What if the official god of your theology isn’t the one who actually gets his way in your life? In this episode I interact with some commentary on the Wheaton “one god” controversy by philosophers Dr. Edward Feser and Dr. Lydia McGrew, with an assist from John and Paul.
To give you a flavor for their comments, in part Dr. Feser says
…one of the things some readers get hung up on, though, is the word “worship.” They seem to think that if you say that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, then you are insinuating that Christianity and Islam are both salvific, or that the differences between Christian and Muslim theology and ethics are not very important, or something along those lines. But none of that follows at all.
And Dr. Lydia McGrew comments,
It isn’t enough that Muslims think the Being who revealed himself to Abraham also spoke to Mohammad. Truth matters, and since that isn’t true, there is no real historical connection—in the acts of God himself—between the Allah of Islam and the one true God. But there is a real historical connection in the acts of God between Judaism and Christianity.
If I understand her, her answer is that no, Christians and Muslims do not worship the same god, on any interpretation of the question I discuss here. In contrast, Dr. Feser argues that Christians and Muslims are referring to and so in a sense worshiping the same god, but this isn’t to say that their theologies are the same, or nearly so, or that both traditions of worship equally well please God and result in salvation.
I’m on Dr. Feser’s side, but both his and her articles stimulated me to think about the New Testament distinction between one’s official god and one’s actual or functional god. That’s what this episode is about.
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Links for this episode:
- previous trinities posts on the “same god” controversy
- members of the Evangelical Missiological Society weigh in on the one god controversy
- Dr. Ed Feser, “Islam, Christianity, and liberalism again (Updated)“
- Dr. Lydia McGrew
- podcast 122 – 7 Christians on 4 questions in the “same god” controversy
- Christian Identity movements
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- 2 Corinthians 4:4
- biblical unitarian websites
- Today’s thinking music is Ophelia’s Song by grapes.
