Is the God of Christians the God of Muslims Too?

Back in November and in response to a letter by some 100 Muslim leaders, the New York Times published a letter drafted by the Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School, and signed by 100+ Christian signatores. The letter called for Christian cooperation with Muslims. Among the signatores of that letter was the President of Wheaton College and other school officials. Well, it’s now being reported that Wheaton’s president and the other Wheaton officials have removed their names from the letter. I’m interested in the reasons offered by the President for removing his name. Here’s what he says:

“The statement was not carefully enough crafted to avoid encouraging that basic premise of civil religion; i.e., that we are all worshipping the same God,” Litfin said. “As a matter of principle over the years, I have made it a point to avoid becoming complicit in this cultural premise, denying as it does the unique claims of Christ.”

Huh? The God of Christians is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus. The God of Muslims is the God of Abraham. Seems to me Christians, Jews and Muslims do in fact worship the same God. Now depending on which of these monotheistic faiths you embrace will determine which of them you believe either has some false beliefs about that God, too few true beliefs about that God or just too many beliefs about that God.

That Christians and Muslims have throughout history taken themselves to be worshipping the same God is evidenced in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles, where he attempts to refute the beliefs of a prominent Muslim philosopher, Averose; but Thomas’ refutation doesn’t proceed by simply pointing out that Averose is in fact speaking of a different God. QED. No, he proceeds by trying to show that what Averose says about God is false.

Suppose you and I are discussing Tom Cruise. We discuss his marriage to what’s her name (what’s her name?.....right, Katie Holmes…had to google that one), we discuss his commitment to scientology, his role in the spectacularly gripping film Magnolia, and his early performance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Who is it we’re talking about? Who is it we’re referring to in our discussion? We’re talking about or referring to Tom Cruise, of course. But, suppose I point that Tom Cruise was not in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. And suppose you insist he was and that you really enjoyed him in that film. Seems to me we are in fact talking about and referring to Tom Cruise but you have at least one false belief about him. You believe he was in FBDO. You’re mistaken, however, because it was Matthew Broderick who starred in FBDO, not Tom Cruise. But notice: it’s not Matthew Broderick that we’re talking about, it’s Tom Cruise we’re talking about. And you are attributing to Tom Cruise something that’s not true of him.

Likewise, the fact that Christians, Jews and Muslims say different things about God does not entail that it is different gods about whom they say things. President Litfin is mistaken if he thinks that from the fact that Christians and Muslims have different beliefs about God it follows that they worship different gods. And for the life of me I can’t understand why he would think that acknowledging that Christians and Muslims worship the same God is to deny the unique claims of Christ. It isn’t. I believe that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Muslims don’t. I think they’re mistaken. They think I’m mistaken. How is this disagreement logically connected to the claim that we worship the same God? It’s not.

Let me go out on a limb here and make a conjecture. I conjecture that what really happened is that the President caved under pressure from Wheaton’s contributors. I bet that big dollars were threatened to be pulled if his name and the names of the other Wheaton officials did not come off that letter. If he in fact succumbed to such pressures or even felt such pressure, I’d like to know. At the very least, let’s be clear about this: no one must deny the unique claims of Christ by acknowledging that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship the same God. To think otherwise is to be ignorant both of history and of logic. I think we should expect better from a Christian college president.

Is Religious Identity the Enemy of Global Harmony?

An American generation under 45 has glimpsed an interconnected world beyond race and tribe. They know its attainment will be elusive but, after a bleak season, they feel summoned by what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” And, speaking of experience, they know Lincoln came to the presidency with all of two years in Congress behind him, and a failed Senate campaign.

Those are the words of Roger Cohen in a NY Times Op-Ed piece today titled Tribalism Here and There. Cohen’s editorial, a sort of pro Obama piece that looks at the rise of tribalisms in the context of globalization, makes what I think are some very important points. Against those whose wide-eyed optimism links globalization with a safer, more connected world, Cohen notes:

Connection and fragmentation vie. The Internet opens worlds and minds, but also offers opinions to reinforce every prejudice. You’re never alone out there; some idiot will always back you. The online world doesn’t dissolve tribes. It gives them global reach.

What I found most interesting, however, was this remark:

The main forces in the world today are the modernizing, barrier-breaking sweep of globalization and the tribal reaction to it, which lies in the assertion of religious, national, linguistic, racial or ethnic identity against the unifying technological tide.

Only the worst sort of denial can fail to notice that tribalism, rooted in religious identity, has been the source of terrible intolerance and responsible for inflicting upon humanity scores of horrendous human atrocities. So familiar are we with religiously inspired violence that I see no need to parade before us the usual cast of examples.

However, I think it has become increasingly clear that evil and ugliness perpetrated against humanity is not the special inclination of those with religious identities. The killing fields, the Soviet pogrom, the rape of Nanking, the revolution in China and the world wars should all be sufficient to dispel the myth that somehow secularists are impervious to intolerance and evil. I think it was Anthony Appiah who once sagaciously noted that we human beings as such seem naturally impatient for harmony.

Though no doubt there are historical connections between religious identity and crimes against humanity, those connections are contingent, I would argue, and the solution to tribalism does not reside in ridding the world of religion or religious identity. Well, that's also what what I would argue. There have been and can be religious identities, i.e., communities with deep religious identity, without tribalism. Indeed if I had the time I would argue that the resources necessary for tolerance and a valuation of pluralism—e.g., an account of human beings as possessing inestimable and intrinsic worth, a recognition of human beings as thoroughly finite, frail and fallible, and an account of human beings as free—are actually to be found (perhaps surprisingly if you listen to the story told by the secularists) in theistic religions.

So, to Mr. Cohen I say this: while I agree that tribalism is no friend to universal harmony, ridding the world of religious identities would not a harmonious world make. And maybe, Mr. Cohen, just maybe, religion holds a key to the sort of universal harmony many of us—both secular and religious—long to see realized.