Apologetics for the Masses #497 - Do Muslims and Catholics Worship the Same God? (Part 2)

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Topic

Do Muslims Worship the Same God as Christians? Responses to comments...

General Comments

Gentlemen,

Just wanted to let you know about an app for men - it's called Exodus 90 - that has an Advent Challenge that is "designed to support you in preparing for Christ’s coming at Christmas, and to share his loving presence with your family and friends. Join Msgr. James Shea and thousands of other men this Advent," in working through the challenge.

The "Challenge" is a series of daily prayers and short meditations designed to get you ready for the birth of the Christ child. Each one only takes a few minutes to go through. I'll be writing a short weekly commentary for the app to sort of summarize the week's meditations. I've been given a preview of Week 1 of Advent and I thought it was very well done and I thoroughly enjoyed the daily meditations...they really centered my thoughts and helped me dig a little deeper into the purpose for the Advent Season. In other words, I highly recommend the app. You can get a two-week free trial to see if it works for you or not. If you don't like it, don't continue. But, again, I recommend giving a shot. You can download the app here: https://exodus90.com/

Introduction

Okay - very short this week as I'm trying to get out of here for Thanksgiving - just a few comments that came in from a reader via email in reply to last week's newsletter about whether or not Muslims worship the one true God, and my responses to those comments. First, the reader's comments in full, then his comments repeated with my responses interspersed. His comments will be in italics.

Challenge/Response/Strategy

Do Muslims Worship the Same God as Catholics? A Reader's Response:
The Muslims and The Jews Do Not Worship God. In Spirit And Truth this was Jesus's Point to the The Samaritan Woman. God Desires Humanity to Worship Him in "Spirit and Truth". And Worship of Him, must be, to be pleasing to Him, be somehow of His Son in The Spirit.

When the Muslims Seek to Worship They Are Blind to The Proper End of Who God Is. All The Worlds Religions are a grasping after the Truth of God.

The Divinely Revealed Religion Is what God Wants all men to do in Order To Fulfill their Proper End. The Bare Minimum for anyone to reach The Proper Goal Which God has designed for them Is To Agknowledge his Exsistence and And Too Seek Him Diligently. The Faith of Abraham is thought include the Trinity Because It was something which his Faith Would Not Prevent him from Receiving The Reality of The Trinity. I.E., His Faith was not opposed to That Reality. This was Jesus' Point to The Pharisees When He said "He saw my Day and Rejoiced" and If they did Believe Him and Moses, as they claimed, they would not be trying to Kill him.

These Quotes are not precise but give The Gist of What Jesus was trying to teach the Jews - Those who have the Grace of True Faith never really reject any of what God was going to reveal or did. A Muslim may come to a Spiritual Conversion But he must as any one must Follow that Grace To The Communion Which God has Destined all Men. In His Son i hope this has been of help

PS Anyone can claim a Monotheism But The Fruits Of The Spirit are the Infallible proof It being Truly so.

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Reader's Response
The Muslims and The Jews Do Not Worship God. In Spirit And Truth this was Jesus's Point to the The Samaritan Woman. God Desires Humanity to Worship Him in "Spirit and Truth". And Worship of Him, must be, to be pleasing to Him, be somehow of His Son in The Spirit.

My Comments
Okay, he seems to be arguing that the Samaritan woman Jesus was talking to in John 4 was not worshipping the one true God because she did not worship "in spirit and truth" as Jesus said "true worshippers" will do. But, let's look at the full context of the passage. John 4:20-24, "'Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.' Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.'"

First point: Jesus seems to be saying that the Samaritans do indeed worship the Father when He says, "neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father." Yet, He also says they worship "what [they] do not know." So, it seems that they worship the one true God, but they do so in an incomplete, flawed, and deficient manner because they do not "know" Him as the Jews do. The point is, though, that just because they do not know the Father they worship, and they do not worship Him in "spirit and truth," that doesn't mean they are worshipping a false god. If just means their worship of the one true God is deficient.

Second point: Even if the worship of Muslims, and Jews, is not pleasing to God, that still doesn't mean those whose worship is not pleasing to Him are somehow worshipping some other God. It simply means, again, that their worship is deficient. I don't understand why some believe improper worship of God necessarily equates to worshipping a different God. Where does Scripture say that deficient worship of the one true God = worshipping a false god? As I said in the last newsletter, Cain's worship of God was deficient - his sacrifice was rejected by God - yet, no one would say Cain was worshipping a false god.

Third point: The Jews do not worship God? Really? So the Jews of the Old Testament did not worship the real God? It wasn't the real God that gave the Jews the Old Testament Scriptures? It wasn't the real God that divided the Red Sea? It wasn't the real God that fed them in the desert with manna from Heaven? It wasn't the real God that created Adam and Eve along with the rest of the universe? I ask that, because that is the God the Jews worship - the Jews of the Old Testamenet era as well as the Jews of the New Testament era. If the Jews of today do not believe in and worship the one true God, then neither did the Jews of the Old Testament. So, to say that the Jews do not worship God is just a ridiculous statement to make. Yes, the Jews no longer have the proper worship of God - they don't have the sacrifice of the Mass - and they do not accept the revelations of the Trinity and the Incarnation and so forth, but that doesn't mean they now worship some other God.

Reader's Response
When the Muslims Seek to Worship They Are Blind to The Proper End of Who God Is. All The Worlds Religions are a grasping after the Truth of God.

My Comments
All the world's religions are indeed grasping after the truth of God. However, there are only three of those religions that claim to worship the God of Abraham. Just because the Muslims are "blind to the proper end of Who God is" - i.e., that He is a Trinity - does not mean they are believing in and worshipping a different God. It just means they worship what they do not know.

Reader's Response
The Divinely Revealed Religion Is what God Wants all men to do in Order To Fulfill their Proper End. The Bare Minimum for anyone to reach The Proper Goal Which God has designed for them Is To Agknowledge his Exsistence and And Too Seek Him Diligently. The Faith of Abraham is thought include the Trinity Because It was something which his Faith Would Not Prevent him from Receiving The Reality of The Trinity. I.E., His Faith was not opposed to That Reality. This was Jesus' Point to The Pharisees When He said "He saw my Day and Rejoiced" and If they did Believe Him and Moses, as they claimed, they would not be trying to Kill him.

My Comments
I agree that God wants all men to believe and practice the "divinely revealed religion". That's why I do what I do. Regarding the "bare minimum" for anyone to achieve what God has designed them for...well, Muslims, as well as Jews, do indeed acknowledge His existence.

Regarding the "Faith of Abraham" including a belief in the Trinity "because it was something which his Faith would not prevent him from receiving" - that's not much of an argument. There is nothing in Scripture, or the Sacred Tradition of the Church, that I am aware of, which points to the Faith of Abraham including a belief in the Trinity. If Abraham believed in the Trinity, one must ask why he didn't pass that belief along to his family and to his people? And why Scripture does not record his belief in the Trinity? That he "saw" Jesus' "Day" and rejoiced in it, does not necessarily imply a Trinitarian belief, as much as it implies that Abraham was given a glimpse of the coming of the Messiah and rejoiced in it. Being given a special revelation of the coming of the Messiah is not the same thing as being given the knowledge that God is Three Persons. A belief in the Messiah does not equate to a belief in the Trinity.

Reader's Response
These Quotes are not precise but give The Gist of What Jesus was trying to teach the Jews - Those who have the Grace of True Faith never really reject any of what God was going to reveal or did. A Muslim may come to a Spiritual Conversion But he must as any one must Follow that Grace To The Communion Which God has Destined all Men. In His Son i hope this has been of help

PS Anyone can claim a Monotheism But The Fruits Of The Spirit are the Infallible proof It being Truly so.

My Comments
"Those who have the Grace of True Faith never really reject any of what God was going to reveal or did." Well, that sounds kind of like the "assurance of salvation" that Once Saved Always Saved Protestants buy into. That is simply false. We receive the grace of true faith when we are baptized; yet, many fall away from the faith after they are baptized. 1 Tim 4:1 speaks of how there will be those who will "depart from the faith" by giving heed to the "doctrines of demons" - false doctrines. So, yes, many of those who have received the grace of true faith have later fallen away from that faith.

The argument he makes, though, even if it were true, is irrelevant to the main argument regarding whether or not Muslims worship the one true God. If his argument were true, it would mean that everyone who is not Catholic, is worshipping a false god. Not just Muslims and Jews, but Protestants and even the Orthodox, because they do not have the "True Faith"...they only have part of it.

"PS Anyone can claim a Monotheism But The Fruits Of The Spirit are the Infallible proof It being Truly so." Where does the Bible say, or where does the Church teach, that the fruits of the Spirit are the "infallible proof" that one has a monotheistic faith? Furthermore, is it being claimed that there is no sign of the fruits of the Spirit among Muslims or Jews? There is no love in Islam or Judaism? No joy? No patience? No kindness? No faithfulness? And so on? I would argue that signs of the fruits of the Spirit can indeed be found among Muslims and Jews. Which means the argument in this "PS," is an argument that Muslims and Jews do indeed worship the one, true God, although in an incomplete and necessarily deficient manner. So, essentially, this person's "P.S.", pretty much contradicts the rest of his arguments.

Closing Comments

I hope all of you have a truly holy and blessed Thanksgiving holiday. And, if you're traveling...Vaya con Dios!

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