Christians worshiping Allah

Last updated on: December 20, 2015 at 10:18 pm by Dave Griffey

Christians worshiping Allah 2015-12-20T22:18:00-04:00 Dave Griffey

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

And Muslims worshiping Jesus. Well, not really. But that’s sort of what some sound like they are trying to say. The great heresy of our time is, of course, found most often within the hallowed hallways of critical scholarship. The idea that in some vague, spiritual way the ‘Christ’ of Christianity might speak to us, but the Jesus of the 1st century was simply one of many religious leaders. Likewise, the Christ of faith may simply have been inspirited story telling on the part of the early Church (and for many liberals, a Church riddled with antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, and any other name thrown about today).

If Arianism was a heresy for saying Jesus may have been the greatest of created beings, but a created being nonetheless, you can see where reducing the Gospel to just one other set of fables, or believing that Jesus and Christ were different, is problematic. Less easy to pinpoint as a heresy is the tendency to simply reinterpret the Scriptures as either irrelevant or radically re-understood to conform with the spirit laid out by these modern heresies.

Nonetheless, we are seeing massive waves of change in how the Christian faith operates in the world dominated by the great heresy of our times. As that heresy gains power and influence, we see more and more Christians caving and simply trying to fit in. Nowhere is this more obvious than the wrangling over the identity of Islam and its beliefs.

So the big story was about a professor at Wheaton College who confessed the great confession of our age that Islam and Christianity are more or less one and the same when it comes to the God we worship. Oh sure, there are some doctrinal differences. But these are necessarily trivial. The Trinity is no longer the defining reality of God, or clearly Muslims don’t worship God. So God is God, and all differences take a back seat to our unity and getting along.

Attempting to equate Islam and Judaism, this view argues that Moses and Mohammed were basically two sides of the same coin. Neither had a Trinity, but they both pointed to the God of Abraham. Of course there are many problems with this, problems that would have been easily seen even a few short decades ago. Moses, if the Bible is to be believed, as well as Church tradition, was looking for the Messiah, the Christ, just as Abraham was and David and the Prophets and all who came before.

But Mohammed, like Arius or Nestorius or any other heretic, was in the light of the age of Christ but chose to reject the Truth as taught by Christ and redefine God according to his standards. For the better part of over a millennium, Christians understood there was a difference.

Today, however, we seem to be confused by this. Sounding more like a happy talk with Oprah Winfrey, a growing number of Catholics, including recent Popes, the Catechism, and now the Vatican are basically embracing the notion that the Oprah is closer to right than any pre-Vatican II leader could ever hope to be.

It’s not just Catholics who see the flaws in this trend. R. Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary pens a worthy rebuke, though watch out. It also follows an Evangelical doctrine in line with more Calvinist thinking. Still, he sees the problems for what they are.

For me? My guess is that part of it is because so many Christians and Westerners have spent so many generations focused on the sins of our fathers, we’ve grown unable to point out the sins of anything else. So now we have a religion with 1.6 billion people who are in no way close to wanting to embrace such an Oprahfied view of religion, and we don’t have clue one what to do. Not to mention being unable to muster the courage to stand up and say where Muslims are, in fact, wrong.

It’s worth noting that those Orthodox Christians I’ve gotten to know, many from Eastern Europe and the Arabic world, do not consider the two to be worshiping the same God. They are wonderful witnesses for Christ, and many Muslims are converting. Not because they are saying ‘Ah shucks, we’re all just worshiping the same God now aren’t we!’, but rather because they admit they aren’t, but are doing so with love and courage. As one Orthodox fellow said today, the martyrs didn’t die for the belief that Jesus was just one swell way of getting to the same God everyone else imagines. And maybe we Christians in the comfort of the Dying West might want to consider that.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

December 20, 2015

Do not try to convert Jews

Next Post

December 21, 2015 The many faces of Orthodoxy

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Abortion Atheism Awesome things Bigotry for the hip American Blogging Books Catholic Catholic Teaching Catholics on the Internet Christian Persecution Christian Unity Christianity and America Christianity in the Post-Modern World Christianity in the world Culture of Death Culture of Life Current Events Decline and Fall of the Christian West Defending Liberty Fun Stuff Global Warming Good Causes Good News Gun Control Health Care History Holidays Homeschool Humor Important things Inspiring Stories Interesting Insights Interesting Stories Islam and the West Liberal "Tolerance" Liberal observations Life in a post-Christian world Memorial Movies Musings News Other Blogs Our Big Politically Correct Bother Politics Popular Culture Post Modern Values Prayers Pro Life Promoting LGBT Protecting Liberty Racism in the world today Scientism Social Observations Sports Strange Stories The Boys The Catholic Church and the Left The Decline and Fall of the American Dream The end of liberty The Faith and the Left The Faith and the Right The Family The Greatness of God The Internet The Leftist Juggernaut The LGBT Question The Media The Pope The post-liberal Left The Power of Propaganda Tributes Twilight of the American Experiment Uncategorized Uneducating Postmoderns When the Church is wrong Why learn from history when we can repeat it instead Wisdom in the Post Modern Age World Events

Select a Month August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What is the longest book of the Bible?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Numbers Genesis 2 Chronicles Psalms