Allah is not God: A Brief Comment on the ‘Insider Movement’

Thanks for posting this Matt+

The whole series of posts at The Gospel Coalition blog this week, of which the Piper video you’ve linked is a part, are really well done, and very helpful.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/13/leading-muslims-to-jesus-questions-to-consider/

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/14/how-islamic-can-christianity-be/

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/15/how-to-share-the-gospel-with-muslims/

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/16/questions-and-biblical-guidelines-for-missionaries-among-muslim-peoples/

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/16/piper-responds-to-the-insider-movement/

Also, TGC posted a piece earlier this year on the question of whether Christians & Muslims worship the same God.  Here’s that link

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/03/07/the-faqs-do-muslims-and-christians-worship-the-same-god/

I especially appreciated the article “How to share the Gospel with Muslims” and STRONGLY recommend it.  It contains some very helpful guidelines and principles and lots of Scripture to fuel reflection and prayer about this topic… and hopefully to help people move from TALKING about how to share the Gospel with Muslims, to actually doing it!  (smile)

I liked this section in particular:

We all have an idea of what we hope to see, and how we do Muslim ministry will be determined by our desired outcome. Insider Movement advocates envision implanting the gospel in a Muslim culture with the hopes that it will grow like yeast and lead to transformation from the inside out. In order to do this, they believe, the message must take on Islamic form. Anything less will be viewed as foreign and suspect. Others argue that Muslims need to be called out of Islam and gathered into a separate body with a clear Christ-centered identity. Anything less, they claim, would be viewed as syncretistic.

I would argue that both are correct. The gospel will take on a form of the culture that it is speaking to; if it doesn’t, it will not be understood. But the gospel will also speak with a prophetic voice within the culture that calls for transformation. It goes in and calls out. Our goal is to preach the gospel of Christ from the Scriptures and let the Spirit transform lives and communities.

BTW, Matt+ I would challenge your comment that insider movement advocates focus on “physical safety.”  I’m NOT an Insider Movement advocate, but I know quite a few folks who are, and none of them have ever focused on that issue.  Their focus has always been on trying to encourage a believer to remain inside an existing social network to facilitate the spread of the Gospel within their circle of family and friends.

Anyway, as I said, I’m very thankful to see this series of posts at TGC blog this week.  There has been so much “heat” in parts of the blogosphere and Christian media on these issues of late (the whole translation petition…), and TGC articles serve as great resource to get beyond the name-calling and help people to dig a bit deeper into some of the nuances and challenges of these questions, while still taking a strong stand for truth.

Hi KarenB.

I did not say that the insider movement “focuses on physical safety”.

My words were:

The Insider Movement - though undoubtedly with good intentions, undoubtedly in the name of evangelism and physical safety - teach new converts to betray the Lord who bought them.”

That is hardly a suggestion that the Insider movement focuses on safety. Safety is mentioned in combination with a number of other Good goals.

That none of your Insider acquaintances are concerned with safety does not mean that none within the Insider movement are concerned with safety. The reasoning below is typical in what I have read from those who support the Insider Movement

“It is true that in regard to the physical safety of Muslim-background believers, there is currently an entire spectrum of Koranic, culturally Islamic, churches which may or may not match our idea of “church.” Because there is both the threat of death and/or of total exclusion from family and the rest of society, modern-day Muslim converts have founded many different types of churches. Some of these look (almost) exactly like FBC; other congregations continue attending the mosque, praying to Allah, and not publicly speaking the name of Isau (Jesus), nor even calling themselves Christians.”
http://www.fbceugene.com/insider-movement

The authors of the above paragraph seem somewhat neutral but they articulate well why the Insider Movement has its advocates.

Oh, and in my reading I have not yet seen any “name calling”. Could you direct me to some articles that do that please?

Matt+ 
Oops don’t mean to nit-pick, but I just noticed your opening sentence again, I’m not sure your opening sentence is a really faithful replication of what Insider Movement (IM) advocates promote.  You wrote:

“The Insider movement encourages new Christian converts in predominantly Muslim countries to remain in the mosque, continue to say Muslim prayers, read the Koran as sacred literature…”

The IM advocates I know would not disagree with MBBs (Muslm-background believers) remaining in the mosque at least for awhile, but they encourage them to pray Christian prayers and say Christian creeds while IN the mosque.  And while they might support using the Qu’ran as a “bridge” to witnessing to Muslims, the MBBs would certainly be encouraged to read the Bible as the way to knowing Christ and His commands!

Any way, I’m not advocating for IMs, but just remembering what Kendall has always encouraged us about describing an “opponent’s” position in a way that they would recognize and accept as valid.

Matt+
I will send you some links by email over the weekend re: the name-calling.  Can’t post them here today for a number of reasons, and I believe it would take the thread off-topic anyway.

Really, all I was trying to do was say I LIKE this series of articles, including Piper’s piece. 

Apologies if I stirred up something I shouldn’t have.

Hi Karen B.

Don’t worry, you’re not nitpicking, just using your personal experience of people you know.

The problem is that we are not just dealing with “the people you know” but an entire movement which includes many who advocate the very things I described above.

“A growing number of professing Christians involved in witness to Muslims are a part of what is called, “Insider Movements,” or the “Insider Movement.” This controversial approach to ministry has resulted in many of its proponents to affirm that Muhammad was a prophet from God, the Quran is at least partially-inspired Scripture, and it is possible for Muslims to retain their Muslim identity as “Muslim followers of Christ.” Such beliefs have resulted in radical practices such as professing Christians and former Muslims legally converting to Islam and the production of “Muslim-idiom translations” of the Bible that do not literally translate such words and phrases as “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” and “Son,” in reference to Jesus and “Father” in reference to God.”

http://biblicalmissiology.org/2011/03/20/the-insider-movement-a-brief-overview-and-analysis/

Matt+

Biblical Missiology is leading the charge against Insider Movements, and so is hardly an unbiased source.  It would be like accepting what Susan Russell says about orthodox Anglicans being schismatic…., or something like that!  This is not to say that what the folks at Biblical Missiology are writing and saying is either untrue or unimportant.  Not at all.  But they are not the best source to use to describe the goals and intent of those who support IMs.

*IF* it would be helpful, over the weekend I could try to pull together some resources from IM advocates in their own words, but I’m not sure that’s really necessary.  For the average Anglican in the pew in N. America, whom I believe comprise the major readership of SF, going into too much detail on this beyond what TGC blog has already done in their excellent series is not necessary.

For those of us who do work in Mslm countries, it’s a hot issue and one I and my teammates are very actively involved in discussing, debating and praying through as a team, with colleagues on other teams, with our org’s leadership, with our home chchs, and with the MBBs with whom we work.

Hi Karen B.

“Biblical Missiology is leading the charge against Insider Movements, and so is hardly an unbiased source. “

So what? They are either factually correct or not.

“It would be like accepting what Susan Russell says about orthodox Anglicans being schismatic….”

No it wouldn’t. The article I site made specific charges that were quoted above. Do IM supporters engage in those practices or not? It is a factual question.

Whether or not we consider such practices heretical is a theological and biblical question.

“But they are not the best source to use to describe the goals and intent of those who support IMs.”

Who said they were? I think it is a fine source and the Factual charges they make I have seen made elsewhere. John Piper himself makes them in the video above.

The reason I quoted that particular text is because you were using your “personal aquaintances” to suggest that IM people do not do the things Piper and I suggest above. I was making it clear that I am not the only one with that perception.

But if you prefer a more neutral/academic approach, here is a series of posts by Dr. Doug Coleman who cannot be accused of putting words in people’s mouths. He writes:

“In response to these realities, IM claims that salvific faith in Jesus does not require a change of religion or religious identity, even though biblical faith will require one to abandon or reinterpret certain beliefs and practices of his pre-faith religion.[1] In other words, a Muslim does not have to stop being a “Muslim,” although he may have to change or reject some of his beliefs and practices. So a “Muslim follower of Jesus” might continue to go to the mosque and perhaps even participate in the prayers with others there while internally changing some of the content or meaning. He also might continue to affirm Muhammad as a prophet in some way, and might even participate in the Hajj, again transforming the meaning. At the same time, these “Muslim followers of Jesus” join together separately, away from the mosque, for worship and Bible study.”
http://betweenthetimes.com/index.php/category/series/insider-movements-series/

“*IF* it would be helpful, over the weekend I could try to pull together some resources from IM advocates in their own words.”

Go for it if you like. I am sure there are IM advocates who are more like your aquaintances. And there are IM advocates who do the things Piper et al address negatively.

Both, interestingly, seem fine with Christians continuing to worship in Mosques, address God as Allah, reject the translation of “Son of God” in the NT etc.

“For those of us who do work in Mslm countries, it’s a hot issue and one I and my teammates are very actively involved in discussing, debating and praying through as a team, with colleagues on other teams, with our org’s leadership, with our home chchs, and with the MBBs with whom we work.”

I don’t know that there is much to pray about here. The NT is very clear that Christians are not to participate in pagan worship.

Matt+, can you say more on the idea of Islam being “pagan”?  I’m not sure I am at home with that.  Yes, they are not Trinitarian - they have turned back from the full Revelation of God in Christ and thus practice religion apart from the work of the Holy Spirit.  But doesn’t that describe Judaism as well?  And certain heretical Christian groups?

I think Dante placed Mohammed in a ring with other heretics/church dividers in The Inferno.  That would be closer to my understanding of Islam.  But I don’t have a substantial comparative religion resume, so I am open to correction on this.

We had some debate with a Muslim rep when I was at my last church.  His position was that Islam was a reclamation of the true faith, which Judaism and Christianity both received but “messed up” (his words).  That is pretty much the position of any number of Protestant groups.

I don’t think that Muslims pray to a “different god.”  My sense is that they pray toward the one God, but have rejected his terms for that conversation.  I do not perceive them as “pagan” in the sense of reverting to nature gods and “confusing the creature with the Creator.”  If anything, they overemphasize the distant, impersonal mystery of God and wind up with a bunch of man made religion in place of the work of the Holy Spirit.  But again, that describes any number of Christian bodies who I would not classify as “pagan.”

(I apologize for these questions if the video answers them - I am at a site where filters prevent me from viewing it).

Hi Timothy+

“But doesn’t that describe Judaism as well?  And certain heretical Christian groups?”

Yes, it describes any spirituality or religion that does not flow from and submit to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Jews, before the proclamation of the gospel would not have qualified (obviously) but now they do since they reject God as he has been revealed to them in Christ Jesus and therefore no longer worship the true God which is why the church and the synagogue cannot be one.

I think Muslims pray to a phantasm - a distortion of the true God - who is every bit the idol that Zeus was or Aten or the Buddha or any of the Hindu gods or goddesses. A creation of man and not a revelation from God…all human conceptions of God that reject God’s revelation of himself in Christ end up confusing the creature with the creator because they replace the true God with a god of our own imagination.

It comes down to a question of identity. If you tell me that you are an introvert, bookworm, who loves dogs but I prefer to think of you as an extrovert, who hates dogs and never reads then I can prattle on about how we are good friends and I really know you - but really i don’t. I have projected my own desires and thoughts and impressions on you and I am friends with that thing…not you.

That is the essence of paganism and idolatry in general.

Matt: wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that Jews reject a crucial, indeed essential, element of the revelation of God, but that even in the error still worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Is that really idolatry? Is that really paganism?

Hi David,

I do not think that contemporary Jews worship the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob because the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is Jesus. They have rejected his self revelation. Their present image of God is therefore not God but an idol.

The debate about who Muslims and Jews are worshiping is a moot point. John 4 is an excellent reference. The essential need here is for truth -“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” This who have not put away false practices face condemnation. Rev 2:14 is clear that God demands full worship, not partial. We can’t have it both ways.

#10, I think another way to take a bite at that apple is to say that contemporary Jews are worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but their hardness of heart has not allowed them to see Jesus as the true Son of God and the true Messiah and so they do not perceive God in all His fullness [but it is still God in all His fullness].  Will they ever see this and be saved?  I don’t know; can we pray they will see this and be saved?  Absolutely.

  do not think that contemporary Jews worship the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob because the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is Jesus. They have rejected his self revelation. Their present image of God is therefore not God but an idol.

That’s the nub of the issue, isn’t it?

  I think another way to take a bite at that apple is to say that contemporary Jews are worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but their hardness of heart has not allowed them to see Jesus as the true Son of God and the true Messiah and so they do not perceive God in all His fullness [but it is still God in all His fullness].

Surely it’s more accurate to say that they do not perceive Him properly at all. No-one has seen God [the Father], says John (1:18), but He has made Himself known in the person of Jesus. You know Jesus, you know God - you don’t know Him, you don’t know God and, as Matt so helpfully points out, any false view of God is idolatry.

I’m not in any way as qualified as Karen B to speak about Islam and Muslims.  However, Matt+, if an Arabic speaker refers to God he’s got to use the word Allah.  It means God in Arabic.  Arabic speaking Christians call God Allah.  What we can say is that the Muslim understanding of God is seriously distorted.

Hi Katherine,

There are other words for God in Arabic and some Christian’s choose not to use the word “Allah” because of the risk of confusion with the Allah of Islam who is not God. In my post of course, I was not referring to the “word” Allah in so far as it is used generically but to the Muslim conception of Allah.

I’ve run into this argument before, and I must say it is quite strange.  It’s as if, for someone to prove his non-liberal non-multicultural credentials, he needs to argue for monotheists to be pagans.  Joe Carter did the same thing a while back at First Things, when he railed at persecuted Christians in a Muslim country for using “Allah” in their Bibles, when in fact (as Arabic speakers) they had always been doing so - even before the days of Mohammad.  It reminds me a little of the crazy atheists that need not only to argue that Jesus wasn’t who he said he was or didn’t rise from the dead, but also go a crazy extra step and deny that he even existed.

There’s a lot of rhetorical sleight of hand that goes into this.  I mean, really, every time we don’t worship Jesus in spirit and in truth, we are, in a sense, “idol worshippers” even in a fully orthodox Church.  This is indeed true in a sense, but not in every sense.  It is demonstrably NOT true in the sense that that means the golden cross in the sanctuary needs to be ground into powder as if it were the golden calf.  It is NOT true that the person (in need of repentance) needs to be treated and seen like a pagan in every sense. 

Put another way, when a Jew today becomes a Christian, he need not (and almost never does) perceive the change as changing from a pagan worshiping a false deity to now finally a worshiper of the one true and living God.  He instead (rightly) perceives it as going from seeing through a glass darkly to seeing him face to face.  Thus the Christian faith fulfills rather than abolishes their prior Jewish experience of God - making some things redundant and filling other things with meaning hitherto unseen.  Matt might argue that this is appeal to the mere experience of converts and therefore rubbish, but it also happens to be the exact same posture that the Apostles took toward their fellow Jews in Acts.  Even when they were confronting the leaders in their plans to kill Jesus, they didn’t say they were representatives of paganism, rather that they were doing Satan’s work by purporting to honor God while rejecting his only son.

The point is that modern Judaism, not to mention Islam, may indeed be fundamentally flawed in its picture of God - giving us a distorted picture of God that does not lead to the salvation and freedom offered by him in Christ, but rather to slavery on the one hand and poisonous misleading self-righteousness on the other.  But it does not follow from this that therefore we are best served by seeing them as pagans rather than monotheists.  Words mean things, and their content matters.  Especially when we are trying to be a witness to them. 

Really, Matt, with a Jewish person, would you really take the tack of “You are actually a pagan, and the diety YHWH is a false idol.  The passover is a feast of demons.  The torah is an idol.  You must reject this false god of your fathers and turn to the true and living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”?  Really?  In person?  To their face?  Would you not rather say that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, and the promised messiah, and the word of God?  And by saying “God” in the last sentence, is it really helpful to add that it is “God”, mind you - the Jesus God - as opposed to YHWH, your pagan god?

RE: “It’s as if, for someone to prove his non-liberal non-multicultural credentials, he needs to argue for monotheists to be pagans.”

Right—because if there’s one thing that Matt Kennedy needs desperately to prove it’s that he’s not a liberal .  And not politically correct.

Those are the things that Matt’s really really afraid of people thinking of him.

[roll eyes]

RE: “Really?  In person?  To their face?”

And that’s the *other* thing that Matt’s really known for around here—is not saying things he believes to be the truth to people’s faces because he’s really reserved and only says things secretly and quietly and never in person. *koff* crowds of Mormons *koff koff*

Reminds me of the libs who used to imply that we’d never tell someone our beliefs about sex acts between men or between women *in person*.  ; > )

RE: “Put another way, when a Jew today becomes a Christian, he need not (and almost never does) perceive the change as changing from a pagan worshiping a false deity to now finally a worshiper of the one true and living God.  He instead (rightly) perceives it as going from seeing through a glass darkly to seeing him face to face.”

To speak seriously, rather than indulging in wild delusions about Matt, those two concepts are not in conflict or antithetical.

It’s very possible to have been a pagan worshiping a false deity and then worshiping the one true and living God, while at the same time recognizing all of life, humanity, and Truth and Beauty and Love having been once seen “as through a glass darkly” but now oh so clearly.

Hi Wonders for Oyarsa

“I’ve run into this argument before, and I must say it is quite strange.  It’s as if, for someone to prove his non-liberal non-multicultural credentials, he needs to argue for monotheists to be pagans.”

heh…nice non-argument. I must not mean what I am saying because Wonders of Oyarsa has run into the argument before…or something.

“Joe Carter did the same thing a while back at First Things, when he railed at persecuted Christians in a Muslim country for using “Allah” in their Bibles, when in fact (as Arabic speakers) they had always been doing so - even before the days of Mohammad.  It reminds me a little of the crazy atheists that need not only to argue that Jesus wasn’t who he said he was or didn’t rise from the dead, but also go a crazy extra step and deny that he even existed.”

What on earth are you talking about?

“There’s a lot of rhetorical sleight of hand that goes into this.  I mean, really, every time we don’t worship Jesus in spirit and in truth, we are, in a sense, “idol worshippers” even in a fully orthodox Church. This is indeed true in a sense, but not in every sense.  It is demonstrably NOT true in the sense that that means the golden cross in the sanctuary needs to be ground into powder as if it were the golden calf.  It is NOT true that the person (in need of repentance) needs to be treated and seen like a pagan in every sense.”

This is incoherent. Nothing in the above paragraph has anything to do with the actual post.

My point was that Christians ought not to worship with those who pointedly and clearly reject God’s own self revelation in Jesus Christ because in doing so we worship something that is not God.

And from that you pull in something about grinding golden crosses into dust??

“Put another way, when a Jew today becomes a Christian, he need not (and almost never does) perceive the change as changing from a pagan worshiping a false deity to now finally a worshiper of the one true and living God.”

It doesn’t really matter what he “perceives”.

“He instead (rightly) perceives it as going from seeing through a glass darkly to seeing him face to face.”

No, he goes from rejecting the true revelation God to receiving him.

“Thus the Christian faith fulfills rather than abolishes their prior Jewish experience of God - making some things redundant and filling other things with meaning hitherto unseen.”

Nope. Their former understanding of God as not triune and including the Person of Christ is shown to be false, abolished and replaced with the true God who is manifested in Christ. And yes, the scriptures they read do, at that point, seem fulfilled.

“Matt might argue that this is appeal to the mere experience of converts and therefore rubbish”

Not rubbish for the converts…just rubbish as far as an argument to the actual point goes.

“but it also happens to be the exact same posture that the Apostles took toward their fellow Jews in Acts.  Even when they were confronting the leaders in their plans to kill Jesus, they didn’t say they were representatives of paganism, rather that they were doing Satan’s work by purporting to honor God while rejecting his only son.”

Would you care to site some actual texts here or are you going to deal in general impressions and hope that we’ll just take your word for it?

Jesus is quite clear in John 8 and John is equally clear in 1st John 2 that unless one knows the Son one cannot know the Father. So, no, according to Jesus himself those Jews who ultimately rejected the gospel are not worshipers of the true God.

“The point is that modern Judaism, not to mention Islam, may indeed be fundamentally flawed in its picture of God - giving us a distorted picture of God that does not lead to the salvation and freedom offered by him in Christ, but rather to slavery on the one hand and poisonous misleading self-righteousness on the other.  But it does not follow from this that therefore we are best served by seeing them as pagans rather than monotheists.  Words mean things, and their content matters.  Especially when we are trying to be a witness to them.”

To worship one God is not to be non-pagan. To be pagan in the general sense of the word is to worship any god other than the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

“Really, Matt, with a Jewish person, would you really take the tack of “You are actually a pagan, and the diety YHWH is a false idol.  The passover is a feast of demons.  The torah is an idol. You must reject this false god of your fathers and turn to the true and living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”?  Really?  In person?  To their face?” “

Red herring alert. of course we are not discussing what I would say to a Jewish person in the context of evangelism. We are discussing the nature and identity of the god Jews presently worship. Two very different things.

“Would you not rather say that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, and the promised messiah, and the word of God?  And by saying “God” in the last sentence, is it really helpful to add that it is “God”, mind you - the Jesus God - as opposed to YHWH, your pagan god?’

How odd…Jesus and YHWH are one. Why would I call YHWH a pagan God.

Okay,I’ve answered your wild, incoherent, and largely off topic rant paragraph by paragraph. But if you wish to continue commenting, you will keep your remarks on topic. Thank you

“It’s very possible to have been a pagan worshiping a false deity and then worshiping the one true and living God, while at the same time recognizing all of life, humanity, and Truth and Beauty and Love having been once seen “as through a glass darkly” but now oh so clearly.”

Good point Sarah!

I don’t think the argument is nearly so incoherent, Matt, as you assert, though I grant I wasn’t in the mood to be sympathetic in my tone.  I shouldn’t be surprised if you’re not interested in responding sympathetically to an argumentative post.  For that, I apologize.  I should have slept on that one. 

Let me see if I can spell out the argument more clearly.  This is the paragraph I disagree with:

I agree with John Piper. The “Allah” Muslims worship is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is a false god. The revelation of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is that God is triune - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and that Jesus is God’s eternal Son incarnate in human flesh. Muslims deny both propositions. Muslims and Christians cannot both be right about the nature and character of God. One group is guilty of idolatry.

I think the reasoning here is muddled, and the argument is misleading.  You are using words in different senses and making conclusions as if you were using them in the same sense. 

Perhaps you will permit me an allegory.  Say there are two groups of people living in the world.  The first group, the Flattites, believe the world to be flat.  The second group, the Spherians, believe it to be spherical.  The Flattites hold to their belief quite strongly, and have otherwise advanced scientifically to the point where this false belief does them genuine harm.  They refuse to travel to places where they will be sure to fall of the edge, their rockets never make it into orbit, because they shoot them straight up rather than sideways to gain tangential momentum.  Their wrongheaded belief causes them to perceive their relation to the world, wrongly, and this has real consequences. 

Now, say a group of Spherians, discussing this, were to have a disagreement on whether they and the Spherians “live in the same world”.  A particularly polemical Spherian might say something along these lines:

The world that the Flattites inhabit is not the Earth. It is a false world. The revelation of the Earth through science is that the world is spherical - that gravity pulls to the center - and that the earth, not the heavens, rotates. Flattites deny both propositions. Flattites and Spherians cannot both be right about the nature and character of the world. One group is guilty of idolatry.

True, in a sense, that one group is indeed guilty of idolatry - an idolatry that has real consequences.  However, the talk of these two peoples as “inhabiting different worlds” is ultimately metaphorical - it is making a rhetorical point about the importance of their differences.  It isn’t strictly true, because (obviously) there is only one world.  It is true that they can’t both be right about the character of the world (insofar as they truly disagree), but this doesn’t mean the Flattites don’t live in the world.  They do.  They just do so wrongly.

Now, compound this problem by giving the two groups different languages, where the word for “world” is “flattia” in Flattian, and the world is “spheria” in Spherian.  You could make all sorts of points about how Flattia and Spheria are fundamentally different places, and talk about what a horrible place Flattia is, and how people need to move away from Flattia and come to live in Spheria.  But, again, this language is fundamentally metaphorical.  The revelation to the Flattians isn’t to move away from Flattia - it is, rather, that their belief of Flattia to be flat is wrong.  This falsehood is the cause of their trouble in living in Flattia.  But their ultimate problem isn’t one of location, but of knowledge.  Again, one might speak poetically of one’s journey as going “from Flattia to Spheria”, but what changed wasn’t your location but your heart.

My point is that, when you speak of monotheists, it is fundamentally more helpful to use monotheistic language.  To revert to polemic about paganism in disputes between Christians and Jews is to muddle the issue, and not address the true problem.  The Apostles did not speak about Judaism in the same way they did about Paganism.  Nor should we.

This thread raises some very hard semantic issues at the core of twentieth century analytic philosophy.  The widely accepted consensus in modern philosophy of language, which was largely established by Saul Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein, goes something like this:

Ordinary proper names: can be used competently even when we have false ideas about the bearers of names.  A competent user of an ordinary proper name need not associate some true description with the name that fits the bearer uniquely.  Kripke’s example is that all I may take myself to know of Kurt Godel is that he proved the incompleteness of arithmetic; but if in fact he plagiarized this proof from a certain Fritz Schmidt, who was the one who actually proved the incompleteness of arithmetic, then I still have a false belief about Kurt Godel, not a true belief about Fritz Schmidt.  Descriptive content associated with the name “Kurt Godel” does not make that name pick out Schmidt, even though in this example that content is true of Schmidt and not of Godel.  In order to be competent with ordinary names, you need not be the master of some specific descriptive material that the bearer of the name uniquely satisfies.  What you need to do is intentionally connect to a chain of reference that leads back to an original use of the name in question, a use in which the name was given to its bearer.

A descriptive name: functions like a title.  It in some way abbreviates a description and so is tied to that description for its meaning.  For example, the name “Hesperus” was originally introduced basically as an abbreviation for a description like “the actual thing that appears in the night sky as the brightest heavenly body, after the moon.”  You don’t get to refer to something by a descriptive name unless the thing in question actually satisfies the associated description.  The reference of a descriptive name is just that of its semantically associated description.

If we suppose “God” to be a descriptive name, then its associated content could be something like “the Highest One.”  Then believing in God is not a mere psychological state but more akin to an achievement.  It requires hitting the mark, that is directing faith and trust toward the one who is in fact the Highest One.  There is no chance of believing in God, unless God has disclosed himself to us.  We can only hope that we actually stand in a tradition in which God has genuinely revealed himself.

***

The above summary is taken very closely from Ch1. of _Saving God: Religion after Idolatry_ by Mark Johnston, Kripke’s ex-student.  It’s not orthodox, but it is precise on difficult technical matters.

Hi Wonders of Osayra,

I appreciate that you have backed off the incoherence of your original comment.

As for your #21, your analogy this time is not incoherent - it’s simply an assertion without argument because have assumed your conclusion in your analogy without providing any basis for it.

You have asserted that the Allah Muslims worship is the true God revealed in the Old and New Testaments…they worship that God, they simply do not perceive him correctly and there will, as a result, be eternal consequences for that. Nevertheless, we both live on the same planet. We merely disagree about its shape and character.

If, in fact, I agreed with that premise and assertion, then the paragraph you quote above would be as you say:

“misleading” and I would be, “using words in different senses and making conclusions as if you were using them in the same sense.”

But I reject your premise and believe the assertion underlying your analogy is biblically repugnant.

I have argued that the god that Muslims worship is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a metaphorical statement. All false worship, all spiritualities formed on the basis of a rejection of Christ, find their origin in hell

And I have demonstrated - there is plenty of biblical evidence to back it up - that without the Son one does not have the Father, that any worship of God that does not flow out of this revelation is necessarily idolatrous.

The people, as David O pointed out above, who gathered around the calf image while Moses was on Sinai and declared the image to be the image of the god who “delivered us from Egypt” were not worshiping the same god…they were not on the same planet…as Moses. That thing was no god at all and its origin was the pit of hell. The people had become idolaters and those who refused to repent were slaughtered for their idolatry.

The northern kingdom, for another example, may have called the calf images YHWH, and used the same language and even shared some of the historical memory of the southern kingdom, but in truth, the worship of the calf idol was idolatry. They did not reside on the same planet and the prophets said as much. Israel (the northern kingdom) literally became like the gentiles to whom God handed them over and they were not re-gathered.

Even the people of Israel, called out from among the nations, with a common history and language, when they turn from the living God to worship “him” in another way, disregarding his own self-revelation, are considered idolaters and ultimately dealt with as gentiles.

Everywhere we look in scripture, religious and spiritual devotion that rejects God’s own self revelation is necessarily idolatrous and sets a group of people among the pagans.

Hi Matt,

You say:

“You have asserted that the Allah Muslims worship is the true God revealed in the Old and New Testaments…they worship that God, they simply do not perceive him correctly and there will, as a result, be eternal consequences for that.”

That’s not quite correct.  My point is, rather, that when we are talking about monotheism, it becomes incoherent to say “which God are we talking about” and “are we worshiping the same God”.  Within a context of monotheism, these are rhetorical devices - we’ve moved into the realm of metaphor.  You might as well be saying “we don’t have the same PI” or “We live in universes with a different gravitational constants”.  These statements just aren’t literally coherent.  There is only one God, though of course the pagans have many so-called “gods” and “lords”.  When you talk about God, in a monotheistic framework, you simply can’t say “I have mine” and “you have yours” without going into the realm of metaphor - talking about perceptions as if they were real things in themselves.

It’s a tricky business, I know, but I do think that a statement like:

“I have argued that the god that Muslims worship is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

IS in fact metaphorical in the way you are using it.  It’s not an outright falsehood - any more than Jesus’ statement that the father of the Pharisees was the devil.  But it isn’t literally true.  God was indeed the father of them in a literal sense - he is their creator.  But Satan was their father in the metaphorical sense of whose purposes their actions (of plotting to kill Jesus) were serving, and thus who they were growing to resemble in their souls. 

When you say something like “the God of the Muslims”, you need to be careful what is meant by what is said.  The God of the Muslims IS indeed the only God there is.  So is the God of the rocks, the God of the deer, the God of the galaxies, and the God of the Christians.  God is our God, he is their God.  There is none other.  That is literally true.  If you say “the being that corresponds exactly to everything the Muslims say about God” then you are talking about a non-entity - a philosophical construct for the purpose of imagination and discussion.  If you mean “the spiritual being whose purposes the Muslims directly serve by attempting to orient worship toward the divine creator while specifically neglecting to affirm Jesus who is the ultimate revelation of that creator” ... well, yes, you’ve got your answer built into the question.

My concern is that there is an inherent tribalism of trying to collapse every contact Christianity has with another people into “YHWH vs the pagan idols”.  There are some situations where the relationship is exactly that.  But St. Augustine knew the difference between the pagan pantheon and the one the Platonists reasoned about.  St. Patrick knew the difference between the grotesque idols that needed toppling, and the image of the perfect divine circle (in whose center he inscribed the cross of Christ).  And the Apostles were happy to worship in the synagogues alongside unbelieving Jews until they themselves were forced out by persecution, even as they avoided pagan worship.

That’s not quite correct.  My point is, rather, that when we are talking about monotheism, it becomes incoherent to say “which God are we talking about” and “are we worshiping the same God”.  Within a context of monotheism, these are rhetorical devices - we’ve moved into the realm of metaphor.  You might as well be saying “we don’t have the same PI” or “We live in universes with a different gravitational constants”.  These statements just aren’t literally coherent.  There is only one God, though of course the pagans have many so-called “gods” and “lords”.  When you talk about God, in a monotheistic framework, you simply can’t say “I have mine” and “you have yours” without going into the realm of metaphor - talking about perceptions as if they were real things in themselves.

It’s not at all like that, you’re simply begging the question.
Rather the issue is far simpler.

if I were to refer to you as “Boris the welsh cleaning-lady” and do so persistently despite the fact that you have already made yourself known as “Wonders for Oyarsa” then at what point would you consider that I was not approaching you correctly?

If you say “the being that corresponds exactly to everything the Muslims say about God” then you are talking about a non-entity - a philosophical construct for the purpose of imagination and discussion. 

No, not a philosophical construct - an idol and thus the very creation of Satan. It doesn’t matter how many times a monotheist says they are worshipping God - if it’s not clearly and explicitly the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through the Son, by the Spirit, then it’s not God at all in any real sense.
You might as well be worshipping the Baal of the rocks (which, by the way, you really ought to recognise is not God either despite what you claim above - unless that poor deluded Elijah chappy really got it all wrong and actually “the God of the rock” is an acceptable way to think of God).

if I were to refer to you as “Boris the welsh cleaning-lady” and do so persistently despite the fact that you have already made yourself known as “Wonders for Oyarsa” then at what point would you consider that I was not approaching you correctly?

I never said they were approaching him correctly.  But I’m one man out of many men.  There is only one God.

No, not a philosophical construct - an idol and thus the very creation of Satan. It doesn’t matter how many times a monotheist says they are worshipping God - if it’s not clearly and explicitly the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through the Son, by the Spirit, then it’s not God at all in any real sense.

What is this “it”?  It isn’t an idol in the literal sense - there is no image.  It is a philosophical construct.  I’ll even grant that it’s an idolatrous one.  It’s still a construct nonetheless.  As far as Satan’s power to create, we’ll have to disagree on that one.  I believe he has only the power to corrupt and distort.

You might as well be worshipping the Baal of the rocks (which, by the way, you really ought to recognise is not God either despite what you claim above - unless that poor deluded Elijah chappy really got it all wrong and actually “the God of the rock” is an acceptable way to think of God).

Sheesh, there you go again.  My argument is simply that the Muslims and Jews are saying wrong things about God, not wrong things about some other topic.  The phrase “wrong things about God” has meaning.  So does “worshipping God in a way he forbids, and thus an abomination”.  How does that translate in your mind to “an acceptable way to think of God”?

By the way Matt, please address me as I have revealed myself.  My pseudonym is “Wonders FOR Oyarsa” - implying that I want to be attentive to the wonders God is doing in our midst, should Oyarsa need me to give an account for him of things he longs to look into.  I’m not “Wonders OF Oyarsa” because I certainly don’t presume to speak words of revelation on behalf of angels. 

Was that intentional, by the way?  Because if so, it was certainly clever in light of the present topic. 

My argument is simply that the Muslims and Jews are saying wrong things about God, not wrong things about some other topic.

And the problem is with the “simply”. They’re not “simply” saying wrong things. They’re saying idolotrous and utterly incorrect things to the point where they’re talking about another God which is no god at all.

Oh, and please forgive the lack of the “+”.  I’m somewhat new to Anglicanism, and am still getting my bearings about conventions like that.  I don’t mean any disrespect (though I know it could certainly seem otherwise from the spirit of my first post).

Oh, and please forgive the lack of the “+”.  I’m somewhat new to Anglicanism, and am still getting my bearings about conventions like that.  I don’t mean any disrespect (though I know it could certainly seem otherwise from the spirit of my first post).

I can assure you that matt and I are not in the least insulted by it.

David,

And the problem is with the “simply”. They’re not “simply” saying wrong things. They’re saying idolotrous and utterly incorrect things to the point where they’re talking about another God which is no god at all.

I don’t find that helpful.  There is no such thing as “another God”.  I think the best response to “Jesus isn’t the son of God” isn’t “Well, not the son of YOUR god which is no god at all, but he is certainly the son of MY god”, but rather simply “Yes, he is.”

To say idolatrous things about God is still to talk about God.  It’s the very fact that it’s “about God” that makes the error so bad.

RE: “My point is, rather, that when we are talking about monotheism, it becomes incoherent to say “which God are we talking about” and “are we worshiping the same God”.  Within a context of monotheism, these are rhetorical devices - we’ve moved into the realm of metaphor.”

Actually—by Oyarsa’s definitions—it becomes incoherent to say “which God are we talking about” when talking within “a context” of polytheism as well, since as we all know there also aren’t actual pluralities of gods but only one; so that too is—by Oyarsa’s standpoint—a rhetorical device.  Polytheists actually are worshiping either 1) aspects of the one true God or 2) aspects of something else, and calling those aspects “gods.”  In that sense, polytheists and monotheists who worship something other than the one, true God are in the same boat, since they’ve constructed something—either a many-headed monster or a one-headed monster—that is something other than God.

In any case, it’s all moot.  Oyarsa seems to be wishing to imply that the “monotheists”—Jews and Muslims—aren’t “pagan” while the polys may be called “pagan” all under the assumption that since there really is only one God nobody can actually be worshiping something else [commonly called an “idol”] and calling it “God.”

This reminds me of the people who assert that there is no real thing called “polygamy” since US law only allows for one marriage, so any other “wives” aren’t actually “wives” and therefore one cannot be thrown into the clink for having other “wives” because they aren’t such under US law.  It is all a “rhetorical device” and in the realm of metaphor to claim that one has many wives, when in reality in the US there can be only one.  Ergo, there are no “polygamists” in the US; it’s not legally allowed.  ; > )

Regardless, both monotheists and polytheists are worshiping something other than the one true God and in the general sense of the word are both “pagan.”

I appreciate that some would like to understand monotheists as different and less pagan than polytheists, but they’re not really consistent with their own premises in that.

Hi Sarah,

Now lets not go confusing our un-PC technical terms here.  Pagans and infidels are two very different types of heathens. 

I guess I find the distinction between “one god among many gods” and “God” to be a pretty important one.  In a polytheistic context, it makes perfects sense to say “are we worshiping the same god, or different ones?”  Granted, if it happened to be the same god (like, say, Zeus and Jupiter), there might still be disputes as to how he was to be worshiped.  But the question of different gods makes sense when we are talking about a sort of entity you can have more than one of.

Perhaps the trouble comes with the word “worship”.  Did Cain worship God or Satan with his sacrifice?  Well, he worshiped God, in that his sacrifice was directed towards him.  And yet his sacrifice gave no honor to God, and was not acceptable to God.  And the fruits of his action conformed to the one who was a murderer from the beginning.  So in a sense he worshiped Satan.  But not because Satan was the object that his religion was directed towards, but because the condition of his heart made Satan and not God the actual beneficiary. 

I’m actually surprised how hard it is for folks to concede this pretty simple point - that when we talk to Jews and Muslims about God, we are talking about truth and falsehood about God, and not loyalty to competing demigods.  We should say “God isn’t like that” and not “your god may be but mine isn’t”.

RE: “I’m actually surprised how hard it is for folks to concede this pretty simple point - that when we talk to Jews and Muslims about God, we are talking about truth and falsehood about God, and not loyalty to competing demigods.”

Well, the reason why there’s no concession is because the point is not accurate.  If it were, you’d be treating the polytheists in the same way, which is to say that you’d be describing them as “talking about truth and falsehood about God” in their worship of multiple gods.

The reason why you’re *not* treating the polytheists consistently is because that would ruin your larger point which is that monotheists should be treated somehow as better than and less pagan than the polytheists.

Don’t you think, Oyarsa, that rather than constructing the rabbit trail of “we know they’re not really worshiping another god because there is only one God in reality and your talking about it as if they were is actually simply your incorrect use of a metaphor”, you would have been much better served to simply say “hey, I think monotheists should be treated differently from polytheists—they’ve ‘progressed’ after all—and I don’t think you should be calling them pagans either, but calling polytheists pagans is quite alright”?

Now you’re stuck with the whole “other gods is a metaphorical construct” meme for *both* polytheists and monotheists which once again forces them both back on the same plain.

Distressing.

Wonders for Oyarsa,

“I’m actually surprised how hard it is for folks to concede this pretty simple point - that when we talk to Jews and Muslims about God, we are talking about truth and falsehood about God, and not loyalty to competing demigods.  We should say “God isn’t like that” and not “your god may be but mine isn’t”.

1. we are certainly talking about what is true and what is false about God. But we do the same with polytheists and pantheists and panentheists.

2. We can say “God isn’t like that” to Jews, Muslims, panentheists, pantheists, and polytheists.

3. And it is also true that the god contemporary Jews, Muslims, panentheists, polytheists and pantheists worship is not God but an idol.

These three things are not in conflict.

Muslims and Jews worship a god who is not. You are correct above that the idol they worship is “nothing” - he is as much of nothing as the idol’s to which Paul refers in 1 Cor 10.20. But origin of this particular idol…as with all idols…is demonic - therefore to serve, worship, pray to, obey the Muslim concept of “Allah” is to serve, worship, and pray to and obey demons.

Your example of Cain is irrelevant to our discussion because Cain did not reject God’s self revelation and worship another God as Muslims and Jews do. He was certainly worshiping Satan in the sense that he sinned…but there is no indication that he rejected the truths about God that God revealed. Cain merely refused to follow them.

I’m not a fan of making drive-by comments and don’t have time to get sucked into this particular conversation; nevertheless, I think it a huge mistake for a conversation like this to involve the careless lumping together of Jews and Muslims.  I’ve never been much impressed with terms like “monotheism”, since the exercise of counting gods seems to me to say more about the workings of the Victorian brain than about any meaningful religious distinction. 

More important, of course, is the mysterious relationship Christianity has with our Jewish Elder Brothers, which differs fundamentally from that with, say, Islam, which worships a god not revealed in the Jewish scriptures.  Our Lord spent His earthly ministry as a sin-fearing, Torah-observant Jewish Rabbi and had nothing whatever to say about Islam, invented via a new set of writings that explicitly reject the Jewish revelation.  Judaism is explicitly open to the possibility of multiplicity within the godhead and hence to such expressions as “God is Love”; whereas Islam contrives to foreclose the subject entirely.  And no, I don’t think it helpful to compare Judaism with heretical would-be-Christianity simply because it involves different understandings of shared scriptures.

Regardless, the post refers to Islam.  I think it would be much more furitful to limit subsequent comments to this much simpler topic and not stray into the fraught matter of Judaism’s relationship with Christianity, which differs from that with Islam in kind a good deal more than in degree.

Hmm, not sure, #36.  I strayed into the areas you are declaring off limits at #8 and the result was an informative thread closing in on 40 comments.  I think we had to go down a number of paths to keep refining our assumptions and terms.  It’s made me read and think, which is why I haven’t leapt back in.

Islam alone is not the “simple topic” here - the headline is “Allah is not God” and I don’t see any of KarenB’s, Matt’s, Sarah’s or Wonders for Oyarsa’s comments as irrelevant to that provocative discussion starter.

Matt’s answers tend to disagree with your nuanced assumption of “Judaism’s relationship with Christianity, which differs from that with Islam in kind a good deal more than in degree.”  Matt is arguing that all non-Christian religious endeavors (all points of view that do not accept God’s full revelation in Christ) are inherently pagan, no matter what they might have been before Christ came.  I wasn’t entirely comfortable with that on first read, but on visiting Romans 1 I started to read it more favorably,

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” (Romans 1:16-18 ESV)
 
Your comment was well thought out and by no means a drive-by, but the issues you raise do, in fact, suck you into the conversation.

Fr. Fountain #37 - Fair enough.  To the extent that Fr. Kennedy and others here recognize non-Christianity as non-Christianity and note it as (at the very least) problematic, I am in agreement, as any Christian - indeed, any non-Christian, including any non-Messianic Jew - should be.  My contention is that lumping Judaism in with any other form of non-Christianity creates more confusions than it clarifies and at the very least inclines toward doing an injustice to God’s eternal covenant with His Chosen People.  Which question does, in my view, warrant nuance. 

I have no interest whatever in rejecting Christian outreach to Jews.  I will be spending most of the coming weekend meeting with senior representatives of CMJ-USA (Christian Ministry among Jews) and hope to increase our reportage on Jewish outreach for The Living Church Foundation, with which ministry I am affiliated.  Outreach in the name of Christ implies recognition of realities not unlike what has been discussed above.

Nevertheless, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity is different from the relationship between Christianity and anything else.  Conversations about such matters ought not be conducted as if this were not the case.  I thought and think some of what was stated earlier in this discussion was careless.  It is not my intention to declare any matter to be out of bounds - I haven’t the authority in any case - but to caution against sloppiness in discussing our Elder Brothers.

Hi Daniel Muth,

I certainly agree that as idolatries go, I’d rather be Jewish than Muslim. And I also agree that God is not finished with the Jews. Just a brief perusal of Romans 9-11 demonstrates that beyond a reasonable doubt. Paul is very clear that at some point “All Israel shall be saved.” I would note, however, that Paul is also clear that this future salvation for Israel will come through conscious faith in Jesus Christ.

In any case, none of the above affirmations means that the present state of the Jewish faith is not idolatrous and indeed, “pagan”, in the general sense of the word.

And saying this is nothing new…as Tim+ points out above.

Imagine the shock the Jew must have felt upon hearing Jerusalem and the temple law likened to Hagar the slave woman by Paul in Gal 4…especially since this is precisely the allegory Jews used to describe pagan gentiles.

It is certainly true that Christians remained in the synagogues at first. But when the synagogues rejected the gospel, they departed.

And for good reason. God had come to his people in Jesus. Rejecting him is rejecting YHWH. One cannot have the Father without the Son. Without worshiping the Son you cannot worship God.

Of course, the first century was not the first time the descendants of Abraham had turned away from YHWH to idols and become like the gentiles.

And the anticipated salvation of the Jews in Rom 11 will not be the first time God in his mercy and faithfulness rescues them from idolatry just as he has rescued each of us.

Let me see if I can clear up the semantics on the names of God further.  According to Kripke and Johnston:

“Yahweh” is/is used as an ordinary proper name as I described above in [22].  In Exodus 3, a being turns up and introduces himself.  This entity came to called Yahweh (already the difficulty begins though when Moses asks his name he responds “I am who am” a nature-revealing designator that is also a name).  Then a community with all different sorts of conceptions used that name to pick out the same entity.

“God” is a descriptive name as described above in [22].  In arguments about syncretism, it’s almost like a mathematical function or title that designates the Highest One.

So we can ask meaningfully as Marcion did is Yahweh in fact God?  Marcion doubted that the God who appeared to Abraham was God.  If Marcion was wrong about this, then his mistakes were not about the meaning of words.  They would be mistakes about the theological facts of the matter.  This itself would entail that “Yahweh” does not mean “God,” and that “God does not mean “the god who appeared to Abraham.”  If those were equivalences in meaning, then there would be no room for the relevant factual mistakes.

So Wonders for Oyarsa: you seem to be using “God” as an ordinary proper name in which conceptual disagreements about the nature of God still refer to the same entity.  Arguably the Abrahamic community is unified enough that such ordinary proper name usage works for “Yahweh and for “the God of Abraham.”  That’s a pretty sophisticated move on your part, and I like your hypothetical Flat world and Sphere world communities; they harken back to Hilary Putnam’s famous Twin Earth thought experiment in the 70’s when the descriptivist theory of names was being overturned.  That said, I think you need to be more careful about descriptive names.

Matt et al: I like your vigorous defense of monotheism, but you need to be careful about not falling into the descriptivist theory of names, which holds that the meanings (semantic contents) of names are identical to the descriptions associated with them by speakers, while their referents are determined to be the objects that satisfy these descriptions.  In other words if the semantic and conceptual spaces merge, then it’s impossible to even ask if “Yahweh” is “God”.  If you draw public linguistic communities too tightly, then it’s hard not to imply things like Mark and Luke have different Gods and one might be an idolator.  I’m not saying you’ve done that, but being careful about ordinary proper names might help.

Wonders of Oyarsa: I think you have a good instinct to avoid judging people strictly on cognitive grounds.  The Devil would accept the proposition that God exists and probably have a very richly grained conception of God.

Matt: I think you have a good instinct to resist bogus syncretism and to flesh out the different conceptions of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Christians have no business affirming non-Christian conceptions of the sacred.  When Muslims say “there is no God but God” they mean something like “the ordinary proper name Muslim conception of God is the descriptive name Highest One.”

I hope this has been helpful to all involved.  Talk of linguistic communities can sound squishy, but Krikpe semantics can provide a powerful rebuttal to deconstructionism, hideous attempts to make words mean things other than they “say,” and other vile attacks (I’m thinking of you, Marcus Borg) on public speech.

Plantagenets,

I might be wrong, but I thought that the main point of difference between Matt+ and Wonders for Oyarsa was: “Whether it is appropriate to group jews, muslims and polytheistic worshippers together under the term ‘pagan’?”

Fr. Kennedy #39 -

I agree that it would be better to be a Jew than a Muslim.  I say that because on the whole, I think an incomplete answer to the question of God’s identity is better than a purely false one.  The Jews have been entrusted with God’s self-revelation (Romans 3:2).  Their rejection of that revelation’s fulness in Christ means that they are not justified, as you and Fr. Fountain, pace Paul, have rightly noted.  However, this does not necessarily mean that they therefore worship an idol of human making, as do Muslims. 

Clearly, a devout Muslim who comes to faith in Christ must cease to be a Muslim, his former religion being based on no actual revelation from the God of Israel.  You appear to be saying that a devout, Torah-observant Jew who comes to faith in Christ must cease being a devout Jew (since his former Judaism is idolatrous) and become instead a Christian (though I note that you do not seem to imply that he must give up the observance of the Torah or even that he is not still in some sense a Jew - we would have a vastly greater disagreement if you did). 

I do not agree.  The God he worshipped before is the God revealed in what we rightly call the Old Testament.  Though a Jew may not understand that God as He fully wishes to be understood nor worship as does one who knows that God revealed in, through and as Christ, nevertheless the objective reality of that God, revealed in the Hebrew scriptures, has not changed.  Paul is clear that Jewish Torah observance does not justify.  He does not say that it is somehow done in the name of a false god nor that it constitutes idolatry.  A Jew who comes to believe in Jesus as Messiah comes into a fulness of divine knowledge and receives justification that was previously unavailable to him. He has not, as with the Muslim, moved from falsehood to truth, but from incompleteness to fulfillment.  I believe those to be very different things.

Hi Daniel Muth

“I agree that it would be better to be a Jew than a Muslim.  I say that because on the whole, I think an incomplete answer to the question of God’s identity is better than a purely false one.”

Although, apart from Jesus Christ we are talking about distinctions without a difference.  Apart from him one cannot know the true God.

“The Jews have been entrusted with God’s self-revelation (Romans 3:2).  Their rejection of that revelation’s fulness in Christ means that they are not justified, as you and Fr. Fountain, pace Paul, have rightly noted.  However, this does not necessarily mean that they therefore worship an idol of human making, as do Muslims.”

Certainly it does. Any non-triune concept is idolatrous. Any concept of God apart from Jesus Christ after his self-revelation is not merely “incomplete” but necessarily idolatrous…as idolatrous as the golden calf (see above examples).

“Clearly, a devout Muslim who comes to faith in Christ must cease to be a Muslim, his former religion being based on no actual revelation from the God of Israel.  You appear to be saying that a devout, Torah-observant Jew who comes to faith in Christ must cease being a devout Jew (since his former Judaism is idolatrous) and become instead a Christian (though I note that you do not seem to imply that he must give up the observance of the Torah or even that he is not still in some sense a Jew - we would have a vastly greater disagreement if you did).”

I would not at all say he has to give up being a Jew. I would say he has to let go of the golden calf of contemporary Judaism. God has come down from the mountain and revealed himself. To continue to reject that revelation is to put oneself among the pagans.

“I do not agree.  The God he worshipped before is the God revealed in what we rightly call the Old Testament.”

No he is not. The God revealed in the Old Testament is Father Son and Holy Spirit.

“Though a Jew may not understand that God as He fully wishes to be understood nor worship as does one who knows that God revealed in, through and as Christ, nevertheless the objective reality of that God, revealed in the Hebrew scriptures, has not changed.”

It has not. But as Paul says (2 Cor 3), they read through a veil so that what they read does not lead them to the truth

“Paul is clear that Jewish Torah observance does not justify.  He does not say that it is somehow done in the name of a false god nor that it constitutes idolatry.  A Jew who comes to believe in Jesus as Messiah comes into a fulness of divine knowledge and receives justification that was previously unavailable to him. He has not, as with the Muslim, moved from falsehood to truth, but from incompleteness to fulfillment.”

Right. Paul is also writing when many Jews were being given the opportunity to receive or reject their God for the first time. Those who ultimately rejected Jesus Christ, however, ceased to worship YHWH. Paul’s mission, part of it anyway, was to announce the coming of YHWH in the person of Christ. Those synagogues that accepted the gospel remained within the family of Abraham. Those who rejected it did not (Romans 9-11 again)

Now the worship of God apart from faith in Jesus Christ is not in fact the worship of God. Jesus describes such worship in John 8. It is demonic.

P1) God = Jesus
P2) Allah does not equal Jesus
C1) Allah does not equal God

P3) God = God of Abraham
P4) Allah = God of Abraham
C2) God = Allah

The reasoning above is crude and inconsistent.  We can begin to rehabilitate it by distinguishing between Christian use of the word “God” as Supreme Being/Most High/One, True God/The Real God/Object of Faithful Seeking and “God” as Holy Trinity.

P1*) The True, Supreme Being = Jesus
etc.

This is an improvement, but there are still problems:

P3*) The True, Supreme Being = God of Abraham
P4) Allah = God of Abraham

To an orthodox Christian, P3*) and P4) are both kinda true, kinda false in some senses to varying degrees.  We need either to keep unpacking terms until we get to non-controversial atomic propositions which will probably line up only at a trivial level “The orthodox Christian conception of the entity orthodox Christians intend to refer to as the Supreme Being=the orthodox Christian conception of the entity Abraham intended to refer to” or we need a multi-valued logic.  That math gets fancy quickly and requires hard metaphysical choices about what’s important to similarity because any two entities are infinitely similar and infinitely dissimilar, e.g. a chicken and an electron are both not 1kg, 2kgs, etc.  What’s important is to work out the relevant dimensions of comparison; otherwise, you get premises and conclusions that say things like “The God of Abraham is 14.8% like the Holy Trinity.”

In other words, to claim

Yahweh = Jesus

conflates a range of features that imply:

P5) Yahweh=Jesus
P6) Jews worship Yahweh.
C3) Jews worship Jesus

a valid argument that seems weird and again kinda true, kinda false.  In terms of paganism, a strong version of an assumption in this thread seems to be:

P7)  If one fails to explicitly represent Jesus in the target of one’s worship, then one is a pagan.

“If one fails to explicitly represent Jesus in the target of one’s worship, then one is a pagan.”

Yep

Okay, chicken, electron, Yahweh, Allah, Jesus.

Got it.

Hi Michael A,

I didn’t intend to sidestep your question, no disrespect was intended; I dashed off my response on my way out the door and maybe it was more oblique than intended.

Yes, there are many moving parts to this thread and the scope of paganism has been central.  I went into the semantics stuff because of the debate about who Muslims and Jews worship influences how people come down on their potential status as idolaters and/or pagans.  The short answer is linguistic reference influences worship reference.

A model: thousands of years ago, the Jews, a polytheistic lot, were basically going along their idolatrous pagan way.  Then according to the Bible, they experienced a series of divine revelations, theophanies in which they had perceptual experience of an entity.  This entity was tagged with the ordinary proper name “YHWH” (the experiences themselves were far from ordinary but still perceptual, mystically perceptual).  So in the aftermath of “the Sinaitic Experience,” there was a community of people who agreed to link “YHWH” to a causal chain of reference grounded in a series of perceptual experiences just as people do with “Kurt Godel.”  For Moses, “YHWH” referred directly to Moses’s own perceptual experiences.  For another Jew, they might refer directly to Moses’s perceptual experiences, in the way that linguistic meaning and belief are commonly “through another,” c.f. Lacan.  Of course, Jews over time time developed different conceptions of “YHWH” that they associated with the tag “YHWH.”  Some of these conceptions did not match Moses’s perceptual groundings, but in ordinary speech they still referred to the same entity.
  So, if an ancient Jew, called say Barcus Morg, came along and said something like, ‘“YHWH” means whatever you want it to even in public speech,’ then that person would be a verbal terrorist destroying the denotative tag-like function of “YHWH” and making “YHWH” strictly the name of psychological conceptions.  Then “YHWH” would be the name of a theory ungrounded in a link between perception and conception.  If Barcus Morg were very bad, he might then insinuate that the so-called strictly conceptual nature of “YHWH” allowed one to say or believe just about anything about “YHWH.”  That would make the Plantagenets sad.
  But then Betrand Russell and his unlikely friend Matthew K might ride to the rescue.  They might say things like “Barcus, your conception of ‘YHWH’ is so misguided that you don’t even get to use that word anymore; when you speak of ‘YHWH’ you refer to someone or something else entirely.”  That might imply that Barcus had connected his conception of “YHWH” to a perceptual grounding in some other entity.  People might say things like “Barcus, you worship your beard/tenure/a demonic image.”  Functionally, they might be correct.  Other very smart people argue in complex theories that meaning is use at the communicative level and thought level.  But, and this is important, Betrand and Matthew could very easily further obscure the link between assumed perception and “YHWH.,” mired in Barcus’s original sin.  They would then complete Barcus’s exile to a strange, new linguistic community where with no currency of shared public reference it would be quiet difficult for Betrand and Matt to understand Barcus.  Barcus is a linguistic terrorist indeed.  Bad, Barcus, bad!
  Now what if Barcus is partly mistaken about the nature of “YHWH” but he and some of his exiled friends sometimes intend to refer back to the entity Moses perceived and those experiences?  In that case, Barcus et al would be part of the linguistic tribe again (although it would be hard to tell) but with mistaken ideas about “YHWH” while still intending in the same way as everyone else does to refer back to the “YHWH” of Moses’s encounter.  Then to say “Barcus does not linguistically refer to ‘YHWH’” would be wrong according to our Kripkean understanding of how language works in practice.  But a different understanding of “linguistic reference,” maybe defined by a different, a theoretical stipulation of “reference” could differ.  This is where semantics meets the road, that is where our understanding of language itself effects the content of the debate.  At this meta-level, we’re not talking about a correct or wrong umpire call; we’re talking about the constitution of Major League Baseball.
  Thus, the state of play concerning the uses and reference of “YHWH” is getting very blurry with different groups battling confusingly for control of the use/meaning of the word, so drilling down to asking about true and false conceptions “in spirit and truth” is much close to experiential practice and thus clearer .

  Hopefully, you can see what happens when new groups come along with new alleged perceptual experiences and new conceptions and then start linking and revising words, ordinary names, concepts, and increasingly remote perceptions all together.  Then ask what fits a descriptive name like “God” which itself is mediated through complex conceptions.  I don’t know enough about Islam to understand how “Allah” works.  According to Wikipedia, it sounds like a descriptive title like “Supreme Being,” but also the Arabic word for God that stems back from Aramaic speaking Assyrian Christians.  Today Arabic speaking Christians use “Allah” for “God the Father” a hybrid ordinary proper name/descriptive name, “God” a title and “Father” coming from the disciples’ perceptual grounding of Jesus’s assumed perceptions of “the Father.”

***

How does all this address pagan vs. non-pagan?  We tend to use linguistic reference as a proxy for worship reference.  If you think that “Wotan” verbally refers to a demonic image, then you probably think that Wotan worship refers to a demonic image.  But a polytheist can refer to “Jesus” privately and publicly in an orthodox way and still have corrupt worship practices.  We need a proper theory of worship as speech act public and private and as something else.

  Let’s say Barcus can publicly refer to “YHWH” but that he has bad conceptions of “YHWH,” and he uses those conceptions to target his public worship and private prayers.  This is bad, no doubt about it.  Let’s say Barcus’s prayers are like arrows aimed in all the wrong directions.  He never hits his target.  Not good.  But someone at the target’s perspective can still see the effort.  To use Matt’s earlier example, Barcus interacts not with the beloved in itself (in Kantian terms) but with his own projections.  According to psychoanalysis, pure narcissists interact exclusively with their projections, just as solipsists speak only to themselves (the Plantagenets hopes you’re listening!), but still most people break through to others and common ground.  That’s what true love is: recognition of others on the terms of their reality.  That’s level one:  Barcus is wrong but not completely isolated; the target, so to speak, can still reach out to him.  Of course, if Barcus rejects help, that’s his fault.
  Level two is this: God is not limited to a single perspective in this analogy.  God is everywhere.  So to extend the imperfect analogy, the target is everywhere.  That doesn’t mean we should go the full Rasputin and rape and pillage our way to God.  It’s better to say God encompasses all true perspectives.  So, in some sense, it seems that the agnostic who actually loves truth and justice worships Jesus on a deep level.  Without straying into justification by works doctrine, it’s hard to separate faith and works in a working faith.
  What I really want to do here is return to our sense of an objective God beyond our conceptions that I’ve fought so hard to distinguish from (its mediation in) pure mental life.  That God is beyond perception and thus words, i.e. Kripkean reference grounded in perception.  This is the apophatic theology of The Cloud of Unknowing .  To paraphrase Lacan, language generates the sense of the possibility of the unspeakable, knowledge the sense of the possibility of the unknown.  And hopefully, humility.

***

Chicken, electron, cow.

Which doesn’t belong?  On the SAT, the right answer would be “electron.”  But if I sue ETS and say “cow” is a monosyllabic word without the letter “e,”  I may have a case.  What matters in determining similarity here are our underlying dimensions of affinity and distinction—big vs. small and living vs. inanimate or monosyllabic vs. polysyllabic and “e” vs. not “e.”  Big vs. small eliminates more possibilities than “e” vs. not “e” across the set of all possible worlds in modal logic, so it seems more relevant to the fundamental structure of reality and intuitively more relevant to day to day categorization efforts, but setting up a logic and metaphysics that explicitly picks the right dimensions of comparison is ferociously difficult, c.f. Timothy Seider.  Maybe, that sounds like an irrelevant example used to make an irrelevant point about relevancy, but why must heresy about Jesus be worse than total rejection or ignorance?
  But that’s the minor point.  The big point is that a verbal argument about degrees of similarity is an argument about proportion. Without numbers, it’s almost impossible to have the degree of proportion we need to cut through controversy.  I’m being absurdly pedantic here, but I hope that the demonstrated complexity of weighing beliefs, let alone people deepens our shared humility about judging the beliefs and lives of others.

Signing off for a while,
The Plantagenets

Plantagenets,

1. You haven’t answered my question.

2. Your last post used 1,500 words to comment on language theory, leading to perhaps TWO vaguely defined propositions.  This is unnessary verbiage.  You give the distinct impression that you do not know how to construct a simple and logical argument.

3. Minor nit-pick: the logician’s name is Goedel or Gödel, not Godel.

Short and simple: the thing Muslims call “allah” is a deceiver.  In its deception it reveals its true identity as Satan.