In an effort to dispel the mythos that the Muslim god is the same god as the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not to mention, Jesus, I want to share a good word from Karl Barth on the processions of the triune God who is eternally and definitionally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Folks like Miroslav Volf, Katherine Sonderegger et al. have been arguing that Christians and Muslims, basically, worship the same God when it comes to His singularity or oneness (de Deo uno); but clearly, at a definitional level, the Christian God, as He has freely made Himself known through His Self-revelation in the Son, is necessarily and only triune without remainder or addition (de Deo trino). For the Christian, the multiplicity of God in the persons of God is just as ‘essential’ as His so called ‘simplicity’ or singularity in regard to His oneness.

Here, Barth is discussing knowledge of God; i.e. how it is that man or humankind has knowledge of God, as man stands before God in and through union with Jesus Christ, and God’s stand with humanity through the humanity of the Son.

But the inner truth of the lordship of God as the one supreme and true lordship revealed and operative in His proclamation and action—the inner truth and therefore also the inner strength of His self-demonstration as the Lord, as this Lord, consists in the fact that He is in Himself from eternity to eternity the triune God, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The fact that, according to that self-demonstration, man is indebted to Him for everything and owes Him everything is grounded in God’s own eternal Fatherhood, of which any other fatherhood can be only an image and likeness, however much we may owe to it, however much we may be indebted to it. And that self-demonstration constrains us to gratitude and indebtedness and therefore to the knowledge of God the Father as our Lord, because in eternity God is the Father of His own eternal Son and with Him the source of the Holy Spirit. Further, the fact that according to that self-demonstration God Himself is and does everything for the man who still owes Him everything is grounded in the fact that God is in Himself eternally the Son of the Father, eternally equal to the Father and therefore loved by Him, although and because He is the Son. And that self-demonstration constrains us to adoration of His faithfulness and grace and therefore to the knowledge of God the Son as our Lord, because in eternity God is the only Son begotten of the Father, and with the Father, and along with Him the source of the Holy Spirit. And finally, the fact that according to that self-demonstration God is the One from whom we have to expect everything is grounded in the fact that God is Himself eternally the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, and their unity in love. In this way the self-demonstration, and in this way the proclamation and action of God through His Word in the covenant concluded with man, is grounded in God Himself. In this way and on this ground it has its compelling force. Because God is in Himself the triune God, both in His Word and in the work of creation, reconciliation, and redemption, we have to do with Himself. It is therefore impossible for us to postpone the decision—which means the encounter with Him—on the grounds that He is perhaps quite different from the One who proclaims Himself and acts in this way. And because God is in Himself the triune God, in this His Word we have to do with the final revelation of God which can never be rivalled or surpassed. It is, therefore, quite impossible to ask about other lords alongside and above this Lord. In the life of God as the life of the triune God things are so ordered and necessary that the work of God in His Word is the one supreme and true lordship in which He gives Himself to be known and is known. When God speaks about Himself He speaks about the fact that He is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And therefore everything else that He has to say to us, all truth and reality, all enlightenment and salvation, depends on the fact that primarily and comprehensively He is speaking about Himself.[1]

Barth works with a traditional Western oriented doctrine of God, one that thinks with the filioque attendant to it; we won’t hold that against him (e.g. Thomas Torrance, in my view offers a better way forward in regard to thinking the Monarxia of God. Even so, he still speaks in the terms we have here in Barth, in regard to origins or relation).What is fundamentally important about what Barth is communicating, particularly for our purposes in this post, is to demonstrate just how essential the threeness of God is vis-à-vis the oneness of God, and how the latter, for the Christian, cannot be understood to be what it is without the former, and vice versa.

If what Barth is articulating is the case (and it is!), then eo ipso, Christians and Muslims cannot worship the same God. There is not an inchoate or seminal understanding of God for the Christian; there is only the full-blown and flaming understanding that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without compromise. The Christian only knows God by the Son’s revelation of the Father, and the Holy Spirit’s come-alongsideness by whom we say Jesus is Lord. The Christian does not, and cannot conceive of God in any other way. So, to confuse the Muslim God, with the Christian God is an absolute equivocation. And it is rather startling to see Christian theologians of some repute operate under and forward this confusion in their theologizing. I would suggest that this confusion is driven more by a social desire to be ‘ecumenical’ and ‘catholic’ rather than a commitment to be slavishly committed to the fact that God is three in one and one in three.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. The Doctrine of God II/1 §25 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 46-7.