Allah is not the God of the Bible

Submitted by John Paul (United States), Sep 25, 2006 at 22:45

Allah is not God. I understand the linguistic arguments, but this is a theological question. Yes, the German word Gott is used for the being we call "God," but was this always the case? Is it not true rather that words like Theos, Gott, and even God were more particular names of deities? But over time, the Christian conception of the "Godhead" or "Deity" was poured into those words and they lost whatever pre-Christian or pagan connotations they had.

This is a verbal trap - the Muslim's Allah and the Allah of some Christian Mediterranean or Arab peoples are manifestly not the same god simply for being the same or cognate words. Such a trap plays directly into the hands of the merchants of political correctness who want to speak of "Abrahamic faiths" or the "Judeo-Christian-Islamic" tradition - as if such a thing had ever existed!

Allah can never be viewed as the God of the New Testament. That God, to quote the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 1, spoke to us in times past through the prophets but now has spoken through his son, who, it is said, is the express image of his person. For Christians, it is scarcely possible to formulate language stronger than this in support of the Deity of the Son of God. Jesus is quoted in John 8 as saying, "Before Abraham was, I am." In this Jewish context this was a clear claim to divinity, and it was certainly understood to be so by many of the listeners, who picked up stones to stone him.

None of this is anything new, which is why Pope John Paul II as well as the Second Vatican Council have done such a tremendous disservice to Christians of all stripes. They imported modern relativistic thinking into the Christian history of revelation. In their efforts to bend over backwards it seems that they forgot or deliberately obscured (just to be nice) the fact that the New Testament claims that Jesus Christ is the final expression and revelation of God.

Assuming (as followers of both religions will do) that there is objective revealed truth in the sacred writings that Man could not gain on his own, Christianity and Islam cannot both be true and their gods cannot be the same. The Creator cannot have a Son through Whom He created all things and Who was His instrument of salvation through death on a cross and at the same time be the Creator who has no Son and whose final revelation comes through Muhammad. These are not the same God. I leave aside any arguments about whether Allah was the Moon God - not because they are not worth exploring, but because on the terms of the sacred texts of these two religions themselves we have all the information we need to answer the question.

The uniqueness of Christianity is nothing more or less than the uniqueness of the biblical claims of Jesus Christ. By any strict New Testament definition, Muslims are not worshiping the same God as Christians and Jews. (Jews, of course, could also say that from their vantage point Christians are not worshipping the God of the Hebrew Scriptures.)

Because of this the linguistic and etymological discussions about this issue are not only irrelevant, they actually obscure the issue and aid the cause of the jihadists.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".