Sunday, December 27, 2015
Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?
A
referent that has an objective reality beyond the mental construct
evoked by its descriptors, cannot be limited to those descriptors. Even
in light of Barth's claim that God is unknowable outside of his
self-revelation, we must still admit the validity of a lesser yet valid
descriptor like "the God of Abraham," which is shared between Christians
and Muslims. Consider a simpler example. There is a term used in the
Bible, "wandering star," the term for n object which looked like a star
but did not follow the ecliptic. Today we know these objects to be
planets. Now, if a modern astronomer were to converse with an ancient
astronomer and talk about Mars or Venus and its behavior in the sky -
though their knowledge about the heavenly body would differ drastically,
there would be no doubt that they were talking about the same heavenly
body. The situation is no different here with God.