Cross Down Crescent Up

The photo here, courtesy of The Layman, is not a spoof. It's real. Two PCUSA churches in Louisiana merged, according to the Layman, and sold one church property to a local Islamic Association, turning down two offers from Christian churches to purchase the property. Perhaps they didn't offer as much money. The church they sold was First Presbyterian Church (Bossier City, LA), and the steeple "was once topped by a cross."

According to the Layman, Rev. Beth Sentell, one of co-pastors of the merged congregation, "said two considerations influenced their decision to sell the church plant to the Islamic Society. First was the amount of money offered, second was the opportunity to engage in interfiath dialogue and friendship." She and her husband, Dr. Web Sentell, "plan to invite the Islamic congregation and its imam to a church supper where the imam will field questions. Dr. Sentell said, 'We worship the same God.'" Co-pastor J. Daniel Hignight was asked "if he would ever seek to lead a member of the Islamic Society to Jesus Christ." He replied, "I don't feel a particular need to convert them to Christianity."

Same God? Islam teaches that God is One and he has no Son. That's not my God, sorry. A Christian pastor who "doesn't feel the need to convert [and that doesn't mean coerce]" to Christianity has forgotten what Christianity is. Maybe these "Christians" really do worship the same God as the Muslims after all?

Muslims in this country, of course, have a right to practice their faith and purchase buildings, and we will continue to see mosques multiply. They will also be free to proselytize here, a freedom denied to Christians in Islamic countries. But there is just something a little unsettling about Christians handing over a building dedicated to Christ to someone dedicating it to the faith of Mohammed, isn't there?

One could almost feel a sense of betrayal.  But then again, it's "just a building," isn't it? Yes, but still, it was dedicated to Christ (that Person who is God's Son), one would assume, some years ago.

But as I look at the situation as a whole, including the state of the Presbyterian Church USA in various locations, and in "light" of the statements about which "God" Christians and Muslims worship and whether conversions are desirable, one honestly has to conclude: The Christian faith itself has already been betrayed by many in leadership for some time now. What's the offense of just another building with crescent, when the cross had already been emptied of its power?

Comments

[mairnéalach]

This reminds me of the Christian heresy of regarding the human body as "just a shell". Perhaps the same type of unbelief is at the core of both. It is a failure to view time and space as being redeemed and sanctified. And that's merely an aside to the trinitarian heresy these folks are proudly displaying!

[Joe Long]

Putting the cross over these folks' new, combined "tolerant" church would seem to be whitewashing a tomb, anyway.

[Gintas]

Muslims in this country, of course, have a right to practice their faith and purchase buildings...

I take issue with this. Why do they have a right to import jihad, sharia, and everything else about their dark-hearted totalitarian system that turns everything it touches to lifeless sand?

Yes, they are permitted, under the guidance of our Ruling Poltroons, but a right?

[James A. Altena]

Without in any way condoning the deplorable reasoning behind the decision of the PSCUSA congregatgions to sell a church building to Muslims, let alone their abandonment of Our Lord's command to bring all nations and peoples to Him, a related question comes to mind. In urban neighborhoods in Chicago and Philadelphia where I have lived, I can think of several former synagogues that were sold to Christian congregations. (I now live two blocks from one.) If we are going to object to a church being sold to become a Muslim temple, should there not also be an equal objection to Jews selling their former temples to Christians? If one objects that Allah is a different God than our because Muslims believe he has no son, does not the same objection hold for Jews who believe that JHWH has no son? And likewise on the same principle, why should this be a one-way street -- should not Christians refrain from buying either Jewish or Muslim temples on this rationale?

I wish to be clear that what I am after is consistency of both thought and principle of action. Fr. Neuhaus in "First Things" has frequently argued that the god of Islam is the same as the Christian god, but misunderstood and worshipped in ignorance. I have never found that convincing, but if the Trinity is to be the touchstone of whether one believes in the Christian god or not, then one must bite the bullet and argue that Jews likewise do not believe in the same god we do. And if so, then why interact with them differently with regard to the issue raised in this post?

Note that the question here is not whether we have generally peaceful relations with Jews while we do not with Muslims. The issue raised is specifically that those who do not accept the Son do not believe in the Christian god, and consequently that consecrated property should never be interchanged between the two sides.

To put the quesiton a bit more broadly, should Christians out of priciple never relinquish a deconsecrated church building to any other use, but necessarily tear it down instead? If not, then why is it worse to allow a former church to be converted into a house of worhsip for another faith, rather than converted into an MRI imaging center or an auto repair shop (to name two instances of which I am personally aware)?

Again, I'm not arguing for or against; I'm raising hard questions. Have at it, folks!!

[James A. Altena]

Dear Gintas,

There are different sorts of rights. Mr. Kushiner is refering to a legal right, which Muslims certainly have, as distinct from a legal right. There is no legal litmus test of regious belief for admitting or barring immigrants. (You might want to read the extended debate under the blog "Rudy Giuliani's Damascus Road" on Nov. 18th, which dealt with this at length.) Or do you believe the Constitution should be amended to require every citizen to be a Christian?

[Gintas]

There are different sorts of rights. Mr. Kushiner is refering to a legal right, which Muslims certainly have, as distinct from a legal right.

Now I'm really confused. ;-) I think I know what you mean. I wasn't clear in my wording but did say it was _permitted_, by which I suppose I was thinking it was legally permitted, in which case we are in agreement there.

Or do you believe the Constitution should be amended to require every citizen to be a Christian?

Straw man, but should Muslims have the legal right to pursue jihad, sharia, etc.? In an ideal Liberal order, I suppose civilizational suicide cannot be opposed by _any_ means, because those means are illiberal. Even when the result is even more illiberal.

[Jonathan]

Good Lord Mr Gintas, if you wish to exclude people of particular religious persusasions based upon the more unsavory aspects of their faith, then I'm curious as to who exactly you would admit? Perhaps the Quakers and followers of more or less Anabaptistic traditions; though I find some modern followers of the Baptist confessions to be rather frightening at times.

I find the arguments over the 'Godness' of Islam's conception of God to be rather silly, when viewed in light of the Christian Tradition. If the Fathers could concieve of Plato believing in God- sort of- then surely we can concede at least a little common ground in our conception of deity with Islam (and Judaism, which has the excact same problems per Trinitarianism and the Incarnation as Islam). There is no ground lost in saying that Muslims worship God anymore than ground is lost by saying a devout Jew worships God. St. Paul seems to have had no problem with saying that many devout Jews of his day (himself formerly) worshiped and sought to serve God, though 'not according to knowledge.' Did St. Paul thereby undermine the Christian faith? I think not. When St. Justin Martyr and others talk about ancient philosophers being 'Christians before Christ,' in a manner of speaking, they do not undermine Christianity or reduce the exclusiveness of the faith. And so on.

It is certainly important to make clear the differences between Islam and Christianity and the necessity of faith in Christ. But we needn't resort to treating Islamic conceptions of deity as if they were pagan or polytheistic or something. The language of the Scriptures and of the Fathers works perfectly well for me in 'inter-faith' relations.

[Gintas]

...if you wish to exclude people of particular religious persusasions based upon the more unsavory aspects of their faith...

Yet another Straw Man. I'll state it plainly: many aspects of Islam should be forbidden. Jihad, sharia, polygamy, for example. They are completely out of line with Western Civilization (and Christianity), in fact are directly set _against_ it.

I sense that many Christians think they can make some kind of alliance of convenience with Islam, because Muslims are religious, thus they are our "brothers in the fight against Godlessness" so to speak. I think you'll find you're making a deal with the devil.

[John Peterson]

Mohommmedans in our country are not free to practice jihad inasmuch as this means religously justified murder of "infidels." I thought that this was all Gintas was saying.

[David Gray]

>If we are going to object to a church being sold to become a Muslim temple, should there not also be an equal objection to Jews selling their former temples to Christians?

Obviously not from the same people.

[Joe Long]

I think that the conditions of this particular sale of a church building, and the spin surrounding it, constitute pandering to Islam but even more, to the sensibilities of the media - an act of near-idolatry, indeed - not so much to Mahomet as to Oprah and her ilk. It's all about looking more tolerant, accepting, multi-whatever, in the eyes of other upperclass white post-Christian liberals, and has precious little to do with the funny little Moslems whose beliefs and potential impact this church apparently doesn't think it has to take seriously. Just be nice to them, and trust to the contagiousness of niceness - never mind that the new invaders, much like our European ancestors arriving on this continent, might well have well-developed immunities to certain pathologies devastating to us.

It is interesting that those who loudest lay claim to respecting other religions, rarely show the very basic level of respect which takes the other guy at his word. Non-Moslems grandly telling Moslems what TRUE Islam is, and poo-poohing their own adamant protestations of antipathy and declarations of hostile intent, are being appallingly condescending and disrespectful, at least to my way of thinking.

[Gintas]

if you wish to exclude people of particular religious persusasions based upon the more unsavory aspects of their faith

Perhaps you don't join me in hoping that Homeland Security succeeds in doing just this?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Fr. Neuhaus in "First Things" has frequently argued that the god of Islam is the same as the Christian god, but misunderstood and worshipped in ignorance.<<<

Fr. Neuhaus is merely bowing in the general direction of the Curia Romana, an organization of prospective Dhimmis if ever there was one. In the Cold War, when it looked like the Communists were going to win, the Curia developed Paul VI's "Ostpolitik" on the assumption that some sort of accommodation would be needed to ensure the survival of the Church (or at least, of the Curia). Today, with the crescent ascendant in Europe, we see the same sort of spiritual poltroonery in the direction of Mecca. But I sincerely doubt that a theologian the calibre of Benedict XVI actually believes much of what his Secretariat of State says with regard to Islam. Certainly, his selection of a quotation from Manuel II Paleologus was no accident, and contrary to what is now being said, I have no doubt that it actually represents Benedict's true feelings.

The fact is, Islam is a gross distortion of both Christianity and Judaism, which not only claims to supersede both, but also has the chutzpah to tell us (both Christians and Jews) not only that OUR sacred texts are in error, but on how we should be interpreting the texts that remain--while allowing no exegesis or critical examination of their own sacred texts (smart move, since the Quran makes about as much sense as Dianetics).

The fact is, the Allah of Islam is not the Holy Trinity. It is not Yahweh Sabaoth. Allah is in fact a syncretistic mishmash of monotheistic traditons that ends up exalting the worst features of all the sources it has accessed, creating a god who is cruel, capricious, and most certainly NOT the lover of mankind.

The Quran claims to be the verbatim dictation of the angel Gabriel to the prophet. Yet it is also a book that does enshrine violence, does advocate the subjugation of other peoples, does permit conversion by coercion, and does promise its adherents global temporal dominion. If you can judge the spirit by its fruits, then what can we say of the spirits that inspired this religion?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Non-Moslems grandly telling Moslems what TRUE Islam is, and poo-poohing their own adamant protestations of antipathy and declarations of hostile intent, are being appallingly condescending and disrespectful, at least to my way of thinking.<<<

Just too damned bad, Joe. Toleration is a two-way street, and a religion that brooks no criticism either of its texts, or its beliefs, or its behavior, or its leadership, and which uses violence to intimidate its interlocutors is not looking for toleration but rather to subjugate others. It's not a religion of peace, but a religion of perpetual grievance.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Gintas,

What our Constitution and laws properly distinguish between is creed and conduct. The 1st Amendment freedom of speech clause gives anyone the legal right to believe and advocate his convictions (subject to libel laws, which are facts and not beliefs, or creation of immediate danger, such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre, which likewise does not involve convictions of conscience), no matter how abhorrent -- fascism, communism, racism, abortion, even jihad and the ideas of Peter Singer. What it does not to do is give anyone the right to act on their beliefs in a manner that causes actual harm to others.

Obviously, the paradox is that the person who advocates is likely to be the person who acts. But what hard experience has taught us is that efforts to eliminate danger by proscribing ideas we deem wrong, and proscribing those who hold them as well, results in even worse and more bloodthirsty tyranny. We live with a certain degree of risk because we cherish freedom and wish our own consciences to be respected. (Which Supreme Court justice was it who said, "Freedom is the freedom to be wrong"?)

In the last analysis, your approach is precisely what is both advocated and practiced by none other than the jihdists themselves. They hold that Islam is the truth, and anyone who does not submit to it is a poison in the body politic that must be expurgated by blood. To say that "We can do it but they can't because we're actually right and they're wong" is just question-begging, circular reasoning, and special pleading.

Thus my question about amending the Constitution is not a straw man. It is the logical outcome of your position. By contrast, the defense of free speech does not entail allowing jihad, precisely because it distinguishes speech from overt acts. To assert othrwise is your straw man.

Nor do I think anyone here is proposing an "alliance" with Islam, though there are some (such as Peter Kreeft) who have done that regarding issues such as abortion.

Dear Joe,

Agree, the conditons of this particular sale were ones of pandering. My questions are therefore ones of general principle.

Dear David,

I'm not sure of the import of your cryptic post. Please clarify.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>> I'll state it plainly: many aspects of Islam should be forbidden. Jihad, sharia, polygamy, for example.<<<

Islam could certainly use taming of the sort that the British Raj imposed on the more unsavory aspects of Hinduism. We need a little more of the spirit of Charlie Napier in dealing with the Muslim community. Napier, as Governor General of India, determined to suppress suttee (the ritual burning alive of widows on their husband's pyres). The local Hindu holy men protested loudly that suttee was their time-honored tradition. Napier responded that the British were all for tradition. In fact, the British, too, had an old tradition: "If a man burns a woman alive, we hang him. You build your funeral pyre. Next to it, we shall build a gallows. Then let each people act according to their tradition".

That was the end of suttee in India.

A similar approach to Sharia is needed as well. If it is the Muslim custom to kill a woman who commits adulter, it should be our custom to hang the man who kills the woman. If it is Muslim custom to kill apostates, it should be our custom to hang the man who violates freedom of conscience. If it is Muslim custom to burn down a newspaper that prints a cartoon making fun of Mohammed, it should be our custom to put the arsonist away for life.

I'm merely being multicultural here. Let the Muslims enjoy their customs. Let us enjoy ours, as well. Multiculturalism can be a two-way street.

[David Gray]

>I'm not sure of the import of your cryptic post. Please clarify.

Simply that a Christian would object to the conversion of a church where God had been worshipped to use as a place to worship a false god. If a synagogue became a place where God is worshipped in the way He desires presumably those same Christians would have no reason to object. However I can see where an Orthodox Jew might object.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Non-Moslems grandly telling Moslems what TRUE Islam is, and poo-poohing their own adamant protestations of antipathy and declarations of hostile intent, are being appallingly condescending and disrespectful, at least to my way of thinking.<<<

Ooops. I re-read Joe's post, and having worked my way around the logical double negative, I find my self in fierce agreement with him. I think.

[Joe Long]

Stuart - I was agreeing with you! Perhaps I did so awkwardly. It is the non-Moslem who lectures us that "True Islam is a Religion of Peace" and, grandly, that "All faiths have truths in common" and so forth, who seems to me to be condescending.

Basic respect for Islam would seem to mean accepting it on its own self-declared terms: that of perpetual war with me and my civilization. "No, we're really good buddies, no matter what YOU say" is a contemptuous (and reckless) thing to say to a man threatening your life...I might say it to a three-year-old with an orange plastic cap gun, but it would be raw condescension if he did.

[Gene Godbold]

Yeah Joe, it amounts to telling the guy he's insane or stupid.

If you really respect him, and he attempts to practice his beliefs, you need to either kill him or lock him up.

Of course, the best thing to do--before he puts his beliefs into practice--is to win him to the Logos.

[Nick]

>>>If we are going to object to a church being sold to become a Muslim temple, should there not also be an equal objection to Jews selling their former temples to Christians?<<<

Isn't that the wrong way around? The problem is consecrated ground being lost to a non-Christian religion. I could see a Jewish person being upset that a synagogue became a church but not a Christian person.

I strongly agree with Mr. Koehl's comments in this thread. Christianity doesn't purport to find anything in the Jewish sacred text that can't already be said to be hoped for by Jews. The conservative members of both sides believe that the Jewish sacred text is inerrant so they can agree on a great many matters and can claim a common framework even if they disagree on the end goods of that framework. None of this requires trinitarianism being held by either party. If you add a conservative Muslim to the mix everything goes out the window. The Muslim would view *all* texts held by the Jew and the Christian as corrupt.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Of course, the best thing to do--before he puts his beliefs into practice--is to win him to the Logos.<<<

The Muslims have an interesting but effective way of dealing with Muslims who achieve that degree of enlightenment. That they have to employ it in this day and age points to an underlying degree of intellectual and spiritual insecurity, one inherent in the Quran itself. People who know they have the true faith have no reason to resort to coercion to keep people in it.

[Christopher Hathaway]

I gather that the merger of theses two congregations is because they are shrinking.

And the reason they are shrinking is because...?

You've got to appreciate the logical symetry here. If they had the faith to see how tragic and frankly sinful it would be to give sacred ground to the enemy of the Gospel (not to mention of western Civilization) perhaps they wouldn't be shrinking such that they had to merge. More faithful faiths would multiplied.

[Gene Godbold]

I've got two first cousins in Africa engaged in "the best thing to do" and they are fully cognizant of how careful they have to be to avoid that "effective way".

[Steve Nicoloso]

Mr. Kushiner wrote:

Same God? Islam teaches that God is One and he has no Son. That's not my God, sorry.

The question has not really been answered: Do, then, the Jews worship the same God as Christians? Yes, yes, yes, Islam is a worse heresy, i.e., than Judaism. The religion that worships the PCUSA god, arguably worse yet... but if we are going to claim that Muslims do not worship the same God as Christians (however ignorantly or improperly) on the basis that they say God is one and has no son, then what do we say about the Jews, who, as Mr. Altena ably pointed out, have St. Paul arguing that they do worship the same God?

[Grace]

Another disgrace from the PCUSA. This sell out, apparently for top dollar to the religion of intolerance, Islam, is a nice metaphor for for what mainline Protestantism has become.

I doubt the Founding Fathers had any idea that "religious freedom" would become a tool for Islam, which is a totalitarian, imperialistic political movement as well. Even assuming that we can't discriminate against Islam because it is a religion (however bloodthirsty and atagonistic towards Western Civilization), there is no constitutional right for foreigners to immigrate here. We have every right to stop importing any group we see fit. Adherents to a religion that is violent, misogynistic, and at war with the West would be an obvious choice.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Do, then, the Jews worship the same God as Christians? Yes, yes, yes, Islam is a worse heresy, i.e., than Judaism.<<<

Judaism is not a heresy (heresy applies only to Christianity). And the relationship between Judaism and Christianity is qualitatively different from the relationship between Islam and either Christianity or Judaism.

Put briefly, Judaism is the root from which Christianity sprung. The Old Covenant is fulfilled in the New. Christianity considers itself the New Jerusalem, with the promises made to Israel fulfilled in Christ. The first Christians considered the Old Testament to be their "Scriptures" (the New Testament had not yet been compiled, and in some cases, even written), and the Church deliberately rebuffed all efforts to say that Yahweh of the Old Testament was not the Father of the New (which is why our Bible has an Old and a New Testament, and why we don't honor St. Marcion--though neo-Marcionism remains a constant temptation to Christians). Christians believe that the Old Testament is a prophetic revelation of Christ, as well as the "backstory" of salvation history.

Jews for their part do not accept that Jesus was the Messiah, and thus do not consider the New Testament to be Scripture, but the fundamental bond and unity between the two faiths is demonstrable and unshakable. It's an historical fact.

Islam, on the other hand, is a syncretistic cult that combined elements of the preexisting Arabian polytheistic cults, bits and pieces of Judaism, and aspects of Nestorian and monotheistic Christianity, held together by a series of opportunistic "revelations". It has no organic relationship to either Christianity or Judaism; it cannot credibly claim to be a "new revelation", nor can it credibly claim to be able to correct or modify the Scriptures and Traditions of the older religions. It's a classic case of bottom rail on top--the new kid on the block claims priority over the kids who have lived their all their lives. The derivative cult claims to have an exclusive chokehold on truth--one so strong that if you try to question it, they will kill you.

Shows a fundamental flaw in the Islamic world view.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>I'm merely being multicultural here. Let the Muslims enjoy their customs. Let us enjoy ours, as well. Multiculturalism can be a two-way street.<<<

Sounds like your over your flu. Glad to have you back.

[Christopher Hathaway]

Judaism is the root from which Christianity sprung.

A slight disagreement on this statement. I believe that Judaism is in fact the remnant of that root after its rejection of its messiah and should be seen as a rival of Christianity. Judaism's full existence came with the destruction of the Temple, the failure of the Bar Kohkba revolt and the creation of the Mishna and later the of Talmud.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Well Stuart, I've no quarrel with your answer, but that is not what Mr. Kushiner said, and I realize that was not the point of the post, so he should be cheerfully excused. The only reason I pointed it out is that I've heard similarly deficient reasons (e.g., from Ravi Zacharias, et al.) as to why we don't worship the same God as muslims, which apply equally to an exclusion of the Jews... not to mention Calvinists ;-)

[David Palmer]

This is turning out to be a bad week.

Here in Australia our Parliament has just voted to allow so called therapeutic cloning. Selling Churches to Muslims must rate as an equal low.

Stuart Koehl's comments are spot on. Islam appropriates OT/NT characters and doctrine and presents itself as the final perfected version, only it is a bastardised religion w/o God, w/o Christ, no understanding of how we can be made right with God and therefore offering no hope at all.

No wonder they are at war amongst themselves and with everyone one else

[Jonathan]

Steve, gee, Calvinists- I'e known and read not a few Calvinists and Lutheran sorts who, if they represented the only version of Christianity, would send me scrambling for the nearest Sufi shrine. And this is the thing that bothers me about the tenor of many conservative Christian conversations about Islam- Islam is presented as this uniformly pagan religion with an angry sullen god living off in the desert, and Christianity is the exact opposite with a happy loving God whose followers have never done any wrong (which I daresay many Protestants would almost say, those wretched Catholics and such not being true Christians and all). I doubt many of these people have read the Quran, much less any other Muslim literature, and much less Islamic mystic literature.

One needn't go that far in Muslim thought, particularly in Sufi thought, to find a conception of God that is not only not angry and loveless, but sometimes has a tendency to veer off into universalism. Incidentally, it is also in Sufism that one can perhaps best see the common heritage of Aristotle and Plato that Western and Eastern Europe and the Islamic world- as we both have an essentially 'Western' worldview, as compared to, say, Medieval Subsaharan Africa or East Asia, which are not Western by any means.

The primary problem with Islam, and this is quite evident in Sufism, is not a lack of a God who is loving and gracious. The Quran is full of the relative ease, if you will, of repentance. One of the great debates in early Islam was over sola fide vs. something else- centuries before such debates would erupt in Christianity. The real problem is the lack of an understanding of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and all the things that flow from such an understanding. Absent the Incarnation, Sufi mysticism's fights of love tend to end in absorbtion in God and a sort of pantheism.

One does not sacrifice the truth of Christianity by refusing to engage in uninformed invictive. Granted, it is much easier to resort to broad generalizations and a bumpersticker approach to history and theology- which incidentally is quite helpful to those who have much to gain in propogating visions of World War III against the Muslim hordes.

[David Gray]

>Steve, gee, Calvinists- I'e known and read not a few Calvinists and Lutheran sorts who, if they represented the only version of Christianity, would send me scrambling for the nearest Sufi shrine.

That tells us a bit about you.

>One does not sacrifice the truth of Christianity by refusing to engage in uninformed invictive.

Good thing nobody is doing that.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Islam is presented as this uniformly pagan religion with an angry sullen god living off in the desert<<<

A pretty accurate description of Allah, if you ask me.

>>>Christianity is the exact opposite with a happy loving God whose followers have never done any wrong <<<

I don't know any Christians who would contend that the followers of Christ have never sinned, or that terrible crimes have been committed in the name of Christianity (at the very least, Protestants like to point out Catholic crimes, and Catholics Protestant ones).

But the fundamental tenets of Christianity so plainly oppose such behavior that when it occurs it is clearly an abuse or distortion of Christ's teaching. On the other hand, when Muslims employ violence against infidels, they are acting entirely in accord with the founder of their religion and the tenets of their holy scripture.

The commonly held attitude by our society (from President Bush on down) is an excellent example of transference: that Islam is a good religion distorted by a small number of evil adherents more properly applies to Christianity. The truth is rather that Islam is a bad religion redeemed by some of its better adherents.

>>>The Quran is full of the relative ease, if you will, of repentance.<<<

It is also rigid and inflexible, implaccable in its legalism. Thus, when a man and woman who had committed adultery went to the Prophet and said they wanted to confess their sin, after asking if they were certain, had them stoned to death in accordance with the revealed teachings of Allah.

The contrast with the words and actions of Christ in connection with the woman taken in adultery cannot be more stark.

>>>One needn't go that far in Muslim thought, particularly in Sufi thought, to find a conception of God that is not only not angry and loveless, but sometimes has a tendency to veer off into universalism.<<<

Sufis, in addition to being a minority among Muslims, are generally considered to be heretics by the majority. It's like saying the Amish are the mainstream of Christianity.

[James A. Altena]

While Stuart is (obvioulsy) basically correct about the asymmetrical relation between Christianity and Judaism on the one hand, and Christinaity and Islam on the other, only Steve Nicoloso (thanks!) and Nick have fully engaged my points. Which are (to reiterate):

1) The criterion that Mr. Kushiner put forward for saying that the god of Islam (Allah) is not the Christian God is the rejection of the Trinity (and by implication also the Incarnation) -- specifically, the Son (Christ) as fully God (and fully man -- God incarnate). But if that is so, then we must by the same logic say that the god of Judaism (YHWH) also is not the Christian God. On this basis, the descent of Christianity from Judaism is irrelevant.

To be fair, Mr. Kushiner made his observation as an aside and perhaps it wasn't intended to bear this sort of weight. But this principle is in fact frequently invoked by those who deny that the gods of Islam and Christianity are the same. My point is that sauce for the Islamic goose is by parity of reasoning sauce for the Jewish gander.

Nick writes:

"Christianity doesn't purport to find anything in the Jewish sacred text that can't already be said to be hoped for by Jews. The conservative members of both sides believe that the Jewish sacred text is inerrant so they can agree on a great many matters and can claim a common framework even if they disagree on the end goods of that framework. None of this requires trinitarianism being held by either party."

I think you'd get a huge objection to this from the Orthodox Jewish side. From their persective, our assertion that God is Triune is polytheism, and that the Messiah is God incarnate as man is pure blasphemy and a turning to Greco-Roman fables. This gets back to Joe Long's point about taking the other side's self-definition vis-a-vis us seriously.

Implicitly, Stuart proposes that instead of the Trinity and the Incarnation as criteria, that we assert the God of Islam to be different from the Christian God, but the God of Judaism to be the same, on the basis of (if you will) legitimate spiritual descent vs. bastardy and theft. How, he doesn't entirely spell out.

At this point, I'm not finding either argument completely satisfactory. Of course I'm inclined by temperament to wish to affirm that the Allah stands on one side opposed to JHWH and the Trinity on the other, but I have a responsibility to follow objective logic rather than subjective cravings. So what I'm suggesting is that we need to give this a *lot* more sustained thought and coherent reasoning, and less visceral reaction.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Implicitly, Stuart proposes that instead of the Trinity and the Incarnation as criteria, that we assert the God of Islam to be different from the Christian God, but the God of Judaism to be the same, on the basis of (if you will) legitimate spiritual descent vs. bastardy and theft. How, he doesn't entirely spell out.<<<

No, James, I am being very EXPLICIT. Yahweh of the Old Testament is indeed the Father of the New. The early Christians were very clear on that point, and rejected all who would separate the two--such as Marcion.

The Bible is not like the Quran. It was not written (or dictated) by one man, in one place, at one time. Rather, it is the unfolding story of salvation history, a perpetual revelation of God's divine plan for us. The Old Testament ends before the climax of the story, but it provides the backstory and foreshadows that climax. The New Testament begins in medias res--we're in the middle of the story, a story that presupposes and accepts the Old Testament. By the same token, like the Illiad, it ends before the completion of the story, a story in which we remain participants, that will end only with the Second Coming in Glory.

Paul tells us that the Jews are part of God's divine plan, that the promises made to them will not be repudiated. The New Covenant does not supersede but rather completes the Old. We as Christians cannot be supersessionists, whereas Muslims absolutely are.

[James A. Altena]

Dear David and Nick,

Thank you for your responses and comments regarding my question of conversion of the church property. But, agian, I don't think my point has been fully engaged.

Nick writes:

"Isn't that the wrong way around? The problem is consecrated ground being lost to a non-Christian religion. I could see a Jewish person being upset that a synagogue became a church but not a Christian person."

David writes:

"Simply that a Christian would object to the conversion of a church where God had been worshipped to use as a place to worship a false god. If a synagogue became a place where God is worshipped in the way He desires presumably those same Christians would have no reason to object. However I can see where an Orthodox Jew might object."

Again, this gets back to Joe Long's point about respecting the self-definition of the other side vis-a-vis us. If the Christian is to be upset at the conversion of a deconsecrated church to use by Muslims (or any other religion), and likewise the Jew is to be upset at the conversion of a deconsecrated synagogue to use by Christians (or any other religion), because the Christian and Jew regard this as sacrilege (despite the deconsecration) by a false religion, then should we not have the decency to respect that?

Additionally, if it is wrong in principle to relinquish a formerly consecrated property to use for false worship, then why is it not equally wrong in principle to adopt for our use a property previously used (and thus defiled) by false worship? If we think that we can take a building once used for false worship and use it for our true worship instead, why does that not constitute not taking seriously what they did there? Why does the concern run one way here but not the other? In effect, the implicit assumption here seems to be that you can exorcise and consecrate a previously defiled property to Christian use, but that you can't really ever deconsecrate a property -- which is clearly false.

A further question is how this relates to the spiritual principle of the "despoiling of the Egyptians" set forth by the Fathers. Some pagan temples weree taken over and converted to churches by Christians. But to my recollection the Israelites never did this with pagan temples, but always destroyed them instead.

Again, I'm not advocating indifference to this. I'm suggesting that we need to think through the underlying principles here more carefully, rather than positing one-way streets of relation that all conveniently run in the direction we desire. Christ enunciated the Golden Rule, and we ought to observe it by respecting the religious sensibilities of others as much as we wish our own to be respected.

[James A. Altena]

"No, James, I am being very EXPLICIT. Yahweh of the Old Testament is indeed the Father of the New. The early Christians were very clear on that point, and rejected all who would separate the two--such as Marcion."

This still doesn't address the main problem. Since the Jews deny the Son and the Holy Ghost, they would deny that JHWH is God the Father in the sense that we say. If the Trinity is made the irreducilbe touchstone for idetifying whether someone worships the Christian God, then by definition Judaism does not. And if it's not made the irreducible touchstone, then we have the problem of how we hold to the Trinity as an irreducible doctrinal essential of our Christian profession for salvation.

I'm not suggesting Marcionite separation; I'm saying that I don't see a clear, carefully worked-out argument with sound criteria being articulated. I would like to have one, instead of off-hand assertions.

[David Gray]

>If the Christian is to be upset at the conversion of a deconsecrated church to use by Muslims (or any other religion), and likewise the Jew is to be upset at the conversion of a deconsecrated synagogue to use by Christians (or any other religion), because the Christian and Jew regard this as sacrilege (despite the deconsecration) by a false religion, then should we not have the decency to respect that?

I respect their right to be upset but I also know they are in error.

>Additionally, if it is wrong in principle to relinquish a formerly consecrated property to use for false worship, then why is it not equally wrong in principle to adopt for our use a property previously used (and thus defiled) by false worship?

>A further question is how this relates to the spiritual principle of the "despoiling of the Egyptians" set forth by the Fathers. Some pagan temples weree taken over and converted to churches by Christians. But to my recollection the Israelites never did this with pagan temples, but always destroyed them instead.

If you want to argue for destroying the buildings and then rebuilding on the property I can live with that.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Since the Jews deny the Son and the Holy Ghost, they would deny that JHWH is God the Father in the sense that we say.<<<

This simply indicates that the revelation they accept is incomplete, not that it is incorrect. It is not as though the Jews invented something out of whole cloth and then attempted to pass it off on the rest of the world as authentic. Rather, they had and have something authentic, but they are not able to see it for what it truly is. They do not know what they do not know. Thus, Paul's exchatological hope that at the end the Jews, too, will be brought into fullness of Christ, even though they did not accept Him in this world.

>>>If the Trinity is made the irreducilbe touchstone for idetifying whether someone worships the Christian God, then by definition Judaism does not.<<<

Let us say that I know Mr. Smith, my next door neighbor, and I have a cordial relationship with him. But I do not know that Mr. Smith is also doctor and at the same time a scoutmaster. Someone closer to Mr. Smith knows all of these things about him. Undoubtedly, that person has a fuller knowledge of Mr. Smith than I do, but we both know Mr. Smith.

So it is with the Jews and God: they know Yahweh to the extent that He revealed himself to them through Torah. They have a covenant with Him, and He does not reneg on his promises. Do they know Him as well as Christians? As a Christian, I would have to say that they do not. But I cannot deny that they know Him, or that, ontologically, Yahweh is the same God that I worship, since there are implicit references to God's triune nature throughout the Old Testament (which was of immeasurable aid to the Fathers at both Nicaea and Constantinople).

The knowledge of the Jews is incomplete, but what they DO know is true, for what was revealed to them is also revealed to us, and we acknowledge that revelation ourselves.

On the other hand, ontologically, Allah of the Muslims has very distinctive and DIFFERENT characteristics than those shared by the Yahweh of the Jews and the Trinity of the Christians. Hence, Allah of the Muslims is NOT the same God worshipped by both Christians and Jews.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I respect their right to be upset but I also know they are in error.<<<

Actually, in many areas small Jewish congregations often lease space for services from Christian churches, and conversely, small Christian communities frequently lease space for their services in synagogues or Jewish community centers. There is no real conflict or dichotomy here: Jews as a rule do not proselytize, and Christians have pretty much given up on strong-arming Jews or blaming them for all the world's miseries (as Eliot Abrams has written, the problem today is not that Christians want to kill Jews, but that they want to marry Jews). By acknowledging freedom of conscience, we are also free to provide fraternal aid to each other as long as neither of us has to compromise our respective truth claims.

On the other hand, it seems folly to me to give aid and assistance to a religion whose avowed purpose is to place us in a state of subjugation to them, whose behavior towards Christians and Jews was, and remains to this day, highly oppressive in most places where Muslims predominate, and who do not accept the primacy of conscience in matters of faith (though "there is no compulsion in relgion", Muslims like to present non-believers with Hobson's choice in the matter).

[Gene Godbold]

Before the advent of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Jews were actually quite successful at proselytizing--between 6 and 9 million folks of the 60 million person Empire were Jewish around the time of Jesus. A significant proportion of those were converts. There were even more hangers-on who liked the religion but couldn't stomach (or perhaps the inhibition was to be located somewhat lower :-) the requirements.

Good examples, Stuart. The level of Jews has stayed pretty constant over the centuries, with the biggest "threat" being annihilation through intermarriage.

A priest friend of mine who has adopted several children from India says that one of the reasons Hindus dislike Christians is because that the converted Brahmins (or other upper-caste persons) will actually marry converted Dhalits (formerly untouchables) and, by taking the Brahmin name will no longer be identifiable as Dhalit--thus upending the Karmic order of the universe.

[mairnéalach]

It seems fairly clear that the West intends to "Tolerate" itself straight into voluntary dhimmitude.

[LAbriAlumn]

Not unique, 1st Baptist Church in Rochester, MN (now "Autumn Ridge" did the same thing: turned down a Christian high school in favor of a madrassas.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Before the advent of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Jews were actually quite successful at proselytizing--between 6 and 9 million folks of the 60 million person Empire were Jewish around the time of Jesus. A significant proportion of those were converts. There were even more hangers-on who liked the religion but couldn't stomach (or perhaps the inhibition was to be located somewhat lower :-) the requirements.<<<

Entirely true. While the number of full converts was low due to the circumcision requirement, the number of "God-Fearers" was much larger (the Centurion in the Gospel might have been one of these, since he had endowed the local synagogue). These were essentially gentile catechumens who chose to observe Mosaic law and worship as Jews, without being fully initiated into the religion. Under the Hasmoneans, the Jews conquered Idumean Arabia and converted all the Idumeans, thus opening the door to a certain Antipater and his son Herod to displace the Hasmonean dynasty.

Jews and Christians were actually competitors for the large pool of gentiles leaning towards monotheism in the second, third and fourth centuries, and this explains at least some of the antipathy between the two groups (at the time of Constantine's conversion, there were probably more Jews than Christians in the Empire, and even more of them in Parthia, outside the Empire). In fact, Chrysostom's polemical homilies against the Jews can only be understood if one recognizes that Judaism was a large, self-confident and outward-looking religion even at the turn of the fourth century. It took a lot to make Jews a more pietistic and non-proselytizing religion--three disasterous wars and a series of legal injunctions dating from the time of Justinian finally did it.

[LAbriAlumn]

When considering the churches, stop and think of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

Consider the map of Christendom in A. D. 600, and then again in A. D. 800 and A. D. 1687.

Remember Tours and the gates of Vienna.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>When considering the churches, stop and think of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.<<<

The main difference, though, is that the Patriarch of Constantinople did not go out to see Mehmet the Conqueror bearing a Bill of Sale for the place. Rather, the property transfer was accomplished when the Janissaries broke down the doors, slaughtered the people seeking refuge therein, and cut down the priests celebrating the Divine Liturgy at the Holy Table one last time.

If you have to go, do you want to go with a bang, or a whimper?

[Douglas]

Pursuant to federal law, I do not think the church could legally discriminate against the Islamic bidder in favor of a lower bid by Christians or others.

This is the dilemma the liberal society places itself in: it must acquiesce to its invasion and eventual overthrow by illiberal elements.

[William Tighe]

"No, James, I am being very EXPLICIT. Yahweh of the Old Testament is indeed the Father of the New. The early Christians were very clear on that point, and rejected all who would separate the two--such as Marcion."

I would have thought that the general tenor of Patristic Christology would incline one to the view, rather, that YHWH of the Old Testament is in fact the pre-incarnate Logos, rather than the Father ("No one hath seen the Father at any time ..."); and that the Father was, indeed, wholly unknown until revealed by the Son. Marcion was no fool; and his heresy was, as I see it, not so much to concoct an "unknown Father" who sent his Son to Earth, but to dismiss the God of Israel as an evil demiurge without any conntction to either the Father or the Son.

[Gene Godbold]

Huh, I've never heard that before. So when Moses was seeing God's backside, he was really seeing the Son's backside, then? (I've always wondered about that incident.)

[Nick]

Mr. Altena,

I think Mr. Koehl's arguments here are important. That is why I think Trinitarianism is a red herring in the discussion of how Muslims should be viewed differently from Jews by Christians. There were non-Trinitarian Christians and they at one time formed the majority. I'm not aware of any re-baptisms forced by those who had been baptized by Arian bishops as specified in the seventh canon of the First Council of Constantinople. I'm sure if I'm wrong Mr. Koehl can correct me.

I think maybe I'm not being clear enough about the Old Testament. An Orthodox Jew and a Christian view it as a collection of Holy Books. A Muslim would view it as a collection of truths and outright *lies*. There can't be the same sort of common ground there.

Also, I don't believe the Jews adopted holy places during the Temple Periods. This makes sense because in the Temple Periods only one place of worship was endorsed.

[Bill R]

While I haven't had enough time to contribute to this debate (and in general James has well expressed my views), I do believe that Stuart has the better argument here showing that Jews and Christians worship the same God, whereas Muslims and Christians do not.

But I too confess surprise at Prof. Tighe's comments. I've just never heard that before!

[Joe Long]

Late back to this discussion. Noted above:

"One needn't go that far in Muslim thought, particularly in Sufi thought, to find a conception of God that is not only not angry and loveless, but sometimes has a tendency to veer off into universalism. Incidentally, it is also in Sufism that one can perhaps best see the common heritage..."

Any chance at all the Sufis could work any reform on the rest of Islam? From a purely secular point of view - that is, looking at the negative effects of Islam only in THIS world - moving Islam in a Sufi direction would be most advantageous; much less murder of us, and of one another, and many more zany jokes in the world, if I remember a long-ago lecture correctly...

[Joe Long]

"Pursuant to federal law, I do not think the church could legally discriminate against the Islamic bidder in favor of a lower bid by Christians or others."

Not the point. By all appearances, they relished the whole experience, and especially the chance to score cheap multi-culti points.

[Douglas]

"Not the point. By all appearances, they relished the whole experience, and especially the chance to score cheap multi-culti points."

I'm sure they did, and in doing so were fully compliant with the legal and cultural paradigm of the United States.

[James Redden Jr.]

As to the whole "Islam is a religion of peace" line of argument, a Muslim writer admitted this to be a common misconception about Islam. Check it out here under Misconception of Islam #1 http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/notislam/misconceptions.html Rather, Islam is a religion of submission to God according to the author. I suppose the word "submission" needn't have bad connotations all the time. After all, we as Christians are called to submit to Christ through repentance and obedience. Still, though, to use the word "submission" to sum up your religious beliefs in one word...there certainly is a hint of warfare and force to it.

[Douglas]

To elaborate further, what mainly struck me was that even if the Presbyterians had wanted to oppose any sale to Muslims, the law would prevent them from doing so. The episode is also remarkable because it presented that church with a clear choice between loyalty to the secular state or loyalty to the Christian faith. Clearly, the state can have no other gods before it.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Also, I don't believe the Jews adopted holy places during the Temple Periods. This makes sense because in the Temple Periods only one place of worship was endorsed.<<<

This situation emerge very slowly, and was the major bone of contention between Judah and Israel during the divided monarchy and later in the post-exilic period. Originally, the Yahwist cult had numerous high places. Under David and Solomon, the Aaronic priesthood moved to consolidate cultic observance in Jerusalem, which also had the effect of placing the regulation of the cult under their control. When the Kingdoms divided, Israel had a high place at Sechem, while in Judah the main high place was in Jeruslaem; there were others, which were not suppressed until the time of Josiah. When Manesseh began a persecution of Yahwists, a number of priests upped stakes and moved to Hieropolis (Elephantine) in Egypt, where they erected a second temple that competed with Jerusalem through the 4th century BC (finally being destroyed by Egyptian extremists).

The conflict between Yahwists who wanted all worship centered on Jerusalem, and the survivors of the North Kingdom (whom we know as the Samarians) who wanted to worship at their traditional high places, is the fundamental reason why Samaritans were viewed askance by Jews in the time of Jesus. Objectively, they (like the Kings of Israel before them) were otherwise conventional Yahwists who just didn't like being bossed around by a bunch of upstarts from Jerusalem. Since a Yahwist from Jerusalem--the Deuteronomic Historian--got the final rewrite, the Bible reflects reflects his perspective, and he tends to view the acts of all the Kings of Israel as flawed because they did not recognize the exclusivity of Jerusalem Temple, even when they were otherwise quite devout, observed the Covenant, and smote the heathen. On the other hand, Kings of Judah got cut a lot of slack, so long as they toed the Yahwist line. Their reigns could be perambulating disasters, but if they supported the Temple, they were "good" kings; if they did not, then no act could redeem their reigns in the eyes of the Historian.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Any chance at all the Sufis could work any reform on the rest of Islam?<<<

Only if we dispose of all other Muslim religious leaders and impose the Sufis by force. As I said, they're a marginal force in Islam, and many Muslims consider them heretics, barely better than infidels.

[William Tighe]

Re: JHWH as the pre-Incarnate Logos, see:

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=13-06-022-f

and

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=14-01-053-f

not that I am claiming Fr. Reardon as a proponent of the view that I have propounded here (although it would be interesting to have his "take" on the question).

Unfortunately, the only contemporary writer that has dealt with such issues (to my knowledge) is the very eccentric English Old Testament scholar (and one-time doctoral student of the late Hugh Montefiore) Margaret Barker, whose various books (and in this particular *The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God* [1992]) bemuse and bedazzle at one and the same time.

But I shouldn't have thought my suggestion all that much unheard-of, given that one general topos of Patristic exegesis was that it was the pre-Incarnate Logos who spoke to Moses from out of the burning bush and who revealed himself on Mount Sianai. But perhaps this idea ceased to have much purchase on the Christian Imagination as the understanding that all three Persons of the Trinity all cooperate in any external work of manifestation of the deity and that while such manifestations may be "attributed" to one or another Person they are actually the work of all three.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>But I shouldn't have thought my suggestion all that much unheard-of, given that one general topos of Patristic exegesis was that it was the pre-Incarnate Logos who spoke to Moses from out of the burning bush and who revealed himself on Mount Sianai.<<<

To be honest, I haven't seen any of the Greek Fathers make that correlation, though there are others which are more explicit, e.g., that Melchizedek King of Salem, who pops out of nowhere and disappears back into obscurity, was in fact the pre-incarnate Logos, in the same manner that the three angels who visited Abraham under the Oak of Mamre were in fact the Holy Trinity.

Patristic exegesis most frequently identifies the Sophia or Holy Wisdom as a manifestation of the pre-incarnate Logos.

When in doubt

[GL]

Dr. Tighe,

I had resolved to refrain from posting during Advent, but to only read the other bloggers, but I find this subject to fascinating to resist.

Today's evening Psalm from The St. James Daily Devotional Guide for the Christian Year is Psalm 22 (21), which Father Reardon calls "par excellence the canticle of the Lord's suffering and death" in his book Christ in the Psalms. In his commentary on this Psalm in that book, Father Reardon notes that the "Holy Church thinks of the Lord Himself as praying this psalm on the Cross," noting the well-known references and quotes from this psalm recorded in the Gospel accounts of our Lord's passion.

I mention this in relation to this topic because of words in this psalm which would seem to indicate that Christ is praying the YHWH, the most striking of which is verse 19:

But you, O LORD (YHWH), do not be far off!
   O you my help, come quickly to my aid!

I have heard it argued that one way to prove the Trinity from the Scriptures is to note that Jesus prays to the Father. Since the Scriptures declare that both the Father and the Son are God, there must be a distinction of persons in the Godhead or Jesus would be praying to Himself. If that argument has any validity, then wouldn't Psalm 22 provide support for the position that YHWH is not the Son or else He would be praying to Himself in that Psalm? Having said that, I had thought that YHWH referred not to any single person in the Godhead, but to the Godhead Himself, that is, the Holy Trinity.

I post this not as an argument, but as a query. I too would welcome the views of Father Reardon as well as Dr. Tighe's thoughts on the application of Psalm 22 to the question. And now, I will resume my Advent abstinence of posting to MC while I await any replies.

[Clark Coleman]

I believe that the definitive statement in the Old Testament is that no man has seen the face of God (the Father), and that generic statements that no man has seen him mean that no man has seen his face, i.e. seen his full glory. God warned Moses that he could not stand to see the full glory of God, so he was permitted to see the backside of God. I do not see how this would imply that the YHWH of the Old Testament is the Son of the Trinity. It is still true today that the Son has been seen face to face (in the incarnation) but the Father has not been so seen by any man.

[Clark Coleman]

I recall a column by Dennis Prager in which he related the following events experienced by a London rabbi. The rabbi was engaged in "inter-faith dialogue" with various religious leaders, including a "moderate" Muslim imam, for many years. The rabbi read more about Islam in the wake of growing tension worldwide, and discovered that Islam intends to Islamicize all nations and does not consider it legitimate for a Muslim nation to become non-Muslim, just as a Muslim has no freedom to convert away from Islam. As a result, Muslims do not recognize the government of Spain as a legitimate government.

The rabbi did not believe that such a thing could be believed by Muslims in general. In particular, his "moderate" Muslim friend from the inter-faith dialogues could not possibly believe such a thing. At the next monthly meeting, he asked the imam if he recognized the present government of Spain as a legitimate, lawful government. The imam looked at him and immediately replied, "Of course not!" Quite an epiphany for the rabbi.

From this story, and countless others about "moderate" Muslims who will not speak up against terrorism, against suicide bombers, against those who support the bombers, etc., I conclude the following:

1) Any immigration policy that permits Muslims into a Western country would no doubt permit such "moderates" into the country. The London imam, for example, would hardly be the type who would be screened out by any selective immigration policy that attempts to use interviews or questionnaires to weed out the "bad" Muslims.

2) I really don't want people who believe what Muslims generally believe about a host of topics (Judaism, Christianity, Spain, jihad, conversion away from Islam, freedom of speech and press in anti-Islamic matters, etc.) to live in my country, because their beliefs are not compatible with the beliefs that define our civilization.

3) Given #1, the only way to accomplish #2 is to not allow immigration of Muslims into the USA in the first place.

As a counter-argument, no doubt each of us has somewhere met a Muslim once who seemed very nice, etc., which of course trumps all of the above concerns.

[Steve Nicoloso]

It seems we are all emphatically agreed that Christians worship the same God that the Jews (the righteous ones at any rate) worshipped at or before the time, and that the trinitarian formulation doesn't separate us in that respect. It seems that Stuart's analogy, then, is a good one: They knew Bill Smith (or whatever his name was). They said he was a banjo player (or whatever it was) and they were right, but they didn't know he was a doctor, which we now know. So we both know Bill Smith.

But along come some guys who claim to know Bill Smith better than any of us. They agree he is a banjo player AND a doctor. But they claim he is a great first tenor, when we've only known him to sing bass, and most importantly they claim that the sine qua non of knowing Bill Smith is that he makes the best Strawberry-Rhubarb pie you ever did eat.

There are two tacks to take and neither one seems sufficient:

A) Doctrinal separation--two diverse groups make propositional statements about God. If they agree on enough of them, they must worship the same God. Of course, we have no way to define what such a critical mass of agreement is, nor could we agree on which propositional statements are the most important. Set the bar too high, and Southern Baptists no longer worship the same God as Regular Baptists. Set the bar too low, and Christians worship the same God as the Wiccans.

B) Relational separation--This is the approach where we look at the phylogeny of various groups, as well as their diverse understandings of themselves, to gauge their degree of separation. More subjective than Plan A, but it has the advantage of getting us at the truth, which we know to be that we worship the same God as the Jews, at least those living in the first century, according to St. Paul.

The problem is that the phylogenic argument doesn't keep the Muslims out quite as well as we would like. They claim that theirs is the God of Abraham. They say they know that particular God who we claim to know, who created the heavens and the earth, and who sent prophets, and did many of the things and has many attributes we acknowledge. They even agree he sent Jesus, and that he was born of a virgin. They just claim to know this god better, and know a bunch of other things about him... things that we consider absurd, even childish, many of which conflict with things we know, but some others that don't.

But we can't very readily now turn back to Plan A and claim that Muslims don't worship the same God because they don't meet the critical doctrinal mass... After all neither do the Jews, nor the Regular Baptists [a joke].

This seems a dilemma to me. Obviously if enough doctrinal differences exist, then we cannot worship the same God, however phylogenically similar we are (e.g., any US Episcopal diocese). And obviously if we share in common enough doctrinal similarities, we DO worship the same God, however much phylogenic distance there may be (e.g., Maronite Catholics and old-school Mennonites).

[Bill R]

"The problem is that the phylogenic argument doesn't keep the Muslims out quite as well as we would like."

Why not? The relation to God is based not on what the Muslim says, but on the source of the relationship. Whether one is a Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, all Christians have an objective basis for their relationship to God, e.g., Scripture alone, the Church, or both. On what is the Muslim's confidence of such a relationship based? The Koran? Christians don't recognize that as the objective source of truth about God. It cannot be Scripture alone, for the Muslim adds to Scripture. It cannot be the Church, for the Muslim rejects the Church. If we look at the matter objectively, and not subjectively, it seems that your dilemma disappears.

[Bill R]

"Having said that, I had thought that YHWH referred not to any single person in the Godhead, but to the Godhead Himself, that is, the Holy Trinity."

This seems to be the most sensible way to deal with the matter, GL. It would seem that all three Persons of the Godhead appeared--undifferentiated to us--in the Old Testament. It was only necessary for us to understand the three-fold nature of the Lord once the Incarnation took place. Before that time, a Trinitarian disclosure would have been unnecessary and meaningless to us. But conversely, we could only understand the Incarnation by a revelation of the Trinitarian nature of God.

By the way, welcome back. (Don't feel too guilty if you find MC too difficult to resist!)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>) Any immigration policy that permits Muslims into a Western country would no doubt permit such "moderates" into the country. The London imam, for example, would hardly be the type who would be screened out by any selective immigration policy that attempts to use interviews or questionnaires to weed out the "bad" Muslims.<<<

The British Government may finally have seen the light, having yesterday issued a new policy intended to more rapidly assimilate immigrants generally by requiring them to accept a basic set of "British" values if they wish to remain in the country. The age of Multi-Culti non-judgementalism is over, even if we aren't quite back to the age of Muscular Napierism.

[Judy Warner]

As a counter-argument, no doubt each of us has somewhere met a Muslim once who seemed very nice, etc., which of course trumps all of the above concerns.

This morning Fox News interviewed a neighbor of the Muslim guy who tried to bomb a Chicago shopping mall. She told us how very nice he and his whole family are. The neighbors of murderers and child-molesters often tell us the same. Oprahfied as we are, we do not distinguish between personality and character.

[Judy Warner]

The British Government may finally have seen the light,

The Dutch government now requires immigrants to view a film that shows such Dutch values as topless women and two men kissing.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>The Dutch government now requires immigrants to view a film that shows such Dutch values as topless women and two men kissing.<<<

Maybe they think it will discourage them.

[Judy Warner]

Yes, I think that's the point.

[David T. Koyzis]

Back in 1972 a Greek Orthodox church building on the south side of Chicago was purchased by the Nation of Islam and became Mosque Maryam, dedicated to the mother of Jesus. Living in a Chicago suburb at the time, this made an impression on me, a 17-year-old. It called to mind the fate of Aghia Sophia in Constantinople in 1453. This of course had nothing to do with merged congregations and everything to do with Chicago Greeks moving to the suburbs, thereby making the building increasingly redundant. It was a sad turn of events, but inevitable all the same.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Yes, I think that's the point.<<<

NOT!

[Judy Warner]

Why NOT!? The Dutch have an ambivalent attitude toward their immigrants. They are reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Tony Blair has come to, that multiculturalism doesn't work and that immigrants have to assimilate. But they go back and forth on it, as their actions on Ayaan Hirsi Ali have shown. Realism, guilt. Realism, guilt. Back and forth, back and forth. As I understand it, the film is meant to put off those immigrants who don't want to accept men kissing and topless women as an integral part of their civic lives.

Or did I misunderstand you entirely?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Why NOT!?<<<

The Dutch are presenting sexual license as a core Dutch value. This will not have the consequence that they intend. Muslim immigrants will continue to come to the Netherlands both because they can, and because they seek the material prosperity that Western Europe offers in comparison with Muslim countries. The Dutch and other Europeans, for their part, will continue to allow them in because they need the bodies (not making many of their own). Since Muslims are there, and will continue to arrive, viewing the video will probably not make them accept such Dutch "values", nor will it inhibit them from coming. Rather, it will convince them that Dutch culture is corrupt and decadent, and must be brought under the Dar al-Islam. The Quran is not like the Bible--it does not merely tell its adherents to admonish sinners, or to hate the sin but love the sinner, but to smite down sinners wherever they are found and make the world submit to the will of Allah. The video is more likely to cause Islamic violence in the Netherlands than to prevent it.

[Bobby Winters]

Where is the little Dutch boy who will try to stop this leak from turning into a flood? He was never born because those who would have been his parents turned against Nature and Nature's God.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Where is the little Dutch boy who will try to stop this leak from turning into a flood? He was never born because those who would have been his parents turned against Nature and Nature's God.<<<

Or he was born, but had a minor birth defect that his doctor determined would interfere with his quality of life, and so was quietly put out of his parents' misery.

[Patrick Henry Reardon]

Among those invoking my name in this controversy about "the Lord" of the Hebrew Scriptures is Dr. William Tighe, who wrote:

"I shouldn't have thought my suggestion all that much unheard-of, given that one general topos of Patristic exegesis was that it was the pre-Incarnate Logos who spoke to Moses from out of the burning bush and who revealed himself on Mount Sianai. But perhaps this idea ceased to have much purchase on the Christian Imagination as the understanding that all three Persons of the Trinity all cooperate in any external work of manifestation of the deity and that while such manifestations may be "attributed" to one or another Person they are actually the work of all three."

Several others have asked that I clarify my several published remarks relative to this subject.

I take it as obvious (to the Christian faith) that there is only one Mediator between God and man.

This mediation works both ways.

We have no dealings with the true God except through His Son, and the true God has no dealings with humanity except through that same Son. All of Creation takes place through the Son. All other revelation of the true God happens through the Son.

Thus, the God who spoke in the Old Testament did so through His Son. This is why, until VERY recently, it was considered obvious to all Christians that the voice heard by Moses, coming from the Burning Bush was the voice of the pre-incarnate Christ. (Hence, the HO ON in the nimbus around the head of Jesus in traditional iconography.) Similarly, St John identifies Jesus as "the Lord" that he saw "high and lifted up" in the Temple (John 12:39-41). And so on.

On the other hand, divine revelation contains not only what God says to man, but in some measure also what man says to God. God put His words into the mouths of the prophets when they preached to His people. He also put His words into the mouths of the prophets when they spoke to Him in prayer. (I develope this idea in CHRIST IN HIS SAINTS, pp. 279f.) The Psalms perhaps give us the clearest examples of this. The voice of the pre-incarnate Christ is heard in many of the Psalms, speaking to His Father.

While I am at it, let me further suggest that we Christians stop referring to the God of the Bible by recourse to the Sacred Tetragrammaton. Originally that was the name of a tribal divinity in Mesopotamia. When the name finally came to be used in Holy Scripture of the Only Truly Existing God, the Jews stopped speaking it, even in worship. They substitued "the Lord," the name that Christians have always used for the God revealed in Holy Scripture.

[L. Korossy]

The PCUSA ceased to be a Christian church in any sense when they decreed that the Holy Trinity could be said to consist of "Mother, Womb, and Child." This is a matter between Muslims and cultists alone.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Bill R. suggests...

The relation to God is based not on what the Muslim says, but on the source of the relationship. Whether one is a Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, all Christians have an objective basis for their relationship to God, e.g., Scripture alone, the Church, or both.

But what then of the Jews? Do you seriously think that their "relationship" with God is "based" on the OT prophets alone, or on the synogogue, or both? No, they are, they simply are, the People of God--the God Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. The Jews relationship to God is one of ontology, not theology. Their "objective" relationship is merely their own self-understanding, one with which we as Christians just happen to concur. I.e., we think they worship (however incorrectly) the same God that we do (however poorly understood).

By what rule, then, do we define "worshipping the same God" such that Jews do and Muslims don't worship the same God as Christians? I'm asking because I really want to know...

Cheers!

[Ethan Cordray]

I'm not entirely sure why it's important whether or not Christians and Muslims "worship the same God." In matters of theological understanding and especially practice, the two are manifestly different. This seems to me to be the relevant point, not whether we can identify Allah and the Trinity with one another. In the case of the original article, the supposed saying that we "worship the same God" is not a meaningful theological statement but rather a rhetorical gesture indicating that our theological and practical differences are not relevant, which they clearly are.

Second, I'm also not entirely sure that the question of the different relationships Christianity ought to hold with Judaism and Islam is helped by the "same God/different God" distinction. The real question is, Is contemporary Jewish theology and practice recognizable as legitimate under a Christian theological framework in a way that Islamic theology and practice is not? I'm not the one to ask for an answer, but I think that's the question we need.

I believe that the answer to whether all three "worship the same God" is by its nature unknowable. What we're really trying to figure out is which forms of worship are acceptable to the being we Christians believe to be the One True God.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I'm not entirely sure why it's important whether or not Christians and Muslims "worship the same God."<<<

It's of the utmost importance because of the fundamental claim of Islam to be the final and irrevocable revelation of God. If it's the same god as ours, then Muslims can credibly claim that Islam has superseded both Christianity and Judaism (and I note again that Christianity is not supersessionist in regard to Judaism), and thus by divine right can claim the power to rule over us.

With regard to secular opinon, the perception that Christians, Jews and Muslims all worship the same god tends to mask the fundamental distinctions between Islam on the one hand, and Judaism and Christianity on the other, which leads us down dangerous false trails, e.g., that Christians and Jews share the same fundamental values as Muslims, or that peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Judeo-Christians is possible if only we "split the difference" with regard to our doctrines. For the truly secular minded, it creates the impression that religion generally is the problem, and that only the suppression of Islam, Christianity and Judaism within the public square will lead to lasting peace.

>>>I believe that the answer to whether all three "worship the same God" is by its nature unknowable.<<<

It's eminently knowable. Each faith makes certain claims regarding the nature of God; God has defining characteristics which shape faith and doctrine. The God of Christians is dicernable in the God of the Jews, which is why the Church Fathers did not reject the Old Testament. But the Allah of the Quran is so different in his nature from either the God of the Jews or the Holy Trinity of the Christians that those differences cannot be reconciled. What they worship is not recognizable to us. Yes, they are monotheists, but no, Allah is not our God, any more than the elaborate system of deities and demiurges set up by the second century gnostics was recognizable to Tertullian and Irenaeus.

[GL]

Father Reardon,

Thank you for taking the time to provide your insight.

As I understand your post, whenever God is interacting with man or man with God in the Old Testament, the person of the Godhead involved in the pre-incarnate Christ. So when God identifies Himself by the Sacred Name at the burning bush, it is Christ who is so identifying Himself. As I understand your post and your commentary on Psalm 140 (139) which you cited above and which I read this evening, when in the Psalms, Christ prayed to the One whom He identified by the Sacred Name, the One so indentified is the Father. If I misunderstood you, please correct me. This leads me to the question Who is being identified by the Sacred Name in the Shema. I have thought that it was the Holy Trinity and not any specific Person of the Trinity. Is that correct or mistaken? If so, is it accurate to say that whenever the Sacred Name is used in the Scriptures, it may refer to either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit or it may refer to the Holy Trinity depending upon the context in which it is being used?

As to your parting comment, what is your opinion of translations which transliterate the Sacred Name (e.g., the ASV as "Jehovah" or the Jerusalem Bible and NJB as "Yahweh") rather than translate it as "the LORD?"

[Patrick Henry Reardon]

Inquiries from GL:

#1—-
This leads me to the question Who is being identified by the Sacred Name in the Shema. I have thought that it was the Holy Trinity and not any specific Person of the Trinity. Is that correct or mistaken? If so, is it accurate to say that whenever the Sacred Name is used in the Scriptures, it may refer to either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit or it may refer to the Holy Trinity depending upon the context in which it is being used?

My reply: There is only one God, revealed in two Testaments. Sometimes the biblical attention is drawn God as One, sometimes to God as Trinity. References to God's Wisdom and Spirit in the Bible are examples of the latter.

#2--
As to your parting comment, what is your opinion of translations which transliterate the Sacred Name (e.g., the ASV as "Jehovah" or the Jerusalem Bible and NJB as "Yahweh") rather than translate it as "the LORD?"

My reply: My opinion of these efforts is very low.

[James A. Altena]

In case anyone is curious, I hope to post some further comments in response to Stuart and some other folks, but am detained for now by family affairs. Until then, keep the fur flying!

[Ethan Cordray]

>>Until then, keep the fur flying!<<

With pleasure, James.

Stuart, I don't disagree with you over the importance of distinguishing the manifest and essential differences between Islam and Christianity/Judaism. What I dispute is the legitimacy of framing the question in terms of "same God/different God." I submit that this is an inaccurate approach to the question at hand, which is really: To what degree are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam true and good?

I think the talk about same or different gods lends the dispute a sort of distorting prejudice, as though we were talking about separate beings of the same order, like Mars and Apollo. But we are none of us polytheists; there is only One True God. The question is whether and to what degree each religion accurately describes Him theologically and correctly worships Him. To the degree that each is correct, each worships the One True God. To the degree that any one is incorrect, that one worships Him falsely and thinks of Him falsely. I don't think it is possible to accurately answer the question of the relationship between the three religions without always holding in mind that God is One and alone, and the differences are not within Him but between different visions of Who He is.

Now, there are obviously characteristics of both theological vision and worship that all three religions share: universality, omnipotence, creativity, personality; also prayer, good works, and study of scripture. Each religion may have its own particular definition of each of these (especially the practical ones of worship), but some broad categories are shared by all. Therefore, to the extent, however slight, that each holds certain things in common with all the others, they can rightly be said to "worship the same God." But of course there are numerous ways in which they differ, so many as to make it unnecessary to even mention any here. To the extent that they differ, they can rightly be said to "worship different Gods."

So, then, the real question is how best to say what Christians have always and everywhere believed: Judaism is (or at least was) a legitimate and essentially true religion, whereas Islam is an illegitimate and essentially false religion. We are really positing ontological differences between the religions, which talking of ontological differences between their deities is only an indirect method of doing.

This is how the situation seems to me. As orthodox Christians, we are in the first place viewing both Islam and Judaism from within our own theological position, which we consider to be both true and complete (this original perspective is what the liberals in the article have lost sight of; they are wrong from the start, because their self understanding is wrong). Thus both of the other religions must be judged by their compatibility with the true and complete faith to which we hold. It is in this realm of compatibility that I think the distinction can be truly drawn.

I think it is very easy to show that Judaism is (in its true form) completely compatible with Christianity. The whole testimony of the Church and all of the New Testament argue this, as do the vast numbers of Jews who converted to Christianity in the early centuries after Christ. To the extent that contemporary Judaism claims that the two are not compatible, we must insist that it distorts Judaism's essential nature and diminishes the truthfulness of that religion. A Jew (I mean the term religiously) who does not acknowledge Christianity as Jewish is less than fully a Jew.

Islam, on the other hand, seems quite evidently incompatible with Christianity. Not only has the Church considered it unacceptably heretical, but Islamic tradition as well holds that Christianity is incompatible with it. The history of wars between nations of the two faiths--systematic, persistent, and unrepudiated in ways that Jewish-Christian violence never has been--indicates that each considers the other an enemy in the full sense of the word (I leave aside the question of whether such violence is consonant with the Christian view of enmity). A Muslim cannot become a Christian and still remain a true Muslim. It’s one or the other.

So my conclusion is that speaking of having the "same God" as Judaism is simply shorthand for asserting the compatibility of the two religions, and speaking of having a "different God" than Islam is shorthand for asserting the incompatibility of the two. I'd rather not confuse the issue with such a crude and misleading formulation.

[Ethan Cordray]

More particularly in response to Stuart,

I shouldn't have said "unknowable." I should have said "meaningless."

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I submit that this is an inaccurate approach to the question at hand, which is really: To what degree are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam true and good?<<<

Ultimately, they are only true and good to the extent that the God whom they worship is in fact the one true God. Thus, same God/different God is in fact the heart of the matter. If it is the same God, then we are reduced to quibbling over whose doctrine is correct. If it is a different God, then it matters not in the least whether Islamic doctrine is good or bad. The early Christians were quick to recognize that there were many good pagans, that the philosophy of the Greeks was in many ways congruent with the Christian faith. But this didn't change their opinion of paganism. which to them was the worship of false gods, plain and simple. To the extent that pagans held "Christian" values, this was due to the fact that man was made in God's image, an image that cannot be totally suppressed. What was good in paganism came from God; what was bad in paganism was its own.

On that account, we can say likewise that Islam is the worship of a false deity, one who bears no resemblance to the Judeo-Christian God except in being a sole and universal monarch. To the extent that there is good in Islam, it owes it to shameless cribbing from Jewish and Christian beliefs and practices from the 7th century. All the bad in Islam came from Mohammed's own perverted imagination.

Oh, dear! I suppose I'm going to have to enter the witness protection program, now.

[GL]

Father Reardon,

Thank you again. Both answers are very helpful. I highly value your insights.

May you have a blessed Advent and Christmas season.

[James A. Altena]

"1) Any immigration policy that permits Muslims into a Western country would no doubt permit such "moderates" into the country. The London imam, for example, would hardly be the type who would be screened out by any selective immigration policy that attempts to use interviews or questionnaires to weed out the "bad" Muslims.

"2) I really don't want people who believe what Muslims generally believe about a host of topics (Judaism, Christianity, Spain, jihad, conversion away from Islam, freedom of speech and press in anti-Islamic matters, etc.) to live in my country, because their beliefs are not compatible with the beliefs that define our civilization.

"3) Given #1, the only way to accomplish #2 is to not allow immigration of Muslims into the USA in the first place.

As a counter-argument, no doubt each of us has somewhere met a Muslim once who seemed very nice, etc., which of course trumps all of the above concerns."

Per the previous debate of this topic on the "Rudy Giuliani's Damascus Road" blog, Clark constantly strives to frame everything in terms of only the starkest shades of black and white, and to portray those such as myself who see some (even narrow) band of gray as tacitly endorsing (or else naively ignoring) the threat of jihadism. And I take the final sentence to be a snide reference to my previous mention of my co-worker Hamidah (who, I can tell you, would find the position of the "moderate" imam just mentioned quite objectionable).

For the record, I also have no great use for, or illusions about, most of the so-called "moderate Muslims." But there are also truly tolerant Muslims who do not fit the profile of the Spanish imam. I know a few personally. I recognize and deal with exceptions. Clark simply refuses to admit that they even exist; for him, Muslim = terrorist, period.

(Never mind that Clark cannot show the vast majority of Muslims worldwide to be actual supporters or practitioners of terrorism; blanket stereotypes without any exceptions are so much more convenient. Or that the claim that belief in Islam must necessarily and inevitably lead every single Muslim to practice or support violent oppression of every single non-Muslim is made by an extended inferential argument, not direct deduction from logic or evidence, and is demonstrably false from actual factual evidence.)

(And, for the record, no-one here has suggested such a naive device as mere "questionnaires" as ports of entry to screen out potential threats; obviously anyone could lie on those. We need much more robust and searching measures. But of course, on Clark's principles, since such screening cannot separate terrorists from non-terrorist Muslims and we therefore should ban and deport all Muslims, it likely cannot reliably separate all Muslims from Africa and Asia from all non-Muslims, and we therefore must also ban and deport all persons of Arabian, Iranian, Central Asian, Oriental, and Black African ancestry -- including the entire black population of the USA, since likewise it's impossible reliably to screen out all the black Muslims from all the black non-Muslims.)

One might also note that there are Jewish sects in Israel that, due to their Messianc theology, do not recognize the legitimacy of their own nation's government. No doubt Clark favors banning and deportation of them from Israel as well. And by both parity of reasoning and the Golden Rule pronounced by Christ himself, he must also favor all Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist/etc. nations banning and deporting non-Muslims/Hindus/Buddhists, etc.

Since Clark still refuses to address the issues previously raised, I will raise it again.

On what basis in the U.S. Constitution or resulting positive law, particularly given the 1st Amendment, does Clark propose both to ban immigration by all Muslims and to deport all current U.S. citizens who are Muslims (including those who are native born)? Where is there in either in our Constitutional principles or related positive law a tradition and justification for ideological screening based on religious profession alone, as opposed to concrete criminal actions that claim such a profession for their basis? Or does he simply advocate deletion of the 1st Amendment from the Constitution and appeal of the laws based on it?

The problem with Clark's reasoning and proposals is that it can be applied equally across the board to a host off other issues and groups for the same reason. We can start with Hindus and Buddhists, who likewise have perpetrated violence against Christians in India and elsewhere in Asia. Then we can deport or forbid entry to everyone who believes in abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, since that too is ideological advocacy and (if practiced and not just advocated) commission of murder. And next we can extend this to revisionist theological heretics (whose ideas kill the soul and not just the body, which is far worse), and then to homosexuals, fornicators, drunkards, etc. whose conduct spreads death by disease and reckless conduct. All these "beliefs are not compatible with the beliefs that define our civilization." But as a solution Clark obviously favors revival and extension of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts.

The question is not whether we think these things to be so compatible; in fact, agree that they are not. The question is how we treat those who, out of ignorance or malice, hold to them. Our Constitution and resulting positive law have always held that particular convictions, no matter how abhorrent we personally find them, are not grounds for banning immigrants or deporting citizens. The grounds for so doing are actual action or demonstrably provable intent to do so (i.e., actual conspiracy criminally defined, not just belief). Against Clark, one can despise the ACLU (as I do) and still recognize that protection of our own freedom of conscience in worship and speech requires extending that liberty to others with whom we disagree vehemently, so long as their beliefs do not turn into actual unlawful activity.

On the political level, the mindset that thinks the solution is to deport and ban anyone who disagrees with "the beliefs that define our civilization", is, frankly, totalitarian. As Clark has shown here and in another recent post (where he equated disagreement with him to refusal to engage in discussion), he wants a nation in which anyone who disagrees with him about anything is proscribed and eliminated, as being a threat to him and his beliefs. Beware the person who say "I don't want people who believe "X" [as opposed to "do 'X'"] to live in my country"!

And, more importantly, on the spiritual level it refuses to recognize and treat others whom we hold to be in grievous error as being made in the image of God equally to us, with souls in need of salvation. Far more convenient simply to shun them altogether and write them off as damned than to evangelize them.

Let us suppose that Clark's position is implemented; all Muslims are banned and deported from the USA. Likewise (as is in practice already effectively done in some nations) Muslim nations do the same regarding Christians. The two are as completely segregated as man's efforts can make them to be. How then does Clark propose to evangelize Muslims and save souls? Does he really think that can effectively be done abstractly, by clandestine broadcasts and leaflet drops only, without daily personal witness in the flesh? (I mean that personal witness not in the sense of public preaching, but in the sense of the witness of a Christian life, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi: "You may be the only Gospel that your neighbor ever reads.")

Christ did not tell us to shun non-believers and isolate ourselves in safe-houses behind walls. He sent us forth to teach all nations. That means (among other things) taking up the Cross of personal witness to unbelievers in the flesh, including enduring living with them and not apart from them. Unavoidably, personal witness includes the risk of martyrdom (the word "martyr" itself meaning "witness"), whether in spirit or in blood, as countless missionaries to the heathen through the centuries knew and accepted. The "Christian" not willing to assume this risk is simply no true Christian, but one who in fear (like Peter at the fire) denies his Lord.

Christ told us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. The orthodox Christian is a hard-nosed realist who holds no illusions about a sinful and fallen world, but yet lives in hope, with charity toward all men, so far as that lies in his power. It is not of Christ to appeal to those who profess Him to live in fear (and even hatred) of others who do not know Him as their Lord and Saviour.

Let us have no red herrings. No-one here is advocating reckless disregard of the spiritual threat of Islam to Christianity, or denying the urgent need for conversion (quite the contrary, as I have just shown), or proposing porous borders and open immigration without rigorous screening to safeguard the security of our nation. But the simplistic idea that the "solution" is to ban and deport all professing Muslims stands in complete contradiction to our Constitution, our resulting heritage of law, and the daily practice of our Christian faith and witness, beginning with the Golden Rule pronounced by Christ himself.

[Judy Warner]

I don't know if this is Clark's motive or not, but I have observed that many people are so frustrated with our government's inability to act to protect us in so many areas, and to stand up for what we believe, that they move toward an extreme position. The thinking seems to be: Okay, if Congress and the courts are going to destroy our surveillance programs, if our president describes Islam only in terms of a religion of peace and cannot define our enemy, if we are too conflicted and guilty to achieve victory in war, then let's just shut down our borders and get rid of the problem that way. I myself feel exactly that frustration, but I don't have a good solution.

[James A. Altena]

Excellent observation, Judy!

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>But the simplistic idea that the "solution" is to ban and deport all professing Muslims stands in complete contradiction to our Constitution, our resulting heritage of law, and the daily practice of our Christian faith and witness, beginning with the Golden Rule pronounced by Christ himself.<<<

I don't think anyone takes such suggestions seriously. On the other hand, the United States is entirely too loose in its visa policies on Muslim countries. Far too many people get in without meaningful background checks, and once here, very little is done to track their movements and activities.

Regarding Muslims who attain permenant resident or citizenship status, the United States has been entirely too tolerant of tacit or even explicit support for statements and behavior in support of terrorist actions here and abroad (though we aren't nearly as bad in that regard as most Western European countries). Citizenship makes demands as well as bestowing rights and privileges. I'll feel entirely more comfortable with the Islamic community in this country when it becomes as overtly patriotic as the German and Italian populations here were during World War II.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I don't know if this is Clark's motive or not, but I have observed that many people are so frustrated with our government's inability to act to protect us in so many areas, and to stand up for what we believe, that they move toward an extreme position.<<<

You don't know extreme. But the fact is, this country is one major terrorist incident away from a crackdown on Muslims that will make the internment of the Japanese look like a paid resort vacation.

[Judy Warner]

I think about that coming major terrorist incident all the time. I go into Washington one day a week for my job, and every week I think, "I hope this isn't the day they nuke Washington."

[James A. Altena]

Dear Ethan,

Once again we are all indebted to you for an extraordinarily thoughtful post. You have presented an essential part of the basic argument for which I have asked, but until now has not been forthcoming.

I think that this paragraph reaches the heart of how we can distinguish the asymmetries in the relation of Christianity to Judaism on the one had and Islam on the other:

"I think it is very easy to show that Judaism is (in its true form) completely compatible with Christianity. The whole testimony of the Church and all of the New Testament argue this, as do the vast numbers of Jews who converted to Christianity in the early centuries after Christ. To the extent that contemporary Judaism claims that the two are not compatible, we must insist that it distorts Judaism's essential nature and diminishes the truthfulness of that religion. A Jew (I mean the term religiously) who does not acknowledge Christianity as Jewish is less than fully a Jew."

This is clearly something that Islam, as a syncretistic synthesis of elements from Judaism and Christianity (or Gnostic heresies of the latter) with elements of then prevailing Arabic polytheism, cannot claim.

Admittedly, this is a uniquely Christian argument, to which no currently practicing Jew would give assent, and would perhaps charge us with question-begging and circular reasoning. But I don't think it guilty of those fallacies; it is rather a statement of the theological principle of what God intended the full culmination and expression of Judaism to be -- faith in Jesus Christ as the long-promised Messiah.

Given both the complexities of history and the hardening of human heart by sin, I would demur from the statement that this principle and relation "is very easy to show." It is not at all self-evident to anyone who has not been given grace by the Holy Ghost rightly to open and understand the Scriptures (remember the disciples on the road to Emmaeus).

Regarding your statement that "We are really positing ontological differences between the religions, which talking of ontological differences between their deities is only an indirect method of doing" --

Stuart properly raises the question as to whether your statement should actually be inverted to:

"We are really positing ontological differences between their deities, which talking of ontological differences between the religions [as true or false] is only an indirect method of doing."

The question is whether the relative logical order would affect fundamental agreement of the principle.

Also, this does not entirely address the fact that what we are dealing with here is actually existing Judaism since Christ's time on earth, as distinct from the "true" Judaism that makes Christians the true spiritual Jews. I.e., if Judaism since Christ is a fundamental distortion and denial of true Judaism in its rejection of the Messiah, which entails also rejection of the Trinity, then why should not this counterfeit Judaism be categorized as equally false, and as equally worshipping a non-Christian God, as Islam?

And, to be fair to Stuart, it was Jim Kushiner whose original post here actually (and I think properly) first raised the idea that the Muslim Allah is not the Christian God, on the basis of rejection of the Trinity. ("Same God? Islam teaches that God is One and he has no Son. That's not my God, sorry.")

Thus, while your post is an excellent start to a solution, I do not believe it has fully resolved it. It goes so far as to establish a spiritual asymmetry that makes even the god of even Judaism since Christ something far less alien to Christianity than the Allah of Islam. But I do not think it sufficient to establish that the God of that Judaism is the same god as that of the Christian faith. I therefor request and invite further reflection and development of it from all here.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Steve Nicoloso,

While I agree with a number of thoughtful points in your post, I must dissent in thinking that Stuart's "Bill Smith" analogy is a good one. See below (if I have time to finish it before work!).

[Bobby Winters]

>>>Pursuant to federal law, I do not think the church could legally discriminate against the Islamic bidder in favor of a lower bid by Christians or others.<<<

But you could burn it down rather than sell it.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Stuart,

">>>If the Trinity is made the irreducilbe touchstone for identifying whether someone worships the Christian God, then by definition Judaism does not.<<<

"Let us say that I know Mr. Smith, my next door neighbor, and I have a cordial relationship with him. But I do not know that Mr. Smith is also doctor and at the same time a scoutmaster. Someone closer to Mr. Smith knows all of these things about him. Undoubtedly, that person has a fuller knowledge of Mr. Smith than I do, but we both know Mr. Smith.

"So it is with the Jews and God: they know Yahweh to the extent that He revealed himself to them through Torah. They have a covenant with Him, and He does not reneg on his promises. Do they know Him as well as Christians? As a Christian, I would have to say that they do not. But I cannot deny that they know Him, or that, ontologically, Yahweh is the same God that I worship, since there are implicit references to God's triune nature throughout the Old Testament (which was of immeasurable aid to the Fathers at both Nicaea and Constantinople).

"The knowledge of the Jews is incomplete, but what they DO know is true, for what was revealed to them is also revealed to us, and we acknowledge that revelation ourselves."

Unfortunatley the analogy is fallacious, because it fails to distinguish three different senses of knowledge: information, or knowledge in the sense of facts; understanding, or knowledge in the sense of right judgment; and intimacy, or knowledge in the sense of personal relation to another.

The NT dwells richly on this subject. Among the hundreds of references to the words "know" and "knowledge" that a NT concordance shows, the following are particularly relevant to this dicussion. As will be evident, most relate to the third sense of knoweldge as intimacy of personal relation

Matt. 9:6, Mark 2:10, Luke 5:24 (know that the Son of Man has power to heal and forgive sins)

Matt. 13:11, Mark 4:11-13, Luke 8:10 (know [understand] the parables of Jesus)

Mark 12:34 "Ye know [understand] not the Scriptures"

The demons know who Jesus is, and tremble (James 2:19, Acts 19:5, the Legion of demons, etc.), but do not have the saving knoweldge of personal intimacy.

And, with unintentional irony, statements by the Jews themselvs in Mark 12:14 ("We know that thou are true") and John 3:2 ("We know that thou art a teacher come from God")

I Cor. 2:8 (on the princes of this world, including the rulers of the Jews, crucifying the Lord of glory)

Matt. 17:12 (know John the Baptist as the new Elijah)

John 1:26 "One among you, whom ye know not" (cf. Rom. 10:19-21)

John 4:22 (the Samaritans "worship what ye know not")

John 7:26-29 (ironically, "Do the rulers know indeed that this is the Christ?")

John 8:14 (The Jews -- whether "Judeaorun" is read narrowly or broadly -- do not know from where or whom Christ comes or goes; cf. also John 9:29)

Matt. 11:217, Luke 10:22 "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him."

John 8:19 "Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also," (cf. also John 8;54-55, John 14:6-7 & 20, I John 4:6)

John 5:42 ("I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.")

Christians know the indwelling Spirit of truth, which thee world cannot receive because it does not know Christ (I John 4:17)

John 10:1-18 (the "good shepherd discourse; the sheep of Christ's flock know him and his voice; cf. II Tim. 1:12)

John 17:3 (eternal life is "to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent")

I John, chapters 2 & 4 passim (those that know and love God also know and love the brethren)

John 15:21, 16:3 (all who follow Jesus will suffer persecution "because they know not him that sent me.")

John 17:25 ("The world hath not known thee")

Warnings that those who do not "know" Christ (in both the sense of understanding and of personal relation) will not be saved; e.g., Luke 13:23-27.

II Thess. 1:8 (Christ in the final judgment "taking vengenace on tehm that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lrod Jesus Christ.")

Titus 1:16 ("They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him"; cf. I John 2:3-5)

The soteriological implications of Peter's three denials of Christ: "I know him not"

The Scriptures themselves repeatedly make crystal clear that those who reject Christ -- including the unbelieving Jews -- both do not rightly know (understand) the Scriptures, and (worse yet) do not know (are not in a personal relation to) the Father, which is possible only through Christ. Such knowldge is only possible through the Trinity. At best, they only know (and at best insufficiently and with much misunderstanding) something *about* the Father in terms of information. The problem is that, as both the Scriptures and the Fathers' rejection of Gnostic heresies make clear, the latter type of knowledge is not saving knowledge. (As Dewey Beegle once put it, "While there are doctrines of salvation, there are no saving doctrines.")

The Jews therefore do not simply have a "cordial relationship" with God that just happens to lack certain factual knowledge; their alienation from the Father is, alas, for more profound than that.

Thus, per my recent previous post addressed to Ethan, if Judaism since Christ is a fundamentally false Judaism, wherein the Jews do not know the Father in a saving sense since the do not so know the Son, then how can the god of Judaism since Christ be said to be the same God as that of the Christians? Why is it not instead a form of apostasy or idolatry? And, on the other side, how do we reconcile all this with the mystery of the ultimate redemption of the Jews set forth by St. Paul in Rom. 11?

In conjunction with this, I reject your tendentious reading of the OT in terms of a Jerusalem Temple party polemically defaming the Samaritans. II Kings 17 makes it crystal clear the ultimate reason the Samaritans were rejected was not simply for failure to worship at the Temple in Jerusalem, but rather their turning to syncretism with pagan deities and practices. I do not believe such an approach to reading Scripture is consonant with a reverent reading of it as the inspired written word of God given to us for our salvation. ButI'm willing to be proved wrong. I therefore ask you to cite passages from the Fathers that specifically support your intepretation here.