This is fun: A Wheaton College professor has been placed on administrative leave because she says Christians and Muslims worship the same god.
“I love my Muslim neighbor because s/he deserves love by virtue of her/his human dignity,” she wrote on Facebook Dec. 10. “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”
You’re probably thinking something like this:
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Christians believe there is only one god.
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Muslims believe there is only one god.
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(Never mind all the other celestial fauna — the saints, angels, demons, seraphim, cherubs, and that 7-headed dragon.)
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There can’t be two One God Who is the Creator of the Whole Big Universe, and therefore the good professor must be correct.
Ho-ho! You actually thought grade school arithmetic could foil a theologian?
Albert the Pious explains (and protects his club’s claim to exclusive possession of the Eternal Truth): Moozlims ain’t Trinitarians! Moozlims deny that Jesus is the son of god!
Just so’s you know, then …
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The doctrine of the Trinity didn’t formally become part of Christian thought until 325 A.D., following the Council of Nicaea. For the first three centuries, people believing all kinds of incompatible things were going around calling themselves Christians; that’s why the council was called — and the Doctrine of the Trinity was a political compromise that allowed them all to go home.
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Though Jesus (if he actually existed, and if the Gospels are a faithful record of his activities) never explicitly denied that he was the son of god when others said so on his behalf, neither does he ever actually say that he is the son of god. He’s a Bill Clinton-ish figure who allows people to believe whatever they like, but blithely toodles along without ever settling the matter himself.
The unsorted, uncomplicated truth is that we don’t know much at all about Jesus; that’s why I consider theology to be such an intellectually dishonest undertaking. Historically, Jesus is a ball of putty shaped to the needs of every would-be prophet who came along.
The only thing we can say with certainty is that “one god” means “one god,” not a bunch of different gods.