re: J.D. Greear - New President of Southern Baptist Convention

This has been happening for a while and I expect a split soon.

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That would still put the S. Baptists ahead of a lot other religions.

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It's a denomination, not a religion.

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I interpreted Greear's answer to be that Allah is just the Arabic name for God and therefore are the same beings with different labels. I hope he doesn't really mean that because it's not true and doesn't bode well for the SBC.

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Did Allah send His Son to die on the cross to save us from our sins? Did Allah tell Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and then provide a substitution at the last minute?

If not, then they simply aren't the same God, right?

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But most run of the mill Southern Baptists have no idea what is happening to their denomination.

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Mostly because nothing the Southern Baptist Convention does or decides is binding on my church. I didn't choose my church simply because it is a part of the Southern Baptist Convention. I chose it because the preacher follows the Bible and doesn't shy away from preaching from any part of it.

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uou are ignorant if you are talking about a baptist being a protestant

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I'm not.

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The Masons do not mind if you are Catholic.

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I don't care what Masons mind. You will be excommunicated from the Catholic Church for being a Mason. That is a fact.

Here is a more fleshed out explanation of his view.

"This is controversial, but hear me out. Muslims claim to worship the God of Adam, Abraham, and Moses. Many missionaries find it therefore helpful to start with Muslims using the Arabic term for God, “Allah” (meaning literally, “the Deity”), and from there to explain that the God Muslims seek to worship, the God of the Prophets, was the God present in bodily form in Jesus Christ, revealed most fully by him, and the One worshipped by Christians for the past two millennia. This is not the same as saying that becoming a Muslim is like a “first step to becoming a Christian.” And it certainly doesn’t mean that Islam is an alternate way of getting to heaven. It simply means that we are both referring to the only, One deity when we say “God.”

You might ask, “But isn’t the Islamic God so different from the Christian God that they cannot properly be called by the same name?” Perhaps. The question about whether to say that “Allah” refers to the wrong God (or to wrong ideas about the right God) is a highly nuanced one, and there’s not an easy answer. There is no doubt that Muslims believe blasphemous things about God, and their beliefs about Allah grew out of a distorted view of Christianity. The same could be said, though to a lesser degree, of the view of God of the first-century Sadducees, as well as the Samaritan woman, and (to an even lesser degree) the fifth-century Pelagian heretics—not to mention a lot of the medieval Scholastics.

The question is whether the presence of these heretical beliefs (and what degree of heresy in them) demands that we say, “You are worshipping a different God.” Clearly, the Apostles did not say that about the first-century Jews who rejected the Trinity (even though Jesus said their father was the devil!). And Jesus did not tell the Samaritan woman in her ethnic, works-righteousness distorted view of God that she was worshipping a different God, either. Instead, he insisted that she was worshipping him incorrectly and seeking salvation wrongly. And I’ve never heard anyone say that the Pelagian heretics worship a different God, even though they have been regarded (rightly) as heretics.

At the same time, Paul never said, “Zeus’s real name is Jehovah,” as if the Greeks were worshipping the true God wrongly. So, the question is: is the Muslim view of Allah more like that of Zeus or of the Samaritan woman’s heretical conception of God? That’s a tough question, and one that we need to let the context determine. For instance, many Christians find the use of “Allah” more misleading than helpful. For them, “Allah” falls in the “Zeus” category.

On the other side, however, are many faithful Christians working among Muslims who approach the question of Allah much like Jesus corrected the Samaritan woman. “You are seeking to worship the one God, but you are wrong in your view of him, and wrong in how you seek salvation from him. Salvation is from the Jews.” In my time with Muslims over the years, I’ve found that to be a more helpful starting place. This isn’t driven by a desire to be politically correct, but by a desire to start where Muslims are, and to bring them to faith in the one and only Son of God, Jesus.

When talking with Muslims about the gospel, we need to eliminate any unnecessary distractions. The necessary ones, after all, will be tough enough. We must view Muslims with charity, refusing to pigeonhole them. We live in a world of stereotypes, but love can overcome what political correctness can’t. To listen to someone without prejudice is the beginning of loving them. In other words, “Do unto others” applies here as well: let’s see others as they would like to be seen."

Thank you for providing that context. While it does seem to soften his comments a little, I think he's still wrong.

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and from there to explain that the God Muslims seek to worship, the God of the Prophets, was the God present in bodily form in Jesus Christ, revealed most fully by him, and the One worshipped by Christians for the past two millennia

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This just isn't the case. The god (Allah) that Muslims worship is not the God that Christians worship.

Greear goes on to compare the Sadducees and Samaritans with the Muslims but that is also false. The Sadducees understood God from the Old Testament but failed to believe the revelation of Jesus as the son of God. They didn't believe a different god than the one in the OT. Likewise the Samaritans were taught Judaism from the Old Testament but mixed in their pagan worship practices. The core of who "God" was came from the OT Bible (at least the Pentateuch) though they had pagan worship practices mixed in.

The Muslims, on the other hand, do not base their view of Allah on the Old Testament. They have a completely different religious text as the basis for their view and that is the root of why their view is so different than that of the Jews and the Christians. Because they don't use the same starting point, Muslims have a very different conclusion. Mentioning some people and events found in the Old Testament does not change that fact.

I believe Greear is wrong when he thinks the basis for Islam's view of Allah is more like that of the Jews rather than the Greeks. The Greeks had a completely different starting point for their view of the gods and even their statue to the unknown God that Paul uses as a launching point to talking about Christ is more akin to where we find ourselves with Islam. The Qur'an uses more similar terminology with the Bible than the Greeks do with Zeus or their unknown god but the understanding of who God is and what His characteristics are are more aligned between the Greeks and the Muslims than the Jews/Samaritans and the Muslims.

I think Greear might have his heart in the right place but he's terribly mistaken about the nature of Islam and their beliefs.

Would you say Mormons worship the same God?

The Mormon god is more different than Jehovah-God of Christianity than Allah is different than God.