Recently, I was involved in a discussion about whether or not it would be appropriate for a Christian to refer to the God of Christianity as "Allah" when speaking to a Muslim. My initial reaction to this question was outright rejection. After all, I believe that the God revealed in Christianity is utterly distinct from the deity of Islam known as "Allah." Therefore, wouldn't a reference to God as "Allah" be a tacit endorsement of the relativistic point of view that sees all religions as basically worshipping the same God? It was then I came to the realization that I was referring to “God” instead of “Theos,” as I would if I were truly concerned with the actual word for “God” found in the New Testament. From there, things only got worse as I realized that the writers of the New Testament were actually using the Greek word “Theos” to refer to “Yahweh” or “Elohim” from the Hebrew Old Testament! As to the pertinent question: what did the Greek word used in the New Testament (and Septuagint) for “God” refer to before it was used with reference to “Yahweh” or “Elohim”? It referred to the “gods” of ancient Greek polytheism!
As such, it becomes clear that it wasn’t actually the word or phoneme that was uttered which was important in designating who it was they were talking about when the New Testament writers used the word “Theos.” More important was the understanding with which they “filled up” its meaning. While there were certainly similarities between the way in which the Greek speakers of the Roman Empire conceived of their “gods,” and the nature of Yahweh, they came to accept the word “Theos” based on the definition of who Yahweh revealed himself to be in the Scriptures.
Perhaps a discussion of the “True Allah” would, in fact, be an appropriate starting point for a discussion of God with a Muslim...Beyond this question, however, perhaps there is an even more important one: How do Christians “fill up” the meaning of “God” in our context, and what response does this evoke? For it was not without reason that Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt 7:21).
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7 comments:
Hey Ryan. I was blogging and i came across your blog, very intresting subject, i just want share my thoughts if you don't mind, i am a Lebanese muslim, currently living in Dubai, UAE. Allah is a word in Arabic meaning God. To practice islam, the muslim should "read" the Quran in arabic, it could be written in any language, but the words coming out of the mouth should be in arabic, that is why all muslims know the word 'Allah'. Arab christians also use the word Allah in their prayers. In islam, we do believe that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all refere to the same God (Allah) when they warship.
Dr. Dre,
I'm honored to have a guest to my blog from so far away, and grateful for your input to the discussion from a Muslim point of view. I was aware of the fact that Muslims only refer to God as "Allah," and read the Quran only in Arabic. This has always fascinated me, but I have never received a satisfactory answer as to why this should be the case. After all, you've suggested that "Jews, Christians, and Muslims all refer to the same God (Allah) when they worship." But if this is true, how is it that both Christianity and Judaism, which both pre-date Mohammed, called God something other than "Allah" for centuries? When God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush of Exodus 3, he asked God what he should call him. To this, God replied "I AM WHO I AM," presumably speaking to Moses in a language he understood (which was not likely Arabic). There are many observations that could be made based on this self-assertion of God, so I'll limit mine to saying that perhaps the actual word(s) used to refer to God (whether Yahweh, Theos, Allah, etc) is less important than how that word is defined by the one uttering it. Because of this, I disagree with the notion that Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God, because when they refer to "God," they have a radically different definition as to who He is. While I affirm that there are some common truths about God that all three religions hold in common, there are others that are in direct contradiction with each other. For example, perhaps the greatest distinction among these is the Christian assertion that Jesus Christ is more than just a "prophet"-he is the divine Son of God who became human, lived as a man, and died on a cross to free all creation from the bondage of sin. A few days later, he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. As such, Christians believe that God has chosen to reveal Himself to mankind through Jesus Christ...Jews and Muslims do not.
Thanks again for your post...I hope to continue this conversation soon...
-Ryan
Hello Ryan,
Thanks for letting me post. I do agree with you that there are differences between the three religions, what i meant was that what we call Allah, you call God, Jews call Yahweh or Theos, we are talking about the same "person", or "absolute power" even though there are differences, but these differences are not as big as those who warship a cow and call it god. Since Mohammad was Arabic, God chose Arabic to be the only language of the Quran, and it should always be recited in Arabic so that there will be no other interpretation to God's words. However, in terms of worshipping, God said in the Quran what means: "there is no difference between an Arab Muslim and any other Muslim, except by their level of commitment to Islam". Now as Derek said, we do believe that the Quran is God's words, and every letter, or even comma or point had its meaning. So to keep God's words sacred, the Quran was in one official version, but it is translated to almost every language, and that is not a problem for Islam, i mean Muslims have to know what God said as gernerality, and they don't have to learn Arabic to know what He is saying. However that didn't stop Muslims from understanding the quran the way they like, there are Sunnis, Shiatt, and many other sects within Islam. A lot of Muslims or group of Muslims tend to use passages from the quran which were said in context to make their point, but ignore other passages just as important, i am talking about the concept of Jihad, and yes it does exist in Islam, but many people cite what they find will help their cause and ignore everything else. I can tell you that there are much more passages talking about how important it is to keep a soul and respect it, than there is about taking it. But there are people like Bin Laden & Co. who see only what they want and that serves their propaganda.
I hope i wasn't too long.
Derek,
Hey, its good to hear from you! Thanks for your post. I wanted to comment on the assertion that God's truth transcends culture, language, and scribal errors. I agree with you if you mean to say that God's truth is able to break through our human errors, and still be effective in communicating His reality to us. However, this does not necessarily mean that I can read through a passage of scripture and immediately intuit its meaning. Ten people may read the same passage and come up with five different interpretations, three of which have nothing to do with what the author meant when he wrote it. Yet the fact that I have not fully understood its meaning does not imply that God is not speaking through the text! With the aid of the Spirit of God, we must humbly approach the text, realizing that it was written many years ago, and copied by hand many times in many languages. So investigating variants between the ancient manuscripts is important, not to show our academic brilliance or to find a dissertation topic, but because we want to understand what the original text said! While it would make our job as interpreters of Scripture much easier if there were no variants between manuscripts, we must deal with the reality that there are! If we believe that God inspired the original authors of the Bible, we are duty bound to try to figure out as closely as possible what they actually wrote...And yet, God has still revealed Himself to the world, in spite of our imperfect understanding...Thanks again for you post Derek!
-Ryan
Dr. Dre,
Thanks again for another post. I appreciate your insights. You mentioned that the Quran "should always be recited in Arabic so that there will be no other interpretation to God's words," but you also observe that this is not the case: there are many different interpretations of the Quran, represented by many different sects! Muslims, much like Christians, who also have many different interpretations and sects, face the challenge of trying to understand a document that is hundreds of years old, written in a vastly different world-I'm not sure that the fact that it is recited only in Arabic really helps people avoid misinterpreting it...
Anyhow, I hope you continue to check back on my blog every once in a while...I can't promise that everything posted will be worthwhile, but I appreciate your perspective...
-Ryan
Derek,
You bring up some good points...I think it's a real temptation for students of the Bible to begin treating their study solely as an academic exercise. With that said, I also think that, as receivers of the Word of God, we have an enormous responsibility to attempt to understand its meaning with all the tools He has provided us. As for "God's truth waiting for us" behind a textual variant etc, I'll admit that sometimes it seems like a lot of work for very little payoff...and to be sure, sometimes it is. On the other hand, learning to read was also a very tedious process (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y?)...in fact, doesn't learning of any sort sometimes seem tedious? So, while sometimes chasing down the slip of a pen from a drowsy 10th century monk will be of no benefit to anyone, at other times it just may. In either case, our duty is to use the gifts and tools the LORD has provided us...
As to your closing comments, I'll add a hearty "amen"...if someone claims that the Spirit of God has helped them to understand how to follow Jesus, yet this understanding doesn't cause them to live their lives in a radically different way, they've failed to truly understand anything...
-Ryan
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