Judaism in Christian preaching often addresses the historical and spiritual roots of the Christian faith, highlighting the Jewish background of Jesus and the early church. Illustrations typically use images of Jewish traditions, festivals like Passover, and the tension between Jewish identity and Christian evangelism, underscoring the fulfillment of Old Testament promises in Christ (Romans 1:16, Romans 11:26).
Rabbi Marc Gellman leads Long Island’s Temple Beth Torah, a liberal Reformed synagogue. He says, “Really, when you come right down to it, there are only four basic prayers. Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow!
“Wow! are prayers of praise and wonder at the creation.
“Oops! is asking for forgiveness.
“Gimme! is a request or a petition.
“Thanks! is expressing gratitude.
“That’s the entire Judeo-Christian doxology.”
Lon Solomon leads the McLean Bible Church. To reach its fifteen-thousand members, who include Senator Jim Inhofe, Kenneth Starr, and Joe Gibbs, the church is adding ten satellite campuses. He found God in a science class and continues to see Him in his birth-defected daughter. He said in an interview for Esquire magazine:
My search began in earnest in 1969, when I first started taking lots and lots of drugs. I smoked a lot of dope. I took a lot of LSD. And it culminated in 1972, when I made the decision to give my life to Christ, which, as a Jew, was a real risk. I imagine some people thought I was still on drugs. I still consider myself a Jew.
Convert is a really ugly word in the Jewish vocabulary. I didn’t convert. I became the way I was supposed to be.
When I was a junior in high school, I was invited to a national science seminar, six weeks at Virginia Tech. It was there that I studied enzymes. I learned that there were thousands of these proteins in the body to speed up chemical reactions, and they’re all code-specific, meaning that if one doesn’t work, another enzyme correspondingly won’t pick up and do its job. The complexity of that system was so overwhelming that I’ll never forget walking back after class and saying to myself, There has to be a God. I knew nothing of this God at that point.
I know that there are scientific conclusions that some people believe contradict the Bible -- the age of the Earth and the fossil record, for instance. I believe that these conclusions are wrong.
My daughter Jill was born perfectly normal. At three months she started having seizures, and they got worse. Eventually she lost the ability to speak. She’s probably had five thousand grand mals or more, and has serious brain injury. She’s sixteen now, and nonverbal. It took nine years, but finally the doctors figured out that she had mitochondrial disease. The mitochondria are the parts of your cells that produce energy, and hers don’t work right. Her brain doesn’t get enough energy. She used to have six or eight seizures a day. Once, she had nineteen. We never slept through the night.
My daughter has taught me humility. She requires constant, permanent care. She’s not fully potty trained. She has simple pleasures. Taking a walk, picking up sticks, is what she loves to do. Riding in our van and looking out the window gives her great pleasure. I think we get so caught up in the complexity and the speed of things that we forget that that doesn’t bring real happiness. My daughter is amazingly happy. She doesn’t know she’s retarded, that she’s disabled. She needs love. She has been Walden to me, in reminding me what is important. It’s not having a BlackBerry. Or having your name in Esquire magazine. It’s serving somebody. God has given Brenda and me the gift of serving Jill, who will be one year old forever. At first I despised this fate and viewed it as a curse. Now I know that it is a privilege.
I’ve heard of these people who go down the white tunnel. I’m reminded of Shrek, where Donkey says, If you see a long white tunnel, don’t go down it. I don’t know if angels come and get you like Meet Joe Black or what. I’d like to think that maybe the Lord Jesus himself would come and get me.
I don’t have the slightest idea what heaven looks like. But I am convinced that when I get to heaven, Jill is going to be whole, and she’s going to say, “That’s my dad.” I will hear her voice.
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Interviewed by Mark Warren, October 16, 2008
In 1927 Cecil B. DeMille produced the silent movie “The King of Kings” about the life of Jesus. It was shown all over the world. One of those who saw it was a Polish man living in Danzig (today Gdansk) named William E. Wallner. Wallner was so moved by the film he decided to devote his life to Christian ministry.
By 1939, Wallner was leading a Lutheran parish in Prague. Shortly after Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, a doctor in Wallner’s parish was sent to a Nazi concentration camp. The doctor was a Jewish convert to Christianity and he encouraged his fellow prisoners “to die bravely, with faith in their hearts.” As a result, the doctor became a target of Gestapo officers.
Although struck with an iron rod until one of his arms had to be amputated, the doctor would not be quieted. Finally, “one Gestapo officer beat the doctor’s head against a stone wall until blood was streaming down his face.” Holding a mirror before the doctor, the Gestapo officer sneered: “Take a look at yourself. Now you look like your Jewish Christ.”
Lifting his remaining hand up, the doctor exclaimed, “Lord [Jesus], never in my life have I received such honor — to resemble You.” Those would be his last words on Earth.
Distraught by the doctor’s proclamation, the Gestapo officer sought out Wallner that night. Could Pastor Wallner help him, free him from the terrible burden of his guilt?
After praying with him, Wallner advised, “Perhaps God let you kill that good man to bring you to the foot of the Cross, where you can help others.” The Gestapo officer returned to the concentration camp. And through the aid of Wallner and the Czech underground, he worked to free many Jews over the years that followed.
On July 30, 1957, Wallner met with DeMille and spoke about the impact “The King of Kings” had on his life and all who came in contact with him. Wallner ended his account to DeMille by declaring: “If it were not for ‘The King of Kings,’ I would not be a Lutheran pastor, and 350 Jewish children would have died in the ditches.”
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Adapted from the article “The Gospel According to Hollywood: Warner Brothers and Cecil B. DeMille have led countless people to Christianity,” by Mr. John A. Murray, headmaster of Fourth Presbyterian School in Potomac, Maryland. Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2011.
Rabbi Marc Gellman leads Long Island’s Temple Beth Torah, a liberal Reformed synagogue. He says, “Really, when you come right down to it, there are only four basic prayers. Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow!
“Wow! are prayers of praise and wonder at the creation.
“Oops! is asking for forgiveness.
“Gimme! is a request or a petition.
“Thanks! is expressing gratitude.
“That’s the entire Judeo-Christian doxology.”
Though Jews today differ tremendously on abortion (also not surprising, since they also differ tremendously on all manner of theological, liturgical, moral, and political issues), historically, the position is much clearer. Except to save the life of the mother, Judaism has historically opposed abortion.
The Jewish position goes back to Genesis 9:6. Because this is the record of God’s instructions to Noah after the Flood, many Jewish scholars have understood this verse to be binding on all humanity. While modern Christian Bibles such as the ESV translate the verse as, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for man is made in the image of God,” Jewish scholars who comment on this passage suggest that the text actually says, “Whoever sheds the blood of man within man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man.” Rabbis who understood the text to read “man within man” believe that this teaching refers to an unborn child. Thus, these scholars argued for a universal prohibition of abortion for all of Noah’s descendants, Jews and Gentiles alike.
In Jewish law, the unborn is recognized as nearly a full-fledged human being, but not quite. Consequently, it was considered a sin to deliberately harm a fetus, but doing so did not carry the full penalty associated with harming someone already born. In Exodus, a man who strikes a woman and causes her to give birth was not guilty of murder but had to pay a financial penalty. While this could refer simply to a premature but live birth, to the rabbis, this referred to miscarriage or stillbirth. They treated this loss as more of a property crime than a murder, despite the unborn being made in the image of God. (Exodus 21:22-25)
Similarly, if a woman’s pregnancy threatens her life, the fetus was to be considered “one who is pursuing another” to kill her. Jewish law permits one to kill a pursuer to save the life of the one pursued, and hence abortion is permissible to save the mother’s life if directly threatened by the pregnancy. If the baby’s head had emerged, however, the baby was given the same moral status as the mother and, thus, could not be killed.
Since Judaism refuses to assign differing values to life, Orthodox rabbis authorized to decide matters of Jewish law rejected abortion for fetal abnormalities or deformities. Historically, then, Judaism opposed abortion under normal circumstances but permitted it in a very limited number of situations, primarily the saving of the mother’s life. For example, the great medieval rabbi Maimonides permitted abortion only if the pregnancy “definitely and without question” endangered the life of the mother. This was the nearly universal view within Judaism until less than a century ago.
Today, some modern Orthodox Jewish scholars permit abortion to save the life of the mother, even if the fetus is not the direct cause of the threat to the mother’s life. Others extend permission further to protect the mother’s physical or mental health; some to pregnancies caused by forbidden sexual relations such as adultery, rape, or incest; and some, a minority, to severe and proven fetal abnormalities.
These are not universal concessions, however. Therefore, most Orthodox Jewish scholars advocate making such decisions on a case-by-case basis rather than establishing general rules for handling these situations. Abortion is understood differently within the Conservative and Reform branches of Judaism.
The Conservative branch of Jews, unlike the Orthodox Jews, generally follows a somewhat looser interpretation of these guidelines. In 1983, leading Conservative rabbis issued a statement permitting abortion to prevent severe physical or psychological harm to the mother or in the case of extreme fetal abnormalities. These were essentially the same guidelines already adopted by Reform Judaism in 1958, which were then modified in 1985 to specify that psychological reasons included rape and incest. At the same time, however, most Reform rabbis opposed abortion on demand, abortion for trivial reasons, or abortion because of family hardship.
Therefore, using Judaism as a counterexample to the Christian position that life is sacred from the moment of conception is a red herring, and ignores the real limitations placed on abortion within historic Judaism. While Conservative and Reform Jews do support legal access to abortion, they have only done so recently and despite their moral and religious views, not because of them.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
The ancient rabbinic text is clear about the punishment for those who twisted sacred law and misled the people of Israel.
Offenders would be stoned and then hung by their hands from two pieces of wood connected to form a “T.” The Talmud once included this example from the Sanhedrin:
"On the eve of Passover they hung Jesus of Nazareth,” said the
passage, which was censored in the 16th century to evade the
wrath of Christians. “The herald went out before him for 40 days
saying, 'Jesus goes forth to be stoned, because he has practiced
magic, enticed and led astray Israel. Anyone who knows anything
in his favor, let him come and declare concerning him.’ And they
found nothing in his favor."
If armies of Jewish and Christian scholars insist on arguing about Mel Gibson's explosive movie “The Passion of The Christ,” it would help if they were candid and started dealing with the hard passages in Jewish texts as well as the Christian scriptures.
At least, that's what David Klinghoffer thinks.
The Orthodox Jewish writer -- whose forthcoming book is titled “Why the Jews Rejected Christ” -- believes these lines from the Talmud are as troubling as any included in the Christian Gospels. They are as disturbing as any image Gibson might include in his controversial epic.
The Talmudic text seems clear. Jesus clashed with Jewish leaders, debating them on the meaning of their laws. They hated him. Many wanted him dead.
It is possible, Klinghoffer said, to interpret these documents as saying that Jesus' fate rested entirely with the Jewish court. The use of language such as “enticed and led astray” indicated that Jesus may have been charged with leading His fellow Jews to worship false gods.
There are more details in this confusing drama. Writing in 12th-century Egypt, the great Jewish sage Maimonides summed up the ancient texts.
“Jesus of Nazareth,” he proclaims, in his Letter to Yemen, “... impelled people to believe that he was a prophet sent by God to clarify perplexities in the Torah, and that he was the Messiah that was predicted by each and every seer. He interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment, to the abolition of all its commandments and to the violation of its prohibitions.
“The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him.”
Is that it? What role did the Romans play? In terms of historic fact, Klinghoffer emphasized, it's almost impossible to find definitive answers for such questions. But the purpose of the Jewish oral traditions that led to the Talmud was to convey religious belief, not necessarily historical facts.
“If you really must ask, 'Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?’ then you can only conclude that both the Gospels and the Talmud agree that the Jewish leaders did not have the power to execute Him,” Klinghoffer said.
“Did they influence the event? The religious texts suggest that they did, the historic texts suggest that they did not. It's hard to know. ... But if Gibson is an anti-Semite, then to be consistent you would have to say that so was Maimonides.”
Obviously, Klinghoffer is not spreading this information in order to fan the flames of hatred. His goal, he said, is to provoke Jewish leaders in cities such as New York and Los Angeles to strive harder to understand the views of traditional Protestants and Catholics. And it's time for liberal Christians to spend as much time talking with Orthodox Jews as with liberal Jews.
It's time for everyone to be more honest, he said.
“I don't see anything that is to be gained for Judaism by going out of our way to antagonize a Mel Gibson or to antagonize as many traditional Christians as we possibly can. I think we have been yelling 'Fire!’ in a crowded theater,” Klinghoffer said.
“To put it another way, I don't think it's very wise for a few Jewish leaders to try to tell millions of Christians what they are supposed to believe. Would we want some Christians to try to edit our scriptures and to tell us what we should believe?”
*
A statement made by a professor at a leading evangelical college has become a flashpoint in a controversy that really matters. In explaining why she intended to wear a traditional Muslim hijab over the holiday season in order to symbolize solidarity with her Muslim neighbors, the professor asserted that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
Is this true?
The answer to that question depends upon a distinctly Christian and clearly biblical answer to yet another question: Can anyone truly worship the Father while rejecting the Son?
The Christian’s answer to that question must follow the example of Christ. Jesus himself settled the question when he responded to Jewish leaders who confronted him after he had said “I am the light of the world.” When they denied him, Jesus said, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (John 8:19). Later in that same chapter, Jesus used some of the strongest language of his earthly ministry in stating clearly that to deny him is to deny the Father.
Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God. Christians worship the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and no other god. We know the Father through the Son, and it is solely through Christ’s atonement for sin that salvation has come. Salvation comes to those who confess with their lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in their hearts that God has raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9). The New Testament leaves no margin for misunderstanding. To deny the Son is to deny the Father.
To affirm this truth is not to argue that non-Christians, our Muslim neighbors included, know nothing true about God or to deny that the three major monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — share some major theological beliefs. All three religions affirm that there is only one God and that he has spoken to us by divine revelation. All three religions point to what each claims to be revealed scriptures. Historically, Jews and Christians and Muslims have affirmed many points of agreement on moral teachings. All three theological worldviews hold to a linear view of history, unlike many Asian worldviews that believe in a circular view of history.
And yet, when we look more closely, even these points of agreement begin to break down. Christian trinitarianism is rejected by both Judaism and Islam. Muslims deny that Jesus Christ is the incarnate and eternal Son of God and go further to deny that God has a son. Any reader of the New Testament knows that this was the major point of division between Christianity and Judaism. The central Christian claim that Jesus is Israel’s promised Messiah and the divine Son become flesh led to the separation of the church and the synagogue as is revealed in the Book of Acts.
There is historical truth in the claim of “three Abrahamic religions” because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all look to Abraham as a principal figure and model of faith. But this historical truth is far surpassed in importance by the fact that Jesus explicitly denied that salvation comes merely by being merely one of “Abraham’s children” (John 8:39-59). He told the Jewish leaders who rejected him that their rejection revealed that they were not Abraham’s true sons and that they did not truly know God.
Christians do not deny that Muslims know some true things about God. As a matter of fact, in Romans 1:19-20 Paul explains that all people have some real knowledge of God by general revelation, so that they are without excuse. Speaking at Mars Hill in Athens in Acts 17, Paul argued that even some of the Greeks’ own philosophers and poets gave evidence of a rudimentary knowledge of God — but this was not a saving knowledge, and the Apostle was brokenhearted when he saw the Athenians at worship.
In making her claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, the professor claimed the authority of Pope Francis, and since Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church has become ever more explicit in its teaching that salvation can come without a conscious and explicit faith in Christ. This is simply not an option for evangelical Christians committed to the authority of Scripture alone and to the Gospel as defined in the New Testament.
Francis J. Beckwith, a leading Catholic apologist and philosopher, defended the claim that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. At one point, Beckwith argued that two people could have differing knowledge of Thomas Jefferson while knowing the same Thomas Jefferson as the third President of the United States. He continued: “In the same way, Abraham and Moses did not believe that God is a Trinity, but St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Billy Graham do. Does that mean that Augustine, Aquinas, and Graham do not worship the same God as Abraham and Moses? Again, of course not.”
But this line of argument evades the entire structure of promise and fulfillment that links the Old Testament and the New Testament. Abraham and Moses could not have defined the doctrine of the Trinity while they were on earth, but they believed that God would be faithful to all of his promises, and those promises were fulfilled only and fulfilled perfectly in Christ. And, going back to John 8:56-58, Jesus said: “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad ... Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
Evangelical Christians understand that, theologically, there is a genetic link between Judaism and Christianity. That is why Christians must always be humbled by the fact that we have been grafted onto the promises first made to Israel. In terms of both history and theology, there is no genetic link between Christianity and Islam. The Qur’an claims that to confess Jesus Christ as the divine Son and the second person of the Trinity is to commit blasphemy against Allah.
Hard times come with hard questions, and our cultural context exerts enormous pressure on Christians to affirm common ground at the expense of theological differences. But the cost of getting this question wrong is the loss of the Gospel. Christians affirm the image of God in every single human being and we must obey Christ as we love all people everywhere as our neighbor. Love of neighbor also demands that we tell our neighbor the truth concerning Christ as the only way to truly know the Father.
We must also understand that the most basic issue is the one Jesus answered with absolute clarity. One cannot deny the Son and truly worship the Father. There is no question that the Muslim is our neighbor, but there is no way to remain faithful to Scripture and the gospel and then claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
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"Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?" by Albert Mohler • December 1, 2013 • Decision Magazine
Does God care what we call Him? Do Muslims and Christians worship the same god? These are questions many Christians are asking these days, and for good reason.
For some time now, feminist theologians and a host of others have suggested that Christians should adopt new names for God. One denomination went so far as to affirm names like “Giver, Gift and Giving” in place of the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” to be used in worship. Feminist theologians have demanded that masculine pronouns and names for God be replaced with female or gender-neutral terms. But to change the name of God is to redefine the God we reference. Changing the name of God is no small matter.
As a matter of fact, God takes His name very seriously, and the Ten Commandments include the command that we must not take the name of the Lord in vain. We are to use the names God has given for Himself, and we are to recognize that God takes His name seriously because He desires to be rightly known by His human creatures. We cannot truly know Him if we do not even know His name.
Moses understood this. When he encountered the call of God that came from the burning bush, Moses asked God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13). God answered Moses, “I Am who I Am” (Exodus 3:14). God told Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations” (Exodus 3:15).
As these verses make clear, we are not to tamper with God’s name. We are to use the names whereby God has named Himself, and we are to recognize that any confusion about the name of God will lead to confusion about the nature of God, if not to idolatry.
Christians must keep this central principle from the Bible constantly in mind as we consider some of the most urgent questions we face in the world today. We must certainly have this principle in mind when we think about Islam.
Several years ago, a bishop in the Netherlands attracted controversy when he argued that Christians should call God “Allah” in order to lower theological tensions. He also argued that calling God “Allah” would be commonplace in Christian churches within a century and that this would lead to a synthesis of Islam and Christianity.
More recently, an Islamic court in Malaysia ruled that only Muslims can use the name “Allah” in print publications. “The usage of the word will cause confusion in the community,” the chief judge ruled. Oddly enough, Christians may well agree with this Islamic judge. To call God “Allah” is to invite confusion.
In the Bible, God reveals Himself to us in many names. These names are His personal property. We did not invent these names for God. To the contrary, God revealed these names as His own.
We have no right to modify or to revise these names — much less to reject them. Jesus Christ made this abundantly clear. In the simplest way imaginable, Jesus teaches us to know God as Father, and to use this name in prayer. The Lord’s Prayer begins with the words, “Our Father, who is in heaven.” By the grace that God has shown us in Christ, we can truly know Him as Father.
Muslims do not speak of God as their heavenly Father. In the Islamic faith, Allah is not only a different name for god; the deity it designates is far more impersonal than the God of the Bible. Father — the very name that Jesus gave us as the designated name for use in prayer — is a name that simply does not fit Allah as depicted in the Quran.
Furthermore, Muslims claim that Allah has no son. This represents a head-on collision between the God of the Bible and Allah. For, as the Bible makes clear, the one and only true God is most perfectly revealed as the Father of the Son, Jesus Christ. In the Gospel of John, Jesus repeatedly teaches that no one has truly known the Father, except by the Son. In one of the most clarifying verses in the New Testament, Jesus declared Himself to be “the way, and the truth, and the life,” adding, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Because Muslims deny that God has a son, they explicitly reject any Trinitarian language. From the very starting point, Islam denies what Christianity takes as its central truth claim: the fact that Jesus Christ is the only begotten of the Father. If Allah has no son, then Allah is not the God who reveals Himself through the Son. How then can calling God “Allah” not lead to anything but confusion — and worse?
Islam teaches that the doctrine of the Trinity is blasphemous. But the Christian faith is essentially and irreducibly Trinitarian. The Bible reveals that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God. Jesus is not merely a prophet, as acknowledged by Muslims, He is God in human flesh. This is precisely what Islam rejects.
The Trinitarian language is the language of the Bible, and it is essential to Christianity. Indeed, the Christian faith points to Christ and announces that we can only know the Father through the Son. Confusing the God of the Bible with Allah of the Quran is not only a mistake, it is a dangerous distortion of the Gospel of Christ.
The Trinitarian nature of God is embedded within the Great Commission. Jesus tells His disciples to go into the world and make disciples of all nations and to baptize them “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Christians are those who bear the names of God even in our baptism, and those names are Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This has become a matter of significant controversy in recent years as some Christians, including some serving with mission agencies, have argued that Christians can use the name “Allah” in talking about God. In some languages, especially those based on an Arabic source, there is no generic word for god. In such a situation, it might be necessary to begin a conversation by using this word, but the Christian cannot continue to call God “Allah.” It is hard to imagine that anyone can hear the name “Allah” without thinking of him as claimed in the Quran (see following article). Indeed, Muslims who speak languages other than Arabic use “Allah” as the name of god. But as soon as the Christian begins to explain that the true living God is the Father of Jesus Christ the Son, the Christian is making clear that the true living God is not Allah, but our Heavenly Father.
Continuing to use the name “Allah” to refer to the God of the Bible in such situations invites deep confusion. Some now argue that Muslims who come to faith in Christ can even remain within the mosque and continue to worship God as Allah. It is hard to see how that is anything other than a theological disaster.
We can now see that the name of God is no small matter. The deity we name is the God we believe in. Christians believe in only one God, and He is the Father who sent the Son to save us from our sins. Allah has no son, and, thus, Christians cannot know God as Allah. In this light, Muslims and Christians do not only use different names for God; in reality, these different names refer to different gods.
God takes His name with great seriousness, and so must we. Thankfully, we are not left in the dark, groping for adequate language. God has revealed His names to us, so that we can rightly know Him. We are not called to be clever or creative in referring to God, only faithful and accurate.
We are living in challenging days. One of the most pressing challenges of our times is the task of speaking rightly about God. This is particularly challenging when Christians encounter Muslims, but it is also a challenge when Christians encounter secular people in Western cultures. But this really isn’t a new challenge. It was the same challenge faced by the children of Israel as they encountered the Canaanites, and the same challenge faced by the Apostle Paul at Mars Hill.
Our challenge is to speak truthfully about God, and the only way we can do that is to use the names God gave Himself. The God of the Bible is not Allah, and Allah is not the God of the Bible. Any confusion about that undermines the very Gospel we preach.
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©2013 R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version.
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“What Does God Care What We Call Him?” by Albert Mohler, August 22, 2007.
A retiring Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands has been making headlines around the world in recent days with his suggestion that Dutch Christians should pray to Allah.
Bishop Tiny Muskens of Breda, a former missionary to Indonesia, suggested that conflict between Christians and Muslims could be lessened if Dutch Catholics followed the lead of some Christians in Muslim-dominated lands and adopted Allah as the preferred name for God..
From Catholic News:
Speaking on the Dutch TV programme Network on Monday evening, Bishop Muskens says it could take another 100 years but eventually the name Allah will be used by Dutch churches. And that will promote rapprochement between the two religions. Muskens doesn’t expect his idea to be greeted with much enthusiasm. The 71-year-old bishop, who will soon be retiring due to ill health, says God doesn’t mind what he is called. God is above such “discussion and bickering”. Human beings invented this discussion themselves, he believes, in order to argue about it.
Is there a valid linguistic basis for his argument? It is certainly true that the word Allah is the Arabic word for deity. Those supporting an argument like that of Bishop Muskens suggest that the Arabic word can be used as a generic term for deity.
In common English we use the word God as both a proper name and a noun. We differentiate between the two usages by capitalizing the word when we mean to refer to the specific personal God of the Bible, and by not capitalizing generic uses of the word. Thus, we might paraphrase the First Commandment like this: “God commanded His people to have no other gods before Him.” The correct interpretation of this sentence requires the use and understanding of the habits of capitalization.
Those making the case for a Christian appropriation of Allah must take their argument in one of two trajectories. The first trajectory is to argue that Allah can be used in a generic way to refer to any (presumably monotheistic) deity. This case will be very difficult to make. Language, theology, and worship are so closely intertwined that it is difficult, if not impossible, to argue for a generic use of Allah. Further evidence against this trajectory is the fact that non-Arabic speaking Muslims also use Allah when referring to their god.
The second trajectory presents even more of a problem. Those following this line of argument must make the case that Allah and God refer to the same deity. This represents a huge problem for both Muslims and Christians. Allah is not a personal deity in the sense that the God of the Bible is. Furthermore, the Qur’an explicitly denies that Allah has a son, and Islam considers the notion of a triune God to be blasphemy.
Thus, from its very starting point Islam denies what Christianity takes as its central truth claim — the fact that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of the Father. If Allah has no Son by definition, Allah is not the God who revealed himself in the Son. How then can the use of Allah by Christians lead to anything but confusion ... and worse?
The most dangerous (and theologically dishonest) part of Bishop Muskens’ argument is found in these words:
The 71-year-old bishop, who will soon be retiring due to ill health, says God doesn’t mind what he is called. God is above such “discussion and bickering”. Human beings invented this discussion themselves, he believes, in order to argue about it.
According to The Herald Sun [Melbourne, Australia], Bishop Muskens commented: “Allah is a very beautiful word for God .... What does God care what we call him?” What does God care what we call him?
Has the bishop read the Bible? God takes his name with great seriousness indeed. Moses discovered this when heard God speak from the burning bush [Exodus 3:13-22]. God did not leave himself nameless, nor did He invite Moses to devise a name for him. Jesus used this name [I AM] to refer to himself.
The Christian faith is essentially and irreducibly Trinitarian. The Bible reveals that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Jesus is not merely a prophet; He is God in human flesh. This is precisely what Islam rejects. If Allah has no Son, he is not the Father.
This is the most significant theological obstacle in the way of the Christian use of Allah as a name for God. Jesus taught his disciples to pray to “our Father, who is in heaven” [Matthew 6:9] — thus disallowing any confusion concerning God’s name. The most important names for God for Christians are “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit.” In the four New Testament gospels, Jesus uses the word “Father” more than sixty times. No Muslim would refer to Allah in this same way. This is not what will come to mind when a Muslim hears a Christian pray to Allah.
So Bishop Muskens is disingenuous at best when he suggests that God does not care about His name. This is not a matter of mere “discussion and bickering.” If the Bible is the Word of God, we can be assured that human beings did not invent this discussion.
There is one final and insurmountable problem with Bishop Muskens’ proposal. Jesus commanded his disciples to baptize believers “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” [Matthew 28:19]. When this command is taken seriously and obeyed, the whole issue is greatly clarified — a Christian cannot baptize in the name of Allah.
If Allah has no son, Allah is not the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even if the case is made that Allah could be used in a generic sense to refer to God ( and I am not persuaded that it can), the word cannot be used to mean the Father in a Trinitarian affirmation. This is not mere “discussion and bickering.” This is where the Gospel stands or falls.
ADDENDUM: The particular question raised by Bishop Muskens was the use of the word “Allah” by Christians in the West as a means of lessening Christian-Muslim tensions. The question of using “Allah” to refer to god in a clearly missiological setting will raise other issues. If the word is understood as a generic term for God (and not exclusively as a proper name), the question would then be how a Christian must make clear that the God of the Bible–revealed as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ–is not the deity as described in the Qur’an (who explicitly has no son). The linguisitic root of Allah may well be connected to Elohim (a name for God found in the Old Testament). This fact may help to clarify the possible use of the word in a missiological setting. The clarity comes in understanding that, even in the Old Testament, the name Elohim is, in itself, quickly accompanied by other names and words to make clear that the God of the Bible is the personal, monotheistic, covenant-making God of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets. The New Testament makes clear that this God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ — indeed the God who in these latter days has spoken definitively through the Son [Hebrews 1].
In other words, it would seem best to think of Allah in this setting as a place to begin a conversation about God in a Muslim setting. The challenge from that point onward will be to make certain that there is no misunderstanding about the fact that the only true and living God is the Father of Jesus Christ the Savior.
The crucial questions here are these: First, can we assume that the deity central to Islam and known as Allah is, in fact, the same God worshipped by Christians and revealed in the Bible? The answer to that question must be negative. In that sense, Allah is certainly not the God of the Bible.
The second question is whether the word “Allah” can be understood, in Arabic and Muslim settings, as both a generic noun and a proper noun. Some credible Christian scholars and missionaries are certain that it can. The issue then becomes how contemporary Christians remain faithful to the Gospel in this setting even as the Apostle Paul remained faithful in Acts 17 when he visited Athens. Paul, we must remember, had to tell the religious Athenians that they had misunderstood the very nature and character of the true God. “Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you” [Acts 17:23].
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