be all-loving. And this is exactly what the Bible teaches. The Bible
teaches that God loves sinners,
his love is impartial, it is universal,
it is unconditional, and this is a world of difference from the god of the Quran.
According to the Quran, God does not love sinners. He does not love unbelievers. He
is an enemy to unbelievers. God in the Quran only loves those who first love
him, so that his love rises no higher than the sort of love that Jesus said
tax collectors and sinners exhibit.
They love those who love them and that's the kind of love that the god of the
Quran
exhibits. So the Quran assures us of god's love for the god-fearing and the
good-doers but he has no love for sinners and unbelievers. The Quran says
that God does not love the very people that John 3:16 says God loves so much
that He sent His only Son to die for them!
While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us.
So this is a huge difference between the god of the Quran and the God of the
Bible. The heavenly Father revealed by Jesus loves sinners, loves unbelievers,
wants them to come to Him, His love is universal, impartial, and unconditional
love.
But the god of the Quran, his love is partial, it is selective, and it has
to be earned, it is conditional.
Only those who earn it will receive it. So this is a vastly different conception
of God. So I would agree with those who say that the god of Muhammad is not the
God of Jesus Christ. He is not the God of the Bible. In fact, I would
say that the god of the Quran is a defamation of the heavenly Father
revealed by Jesus.