Posted on 03/26/2013 6:56:09 AM PDT by NYer
Last week, Pope Francis received a collection of world religious leaders in his first ecumenical and interreligious event. His address to them contained diplomatic niceties and specific expressions of good will aimed at Orthodox, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims.
His remarks to the latter recognized that Muslims “worship the one living and merciful God, and call upon him in prayer.” In this he echoed the 1964 dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium, which gave a nod to “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.”
Now, both Lumen Gentium 16 and Pope Francis’s words have a pastoral rather than doctrinal purpose. Their aim is to build interreligious bridges by generously acknowledging whatever can be found to be true in other faiths—not to make precise pronouncements about their theology. That said, Lumen Gentium is an exercise of the ordinary Magisterium, and even casual statements from a pope (be it this one from Francis or similar ones made by his predecessors) shouldn’t be taken lightly.
So, what does it mean to say that Muslims adore the one God along with us—to say, as can be reasonably drawn from these statements, that Muslims worship the same God as Catholics? We can consider the idea in several senses.
I think we can say with confidence that any monotheist who calls out to the Lord is heard by the Lord, whether it’s a Muslim, a pagan philosopher seeking the God of reason, or a Native American petitioning the Great Spirit. As Lumen Gentium 16 continues, God is not “far distant from those who in shadows and images seek [him].”
Likewise I think we’re on solid ground in saying that the subjective intention of Muslims is to worship the one God—moreover, the one God from the line of Abrahamic revelation. Whether or not their version of that revelation is authentic or correct, that’s what they “profess to hold” to. Furthermore, some of the attributes of the God to whom they address their worship are comparable to the Christian God’s: He is one, merciful, omnipotent, and the judge of the world.
Just as clearly, though, we cannot say that the God in whom Muslims profess to believe is theologically identical to the Christian God. For the most obvious example, their God is a “lonely God,” as Chesterton put it, whereas ours is a Trinity of persons. Beyond that difference, in the divine economy our Gods are also quite different: most pointedly in that ours took human nature to himself and dwelt among us on earth, whereas the Muslim God remains pure transcendence. To Muslims the idea of an incarnation is blasphemy.
And so perhaps we can distinguish between worship of God and belief in him, the former being more about the intent of the worshiper and the latter being more about the object of belief himself. Thus could Gerhard Müller, bishop emeritus of Regensburg and since last year the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, assert in 2007 that Muslims and Christians “do not believe in the same God,” and yet not contradict any magisterial teaching.
Of course, Jews believe in an utterly transcendent and “lonely” God, too; the idea that Jesus was God’s son, Yahweh incarnate, was likewise blasphemous to the Jews of his day. Is their theology as deficient as Islam’s? Ought we to put them in the same category as Muslims: subjectively worshiping the one God but believing in him, as least partly, in error?
Well, at least one difference suggests itself. Muslims “profess” to hold to the faith of Abraham but really don’t; their version of Abrahamic faith is false. (Of course, they believe that our version is the false one, a corruption of the Qur’an.) Jews, on the other hand, know and believe in their God according to his authentic self-revelation—what they have received from him is true, just incomplete. To be fully true, Jewish theology just needs to be perfected by Christian revelation, whereas, although we can identify many truths in it, Islamic theology needs to be broken down, corrected, rebuilt from an authentic foundation.
Now, it can be a bad practice to judge ideas by their sources. But if, as Benedict XVI has said, faith is at root a personal encounter with God, then the authenticity of God’s personal revelation of himself is of the utmost importance. In other words, the source of God-knowledge becomes the very question. We worship and believe in God because and to the extent that we know him. And we know him, above all other reasons, according to how he revealed himself to us.
In this sense, then, I suggest that we can correctly say that Jews worship and believe in a God who is qualitatively truer, closer to the God of Christianity, than the God of Islam. Both Jews and Muslims lay claim to the same revelation, but where Jews have an accurate record of it (and thus of the God it reveals) Muslims have a fictionalized adaptation.
This question of the theological similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam is perhaps more important than it ever has been. With religious folk of all kinds increasingly beset by secularism and moral relativism, we look across creedal lines for friends and allies—comrades-in-arms in the fight for unborn life, traditional marriage and morality, religious rights, and a continued place for believers in the cultural conversation. It can be an encouragement and a temptation, then, to look at Islam and see not warriors of jihad against Arab Christians and a decadent West, but fellow-soldiers of an “ecumenical jihad” against an anti-theist culture.
Can Islam be that reliable ally? (Shameless product plug alert.) That’s the subject of the newest book from Catholic Answers Press: Not Peace but a Sword by Robert Spencer. The evidence he presents will help us understand Islam’s God more clearly, and make us examine more shrewdly the prospects for any future alliance with followers of the Prophet.
Thank you.
I’ve noticed that. Muslims not only get a pass that other non-Catholics don’t get, but they are warmly welcomed by Catholic hierarchy.
Pretty telling, isn’t it?
I am most certainly trying to twist anything around. I’m trying to show you the inconsistency in your thinking. You say you agree that God’s existence does not depend on our belief.. but then you say, “but, of course, I can only speak for myself.” Can’t you see the incoherence here?
sorry, Stuart. I meant to say, “I am most certainly NOT trying to twist anything around.”
Baloney. God is not inn each one of us. He’s only in those who are His children by faith in Him.
If you want a relationship with God,you have to do it His way and that’s found inn Scripture.
You can choose to believe it or not, but it cannot be twisted to accommodate whatever particular beliefs you want to have.
You have to do it God’s way, which means submitting to HIM.
We have raised a generation who , as has been said,...
“Listen with their eyes” and “Thinks with it's feelings”.
But...They have a strong instinct to follow a leader. Mindless “sheep” who have lost the ability to think, and will follow a leader off a cliff.
I don't think he wants to. He seems to be a classic narcissist. He cannot conceive of anything (literally) outside himself. I'm beginning to suspect he doesn't even believe we exist.
Either that, or "he's" someone's Turing experiment.
And there we have it in a nutshell.
You're wrong and no amount of weaseling and evasion and questioning and rationalization will change that.
In order for you to be saved, you are going to have to do what you've been fighting all these years on FR, that there is a God, that He doesn't change, that there are moral absolutes, that you do have to answer to Him for the decisions you make that don''t line up with His.
Man's rejection of God is always based on moral objections.
God’s moral code is the same for all humanity for all time.
It’s not situational ethics,one thing for pone person at one time and something different somewhere or sometime else.
He set forth His moral code in Scripture. You have no choice about what it is. You can only choose to obey it or not and pay the consequences.
If you’re looking for justification of yourself based on some kind of moral relavitism, you aren’t going to find it from God.
‘How does it matter what form God takes in that person’s mind?”
”I do not believe there is a moral absolute that applies to everyone throughout history.”
”People’s actions are... measured by society,.... I believe their standards of morality are instilled in them by God...and judged by men.
“I have no way of proving to you what I believe.”
“I do not believe we establish our own moral code. I believe God establishes it in each of us as He sees fit.”.....”. No point of reference is required...(and again)...”I believe our moral code is instilled in us by God when He creates us..... To me, that means that what I do, is ok in my eyes and in God’s eyes.
“I dont test or measure my moral decisions.”....
“I’m accountable for all my actions here on earth, but I’ve never done anything that led me to believe that I would get in trouble with God.”
“For me, the conscience is the source for right or wrong.”
So Stuart.....comment on this perhaps?
Proverbs 26:12 Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
Proverbs 30:12 There are those who are fclean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.
No one is clean without Jesus cleaning him. Nobody is perfect or sinless and all it takes to condemn man is one sin
ALL have sinned. You are not right before God without the righteousness of Christ imputed to you. It doesn’t matter if you feel like you’re OK.
I do think possible some form of relativism and situational ethics would fall under what Stuart's been expressing is his belief system ....but I'm not so sure he understands that it might....he's been evasive about his source of defining right from wrong other than what his conscious seems to dictate....which isn't a bad thing if he's had good teaching about what is right and wrong.
I agree God has given all men His Moral code ,in the scriptures, and as much within each person when they are created...it is a gift to us, which unfortunately bad teaching along the way can disrupt and even squelch.. But for those who depend on only Conscious it can be destructive as conscious isn't infallible...it doesn't set the standard, it acts on some standard of teaching along the way.
It would be interesting to know what Stuart's upbringing was in the matter of faith, and or what he discovered along the way on his own.
Stuart....Care to enlighten those who are interested?
ok, thank you
Sorry, I’ve just never questioned my conscious.
No, sorry
Yes, I know
Yes, I follow the path that God has given me, thanks
ok, thank you
Heh.
You know, of course, that I could do an unseemly (albeit funny) thing to that phrase. I mention the fact purely for the purpose of informing you (and everyone) that I did not do so, and in fact abstained in each and every way. I do hope that in drawing your attention to that fact, that I may obtain some few points of credit for my abstention (by whichever credit system applies)for use at some future date (which will undoubtedly arrive), wherein my erudite sense of formality is overcome by my somewhat redneck tendencies in the field of humor.
Thank you for your time.
Please proceed forthwith.
Obviously, we think differently.
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