Capturing Christianity@CapturingChrist
Are Christians and Muslims worshipping the same God?
A lot of people responded to my previous post by saying, “But Muslims get essential things about God wrong—like the Trinity, or the divinity of Jesus. That’s not just a small detail, that’s fundamental.” And I get the concern. But this actually misses the point.
The issue is not how correct someone’s theology is. The issue is who they’re referring to. And here’s the key: you can refer to the same being even while being radically wrong about that being’s nature—whether those errors are accidental or essential.
Take water, for example. We now know it’s H₂O. But before atomic theory, people thought water was an element—not made of hydrogen and oxygen. That’s not a small mistake; that’s a core mistake about what water is. And yet, those people were still referring to water. They were wrong about its essence, but they weren’t talking about a different substance. Same referent, wrong description.
Or take another example. Suppose two families go to the same doctor. One thinks he’s a normal human being. The other thinks he’s a super-advanced AI in a hyper-realistic body. They both can’t be right. But does that mean they’re referring to two different doctors? Of course not. They’re both referring to the same doctor—they’re just wildly disagreeing about who he really is.
So when Christians and Muslims both worship “the Creator of the universe, the God of Abraham, the One true God”—they are clearly aiming at the same being. That’s the referent. One side may be deeply mistaken about His nature (and I obviously think one side is), but the referent doesn’t change just because someone’s theology is off (even wildly so).
So the analogy still holds. Even if the mistakes are essential, it doesn’t follow that they’re worshiping a different God. It just means one side’s got the wrong picture of the same God.
