Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

"Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?" draws a firm "yes" from some and an equally firm "no" from others. In 2015 and 2016 it cost an American professor her post at an evangelical college. Catholic teaching since the Second Vatican Council leans toward "yes"; many evangelicals say "no"; Muslims, following the Qur’an, generally say "yes."

This article sets out the evidence and gives the answer of the Orthodox Church plainly. That answer is no. The God whom Christians worship is the Holy Trinity, and Islam denies him as he has revealed himself. We say this firmly, and with respect for Muslims as our neighbours.

In brief

Arabic-speaking Christians call God Allah, so the word settles nothing. The Qur’an says "our God and your God is one," and Catholic teaching says Muslims adore the one God "together with us"; the Orthodox Church does not adopt that formula. The one true God is the Father, who eternally begets the Son and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds. The Qur’an denies that God has a Son, that Christ is God, and that he was crucified, and so rejects the Gospel's account of his death and resurrection. "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either" (1 John 2:23). St. John of Damascus counted Islam among the heresies. Muhammad is not a prophet of God, and the Qur’an is not the word of God. Muslims, however sincere, do not know or worship the true God as he is, and the Church calls them, as it calls everyone, to faith in Christ and holy baptism.

Thesis: The God whom Christians worship is the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Islam denies the Father and the Son, the divinity of Christ, his crucifixion and his resurrection, so Muslims do not know or worship the true God as he is, and the Orthodox answer to the question is no.

The word "Allah" settles nothing

Allah is not the name of a separate Islamic deity but the ordinary Arabic word for God, used by Arabic-speaking Christians too. In the New Arabic Version of the Bible, Genesis 1:1 reads fi al-bad’i khalaqa Allahu as-samawati wa al-ard, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and John 1:1 ends wa kana al-kalimatu Allah, "and the Word was God."¹ An Antiochian Orthodox parish in Sydney prints its Palm Sunday Matins in Arabic and English side by side; where the English has "Holy God, holy mighty, holy immortal, have mercy upon us," the Arabic reads Quddusun Allah, "Holy is God."²

So the word cannot tell us whether two people confess the same God. An Arab Orthodox Christian who sings Quddusun Allah is praising the Holy Trinity; a Muslim who says Allah means a God who, the Qur’an insists, has no Son. The question is who is confessed, not which word is used.

The argument from "reference"

The strongest case for "yes" separates reference from description. Miroslav Volf of Yale, a Protestant theologian, told Christianity Today in 2011 that Muslims and Christians "who embrace the normative traditions of their faith refer to the same object, to the same Being, when they pray, when they worship, when they talk about God. The referent is the same." He added, "The description of God is partly different," and that some differences "really are foundational to the faith, like the doctrine of the Trinity."³

The Catholic philosopher Francis Beckwith argued that two people who disagree about Thomas Jefferson’s private life are still talking about the same President. "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."⁴

The argument does not settle the matter. The question is whether one receives or refuses the Creator as he has made himself known. In Athens St. Paul said of the altar "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD," "the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you" (Acts 17:23), and went straight on to say that God "now commands all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). To the Samaritan woman the Lord said, "You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship" (John 4:22).⁵ Ignorance before the Gospel is one thing; refusal of the Son after he has been proclaimed is another. Islam is not an altar to an unknown God. It knows the Christian confession of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and rejects it by name.

What the Qur’an says

The Qur’an claims the God of Abraham as the God of Muslims and Christians alike: "And do not argue with the People of the Scripture except in a way that is best, except for those who commit injustice among them, and say, 'We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you. And our God and your God is one; and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him'" (29:46).⁶ In 2007 Muslim scholars and leaders made the same appeal in A Common Word between Us and You, naming "the Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour" as "the common ground between Islam and Christianity."⁷

The same Qur’an is just as clear about where it parts from Christians. Surah 112 says of God, "He neither begets nor is born." Surah 4:171 says, "do not say, 'Three'; desist - it is better for you. Indeed, Allāh is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son." Surah 5:73 says, "They have certainly disbelieved who say, 'Allāh is the third of three.'" Of the Cross it says, "they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them" (4:157).⁸ (See Does the Qur’an Misunderstand the Trinity? and Was Jesus Really Crucified?) So the Qur’an claims the God of Abraham while denying his eternal Son, the Cross and therefore the Resurrection. These are not side issues. They are the Gospel.

St. John of Damascus: a heresy, not a shared faith

St. John of Damascus (died about 750), who served the Umayyad administration before becoming a monk, treated Islam in his work On Heresies as one of the heresies. He wrote that "a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst," who, after coming upon the Old and New Testaments, "devised his own heresy." He summarized its central teaching accurately: "He says that there is one God, creator of all things, who has neither been begotten nor has begotten." Muslims, he reported, "call us Hetaeriasts, or Associators, because, they say, we introduce an associate with God by declaring Christ to be the Son of God and God." He turned the charge around: since Muslims themselves call Christ the Word and Spirit of God, then "by avoiding the introduction of an associate with God you have mutilated Him."⁹

Some scholars doubt that the whole chapter is John’s in its present form (see Who Was St. John of Damascus?), but it has come down under his name, and its judgement is the Orthodox one. Islam is neither a pagan cult nor a second true religion; it is a heresy that keeps the name of the one God while cutting away his Word and his Spirit.

About 781 Timothy I, Catholicos of the Church of the East (a church outside Orthodox communion), debated the caliph al-Mahdi in Baghdad. To the caliph’s charge that Christians were wrong about "one Word and Son of God," Timothy answered with a parable of people "as in a dark house in the middle of the night," each sure he holds a fallen pearl until daylight shows who holds only glass. The caliph said, "We have hope in God that we are the possessors of this pearl," and Timothy replied, "Amen, O King. But may God grant us that we too may share it with you."¹⁰ He conceded nothing of the faith and answered a powerful ruler with courtesy.

The synod of 1180

Orthodox Byzantium faced the question directly in 1180. Converts from Islam were required to anathematize "the God of Mahomet," described with the words of Surah 112. The Emperor Manuel I Komnenos wanted this removed, so that "the true God" would not seem to be cursed. Patriarch Theodosius Boradiotes and Eustathius of Thessalonica opposed him; in Niketas Choniates’ account Eustathius’s speech was harsh and vulgar about Islam, which no Christian should imitate. The synod changed the wording, not the faith: the anathema against "the God of Mahomet" was dropped, and converts were instead to anathematize Muhammad and all his teachings.¹¹ The Byzantinist Niccolò Zorzi reads Manuel’s view as a minority tendency "acknowledging the common monotheism of Christians and Muslims, who adore the same God"; the clergy who resisted him, in Zorzi’s account, did not recognize even a shared monotheism.¹²

The synod did not bless Islam: it dropped a formula the emperor feared could be read as cursing the true God, and it still required converts to anathematize Muhammad and all his teachings. For the wider history, see How Did Christianity Survive Under Islamic Rule? and What Did the Early Christians Believe About Muhammad?

Catholic teaching, and why Orthodoxy does not adopt it

The Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate (28 October 1965) says: "The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men." It adds, "Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet."¹³ Lumen Gentium 16, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 841, says that Muslims "profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."¹⁴

The Orthodox Church has never adopted this Catholic formula. Christian worship is offered to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit; a prayer that refuses the Son is not that worship. From the Orthodox standpoint the formula is mistaken, because it passes over what the apostle made decisive: whoever denies the Son does not have the Father.

The Wheaton controversy (2015)

In December 2015 Larycia Hawkins, a tenured associate professor at Wheaton College, an evangelical school in Illinois, announced that she would wear a hijab during Advent in solidarity with Muslims, writing on Facebook: "I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God." Wheaton placed her on administrative leave over the "theological implications" of her statement.¹⁵ In February 2016 she and the college agreed to part ways.¹⁶

Beckwith defended her. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, asked the decisive question: "Can anyone truly worship the Father while rejecting the Son?" His answer was no: "Christians worship the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and no other god." He added that this does not mean Muslims "know nothing true about God," and that "the Muslim is our neighbor."¹⁷ That is the right question, and the apostolic answer to it is no; Mohler’s reply also shows that firmness and charity belong together.

The dividing line: the Trinity and Christ

The identity of God is not a detail added to monotheism. The Creed confesses "one God, the Father Almighty," and "one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages," and "the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father." Christ said, "He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him" (John 5:23). St. John the Theologian wrote: "Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also" (1 John 2:22-23).¹⁸

Islam gives Jesus the title Messiah, but it denies the Father and the Son in exactly the sense St. John meant: it denies that God is the Father of an eternal Son. Nor does it simply lack this revelation, as Abraham did before the Incarnation. Abraham "rejoiced to see" Christ’s day (John 8:56); the Qur’an, six centuries after Christ, denies that the day came as the apostles proclaimed it. See also The Biblical Case for the Trinity and Jesus in Christianity and Islam.

The Trinity is not three gods. Volf rightly noted that much of what Muslims deny "of the Trinity (e.g., that we worship three gods) ought to be denied by every right-believing Christian."¹⁹ The disagreement is about who the one God is, and on that the Gospel does not leave the answer open.

The Orthodox answer

No council wrote a definition on this exact question, because none was needed: the Creed and the apostolic writings settle it.

There is one God, and he is the Holy Trinity. There is no second real god behind Islam. But the one God is not a God without his Son. A "god" who has no Son, whose Christ was neither crucified nor raised, is not the God who has revealed himself; that account of him is false.

Muslims do not know or worship the true God as he is. Christian worship is offered to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, and its heart is the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of the incarnate Son. Islam rejects the Son by name. In the Lord’s words to the Samaritans, it worships what it does not know; and unlike the Athenians at their altar, it has heard the Gospel and refused it.

Muhammad is not a prophet of God, and the Qur’an is not the word of God. A prophet of the God of Israel does not unsay what God has said in his Son. The Qur’an came six centuries after Christ and denies the Cross that the apostles witnessed and preached. St. Paul had already written, "even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8).²⁰ A message that denies that the Son of God died and rose again is another gospel, whatever its messenger claims.

The Church’s call to Muslims is to Christ and baptism. "No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6); "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). The Lord sent the apostles to make disciples of all the nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19).²¹ The final judgement of any person belongs to God. But the Church does not teach that Islam is a path to the Father, and it invites every Muslim to the Father through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, in the Church.

Objections and responses

"There can only be one God, so of course it is the same God."

There is only one God; that is exactly why it matters who he is. Otherwise the apostolic warnings about denying the Son would have no object. Beckwith’s analogy with Abraham and Moses does not hold: they received the revelation that led to Christ, and Abraham rejoiced to see his day. Ignorance before the Incarnation is not denial after it.

"Jews also deny the Trinity. Do Jews worship a different God?"

The God of Israel is the Father of Jesus Christ, and Israel’s Scriptures are fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah. The same apostolic word applies to all who reject the Son: the Lord told those who rejected him, "You know neither Me nor My Father" (John 8:19), and 1 John 2:23 makes no exception. The Church proclaims Jesus as the Messiah of Israel to Jews and Muslims alike, with love.

"It is Christians who changed God by adding a son."

Muslims sincerely hold this, but it is not so. The Old Testament already speaks of God’s Word and Spirit, and St. John of Damascus pressed the point from the Qur’an’s own title for Jesus, "the Word of God and His Spirit." A God without his Word and Spirit is not more one; he is, in the Damascene’s word, mutilated.

"Saying 'not the same God' fuels hostility."

Truth is not hostility. Byzantine polemic, such as Eustathius’s speech in 1180, sometimes showed contempt, which Orthodox Christians should not imitate. But a Christian who tells a Muslim friend that Christ is the Son of God and that Muhammad is not a prophet says only what the apostles said. Pretending the difference is about words would be neither honest nor loving. Timothy I shows the right manner: no concession on the faith, and courtesy to the person.

What we can say confidently

• {{very-strong: Arabic-speaking Christians, including Orthodox Christians, call God "Allah" in their Bibles and liturgy.}}
• The Qur’an claims that the God of Muslims and of the People of the Scripture is one (29:46), yet denies that God has a son (4:171; 112:3) and that Christ was crucified (4:157).
• {{strong: St. John of Damascus treated Islam as a heresy and called Muhammad a false prophet.}}
• Catholic teaching since the Second Vatican Council says Muslims adore the one God together with Christians; the Orthodox Church has never adopted this formula.
• In 1180 a Byzantine synod replaced the anathema against "the God of Mahomet" with one against Muhammad and all his teachings; it did not endorse Islam.
• Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father (1 John 2:23): Muslims do not know or worship the true God as he is, and the Church calls them to Christ and baptism.

What remains disputed

• {{debated: Whether the Qur’an’s denials of the Trinity are aimed at the Church’s actual faith or at a misunderstanding of it.}} Either way, the Qur’an denies the eternal Son.
• What exactly Manuel I intended in 1180, and how widely his view was shared.
• How much of the chapter on Islam in On Heresies is St. John’s own in its present form.

Conclusion

The Orthodox answer is not "yes and no." There is one God, Maker of heaven and earth, and he has made himself known: the Father who begets the Son before all ages, and from whom the Spirit proceeds; the Son who became man, was crucified, and rose on the third day. Islam denies this God as he is. Its prophet is not his prophet, its book is not his word, and its worship, however earnest, is not the worship "in spirit and truth" that the Father seeks (John 4:23).

An Orthodox Christian can therefore say to a Muslim neighbour what St. Paul said in Athens: the God you seek without knowing him as he is, him we proclaim to you, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is not an insult but the best gift one can offer a neighbour: an invitation to know the true God in Christ, and to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Notes

1. Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1, New Arabic Version (Ketab El Hayat), Bible Gateway. Transliterations are ours. ↩
2. "Palm Sunday Morning" (bilingual Arabic-English Matins), St Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church, Punchbowl (Antiochian Archdiocese of Australia), stnicholaspunchbowl.org.au. Transliteration ours. ↩
3. Mark Galli, "Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?" interview with Miroslav Volf, Christianity Today, April 2011. christianitytoday.com. ↩
4. Francis J. Beckwith, "Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?" The Catholic Thing, 17 December 2015. thecatholicthing.org. ↩
5. Acts 17:23, 30; John 4:22, New King James Version. ↩
6. Qur’an 29:46, Saheeh International translation, quran.com. ↩
7. A Common Word between Us and You (2007), acommonword.com. ↩
8. Qur’an 112:3; 4:171; 5:73; 4:157, Saheeh International translation, quran.com. ↩
9. John of Damascus, On Heresies 100 (101 in some numberings), trans. Frederic H. Chase, Saint John of Damascus: Writings, Fathers of the Church 37 (1958), as reproduced at orthodoxinfo.com. ↩
10. Timothy I, Apology (dialogue with the caliph al-Mahdi), trans. Alphonse Mingana, Woodbrooke Studies 2 (Cambridge: Heffer, 1928), 224-226. archive.org. ↩
11. Niketas Choniates, History (van Dieten ed., 213-220), trans. Harry J. Magoulias, O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 121-123, archive.org: Manuel’s wish "to prevent the true God from being subjected to anathema," Eustathius’s outburst, and the final agreement "to remove the anathema of Muhammad's god from the catechetical books and to write in the anathema of Muhammad and of all his teachings." Niccolò Zorzi, "Nicetas Choniates," in Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, vol. 4 (1200-1350), ed. David Thomas and Alex Mallett (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 132-144, as reproduced at novoscriptorium.com. The wording of the anathema and the quotation "the true God" are given there from Choniates and the synodal tomos of April 1180. ↩
12. Niccolò Zorzi, "Islam e Cristianesimo durante il regno di Manuele Comneno: la disputa sul 'Dio di Maometto' nell'opera di Niceta Coniata," in Vie per Bisanzio (2012), English abstract at the University of Padua research repository, research.unipd.it. On the clergy’s position, Zorzi, "Nicetas Choniates" (note 11). ↩
13. Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate 3 (28 October 1965), vatican.va English text. vatican.va. ↩
14. Catechism of the Catholic Church 841, quoting Lumen Gentium 16. vatican.va; Lumen Gentium 16, vatican.va. ↩
15. Samuel Smith, "Wheaton College Suspends Hijab-Wearing Prof. for Saying Muslims, Christians Worship Same God," Christian Post, 16 December 2015, quoting Hawkins’s post and the college’s statement. christianpost.com. ↩
16. "Professor Who Said Christians, Muslims Share a God Is Leaving Christian College," NPR via WGBH, 8 February 2016. wgbh.org. ↩
17. R. Albert Mohler Jr., "Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?" 18 December 2015. albertmohler.com. ↩
18. John 8:19; 5:23; 1 John 2:22-23; John 8:56; John 4:23, New King James Version. The Creed (Symbol of Faith) is quoted from the Orthodox Church in America’s text, oca.org, in its original form without the later Western addition of the Filioque. ↩
19. Volf interview (note 3). ↩
20. Galatians 1:8, New King James Version. ↩
21. John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Matthew 28:19, New King James Version. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• New Arabic Version (Ketab El Hayat). Biblica. Bible Gateway.
• The Qur’an. Saheeh International translation. quran.com.
• Second Vatican Council. Nostra Aetate (1965) and Lumen Gentium (1964). vatican.va.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 841. vatican.va.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• John of Damascus. On Heresies. In Saint John of Damascus: Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase Jr. Fathers of the Church 37. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958.
• Niketas Choniates. O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates. Trans. Harry J. Magoulias. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984.
• St Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church, Punchbowl. "Palm Sunday Morning" (bilingual service text).
• The Symbol of Faith (Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed). Orthodox Church in America, oca.org.

Other Christian sources and scholarship (including writers the article disagrees with)

• Timothy I. The Apology of Timothy the Patriarch before the Caliph Mahdi. Trans. Alphonse Mingana. Woodbrooke Studies 2. Cambridge: Heffer, 1928.
• Zorzi, Niccolò. "Nicetas Choniates." In Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, vol. 4, ed. David Thomas and Alex Mallett, 132-144. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
• Zorzi, Niccolò. "Islam e Cristianesimo durante il regno di Manuele Comneno: la disputa sul 'Dio di Maometto' nell'opera di Niceta Coniata." In Vie per Bisanzio. 2012. (Abstract consulted.)
• Volf, Miroslav. Interview with Mark Galli. Christianity Today, April 2011.
• Beckwith, Francis J. "Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?" The Catholic Thing, 17 December 2015.
• Mohler, R. Albert, Jr. "Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?" 18 December 2015.
• Smith, Samuel. "Wheaton College Suspends Hijab-Wearing Prof." Christian Post, 16 December 2015.
• "Professor Who Said Christians, Muslims Share a God Is Leaving Christian College." NPR / WGBH, 8 February 2016.

Sources from the Islamic tradition

• A Common Word between Us and You. Open letter of Muslim scholars to Christian leaders, 2007. acommonword.com.