Corcoran on the God of Muslims and the God of Christians

A continuing theme in the Christian blogosphere, which we discussed before (God = Allah?) – now Calvin College philosopher Kevin Corcoran, on his blog Holy Skin and Bone, asks:

Is the God of Christians the God of Muslims Too?

Corcoran answers a firm “yes”, and sort of scolds evangelicals who say “no”. He also summarizes an interesting recent incident that prompted his post – check it out. I guess I’m agnostic, for reasons similar to those cited by Keith DeRose in the comments on Kevin’s post. But I don’t think this issue matters, for reasons I’ll explain in a future post.

Here are a couple of thoughts. Whether “God” (etc.) as used by Muslims refers to the one God (assuming the truth of Christianity) is one thing. But what gets many evangelicals bent out of shape is the idea (which can be confused with the one just noted) that Muslims, by way of the the Islamic tradition, in some sense “successfully” worship God, establishing some sort of personal relationship with him. Now at least if this sort of personal relationship is the same sort Christians have with God, then this suggests that Islam is as good as Christianity, in the practical sense that by means of it, human salvation is accomplished, maybe as often as in the Christian tradition. In short, these evangelicals mistakenly see the claim that “God” (spoken by a Christian) and “Allah” (spoken by a Muslim) refer to the same being as a threat to their Christian exclusivism.

This is a mistake – nothing about the salvific effectiveness of the various religions follows from the claim that “Allah” refers to God. (For having a friendship with God, in seems necessary that one be able
to refer to – at least think about – him, but this ability is plainly not sufficient to establish that friendship.)

However, these evangelicals are smarting from the fact that various (usually incoherent) forms of religious pluralism are often pushed in political contexts, pop religion literature, in the academic world of Religious Studies, and in some wings of Christian theology. Actually, in some crowds, some sort of religious pluralism is not so much pushed as just smugly assumed to be something all good and informed people agree on.