[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.