For one thing, Allah is a distant, remote being who reveals his will but not himself. It is impossible to know him in a personal way. In his absolute oneness there is unity but not trinity, and because of this lack of relationship, love is not emphasized. Indeed, for the Muslim, Allah cannot have any associates. When we look at Yahweh, however, who is the God of the Bible, we see a different kind of deity. The Jews realized that Jesus was referring to himself as God and took up stones to stone him for what they believed was blasphemy.
This link between Jesus in the New Testament and the burning bush in the Old Testament demonstrates the unity of the one God manifested to both the Jews and the Christians. This cannot be said of the Muslim God because Muslims reject the deity of Jesus and therefore reject much of what the New Testament says about Jesus.
We also find that the Bible portrays Yahweh in contrast to Allah. For example, Allah is considered to be too holy to have personal relationships with man, but Yahweh is often described as a loving God interested in our personal struggles.
Yahweh is also depicted as unchanging and One who assures the salvation of the faithful. Finally, because there is unity in the Trinity with the one God also being three persons, God can be described as the Father of Jesus. Some scholars want to emphasize the similarities between Yahweh and Allah, and point to a common belief in a monotheistic God who is Creator of all things, omnipotent and merciful.
Both religions also claim that God has sent prophets to reveal His will and produce scriptures to guide our lives. However, Allah and Yahweh cannot refer to the same person for the following reasons. Muslims do not recognize the Old or the New Testament. We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection. Yet while the Church has affirmed that Muslims and Christians worship the same God it has never explained clearly its reasoning.
Just as it is not enough to point to the case of the Jews, it is not enough simply to affirm that both Muslims and Christians worship one God. A question lies before us: does the Islamic understanding of that one God correspond closely enough to how God has revealed himself to Israel and the Church? A thought experiment might prove this point: Suppose I were to start a new religion today, teaching a 21 st version of Marcionism, that the one God is evil and created the world because he enjoys watching humans suffer?
Or, perhaps, that the one God is a physical being who lives in the next solar system? Most Christians and Muslims would deny that my god is their God, even though we both believe in one God.
Yet believers do not have to agree on everything about God to affirm that we share belief in him. Nevertheless, we hold so much in common in regard to God that neither of us doubt that we worship the same God. The relationship of Christian and Islamic conceptions of God presumably lies somewhere in between these two cases.
But which does it resemble more? Is there enough in common between Islamic and Christian conceptions of God to affirm that we worship him together? Divine mercy does not exclude divine punishment.
Indeed, Q suggests that God can act in an inscrutable manner. In his papal bull, Misericordiae Vultus , which announced a Jubilee year in the Catholic Church from December 8, to November 20, dedicated to the theme of mercy, he wrote:. They too believe that no one can place a limit on divine mercy because its doors are always open.
But he also destroys people who deny those prophets. He does not simply judge them. He does not simply punish them. He actively leads them astray. This prayer makes sense because God is capable of guiding humans elsewhere.
The Islamic concept of a privileged position for humanity departs from the early Jewish and Christian interpretations of the fall from Paradise that underlie the Christian doctrine of original sin. Christian theologians developed the doctrine that humankind is born with this sin of their first parents still on their souls, based upon this reading of the story. Christians believe that Jesus Christ came to redeem humans from this original sin so that humankind can return to God at the end of time.
Consequently Muslims believe that the descent by Adam and Eve to earth from Paradise was not a fall, but an honor bestowed on them by God. According to Islamic tradition, angels were created from light. An angel is an immortal being that commits no sins and serves as a guardian, a recorder of deeds, and a link between God and humanity.
In contrast to humans, angels are incapable of unbelief and, with the exception of Satan , always obey God. Despite these traits, Islamic doctrine holds that humans are superior to angels. According to Islamic traditions, God entrusted humans and not angels with the guardianship of the earth and commanded the angels to prostrate themselves to Adam. Being an ardent monotheist, Satan disobeyed God and refused to prostrate himself before anyone but God.
For this sin, Satan was doomed to lead human beings astray until the end of the world. Initially, Islamic theology developed in the context of controversial debates with Christians and Jews. Another controversial theological debate focused on the question of free will and predestination.
One group of Muslim theologians maintained that because God is just, he creates only good, and therefore only humans can create evil. Many other theological controversies occupied Muslim thinkers for the first few centuries of Islam, but by the 10th century the views of Islamic theologian al-Ashari and his followers, known as Asharites, prevailed and were adopted by most Muslims. God is therefore just to hold humans accountable for their actions.
The views of al-Ashari and his school gradually became dominant in Sunni, or orthodox, Islam, and they still prevail among most Muslims.
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