Featured J.D. Greear: Muslims Worship the Same God as Christians, They Just Misunderstand Him

"Allah" is simply the Arabic word for "God." If you read the Arabic translation of the bible you will see "Allah" as the word for "God."

The problem arises, not in the word, but what the word signifies. If you use the term to simply mean "God" I would have to ask, "Do you mean the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?" If the answer was "No" then we are not talking about the same god. But if the answer is "Yes" then we have common ground to continue.

 

So basically, unless I missed something, Greear advocates witnessing to Muslims like Paul witnessed in Acts 17:22-23 (where Paul recognizes a worship to an "unknown god" and proceeds to relate the One True God in that context).

 

No. But neither did Greear. Did you read his response to the question in the first post? Again, unless I am missing something (which is entirely possible as I just arrived home from vaccation) Greear is simply saying "what you worship as unknown I proclaim to you." Here is his conclusion (he was dealing with using the Arabic name for "god":

"With Muslims, I would say that more often than not it is more helpful to use the Arabic name for God. They understand that to be the God of Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. That’s a good place to start. Then you can say, “This God you worship, here is what He is really like, according to the revelation.” That said, I would leave this question mostly to the discretion of the person who is on the field in a given situation."

 

Yes. I couldn't quite figure out if he agreed that Allah they knew as Muslims was the same God we worship or if he was using their acknowledgement of God as a starting point. I think the latter because he emphasized witnessing to them. But I may have misunderstood.

 

Like in dealing with other false religions, it's a matter of sharing the same vocabulary, but using a different dictionary.

 

I believe that most here will agree that Muslims do not worship God. But the issue Greear is speaking of is in the area of evangelism and using their claim to worship the God of Abraham as an opportunity to explain the gospel in a meaningful way (as God is a God of means). Reading Greear, I do not see the objections here truly addressing that author's thesis. So while I agree with everyone here that the Muslim notion of Allah is not the Christian God at all, I disagree with some that Greear is supporting that it is.

I think that this is an important enough issue (in terms of evangelizing Muslims...which is the context of Greear's book) to offer a quote from Greear. Whether we agree on his method/understanding or not, it does not seem to me that Greear is saying that God and the Muslim concept of Allah are actually one in the same (which is the direction that this thread seems to be heading).

"This is controversial, but hear me out. Muslims claim to worship the God of Adam, Abraham, and Moses. Many missionaries find it therefore helpful to start with Muslims using the Arabic term for God, “Allah” (meaning literally, “the Deity”), and from there to explain that the God Muslims seek to worship, the God of the Prophets, was the God present in bodily form in Jesus Christ, revealed most fully by him, and the One worshipped by Christians for the past two millennia. This is not the same as saying that becoming a Muslim is like a “first step to becoming a Christian.” And it certainly doesn’t mean that Islam is an alternate way of getting to heaven. It simply means that we are both referring to the only, One deity when we say “God.”

You might ask, “But isn’t the Islamic God so different from the Christian God that they cannot properly be called by the same name?” Perhaps. The question about whether to say that “Allah” refers to the wrong God (or to wrong ideas about the right God) is a highly nuanced one, and there’s not an easy answer. There is no doubt that Muslims believe blasphemous things about God, and their beliefs about Allah grew out of a distorted view of Christianity. The same could be said, though to a lesser degree, of the view of God of the first-century Sadducees, as well as the Samaritan woman, and (to an even lesser degree) the fifth-century Pelagian heretics—not to mention a lot of the medieval Scholastics.

The question is whether the presence of these heretical beliefs (and what degreeof heresy in them) demands that we say, “You are worshipping a different God.” Clearly, the Apostles did not say that about the first-century Jews who rejected the Trinity (even though Jesus said their father was the devil!). And Jesus did not tell the Samaritan woman in her ethnic, works-righteousness distorted view of God that she was worshipping a different God, either. Instead, he insisted that she was worshipping him incorrectly and seeking salvationwrongly. And I’ve never heard anyone say that the Pelagian heretics worship a different God, even though they have been regarded (rightly) as heretics.

At the same time, Paul never said, “Zeus’s real name is Jehovah,” as if the Greeks were worshipping the true God wrongly. So, the question is: is the Muslim view of Allah more like that of Zeus or of the Samaritan woman’s heretical conception of God? That’s a tough question, and one that we need to let the context determine. For instance, many Christians find the use of “Allah” more misleading than helpful. For them, “Allah” falls in the “Zeus” category.

On the other side, however, are many faithful Christians working among Muslims who approach the question of Allah much like Jesus corrected the Samaritan woman. “You are seeking to worship the one God, but you are wrong in your view of him, and wrong in how you seek salvation from him. Salvation is from the Jews.” In my time with Muslims over the years, I’ve found that to be a more helpful starting place. This isn’t driven by a desire to be politically correct, but by a desire to start where Muslims are, and to bring them to faith in the one and only Son of God, Jesus."

 

I agree that in the US the name Allah connotes only the Muslim deity (at least with English speaking persons...I suppose "Allah" would mean "God" to people who spoke Arabic as their native tongue).

But there's the rub of this thread. No one is advocating that the Muslim misconception of God is the correct Christian understanding of God, nor is anyone advocating changing the word "God" to "Allah"but instead are discussing whether or not one's native and cultural concept of Allah can be a starting point to discuss God.