Menjelang Ramadhan, ada baiknya artikel menarik dari Romo Tom Michel ini
kita baca.
Selamat membaca.
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Do Muslims And Christians Worship The Same God?
UCAN Column "Muslim-Christian Relations"
by Jesuit Father Tom Michel
VATICAN CITY (UCAN) -- The Second Vatican Council teaches that Muslims
"adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and
all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to humans.
They take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even God's inscrutable
decrees."
Pope John Paul II has said the fact that Christians and Muslims worship
"the
One and same God" is a factor that draws the two communities together and
lays the basis for love and cooperation between the two communities of
believers. But some Christians and Muslims question whether Allah and God
are the same deity.
Allah is the name by which Muslims and Arab Christians have for centuries
called upon the One God. Ancient inscriptions in the Arabian peninsula seem
to indicate that Christians in Arabia already referred to God as "Allah"
before the time of Muhammad. The word Al-lah literally means "The God" and
is the equivalent of ho theos, the Greek term used in the New Testament to
refer to God. In Arabic translations of the Bible, the name Allah is always
used to translate ho theos.
Over the centuries, Arab Muslims and Christians have disagreed over many
issues, both religious and political, but they have never accused one
another of worshiping different gods. Moreover, the people of Malta, an
almost 100% Catholic country whose language is similar to Arabic, also call
God "Allah," even in the prayers of the Christian liturgy.
Some Christians have objected that since Muslims' understanding of God is
not Trinitarian, how can the God of Muslims and Christians be one and the
same. One could ask the same question about the great figures of the Old
Testament -- Abraham, Moses, Isaiah or Jeremiah -- whose understanding of
God was not Trinitarian, or even of figures like John the Baptist and Mary
in the New Testament. They all worshiped the one God of "Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob" and sought to do God's will. It was only later Christian reflection
that arrived at an understanding of the One God as Trinity.
Just as Christians would never claim that Abraham, Moses and John the
Baptist worshiped a different God because they did not understand God's
Triune nature, so it would be wrong for a Christian to claim that Allah
worshiped by Muslims is not the God of Christians.
It is not only Christians who question whether the two communities worship
the same God. Some Muslims accuse Christians of worshiping three gods. This
is based on the view that the Christian doctrine of "one God in three
persons" constitutes a kind of committee, a sort of "division of labor"
among three individuals who share in the work of creating, saving and
judging humankind.
All theologians and Church teachings agree that this is a misunderstanding
of Christian faith, yet Muslims may be excused for holding this distorted
view, for that is the way the Christian doctrine has often been presented
to
them. The ancient Councils of the Church like those of Nicea, Ephesus and
Chalcedon actually defined Christian faith as holding "one God in three
hypostases." That Greek word is often rendered as "persons" but according
to
Karl Barth, a leading Lutheran theologian of the past century, it means "a
way of being." According to Karl Rahner, one of the Catholic Church's most
important theologians in recent times, it is "a mode of subsisting" -- that
is, a way of being and acting.
In other words, Christian faith affirms one God who has three essential,
eternal ways of being and acting. The one eternal God has an eternal
Message, a Message that Christians believe God expressed perfectly in the
person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus "incarnated" that Message in that it
became visible in him, in the way he lived and what he taught.
But this same God actually lives and moves in all creation. From the
smallest sub-atomic particle of molecular science to the driving force
behind super-galaxies, there is always something that is not measurable or
"quantifiable," because it is divine. That "something," that divine spark,
is God's transcendent presence in all things, constantly guiding, teaching,
encouraging. Christians call that divine presence the Holy Spirit.
The Trinity, then, is a way of affirming that the one God does not remain
distant from human history or outside the created world, but has these two
"ways" or "modes" of being present and active. In a Trinitarian
understanding, God need not have recourse to created mediators like angels
or books, for God's ways or modes are themselves divine. As such, the
Christian belief could be said to be the "radicalization of monotheism."
Does this mean that Christians and Muslims are simply saying the same thing
in different words? Not at all. Islam and Christianity are two different
religions and have different teachings, and God is able to save both Muslim
and Christian if they faithfully follow their respective paths. What it
means, though, is that both are directing their attention and service and
love toward the same merciful and compassionate God. Kenneth Cragg, former
Anglican archbishop of Jerusalem, used a grammatical image to describe the
relationship between the Christian and Islamic understanding of God: "On
the
subject [God], we agree; on the predicates, we disagree."
What does it mean, practically speaking, that Muslims and Christians
worship
"the one and same God"? It means, for one thing, that the two communities
are not rivals or enemies. When Christians hear Muslims being called to
prayer, they should be happy, for it is their God who is going to be
worshiped and served. When they see good Muslims performing the prayer,
fasting in Ramadan, and doing good works like giving to the poor,
Christians
should praise God for the fact that so many of their Muslim sisters and
brothers are doing God's will.
Similarly, Muslims can regard Christians as fellow monotheists with whom
they share some of the most basic orientations to life. They need not
regard
Christians as kafirs (unbelievers) or mushriks (pagans). Like Muslims, good
Christians want to submit their lives to God, just as do Muslims. Jesus'
preaching revolved about the "kingdom of God" -- that is, what a person's
life is like when God rules and governs every aspect of it.
Isn't there a deep point of contact between real submission, true islam,
and
the commitment to accept God as the sovereign ruler of one's life and
destiny? Is it this point of contact to which the Qur'an was perhaps
referring when it stated: "And you will find that the closest in affection
to those who believe [Muslims] are those who say, 'We are Christians,' for
among them are priests and monks, and they are not arrogant" (Qur'an 5:82).
The one God to whom we submit our lives wants all, Christian and Muslim, to
reject arrogance and to come before Him together, so that God can govern
our
societies according to His will.
-----
Jesuit Father Tom Michel is Ecumenical Secretary of the Federation of Asian
Bishops' Conferences and Secretary of the Jesuits for Interreligious
Dialogue.
=====================
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