Why that suspended Wheaton professor is wrong to say Christians and Muslims 'worship the same God'

The media and student activists think they have a new sympathetic victim in the culture wars, and it's Wheaton College Professor Larycia Alaine Hawkins. Prof. Hawkins was suspended by Wheaton, an evangelical Christian institution, for the following Facebook post - but mainly for the money quote that claims Christians and Muslims "worship the same God." The predictable narrative here is that Hawkins - that rare Christian who isn't filled with hate toward Muslims - tried to reach out with love, only to get slapped down by her Bible-thumping overlords who will not countenance anything but vile rage toward the followers of Islam. That also appears to be the regrettable view of many Wheaton students, who perhaps should know better but generally follow the lead of dopey college-age activists everywhere. The Washington Post offers the conventional perspective:

"I stand in human solidarity with my Muslim neighbor because we are formed of the same primordial clay, descendants of the same cradle of humankind,” she wrote. “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book … But as I tell my students, theoretical solidarity is not solidarity at all. Thus, beginning tonight, my solidarity has become embodied solidarity.” She linked to a Christianity Today interview with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf on the topic. In the piece, Volf said that “all Christians don’t worship the same God, and all Muslims don’t worship the same God. But I think that Muslims and Christians who embrace the normative traditions of their faith refer to the same object, to the same Being, when they pray, when they worship, when they talk about God. The reference is the same. The description of God is partly different.”

One thing you'll notice is missing in the story is any quote from a Wheaton College official answering the question of why, in fact, it's not true that Christians and Muslims don't worship the same God. My guess would be that the question was never asked because the answer would have been highly theological, and the Post doesn't want sound like Christianity Today or Charisma Magazine. But without asking and getting an answer to that question, you can't really make the issue understandable. And the truth is that it's not that complicated to explain. The heart of Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ is incarnate Son of God, and that He came to Earth from Heaven specifically for the purpose of taking our sins upon Himself and taking them to the grave, only to leave those sins in the grave upon His resurrection, thus ensuring His victories over both sin and death, and earning the authority to pardon the sins of anyone who would come to Him in repentance so they could fulfill God's will by being reconciled to Him.

---

Key to all this is one overriding fact: Jesus Christ is, in fact, God, and recognized as such by the Father as part of the Trinity, along with the Holy Spirit. Any "god" who does not recognize Jesus Christ as Lord is simply not the God worshiped by Christians. The Muslim god referred to as Allah does recognize Jesus as a historical figure and even as a prophet, but not even as the supreme prophet (that honor going to Mohammed), let alone as God Himself. This is not some nitpicky distinction. The deity of Jesus is the central core of Christianity. Everything Christianity teaches about forgiveness of sins and eternal life is completely invalidated if Jesus is not God and if He did not rise from the dead. So a "god" who does not recognize Jesus as God and does not recognize His authority to confer grace for sins is simply not our God. Secular media don't get this because they don't understand the spiritual aspects of faith. Their view of anyone's faith decision is usually something along the lines of, "Hey, if that's what works for you, then that's great." Translation: It's all a bunch of BS that you just hope will make you feel better, so whatever that happens to be for you is fine for you, maybe not fine for me or anyone else. They really don't believe there is a spiritual realm with a real true God who can be distinguished from false ones people manufacture, so they don't see what it matters if one faith says one thing and another says another. And if there's "something up there somewhere," they don't think anyone can really know what it is because they don't believe the Creator could actually reveal Himself to us in a way we can understand - which of course is exactly what He did by inspiring the writing of the Bible and by sending His Son and His Spirit. So to them, when a professor at a Christian college claims we all worship the same God, hey, what's the problem with that? She's just trying to reach out, build bridges, spread love and not hate, bring everyone together, imagine no hell below us, above us only sky . . . I don't expect the secular media to get this, but I do expect a professor at a Christian college to get it. At least the college's leaders do. Hopefully they can teach it to their activist students a little better than it appears they have to date. And I'm all for reaching out in love to Muslims, but love doesn't mean you affirm someone's errant beliefs, and that's the tragic mistake Prof. Hawkins has made here. If she still doesn't understand what she did wrong, then she really shouldn't be teaching at Wheaton or any other Christian institution.