“Muslims, Christians worship same God” — Bush
October 6, 2007 — Deacon DuncanThe Baltimore Sun is reporting that George W. Bush sees the God of Islam as being the same God as the one Christians worship.
“Well, first of all, I believe in an almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God,’’ he said. “I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace. And I believe people who murder the innocent to achieve political objectives aren’t religious people.
The Christian God is supposed to be a Trinity, one member of which is Jesus. Muslims are strict monotheists who regard Jesus as a prophet who is out-ranked by Mohammed. Can we say at this point that George W. Bush is as good a theologian as he is a president?
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October 6, 2007 at 9:14 am
Sort of…
Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the “same” god. The major – IMO – schism involves the divinity of JC; neither Jews nor Muslims accept his divinity though both consider him a prophet. They can all be grouped as the Abrahamic faiths.
I’m also not sure of the “outranked” part because I’m not sure that one prophet is ever thought of as outranking another.
Taking all that aside, Bush is a “true believer”; the part of his statement about “…or any other religion, prays to the same God” extends his inclusiveness beyond the Abrahamites. LOL! Trust me, Mr. Bush, the God and Goddess I serve is NOT the god of Abraham. Yes, Bush is a bad theologian.
October 10, 2007 at 8:01 pm
http://www.hotconflict.com/blog/2007/10/allah-the-god-o.html
There seems to be a lot of debate here in the United States. Many people are trying to suggest that the God Allah of the Muslims is not the same God of the other monotheistic religions. This is a very serious misunderstanding of Islam and I am surprised it is so common in this society. The very essence of the message of Islam is that there is no other God than Allah. The God of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad.
October 11, 2007 at 8:15 am
Do you think that Christians worship a Trinitarian God?
October 12, 2007 at 8:22 am
[...] has a column at Townhall.com in which he responds to George W. Bush’s remarks (reported here) about Muslims and Christians worshipping the same God. In a nutshell, Thomas gives the president a [...]
October 12, 2007 at 9:16 am
Professor,
I’ve never understood the Christian Trinity; I don’t know how to look at it. Is it three Gods labeled as one or one god labeled as three?
October 12, 2007 at 9:32 am
Officially, the various Church Councils have defined the Trinity as “a mystery,” meaning “we can’t make sense out of it either.” The problem is that they want to have three distinct persons, each of whom is God, while at the same time claiming that there is only one God, and He is a personal God. Three distinct persons, each of whom is God, are functionally indistinguishable from three polytheistic gods. The Church Councils tried and tried to think of some philosophical, semantic, or psychological trick that could be used to distinguish between the two, but they failed. The designation “mystery” is simply their way of conceding defeat.
October 12, 2007 at 9:36 am
The root cause of their problem, by the way, is that their definition of God arose via an adversarial political process, rather than by deriving their concept of God from an observation of God’s actual characteristics. Since God does not show up to be observed in real life, however, it’s understandable that this sort of situation should arise.