Transcript

Over the past few weeks, there's been a lot of discussion online related to the question, do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?

The discussion was spurred on by a debate on Tim Pool podcast and a debate on Capturing Christianity, where the Eastern Orthodox guest used it to argue that Catholicism is false.

I wasn't planning on addressing this issue because my colleagues Joe Heschmeyer and Jimmy Akin have already addressed this question on their own channels, and I try not to address topics other people have already covered.

But I got a lot of requests to talk about it and there are a few arguments that I can offer that complement what Joe and Jimmy have already said.

And there's also some objections that have come up since then that I can address, so let's jump right in.

First, I want to be clear that I don't like the phrasing, Muslims and Christians worship the same God.

That sounds like we're saying the God of Christianity and the God of Islam are identical in all respects, which is false.

The Christian God is a trinity of three distinct divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The God of Islam is, in contrast, a single infinite person who has other different attributes.

Though both concepts also have many overlapping attributes as well.

It is silly though to say Islam does not worship the true God though, simply because Muslims call God Allah.

Allah is the Arabic word for God.

It's the same word Arabic-speaking Christians use when they refer to God.

So the name Allah isn't the main issue.

But I still don't think it's prudent to make the claim Muslims and Christians worship the same God.

You can show that claim is true but you have to qualify it, otherwise people will think that you're committing religious indifferentism.

It's sort of like the claim Catholics worship Mary.

That claim is true but it has to be qualified so people don't think you're committing idolatry.

Catholics give Mary the respect she is worth.

They give Mary her worth-ship.

Since Luke 1:48 says all generations will call Mary blessed.

But Catholics do not give Mary honor that is due to God alone.

Likewise, Muslims and Christians both worship God but Muslims and Christians don't offer God the same kind of worship.

And when we look at the question in this way, we can find clarity amidst disagreement.

What makes this question difficult for people to discuss is that many people have a very narrow definition of worship.

Worship is just giving God all the honor God is due and since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit deserve honor, refusing to honor each of these persons as God means a non-Trinitarian can't worship God.

Critics also say that the Bible teaches that whoever denies the Son does not have the Father, and that pagans offer worship to demons, not God.

Therefore, they say Muslims cannot be worshiping God.

But we have to be careful about taking a few proof texts and using that to answer a complicated question.

Zeus and Thor do not exist, and if they have any effect on the world, that's just the work of demons.

And John says the Antichrist doesn't have the Father but in the same letter he also says, He who loves is born of God and knows God.

A person might not have God as a covenantal Father but the Bible says non-believers can have God as the creator to whom they must give worship.

But before I share those verses, consider this thought experiment to help us examine the issue.

Imagine you're hiking up a mountain with an agnostic friend.

He thinks the trinity is illogical and so he rejects that doctrine but he is open to the existence of one infinite perfect God who created the universe from nothing.

As you reach the top of the mountain and your friend sees the beauty of nature before him, he says out into the void, Thank you, God.

And then you look out into the same beauty and say, Praise be to God.

Now, which of these statements better describe this situation?

One, your friend along with you adores the one and merciful God.

Or two, your friend is giving worship to a demon or some other creature but he is not worshiping God.

Most people will find statement one far more plausible than statement two.

Your friend knows that demons are creatures and that they are evil.

He isn't intending to worship them.

However, he is expressing gratitude to the all-good uncreated creator.

Even if your friend has rejected Christian theology, at least for now, you can still commend him for rejecting the error of atheism and for giving praise, i.e.

worship, to the one creator God.

This doesn't mean his mere theistic worship will save him from sin or even that God accepts this worship.

It just means you and your friend have more common ground and so you can use this to move him closer to the fullness of divine revelation.

And that's what Vatican II is talking about when it comes to Muslims.

Here's the passage in question that's often debated.

But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the creator.

In the first place amongst these, there are the Muslims who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God who on the last day will judge mankind.

This passage was approved in a vote of 2,151 council fathers in favor and only five against so it was very uncontroversial at the Second Vatican Council.

However, in two recent debates, the Eastern Orthodox apologist Jay Dyer used this statement to argue that Catholicism is false.

Ridhim Zumer and Gavin Ortlund have also taken issue with this claim so let's look at some criticisms on this side of the issue.

First, even if this passage were in error, that wouldn't prove Catholicism is false.

To do that, you'd have to falsify a statement the church infallibly defined to be true or you'd have to show two infallibly defined statements contradict each other but no doctrines were infallibly defined at the Second Vatican Council.

In a worst-case scenario, a Catholic, if he had good reason, could privately refuse to assent to this statement.

Such an act would not be as sinful as rejecting an infallibly defined dogma like the trinity, a heretical act which always involves grave matter.

I've also found that some Eastern Orthodox commenters are inconsistent on this point.

They will say Catholicism is false because the Pope said in an offhand comment that Christians and Muslims worship the same God or a non-infallible teaching at an ecumenical council says Christians and Muslims each adore God- but then they will ignore their own tradition when it speaks of Christians and Muslims having recourse to the same creator God.

Here's video of Russian Patriarch Kirill saying, Christians and Muslims each turn to the same God, the Creator.

And here's a 2023 address where the Russian Patriarch said, We Christians and Muslims know and confess that God is the true creator of the world and the only lawmaker.

When Jay Dyer saw this posted on X, not knowing its source, he said, Thanks for proving you're not Christian, LOL. And here's Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

We are all created by the same God, and as such, uh, we are brothers and sisters between ourselves.

We have the same heavenly Father, whatever we call him.

Now, Orthodox apologists say this doesn't matter because the patriarchs aren't infallible, but the pope and ecumenical councils aren't always infallible.

In fact, they rarely teach infallibly.

If the patriarchs can err on Islam without refuting Orthodoxy, then the same is true of non-infallible Catholic teachings on the same subject.

But more importantly, how does the Eastern Orthodox apologist know that the pope, Vatican II, and these Orthodox patriarchs are wrong about Muslims worshiping God?

An Orthodox apologist might say, Well, we have the tradition and consensus of Orthodox saints and fathers to guide us, but does he?

Centuries before Islam existed, the Church fathers affirmed that Jews who rejected Jesus still worshiped God.

In the second century, Justin Martyr said, Nor do we think that there is one God for us, another for you, but that He alone is God who led your fathers out from Egypt with a strong hand and a high arm.

Nor have we trusted in any other, for there is no other, but in Him in whom you also have trusted, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.

In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa said, We can hear Jews believing in God, and our God too.

Even our Lord reminds them in the Gospel that they recognize no other God than the Father of the only begotten of whom ye say that He is your God.

Are we then to call the Jews Christians?

Because they too agree to worship the God whom we adore.

Gavin D'Costa's study of Vatican II and Islam says the eighth-century Father John of Damascus, quote, affirms that Muhammad rightly says that there exists one God, maker of all.

Islam's true monotheism is hardly ever contested, even in the most bitter of criticisms.

While Muhammad, the Quran, and often Muslim behavior are negatively viewed, it is difficult to find any text that says that Muhammad's monotheism was other than of the true Christian God, one creator and judge.

The ninth-century patriarch Timothy I said, Muhammad separated his people from idolatry and polytheism, and attached them to the cult and the knowledge of one God, beside whom there is no other God.

Granted, there were church fathers like Chrysostom who disagreed on the Jews worshiping God, but this shows the necessity of the magisterium for interpreting not just unclear Bible passages, but also disagreement among the church fathers on theological issues.

Saying that what the church teaches is just whatever you or your favorite Orthodox YouTuber or social media account says it teaches sounds like Protestantism, not apostolic Christianity.

And ironically, early Protestants sound like the fathers at the Second Vatican Council.

Martin Luther said this, For all outside of Christianity, whether heathen, Turks, Jews, or false Christians and hypocrites, although they believe in and worship only one true God, yet know not what his mind towards them is.

The passage about Islam from Vatican II is not in error, and it doesn't contradict previous church teaching, and I'll show that by walking through each part of it.

The passage in Lumen Gentium begins by saying, But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the creator.

Now, this does not mean that God saves people directly through non-Christian religions.

It means God can use imperfect methods to gradually enlighten people about salvation in him.

For example, God often uses Protestants to bring people out of atheism, but that doesn't mean Protestant theology is God's final plan for those people.

Likewise, one could say that God foreknew the error of Islam, and so he providentially used it to move some people away from polytheism and prepare them for the Gospel, even though God did not positively will Islam to exist.

Saying Muslims are part of the plan of salvation does not mean Islam saves people.

It just means that God wants to save all people, and He uses every single person on Earth, whether they know it or not, as part of His divine plan.

The passage continues, In the first place amongst these, there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham Note the qualification.

Muslims profess or claim to have the faith of Abraham, but they don't actually have that faith because the Quran is an uninspired distortion of the Old and New Testament delivered by a false prophet.

I cover this in my episode on why I'm not a Muslim, linked in the description below.

And real fast, at this point, a lot of people would say in a video, Here's a word from our sponsor, but I love that our supporters are so generous, we don't need sponsorships.

We can just focus on sharing and defending the Catholic faith.

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And now, back to the episode.

And finally, the passage says that Muslims, quote, Along with us, adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.

As I said before, I don't like the claim Muslims and Christians worship the same God.

Pope Saint John Paul II did use this language sometimes, like in an address to young Muslims, but this address either has no magisterial authority or very little authority, especially in comparison to what was taught at the Second Vatican Council.

This is the claim I'm much more interested in addressing.

So, let's address some of the objections that people make to this particular statement.First, some critics say the Bible teaches that a person cannot worship or adore God if they don't worship the Trinity.

However, the Bible gives examples of people who did worship God even though they were ignorant of the Trinity.

St. Paul told the Athenians, I found also an altar with this inscription: To an unknown god.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

In Romans 1:20-21, Paul says, Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

So they, the pagan Gentiles, are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.

St. Paul assumes a person can not only worship God if they don't know he is a trinity, but a person is morally required to worship God and give him thanks as the one creator.

Those who sacrifice to idols worship demons because idols represent finite creatures, not the true uncreated God who can be known to exist and surpasses anything made by human hands.

The First Vatican Council infallibly taught that, quote, God, the source and end of all things can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason.

In my article, The Case for Natural Theology, link below, I show how this is the case for all of church history, and I specifically cite Eastern writers to show natural theology wasn't just a Western practice.

Moreover, if man can know God exists by natural reason, then he can offer natural praise or thanks to God, which is a kind of worship, albeit one that is not salvific.

Jesus told a Samaritan woman in John 4 that, quote, You worship what you do not know.

We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

This also came up in the debate with Jay Dyer, who admitted that a non-Christian can worship God in a qualified sense of the word worship, because the word worship has multiple meanings.

The Samaritans are Unitarians.

It's the same fundamental ontological position as Islam, right?

They're Unitarian.

Jesus says, You worship what you don't know.

So the true sense here of what matters in terms of worship, in that regard-

So she, so she does worship it.

So she-

But the point is that she doesn't know it.

She concedes, she does worship it.

Yeah.

But it doesn't mean-

Not totally.

the resolution is not-

Not intimately.

listen, the resolution-

And that was the whole argument that I made.

That's what I said.

I said, Jay doesn't know the Trinity.

The resolution of the debate-

Cameron, can you put up my Superman slide?

is whether Christians and Muslims, the resolution-

Thank you.

of the debate Hold on.

The resolution of the debate was whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

If you concede that it's possible to worship the true God even without in some sense knowing him, then you've just conceded the debate.

No, but I'm, I'm-

Jay said in response that the worship was not salvific, to which the Catholics on the panel agreed with him.

Worship is not a narrow, simple category.

As I argued in my previous episode, The Protestant Worship Problem, Protestants cannot fully worship God because they don't offer the sacrifice of Christ to the Father through the Eucharist.

But Protestants can still imperfectly worship God through the praise they offer him.

Muslims have even less worship to offer God than Protestants because they're not baptized.

However, Muslims can still know from reason that one God exists and give God the praise he is naturally due, in accord with what Paul says in Romans 1. Bishop Athanasius Schneider put it this way: When a person sincerely adores God the creator, as I assume the majority of simple Muslim people do, they adore God with a natural act of worship based on the natural knowledge of God, the creator.

Every non-Christian, every non-baptized person, including a Muslim, can adore God on the level of the natural knowledge of the existence of God.

They adore in a natural act of adoration the same God whom we adore in a supernatural act and with supernatural faith in the Holy Trinity.

But these are two essentially different acts of adoration.

The one is an act of natural knowledge and the other is an act of supernatural faith.

And God can use this natural knowledge to lead a person to have supernatural saving faith in Christ.

Consider the Roman centurion Cornelius in Acts chapter 10.

Luke describes Cornelius as, A devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms liberally to the people, and prayed constantly to God.

An angel then told Cornelius, Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God.

And then he commanded Cornelius to see St. Peter.

The average faithful Jew of the Old Testament worshiped God even though he did not know God is a trinity.

Now, some people try to claim that ancient Jews were Trinitarians because they knew about the angel of the Lord or they read Psalms that talked about the Lord saying to my lord, or for those who lived after the 3rd century before Christ believed there were two powers in heaven.

And I agree they were not strict Unitarians, but that doesn't mean ancient Jews were Trinitarians.

Recognizing divine power beyond one person doesn't entail belief in the true God or the Trinity.

Jehovah's Witnesses call Jesus a god, but they reject the Trinity.

If these critics say that Jehovah's Witnesses don't worship God, then they'd have to reject the claim that Old Testament Jews worshiped God simply because they had a vague belief in a multiple divine power theory.

All of this shows that ignorance of the Trinity doesn't prevent someone from offering worship to God, which of course God may or may not accept.

But another objection tries to make a distinction between ignorance of God's true nature and willfully rejecting God's true nature.

It says the latter is an insurpassable impediment to worshiping God, but the former is not.

Ancient Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, and Romans like Cornelius did worship God because they were merely ignorant of his true triune nature.

However, if you know about the doctrine of the Trinity and consciously reject that doctrine, then you cannot worship God.

Here's how Gavin Ortlund put it.

There's a difference between rejecting the Trinity after God has made it clear- and revealed it more fully, versus not knowing the Trinity fully before God has made it clear.

Those are very different.

Ignorance prior to revelation, rejection after revelation, two different things.

First, if you hold this view, then the agnostic friend in the hiking story can't be worshiping God, because he rejects the Trinity.

However, most people would see his behavior as natural adoration of God that isn't salvific, but is still praiseworthy.

And Christians adore God alongside such a person.

Second, there doesn't seem to be a meaningful difference between one who is in ignorance of a person's true identity and one who rejects true claims about a person's identity when it comes to being able to express praise toward that person.

When a random person thanks Superman for saving him, he may be ignorant about Superman's identity as Clark Kent, or even who Clark Kent is, but Clark receives their thanks nonetheless.

In some storylines, Clark's childhood friend, Lana, knows he is Superman, so when she thanks Superman, she knowingly is thanking Clark as well.

But in many stories, Lois Lane not only does not know Clark is Superman, she actively rejects that claim.

Well, Lois, the truth is, I'm actually Superman in disguise, and I only pretend to be a journalist in order to hear about disasters as they happen and then squeeze you out of the byline.

You're a sick man, Kent.

You asked.

And yet when Lois Lane thanks Superman for saving her, she is still thanking Clark, even if she not only doesn't know it, but rejects that identity claim.

So a Christian saying, Thank you, God, would be like Lana thanking Superman, and your agnostic hiking friend or a Muslim saying, Thank you, God, would be like Lois thanking Superman.

Even those who reject God's true identity can offer natural, imperfect, non-salvific worship to God as the one infinite creator of the universe.

Finally, this objection does not work because the Bible refers to Jews who rejected Jesus as serving God.

Acts 22 describes Paul telling the Jews in Jerusalem that in persecuting Christians he was, quote, Being zealous for God, as you all are this day.

And in Romans 10, Paul says, My heart's desire and prayer to God for them, the Jews, is that they may be saved.

I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened, for being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

Paul's speech in Jerusalem and the writing of his letter to the Romans occurred in the late '50s, about 25 years after the crucifixion, when unconverted Jews weren't just ignorant of Christ, but openly rejected him.

And yet Paul still says the Jews have zeal for God, and not something else like a demon.

This description would also apply to Muslims who show zeal for God by praying five times a day, but have not been enlightened to believe in God's triune nature.

Another objection is that if we say Muslims worship God, then where do we draw the line?

Will we say polytheistic pagan tribes worship God?

Will we say Mormons worship God?

First, this objection cuts the other way as well.

Where do you draw the line on error about God showing a person does not worship God?

Some Eastern Orthodox say that Catholics do not worship God because Catholics believe in the Filioque.

And here's Deacon Ananias in the debate saying that Catholics might not be worshiping God because their Eucharistic theology differs from the Eastern Orthodox.

Are you telling me I have to have an Eastern Orthodox theology of the Eucharist to worship the same god as you?

Uh, you might.

You might, yeah.

Really?

Really?

Well Yeah.

Second, and more important, this is a continuum fallacy.

Just because there might be religions where we don't know if they adore the one creator, God, doesn't mean there aren't religions where we do know if they worship God.

Jews and Muslims have a long history of defending classical theism, or God being infinite being itself.

Mormons, on the other hand, reject classical theism, and at least some of them think God is an exalted man and that Jesus is a creature who, along with Satan, have the same spiritual father.

So Mormons do not adore the one God, creator of all things.

While Islam is often seen in the past as a kind of Christian heresy, Father Luis Ladaria said, quote, One cannot even consider that this Mormon doctrine is a heresy.

The teaching of the Mormons has a completely different matrix.

Another objection is that this kind of reasoning commits the quantifier shift fallacy.

Billy has a mom and Teddy has a mom, but that doesn't mean Billy and Teddy have the same mom.

Likewise, Christians worship a god, Muslims worship a god, but that doesn't mean Christians and Muslims worship the same god.

That's true, but you can avoid the quantifier shift fallacy by adding more attributes to what is shared between two people.

Billy has a mom who is the principal of the only school in town, and Teddy has a mom who is principal of the only school in town.

So we can say Billy and Teddy have the same mom.

Christians and Muslims worship the one God who created the universe.

They may be mistaken about what the creator is like, but we can still say that each worship the same being that created all things, although Christians and Muslims offer this being different kinds of worship, one natural adoration, the other supernatural adoration.

Finally, some critics say Vatican II contradicts previous magisterial teaching.

This was Jay Dyer's argument in the debate on Capturing Christianity, though it was totally irrelevant to the topic of Christians and Muslims worshiping the same god.

All Jay proved, at most, was that one or more non-infallible statements were in error, not that Catholicism itself is false.

Jay even admitted the statement in Vatican II about Islam is ambiguous, which means it can be reconciled with other statements on the subject since the alleged contradictory meaning is not explicit in the text.

My argument was, is that Vatican II causes the ambiguity by saying that Muslims worship, adore

the one true God and know Him.

That ambiguity leaves it open as if that worship is accepted and that it is a genuine pipeline to God.

But if it's ambiguous, that means it doesn't have to have this problematic meaning.

The previous Catholic statements Jay showed in the debate were medieval popes and councils talking about suppressing Muslim and Jewish worship, along with one quote that's probably a misquotation about demon worship, or at the very least, isn't a magisterial teaching.

It's true there were crusades against Muslims, but there were medieval crusades against Christian heretics.

But that didn't prove the church thought those people did not worship God.

You can worship the true God in the wrong way and be punished for that, a lesson Nadab and Abihu learned the hard way in Leviticus 10.

Moreover, the channel Catholic Truth has shown, going back a thousand years from Pope Gregory VII to theologians like St. Robert Bellarmine, to Pope Pius X and other pre-Vatican II popes, that the church has always recognized that Muslims and Jews aren't like other non-Christians, because they do worship the one God.

Jay also claimed the modern Catholic Church has committed apostasy because it violated the 64th Apostolic Canon and the Council of Trullo's injunctions against entering locations of prayer with non-Christians.

But Jay has no basis to say which canons apply today and which do not.

The apostolic canons also say a priest should be excommunicated if he enters a tavern, and the Council of Trullo says you can't seek help from a Jewish doctor.

The Catholic Church has an advantage over Eastern Orthodoxy because the Holy See is capable of teaching universally through mechanisms like the Universal Catechism, the Catechism of the Council of Trent centuries before that, canon law before that, and papal bulls before that, and so on.

It's capable of teaching the faithful what they are to believe.

The faithful aren't left sifting through scripture and previous church teachings by themselves or with the help of their favorite YouTuber.

So, let's tie all this together.

I don't think it's helpful to say Christians and Muslims worship the same God, but if God's existence can be known by reason, then some non-Christians can come to know that God exists and they can offer natural worship of God.

This worship is not salvific, but it's better than atheism, animism, or polytheism.

It's something a missionary can build upon to lead a person to full knowledge of the true God.

I find this topic is usually brought up by people who want to disprove Catholicism, which is unfortunate because the Catholic Church has the fullness of worship we want to share with all people, be they Jews, Muslims, or anyone else.

Pope Paul VI put it well in his encyclical Ecclesiam Suam that he wrote during the Second Vatican Council.

He said this: Obviously, we cannot agree with these various forms of religion, nor can we adopt an indifferent or uncritical attitude toward them on the assumption that they are all to be regarded as on an equal footing and that there is no need for those who profess them to inquire whether or not God has Himself revealed definitively and infallibly how He wishes to be known, loved, and served.

Indeed, honesty compels us to declare openly our conviction that the Christian religion is the one and only true religion, and it is our hope that it will be acknowledged as such by all who look for God and worship Him.

If you liked today's episode, check out Joe and Jimmy's takes on the subject in the links below, and I hope you have a very blessed day.