Muslims, Catholics, and ‘the Same God’

Michie · Tuesday at 1:48 PM

Looking from another angle might shed light on the thorny question of ‘who worships what’

“Protestants don’t worship God!” “Muslims worship the same God as us!”
As Catholics seeking to defend the Faith, if we’re not careful or precise with our terms, we can risk tangling ourselves into making seemingly conflicting claims.

Lately, we’ve seen much mainstream debate around the question of whether Muslims can be said to “worship” God, and Tim Staples has covered this effectively before. There has also been a lot of great work accomplished in explaining how true worship of God entails the sacrifice of the Eucharist.

But it’s become clear that we need a more unified framework for using the term worshipin interreligious apologetics. The cleanest and most theologically consistent way to do so is by distinguishing between material worship and formal worship—a distinction grounded in Thomistic metaphysics.

In Thomistic thought, matter is the raw “stuff” and potential of a thing, or its capacity to take on shape. Form is what gives matter definition, purpose, and completion.

Continued below.

Muslims, Catholics, and ‘the Same God’

As Catholics seeking to defend the Faith, if we’re not careful with our terms, we can tangle ourselves into making seemingly conflicting claims.

www.catholic.com

Chrystal-J · Tuesday at 1:58 PM

Catholics worship Jesus as God. Unless another religion does that, it's not the same God IMO.

Cosmic Charlie · Tuesday at 6:19 PM

Ok, I'll jump in, because, I was asked.

I spend a year studying the history of monotheism. (no one but me cares, but, serious, it was rough).

Yahweh, Jehovah, Al-lah.

What do they mean ? They all mean "God" in their respective languages.

Yahweh:

The first among god's in the early Jewish pantheon of gods. Abraham, (a guy who, likely, didn't actually exist) sees a burning bush and Yahweh is now the only true God. It takes 700 years for this to become a serious thing among Jews. For most of the time of the Jewish temple, there were shines to various gods of the various tribes of Israel.

Sorry about that. (I knee-jerk apologetic, my wife has threatened to divorce me over it)

Jehovah:

The original name for the Trinity. In the first century AD a bunch of Jews living in Judea claimed that a faith healer had performed miracles, and they had a ton of stories, but to a person they all agreed on only one thing: This guy was the Word, the God, Yahweh, Incarnate. This caused 400 years of theological thought, eventually breaking up the Western and Eastern Christian Churches over how to frame a "Trinity" as one God.

Al-lah:

Mohammad was absolutely, positively, convinced that Al-lah, the primary god of the Arabic pantheon, was the same God as Yahweh (it's not immediately clear that he understood or cared that Jewish thought was working on the creation of Christianity or the Trinity. He just saw it all as Judaism and Jewish thought.)

He has all kinda visions. Some are REALLY hard on him and even harder to understand. He comes up with a Monotheistic revelation for the Arabs. It spread in 1 generation (40 years). That's impressive. I think the Arabs were ready for monotheism in 600 AD.

Anyway,

The idea of a trinity actually works better as a single, unified God for most mystical thought. See any major religion and you'll notice this.

We all worship one God. How we see him configured is up to every single one of us.

We've taken, as a species, way too many lives over this, frankly, rather academic subject.

I quote the great Sufi philosopher, Ibn Al-Arabi:

Do not praise your own faith exclusively so that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this you will miss much good. Nay, you will miss the whole truth of the matter. God, the Omniscient and the Omnipresent, cannot be confined to any one creed, for He says in the Quran, wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah. Everybody praises what he knows. His God is his own creature, and in praising it, he praises himself. Which he would not do if he were just, for his dislike is based on ignorance.

Yeah, Sufis.

I like Sufis.

Akita Suggagaki · Tuesday at 6:23 PM

God is who God is. And yet we all have different understandings, images, beliefs and notions about God.

Same God, only God but different understandings, images, beliefs and notions about God.

Gregory Thompson · Tuesday at 6:46 PM

I'd be really sad (today) if I didn't have the chance to discover the trinity. (previously)

Some christians may worship the same god as the muslims ... but that isn't a compliment.

RileyG · Tuesday at 10:35 PM

Chrystal-J said:
Catholics worship Jesus as God. Unless another religion does that, it's not the same God IMO.

Agreed. Even though Muslims consider Christians, and Jews as "people of the book," yet many radicals are fine with slaughtering them. Odd.

Lady Bug · 2025-08-20T00:06:49-0500

Chrystal-J said:
Catholics worship Jesus as God. Unless another religion does that, it's not the same God IMO.

I don't want to promote anything wrong here but I am developing a soft spot for the sspx because I think they want to cleave to a Catholicism that doesn't seem so acquiescent. It doesn't mean I'll defect to the sspx but - I'm feeling their pain.

FaithT · 2025-08-20T01:58:01-0500

Lady Bug said:
I don't want to promote anything wrong here but I am developing a soft spot for the sspx because I think they want to cleave to a Catholicism that doesn't seem so acquiescent. It doesn't mean I'll defect to the sspx but - I'm feeling their pain.

What’s sspx?

Michie · 2025-08-20T02:42:37-0500

Society of Saint Pius X.

chevyontheriver · 2025-08-20T07:49:22-0500

Michie said:
Looking from another angle might shed light on the thorny question of ‘who worships what’

“Protestants don’t worship God!” “Muslims worship the same God as us!”
As Catholics seeking to defend the Faith, if we’re not careful or precise with our terms, we can risk tangling ourselves into making seemingly conflicting claims.

Lately, we’ve seen much mainstream debate around the question of whether Muslims can be said to “worship” God, and Tim Staples has covered this effectively before. There has also been a lot of great work accomplished in explaining how true worship of God entails the sacrifice of the Eucharist.

But it’s become clear that we need a more unified framework for using the term worshipin interreligious apologetics. The cleanest and most theologically consistent way to do so is by distinguishing between material worship and formal worship—a distinction grounded in Thomistic metaphysics.

In Thomistic thought, matter is the raw “stuff” and potential of a thing, or its capacity to take on shape. Form is what gives matter definition, purpose, and completion.

Continued below.

Muslims, Catholics, and ‘the Same God’

As Catholics seeking to defend the Faith, if we’re not careful with our terms, we can tangle ourselves into making seemingly conflicting claims.

www.catholic.com

I like this conclusion. Muslims intend to worship God but their confusion about God prevents a true formal worship of God. I consider them to be trying to worship the one true God but their confusion about the one true God means their worship misses the mark. They have a powerful good idea in the one God, but woops.

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Muslims, Catholics, and ‘the Same God’

Michie

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Looking from another angle might shed light on the thorny question of ‘who worships what’

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Chrystal-J

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Cosmic Charlie

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Looking from another angle might shed light on the thorny question of ‘who worships what’​

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Looking from another angle might shed light on the thorny question of ‘who worships what’

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