What is the difference between God and the Muslim god? It seems like there are a lot of similarities between the Qur'an and the Bible.
The difference between love and hate, life and death, good and evil. I can tell you which is which and why but that is for you to discover not for me to dictate.
Sealacamp
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To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. John 15:5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing."
There is a lot of overlap between the Qur'an and the old testament, and Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the God of Abraham.
The difference is that the Jewish and Muslim faiths continue to believe that salvation is achieved through keeping the Law, and that God wants us to be 'good enough' by our own will.
Christians recognise that this won't happen, that none of us can ever be 'good enough' for God by our own efforts, and so we rely on Jesus, the Messiah, to make us righteous, as He dies to pay the price for our sins and rose again to enable us to have victory over sin.
Sorry, that sounds a bit "Christianese"... if you need clarification let me know, I am unsure what background you come from or how familiar you are with the way Christians describe things. If that last bit sounds like gobbledygook, please tell me
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Islam is a works based religion much of how most of current christianity has turned out to be. Christianity in its origins is a grace based religion in which God came into the world to save us. There is no ritual no dance no anything to save us. We are not saved by our works but solely by grace unlike Islam which there isn't a personal god. Not to mention there is no original sin. According to Muslim theology we a born neutral capable of doing good unlike Christianity were we totally depraved and God has to come rescue us.
__________________ "Theological liberalism is a different religion, a religion of moralism and uplift, whereas. Christianity is about sin and grace." -John Gresham Machen (1881-1937)
Last edited by ReformedChapin; 20th March 2009 at 01:50 PM.
Ravi Zacharias said something to the effect that all man made religion is based on the principle of following a set of rules for which you are rewarded with salvation/heaven. Divine religion on the other hand begins with God offering salvation to us before we have ever followed a rule or 'earned' any reward.
This is not to denegrate morality, but merely to point out that morality is not really the point of Christianity, its a by product of the point. Christianity begins by God approaching you in your sins and offering to get you out of them so that you can know him.
Another man, David Torkington said that Christianity is not so much a moralism as it is a mysticism.
What he meant by this is that the point of Christianity is not following rules or living a moral life, but rather an inner knowledge and experience of God. Again the caveat must be made that morality is indispensible because God is the source of true morality and one can not really know God while rejecting his very nature, which is what defines our morality.
This gets at the fundamental difference between the Christian and Muslim visions of God.
In Christianity God has literally made humanity of His own being, giving us a spirit from His Spirit and eventually becoming one of us Himself all for the purpose of uniting us to Himself in relationship.
In Islam on the other hand God is utterly "other" than humanity and ultimately there can be no real communion between God and man because the two are fundamentally different and seperated.
In Christianity there is a seperation between man and God, but that seperation is caused by sin, not by our created nature. In Christianity God made man in his own image and likeness, in other words, we were made to be able to relate to God, to be able to commune with God. There is in our very created nature a similarity to God that allows us to relate to Him.
In Islam this really isn't there for the most part. Humanity is not just seperated by sin, but by our very created nature.
This also derives from the fact that in Christianity God's fundamental nature is defined as relational. God by nature exists in relationship and desires relationship. This isn't true of Islam.
This is also seen in the concepts of heaven. In true Christianity heaven is defined as eternal direct relationship with God. He shall wipe away every tear from our eyes, and so shall we ever be with Him.
In Islam heaven is depicted in the more common human conception as a place of eternal indulgence.
Interestingly Judaism has always been caught somewhere between these two views. This is because they did not receive the revelation of God in the new testament. Meaning it was offered to them but they chose not to believe it. Judiasm has some key differences from Islam that make it more like Christianity because they received the old testament, but they also have key differences from Christianity that make them more like Islam because they rejected the new testament revelation.
A lot of the differences between Christianity and the other two stem from the revelation of God as a Trinity. The Trinity is the only doctrine that can really make sense of a transcendant God who is also relational, and loving.
Judaism has more sense of God's relational nature and his loving nature because of the revelation they were given through the prophets of the Old Testament. However, they have struggled to try and reconcile that to their theology which denies the Trinity and the incarnation. Islam on the other hand, lacking the prophets has gone had little in the way of seeing God as relational or loving.
The word Allah is a translation for the word God in arabic. I am a Catholic arab and in our language we say Allah in reference to our christian God, just as the moslems say Allah in reference to that same God.
and they do believe the He is the same God that we believe in.
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The word Allah is a translation for the word God in arabic. I am a Catholic arab and in our language we say Allah in reference to our christian God, just as the moslems say Allah in reference to that same God.
and they do believe the He is the same God that we believe in.
That is what they think.
The question is whether one can believe that it is the worst possible sin to think of Jesus as God and at the same time worship the One True God?
There is a lot of overlap between the Qur'an and the old testament, and Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the God of Abraham.
Absolutely false and this is what deceives many as well. Even Paul stated that since the Jews rejected Jesus they did not know the real father. How much more so Muslims? They reject Jesus so the God you claim is the same God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, is certainly not. Jesus is the way not works or Mohammad or what every other methodology you desire to find. When the "way" is rejected then it is not a legitimate path.
Sealacamp
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To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. John 15:5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing."
There is a lot of overlap between the Qur'an and the old testament, and Muslims, Jews and Christians all worship the God of Abraham.
The Muslims took a few key stories from the old testament dealing with Abraham and his descendants.
Think of it like this. The whole bible from beginning to end is revelation of God. It was given so that we could know about God and eventually know God.
The muslims have small parts of that revelation that they have taken out of their context and repackaged. So yes there is some resemblance between aspects of their religion and Judaism.
Judiasm has a much greater portion that Islam does because they have not only those few stories, but also all the prophets, the psalms, and the 'wisdom' books.
They, however, rejected the greatest revelation of God ever to be given. The Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Thus though their view of God is closer, it is still inaccurate.
Now, the point of Christianity is knowing God, and relationship with God. The first point to consider is how can you really know someone, if you insistantly believe false things about them? Secondly, how can you have relationship with someone when the things you believe about them tend to tell you that the person is not really interested in close relationship with you?
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