April 8, 2025 • 34 mins
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
- The Catholic Herald, “All Faiths Lead to God” https://catholicherald.co.uk/all-faiths-lead-to-god-pope-fuels-controversy-by-preaching-religious-pluralism-on-final-day-of-tour/
- NPR, “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?” https://www.npr.org/2015/12/20/460480698/do-christians-and-muslims-worship-the-same-god
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Like, come on, that's funny.
(00:01):
I think Jesus laughs at that.
Maybe.
I think he giggles a little.
Or he smites them.
Like, how dare you?
Getting smout.
Smout.
Smited.
Smat.
Smote.
Smeat.
Smited, probably, but it's better to say all the other things.
I like smout.
Smout is good, right?
He done got smout.
Mm-hmm.
Welcome to TikTok Theology, a podcast that tackles the major trending topics on social media that concern the Christian faith.
(00:27):
I'm Meagan.
And I'm Steven.
We know you can't form a theology in three minutes or less, but those videos can identify current issues.
TikTok will give us the prompt, and then we'll do a deep dive.
Thanks for joining us in this exploration.
Hello, friends.
Welcome back to TikTok Theology.
Hello, everybody.
Episode six.
(00:48):
We're already a little over halfway through this season, which is crazy.
Yep.
Time flies these days, isn't it?
It's moving along.
Moving and grooving.
Speaking of time.
So we do pre-record these, of course.
I like to believe that we would have the time every week to do this, but alas.
No, we don't.
We don't.
So when we're filming this or recording this very recently in September of 2024, we had our friend at the Vatican, Pope Francis, made a comment that made its way to social media.
(01:22):
And what do we do on social media?
We pay attention to this stuff.
We look around.
Yeah.
So this is one of those things that obviously was causing a lot of questions, comments, concerns in social media period, but definitely like Christian social media.
Had a lot of students asking me about this, too.
This was in our faces a lot, especially in Christian higher ed, which is where we both linger and live.
(01:43):
So the Pope said, there's only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God.
Some are chic, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths to God.
Pope Francis also said this in 2013 when he said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
So this is not new that Pope Francis feels this way, but also social media is way more prominent now than it was in 2013.
(02:05):
So causing more of a ruckus these days.
It was probably his clearest, clearest distinct straight up pluralism.
Yeah, which is really a little scandalous, especially to come from the Pope, the Vatican and like that space.
So there's been a lot of discourse and questions and comments, concerns, especially when it comes to this concept of like interreligious dialogue.
(02:27):
And what this means for a global society, because I mean, what like statistically, so many people in this world are religious.
Yeah, like a very small percentage. The majority are.
Yeah, so this has a buy-in for most of the people who are currently alive and especially us as Christians who would affirm something very opposite to the statement that Pope Francis has made.
(02:50):
And so we thought it'd be a really good conversation to open up the floor and chat about pluralism and do Muslims and Jews and Christians.
Do we all worship the same God? Is this an all roads lead to Rome moment?
And are we worshiping God?
But also so are all these other religions and what does that mean and what does the Bible say?
So I think it definitely is an answer to violence, religious violence is like, hey, if we all worship the same God, we just kind of see it.
(03:18):
Then we should be peaceful towards each other. Right.
But at the same time, it seems to go directly against some of the words that Jesus said and that the Bible affirms that historically we've held as Christians.
And not just us, the same exclusive claims that Jews and Muslims hold. Yeah.
They're not comfortable with this either.
Yeah, no, like there's not really, it's not like the Pope saying this, then Christians are like nice and Jews are like nice and Muslims are like nice.
(03:42):
Yeah, you're right. You're right.
That's awesome. Thanks for saying that.
Yeah.
No, I think everyone in their own religious circles is probably a teeny bit up in arms about this comment.
Yeah.
And have you heard, did you remember that Wheaton College professor getting axed in 2015?
I had, I heard a little bit about this, but tell, tell me, refresh me and tell the people.
(04:03):
So this is kind of, well, she didn't get axed per se, but like,
Per se.
In December of 2015, Larissa Hawkins, she was a tenured political science professor at Wheaton.
And she posted on social media, she was wearing a hijab during Advent because she wanted to show solidarity with Muslims.
Yeah.
Because she saw that they were increased discrimination in the US.
(04:24):
And she said on her Facebook post that Christians and Muslims worship the same God and she actually evoked Pope Francis.
Like, because she was like, Pope Francis just said this last week.
And so, um, and so Wheaton College is just kind of like a very, you know, rigorous and famous, very strong evangelical school.
Yeah.
And so they put her on administrative leave and it just tried to figure out what was going on.
(04:48):
They clarified that this was not because she wore hijab, but because of her theological statements regarding the nature of God.
Right.
That if this is the same God, like that's why.
Super important distinction.
Exactly.
And so, but in February 2016, the college and Hawkins reached a mutual agreement and they parted ways.
And they actually did a joint release statement acknowledging that they found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation.
(05:13):
I guess it's somewhat of a happy ending, but this, this woman did lose her job over it, you know, fundamentally.
Yeah.
And so it's something that is, has like real world implications because it is as simple as pluralism.
You could view legitimately as heresy.
Oh, yeah.
Someone finding salvation some other way outside of Christ.
(05:35):
Right.
So this isn't a universalism that could potentially not be heretical.
This is like.
Which we chatted about.
We've chatted about last season with the inclusivism thing.
Right.
Even though I still don't agree with universalism, it could potentially not be heresy.
But pluralism is typically seen as heresy because you have other ways of salvation besides Jesus.
(05:56):
Yeah.
And that's like.
That goes kind of against the whole point.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, but Muhammad didn't die on the cross.
Yo.
Yo.
Jesus did.
Yeah.
Right.
And so like there's.
And then we believe that Jesus was the one to do it.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So there's this claim of exclusivity that like most Christians definitely hold.
Absolutely.
But especially even Jealous Pentecostals and like we totally affirm that this exclusivity.
(06:21):
We want to be generous and gracious and know that the spirit is working as we've talked about
earlier in this season two.
The spirit is at work beckoning us.
But that's kind of like a pervenient grace, you know.
But fundamentally, fundamentally it is our faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ that saves us.
That's that's what it is.
Jesus is the one who died on the cross and we have to like straight up affirm that.
(06:43):
And so this is a big issue because it's a global issue.
So I think to start with this, let's talk about like how are the so-called Abrahamic religions
connected?
Right.
And this is Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
How are they connected?
So first off, something that a lot of times surprised people, but Islam is 600 years younger
(07:07):
than Christianity.
Yeah.
I mean, we know this, but it seems more ancient.
I think because of the way it's culturally expressed.
I feel like sometimes culturally, like stuff from like Asian countries, the Middle East,
like feels really old.
Yeah.
Like and it is Islam is no for sure, but it feels like Christianity is so contemporary
contemporary.
A lot of ways.
Yeah.
Or it's become like weirdly Western in some ways that it feels like it's not as
(07:31):
Yeah.
Totally old as it is.
Not as ancient, but it is.
It's more ancient.
It's over 2000 years.
It's ancient ish.
It's more ancientist.
But Islam is the youngest.
It's about 1400 years old.
Christianity is 2000 years old.
And Judaism, depending on where you put the start and date, it might be 5000 years old.
Yeah.
I mean, like, so it's like, it's very, very old, right?
Yeah.
All three of these faith traditions point back to Abraham as a common ancestor.
(07:56):
All of them hold to the Old Testament God as God.
And so this is where it's like, it's the same God, but is it?
But is it?
But they all affirm, you know, the story in Genesis, right?
Yeah.
So Abraham's story is told in Genesis 11 through 25 and Genesis will put him chronologically
(08:17):
around 2000 years before Christ.
He was called out of Ur and the Chaldeans.
And we know the whole, I'm just not going to go through the whole story, but with Sarah,
he fathered Isaac.
Isaac and Rebecca had two sons, Esau and Jacob.
Now we know about this.
Esau's the older son, Jacob is younger and he was little mischievous.
You know what I mean?
Miss Chivas.
(08:38):
Yeah.
Ended up getting to birth right and all that good stuff.
But Jacob had 12 sons and these 12 sons would develop as the 12 tribes of Judah.
Sort of.
Okay.
Sort of.
Sort of.
His 10 sons, mine is Levi, priests, wooden, and haret land.
And then Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Naftali made the other two tribes.
So those make up the 12 tribes, which interestingly is listed a little differently in Revelation,
(09:01):
but we won't get into that right now.
That is unimportant to this beginning conversation, guys.
Look away.
Right, right, right.
This is how Israel kind of starts with their tribes and all that kind of stuff.
And then we have, you know, Moses, which we'll talk about in a second, but like that's really
crucial, but it's kind of the beginning.
But before Isaac, you had another son, Sarah and Abraham.
(09:21):
Abraham couldn't have babies.
Correct.
They were frick old.
Okay.
Oldest frick.
You know what I mean?
Little crusty, little dusty.
That's okay.
Was the calendar years and the way they calculated ages the same as it is now?
Maybe not.
Maybe it is.
I don't know.
But the point is they were oldest frick.
They were very old.
Right.
Yes.
Beyond.
Childbearing years.
Beyond childbearing years.
And she couldn't get pregnant.
(09:42):
And then I know that Abraham was like a promise that he would have a great multitude.
Right.
Yeah.
So they were like, Hey.
Let's take it in our own hands.
I got this.
Oh, so.
Thank God.
And because that always goes well.
Yeah.
You know, anytime we say we got this, that always sends to go really well.
It sure does.
In men's amounts of sarcasm.
But to give Abraham and Sarah a little bit of credit, this was a common practice back then.
(10:04):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of people did not.
It's dramatic for us.
Yeah.
People didn't survive childbirth.
People didn't live very long.
So being barren was a no go.
Being barren was, you know, like they just, they had to find other ways to populate like the world
and to keep their lineages going.
Correct.
And so this was a common practice.
So it's not like affirming this is the morally upright practice, but it is a common practice back then.
(10:25):
Well, so why Sarah suggested it?
Yeah.
Sarah suggested it.
She was like, Hey, have a baby with Hagar.
Hagar, Sarah's servant.
He did.
And they had Ishmael.
And then they would raise him as their own, but Sarah could never like feel right about that.
You know what I mean?
And then God's like, Yo.
What's up with that, y'all?
I said, you and Sarah are going to have a baby.
(10:46):
I'm going to put some effects on that.
So sounds, sounds glorious.
Yeah.
So God was like, Yo, you and Sarah are supposed to have that baby.
Okay.
Wow.
So that's what happened.
And then they did have a baby to have Isaac.
And then Sarah, of course, grew in some jealousy and we don't want to act like Abraham wasn't part of this either.
(11:07):
They decided to kick him out and to bring him east, basically where Abraham came from.
And so they settled somewhere alongside the Arabian Peninsula.
And then they had many, many descendants.
And then God even blessed Hagar, right?
And she said, you're going to have a great multitude coming from your lineage.
Yeah.
Well, Muslims believe that the descendants of Ishmael filled out the Arabian Peninsula.
(11:30):
And that's who would become Muslims.
Yeah.
Now we don't have the lineage starting and stopping because when Muhammad actually started Islam,
like he moved them from a polytheistic faith tradition.
So we don't have like a strict, like we have a bunch of chronologies of like how everybody descended from Isaac in the Bible.
We don't have that gap.
(11:51):
But I mean, I have no reason to disbelieve that, you know what I'm saying?
I could totally see them as descendants of Ishmael.
Yeah, for sure.
And a lot of people do, right?
Yeah.
That's kind of like how they're all connected to Abraham.
Obviously Christianity is believed to be the fulfillment of the law in this new covenant in Jesus Christ.
And so we are continuous with the Old Testament.
And Muslims also have the Old Testament because of the story of Ishmael, right?
(12:16):
So in Jewish history, you have Moses, which is basically where kind of like Israel as a nation starts.
Yes.
After he brings his people out of Egypt, you know, this is all recounted in Exodus.
It's a long story of how they got there, but it was during the famine and stuff like that.
And then, you know, after that, God establishes this people where God is supposed to be this executive.
(12:37):
And then you still had like this legislative branch through the priests and the Levites.
And then you had this judicial branch through the judges, but the judges are supposed to lead, right?
Yeah.
The true leader is God, but then they would lead there.
They clamored for a king and then they had the Golden Age where they had kingdoms,
but this is not what God wanted.
You know, Samuel spoke very strongly against it.
And eventually this kingdom fell.
(12:59):
It was a divided kingdom after Solomon's reign, Rehoboam led United Monarchy until Jeroboam rebelled.
And so Jeroboam took 10 tribes of Israel and Rehoboam took the two tribes of Judah.
So he had a divided kingdom.
And when it's divided, guess what?
It's easily conquered.
You'd conquer one, then you conquered the other.
And so you see a whole bunch of captivity is a whole bunch of Israel being conquered from there on out.
(13:20):
One of the main ones was the Babylonian captivity,
which is where Judaism shifted from a regional religion to a more global one,
because they were kicked out of Israel and they had to like form their new thing.
So this is where they formed synagogues that they could worship in where they started writing down
a whole bunch of their oral tradition that we have still as a scroll today,
because they couldn't actually worship in the temple, stuff like that.
Right. So that's essentially the Jewish history of where they come from and what happened there.
(13:46):
Islam, I'm skipping over Christian history because we kind of assume.
Then we kind of know that.
We know this, right?
If not, I have a really good book for you.
But the little recap is when Rome is in power, they go from a republic to an empire.
And then as they start as an empire, that's when Jesus is born,
like literally during the reign of Caesar Augustus.
(14:08):
And then the Christians start as like a fulfillment of Judaism to get rejected
by Judaism to get rejected by the Romans.
And they have their new sect, their new religious tradition.
They do all their missions work all over the place.
And Christianity explodes in this transcontinental place.
Israel is part of Asia.
And people forget that the Middle East is part of Asia, the continent.
(14:29):
Yeah.
Right.
We always just assume like European, but it's not.
But Rome is transcontinental.
It's lower Europe, it's upper Africa, and it's the Middle East Asian part, right?
And these missionary trips are going everywhere.
And this is the church, the early church, and it's going all over the place and spreading,
persecuted for a while until Constantine comes to power.
And then it becomes the official religion of Rome.
Okay. So that's Christian history.
(14:50):
Very, very, very brief.
Then Islamic history.
Okay.
Muhammad lived between 570 to 632 and he belonged to the Arabic tribe of the Q-Resh.
And he was in Mecca.
He preached to the people and he implored them to abandon their polytheism because in the Arabian
Peninsula, they were generally polytheistic.
And he wanted them to worship one God.
(15:10):
Okay.
So remember this.
This is around 600.
Okay.
600 years after Jesus.
Okay.
Much later.
Although some people converted to Islam, Muhammad and his followers were persecuted
by the Meccan authorities.
And so after 12 years of persecution, Muslims performed what's known as the Hijra,
which is an emigration to the city of Medina in 622.
(15:31):
There, Muhammad established a political and religious authority.
The Meccans and the Muslims fought.
But by 629, Muhammad was victorious.
And by the time of his death at the age of 62, he united all the tribes of Arabia to be Muslim.
Now there's a couple of like two pertinent legends that Muslims will tell.
One of them is this night journey.
(15:53):
And so this is according to the Islamic tradition, Muhammad took a journey during a single night
around the year 621, where Muhammad traveled to Burak, the farthest mosque, where he led
other prophets in prayer.
He ascended to heaven, spoke to God and was given instructions to take back the faithful
regarding prayer.
Oh, all the way up.
Yeah.
And, but this is also where the, the dome of the rock is where the, so the Jewish temple,
(16:16):
if you go to Israel, the Jewish temple where Jesus walked those steps, right now you'll see a mosque.
Oh well.
Set up top of it.
They believe is the holy site.
And so this was like a huge reason for the Crusades and why the Muslims and the Christians
fought each other.
Yeah.
Because they were trying to recapture this holy site and eventually Islam won out this
little area right here.
And so Jews and Muslims have been fighting forever.
(16:38):
And then with the Crusades, Christians were involved in that too.
Yeah.
Another one of his legends is during the last 22 years of Muhammad's life, beginning at the age
of 40, he had revelations from God through the archangel Gabriel.
Gabriel visited him nightly and taught him a whole bunch of stuff about things.
He had his followers memorize his teachings and recite them.
(17:00):
And then after he died though, they wrote him down and this is what the Quran is.
And it's also like Quran literally means recitations.
And so that's what is written down.
That's the main holy book for Islam.
Yeah.
So Islam grew and a century after Muhammad's death, the Islamic empire extended from Spain
in the West to the Indus in the East.
(17:20):
To this day, it's one of the biggest religions in the world.
Yeah.
Now, most Muslims are peaceful.
There's various sectors in it, the Sunnis, the Sufis, the Shiite.
But there is a good amount of them that are like, it's a small minority.
But the terrorist groups that come from this Islamic thing are warring.
(17:40):
You think about the history of Muhammad, they came through war and stuff like that.
Similar to the conquest of even of Israel, how they started.
But dissimilar to the start of Christianity, right?
Like Christians were persecuted.
But it was Constantine in his conquest 300 years later that was similar there.
So that's basically the histories involved there.
(18:01):
Did you know all that?
I'm not a huge, I never did like a...
World religions.
World religions, yeah, like class per se or like never really learned about any of that.
So I, but I find it really interesting.
I actually do find it really, really interesting.
So I think it's a good to have a crash course and like understand.
Because I think even, I can be guilty of this, but like even as Christians,
I think it's important that we know the religions of people that we're talking to or about.
(18:26):
Especially if at some point we ever are like witnessing in like a different religious space.
Like it's just good to know.
Like in the wars and stuff that are happening that are all around us.
Yeah. Like it's just good to know things.
Like there's like, there's never any negatives in just like educating yourself about stuff.
So I think this is good.
Like I just, I think it's really interesting.
Yeah.
How all of these things are.
And I do think it helps because when you're going to understand why we're against pluralism.
(18:52):
Yeah.
I think it's helpful to understand why we think that.
Not just the theological aspects, but like the historical aspects of like, hey team.
Exactly.
These came about in very different ways perhaps.
There's obviously the same Genesis in Abraham.
I want to talk about some of the other similarities.
And then we can like kind of get into that question.
(19:13):
Do they worship the same God?
So number one, along with the Quran and the Hadith, those are holy books for Muslims.
Yes.
Muslims also hold parts of the Bible as holy texts.
And a lot of people don't realize that I think.
Yeah. I actually don't really know all that.
Yeah. So Muslims believe parts of the Bible are from God, but others have been distorted.
(19:35):
And so they reject what they think is a lot of the distorted parts of the Bible.
The Quran was given as a remedy to those distortions.
And it identifies three sets of books from the Bible that are genuine and divine revelations.
There's the Torah, which in Arabic is called the Talrat given to Musa, which is Moses.
(19:58):
Right.
There's the Psalms, which in Arabic is the Zabur given to Daud, which is David.
And then there's the Ingyil, which is the Gospel given to Isa, Jesus.
So that's, I think, extremely unknown.
Oh, yeah.
Is that the Muslims actually hold to the Gospels.
Yeah.
The Gospels.
So people don't really realize that.
(20:18):
No.
Big in Islam is the prophets, right?
So they believe that the prophets are chosen by God to be messengers.
They're human and not divine.
All of their prophets, including Muhammad, are not divine.
They do not believe that they're divine.
Oh, yeah.
They don't have a single one that they believe is incarnate the way that we would believe Jesus was.
Exactly.
They only believe Allah is God and that's it.
(20:39):
And they also don't have the same concept of the Holy Spirit that we do as a personal being.
So the Quran mentions numerous figures considered to be prophets in Islam.
So they include Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.
In fact, they believe Jesus is the greatest prophet apart from Muhammad.
(21:00):
They believe Muhammad came after Jesus as the last prophet, as the seal of the prophets.
But they believe Jesus is the greatest prophet.
Do they hold to the same creation account?
Yeah.
To believe that Adam was, yeah, right.
Yeah, they do.
Word.
And so, and so they think Jesus is the greatest prophet apart from Muhammad.
They believe Jesus was, this is going to be surprising for a lot of people.
(21:20):
They believe he was born of a virgin.
They believe he spoke from the cradle, literally from the cradle.
He said, hello everyone.
It's me.
Jesus boy is like sup.
Sup dog.
In a manger, just like yo.
But this is written in the Quran that like the Quran talks about Jesus and Mary.
And they have like this whole Mariology in the Quran.
(21:42):
Mariology.
Come on somebody.
However, they do not believe he was crucified, but he was taken up and the likeness was given
to another man, which is similar to what the Gnostics held.
Wazers.
Right.
So, so he was like, it was like a.
Do they believe in ascension the same way that like theoretically like Elisha ascended?
Yes.
That's what they think happened with Jesus.
And then they just made in a guy look like him.
(22:04):
Yeah.
Or just represent.
You know, one of the Gnostics, I'm not sure if they tie it to him specific,
but one of the Gnostic Gospels said it was, it was actually Joseph of Eremythea on the cross.
Oh, the guy who gave him the.
Yeah.
One of the Gnostic Gospels says that.
Interesting.
That it was an illusion cast over them.
Oh, so that he was, he did look like Jesus.
Yeah.
Or something like that.
That's what one of the Gnostic Gospels say.
(22:24):
And I'm not sure if they hold to that per se, but they believe that he did.
That it was representative.
Yeah.
And not a little.
It was the likeness given to another man.
Okay.
Interesting.
They did say that.
And so that that is like the Gnostics.
Another thing that's super interesting.
Jesus, not Muhammad will usher in the day of judgment.
Jesus is the last judge also for Muslims.
(22:45):
Yeah.
They believe Jesus is going to come back and judge everybody.
Do they hold to a different, like they don't hold the revelation though.
They hold to like kind of versions of it, but not like full on.
Not like the way they do the Gospels.
They'll think it's like perverted, like a perverted, you know, like a witness or whatever.
Okay.
And so the Quran talks a lot more about the Virgin Mary than the Bible does,
which is also interesting.
And so again, Muhammad is the seal of the prophets and he was sent to convey divine message to the
(23:08):
world and to sum up and finalize the word.
And this is why also they rejected some of the things that they thought were perverted
in the scriptures and they accepted the things that they were right.
Interesting.
Very interesting, right?
Right off the bat.
People, you know, Christians a lot of times are very, very pro-Israel.
And for political reasons, because of biblical reasons too, where they think like
(23:28):
Israel plays an important part in their eschatology and you know, they're God's chosen people.
Like this says the right, you know, in the Bible.
So there's reasons for that.
But sometimes in that, they'll like assume certain things.
Islam actually has a more positive view of Jesus than Jews do.
Jews think Jesus was a like a false prophet.
(23:49):
Yeah.
They think he was actually wrong.
A liar.
Muslims believe he was a great prophet, the greatest after Muhammad.
Both are wrong because we believe that Jesus is God incarnate, God himself made flesh, right?
But that's something that I think is surprising to a lot of people.
So like witnessing to Jews, you have to prove that Jesus was the promised Messiah,
(24:10):
as opposed to a heretic liar, right?
Yeah.
Witnessing to Muslims, you have to prove that Jesus wasn't just a great prophet,
but he was actually the incarnate son, like the savior.
So it's a different approach that you're doing.
Yeah.
I also do think that when you only assume that like there's nobody possibly at all in like
any conflict against Israel, that people aren't in there that also hold the same belief of you,
(24:35):
that you do or positively affirm a lot of aspects of scripture.
Right.
It becomes a very us them, which is what we're super against.
We're very against that.
In any format and have spoken out in so many different contexts.
Exactly.
I think the us them mentality kills us more often than anything else.
Yes.
So yeah.
But then we think about like historically what's happened.
We had 9-11, you know, we've had so many terrorist attacks by Islamic extremist groups.
(25:00):
You don't see Jewish extremist groups attacking people.
Correct.
Terrorist Muslim groups coming to power, taking over certain regions and places
like that.
So what you see with ISIS and al Qaeda and different various, all those are deemed already
like globally as terrorist groups and they come and they're coming to power.
Right.
That's what the war in Gaza is literally all about.
(25:23):
Right.
Hamas has been deemed a terrorist group.
And they were this terrorist group that came to power.
So not everybody in their population like supports them or likes them.
But the problem, one of the problems is some Muslims do.
So some Muslims are not violent yet they support these factions that are considered
terrorists.
But then many of them are peaceful.
So it's a very, very difficult situation.
(25:44):
But one thing we can't do is just assume Muslims are terrorists or anything like that.
Generizations are really harmful.
It is a small number that are actually terrorists.
But what is the support of these terrorist groups?
That number is bigger, but still in the minority.
Correct.
Okay.
Now we come back to our question.
Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God if they're all rooted in the Old Testament?
(26:08):
They all hold the Genesis.
Yeah.
They all mess heavy with the Torah.
They do.
They do.
They're like that rocks.
Yeah.
They're like Genesis, they're Deuteronomy rocks in every religion.
They got it.
They got it.
Then it fell apart from it.
So I think, you know, the main question here is can you reject Jesus Christ as the Son
(26:28):
and then truly know God the Father?
That's the real question.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
If you think about this, Albert Moller, who's this, he's a conservative evangelical theologian,
he says, and it's Christ himself who answered that question, most classically in the Gospel of John,
and he said that to reject the Son means that one does not know the Father.
(26:49):
This is John 5.23.
It says that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.
Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
Mm-hmm.
And John 15.23 says, whoever hates me hates my Father as well.
There's other passages I am and the Father are one.
Colossians 1.15 says the Son is the image of the invisible God.
(27:10):
Right?
Mm-hmm.
And so the Christian belief of God as triune makes to claim that this is the same God impossible.
I think.
I would agree.
Because I mean like, okay, so it's Genesis.
You got that right.
Mm-hmm.
But then you're saying when God became flesh in order to save us, you're saying that this isn't God.
Yeah.
The Trinity is what complicates this.
(27:31):
Right?
Yeah.
Because fundamentally, Jews do not believe the Messiah has come.
No, they don't.
And we believe He has come and He is God.
Yes.
And Muslims don't believe a Messiah has come.
They believe in something different.
It's like totally different there.
Yeah.
So to me, that can't be the same God, right?
Right.
Well, you can't really believe, yeah, you can't believe the same God and then actively reject Jesus.
(27:58):
Right.
Like that's kind of what all of those, I mean, stated in like every single one of those scriptures.
Jesus himself being the one to.
To say it.
To say it.
And in Paul too, you know, in Colossians.
Like there's been a lot of it just straight up said in that way, which is why I think it makes pluralism as an argument.
Just wrong.
Yeah.
But second of all, just like really, really difficult to say something like, yeah, we believe that God is the same God.
(28:21):
Is the same.
But then.
But then we reject Jesus.
We reject Jesus.
Who's the actual savior, right?
Yeah.
Who's the way that we get to God.
Yeah.
So if you're rejecting the connection between you and God.
But he's also just not a prophet that somehow made salvation possible.
Correct.
It's because God became flesh.
That we were able to even have access to salvation at all.
(28:42):
Exactly.
Correct.
So, and so this is something that like, I think is an exclusive claim that we can't get away from.
Now we can say like we've said.
One of those primary belief moments.
It is.
I mean, it's Orthodox Christianity.
And as soon as we start getting away from that, I think we get into actual heresy territory.
Yeah.
We can say that the spirit is beckoning us.
The spirit is at work at places trying to reveal Christ.
(29:04):
But the point is he's revealing Christ.
He's not revealing Muhammad.
He's not revealing Vishnu or Buddha or something like that.
He's revealing Christ.
Right.
C.S. Lewis has a really important saying in, uh, mere Christianity.
Have you read mere Christianity?
I've not, but I've heard obviously C.S. Lewis.
Super duper recommend that.
That's, that's the book that made me want to become a theologian.
I read that when I was 14.
(29:24):
That's what you're like, oh, yep, that's it.
I'm in it now.
Yeah.
And he said, he said, a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said
would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg
or else he would be the devil of hell.
You must make your choice.
Either this man was and is the son of God or else a madman or something.
(29:48):
Something worse.
Yeah.
And so based on these claims that Jesus made about himself,
he's either a liar knowingly deceiving people, a lunatic.
He falsely believes that he was God or Lord.
He is who he says he was.
He truly is who he claims to be.
And so the thing is, Jews said he was a liar.
(30:09):
Muslims say he's a lunatic essentially.
Yeah.
Because how can he say what he said and be a prophet?
Right.
Well, they reinterpret it through the Quran.
Right?
Yeah.
But like, but the words he's saying can't be right.
Right.
Christians say he's Lord.
Right.
And so this is kind of where we're at here.
And you know, you want to be gracious.
You want to be loving.
(30:29):
You want to be kind.
That's the disposition we always take everywhere.
But like, I'm sorry, man, you can't be messing with my Jesus now.
But on the real talk, on the real talk, we wouldn't be doing you a service.
Like we wouldn't be doing anybody a service if we got wishy washy when it mattered.
Yep.
Because when it matters, if we let, if we're kind of those people are like,
well, all roads lead to Rome, then we are willingly allowing people to walk head first into hell.
(30:53):
Yeah.
And so look, I think the Pope is a really nice loving guy.
I think he's done so much good stuff in the world, but I think he's flat wrong.
Oh.
Flat wrong.
The flattest.
And I don't know what else to say about that.
Like that's, you know, y'all can't mess with my Jesus now.
No.
It's one of those, but we talked about this so early on about like primary belief,
(31:13):
secondary belief.
It's primary.
This is primary.
You either believe that Jesus was the son of God.
He is the savior.
He is our point of salvation or you don't.
Christians believe salvation.
You are saved if in your proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Correct.
Not just saying, oh, I believe it's true.
No.
Or I believe God.
Or I believe God.
Or I believe in God or just a creator or whatever.
(31:35):
No, you're saying Jesus is your Lord.
Correct.
Because he's God incarnate.
That's why he's your Lord.
Yes.
I mean, that's it.
That's right.
I don't know what else to say there.
Which is why we got to be like-
Got to draw a line.
Got to draw a line.
Yes.
Like there are a lot of conversations we've had on this podcast where there are tertiary beliefs.
Where these are conversations where we're-
Where there's various views and we're like, oh, this could be strong.
(31:55):
This could be strong.
We get it, whatever.
Or like social stuff where it's like, yeah, we believe this,
but here's how to be a better human being when we're having these conversations about it.
Right.
Right.
But this is not that.
Nope.
This episode is a line draw for us because we're like, no, man.
Like, no, you can't.
You can't.
You cannot hold the pluralistic belief.
Don't mess with my Jesus now.
Don't you mess with my Jesus.
This is continuing to fall into our metaphorical line of merge.
(32:16):
Don't you mess with my Jesus.
Jesus tell you what.
Well, you have the lunatic thing.
It's like if somebody now showed up and anytime that somebody shows up and claims that they're Christ,
we're like, oh, cult leader.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Crazy person.
Like-
And some people were saying that about Jesus, but then it was proven true through his miracles,
through his teachings and through fundamentally the resurrection, right?
(32:37):
That part.
That's the big one.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
But yeah.
Rigger, rubber, right.
Man.
Yeah, you can't.
Sorry, y'all.
Y'all can't mess with my Jesus now.
Sorry, team.
But I think that's it.
I think it's kind of sick.
I mean, it's kind of like a dead stop right there.
I mean, we said the T on that one.
That's it.
Don't mess with my Jesus.
So we try to give some explanation of what the views are and why someone would hold it.
(32:59):
And we were fair, I think, in addressing it, but then we were just like, but here's the line.
Well, because it's good to know why people believe things.
It's good to know where pluralists are coming from because arguing when you're only
educated on one side is pointless and dumb.
Because it's like, yeah, you can be right.
But if you don't understand where they're coming from, then you might as well be not
having this conversation because you can't address or discuss anything that they're coming from.
(33:22):
So it's good to have understanding from both sides.
Unemotional sense.
Look, don't view Muslims as evil.
View them as lost.
And the same as Jews.
This is what's like, I think people are, they're God's chosen people.
They rejected the Messiah, meaning they're lost also.
Y'all, we got to do some missions.
(33:44):
We got to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ.
Got to treat them with love and dignity and respect.
Don't view them as the other.
Don't view them as the enemy.
Also don't view them as particularly special like quasi saved.
They need to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord, period.
Just like anybody else.
There ain't no mints and words about that.
(34:06):
You don't make Jesus your Lord.
You ain't getting up there, yo.
You ain't getting up there, yo.
No, I'm saying.
I do.
And on that note, this episode, like always, was sponsored by the School of Theology and
Ministry at Life Pacific University.
All right, we'll see you next time.
See ya.
Like, come on, that's funny.
(00:01):
I think Jesus laughs at that.
Maybe.
I think he giggles a little.
Or he smites them.
Like, how dare you?
Getting smout.
Smout.
Smited.
Smat.
Smote.
Smeat.
Smited, probably, but it's better to say all the other things.
I like smout.
Smout is good, right?
He done got smout.
Mm-hmm.
Welcome to TikTok Theology, a podcast that tackles the major trending topics on social media that concern the Christian faith.
(00:27):
I'm Meagan.
And I'm Steven.
We know you can't form a theology in three minutes or less, but those videos can identify current issues.
TikTok will give us the prompt, and then we'll do a deep dive.
Thanks for joining us in this exploration.
Hello, friends.
Welcome back to TikTok Theology.
Hello, everybody.
Episode six.
(00:48):
We're already a little over halfway through this season, which is crazy.
Yep.
Time flies these days, isn't it?
It's moving along.
Moving and grooving.
Speaking of time.
So we do pre-record these, of course.
I like to believe that we would have the time every week to do this, but alas.
No, we don't.
We don't.
So when we're filming this or recording this very recently in September of 2024, we had our friend at the Vatican, Pope Francis, made a comment that made its way to social media.
(01:22):
And what do we do on social media?
We pay attention to this stuff.
We look around.
Yeah.
So this is one of those things that obviously was causing a lot of questions, comments, concerns in social media period, but definitely like Christian social media.
Had a lot of students asking me about this, too.
This was in our faces a lot, especially in Christian higher ed, which is where we both linger and live.
(01:43):
So the Pope said, there's only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God.
Some are chic, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths to God.
Pope Francis also said this in 2013 when he said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
So this is not new that Pope Francis feels this way, but also social media is way more prominent now than it was in 2013.
(02:05):
So causing more of a ruckus these days.
It was probably his clearest, clearest distinct straight up pluralism.
Yeah, which is really a little scandalous, especially to come from the Pope, the Vatican and like that space.
So there's been a lot of discourse and questions and comments, concerns, especially when it comes to this concept of like interreligious dialogue.
(02:27):
And what this means for a global society, because I mean, what like statistically, so many people in this world are religious.
Yeah, like a very small percentage. The majority are.
Yeah, so this has a buy-in for most of the people who are currently alive and especially us as Christians who would affirm something very opposite to the statement that Pope Francis has made.
(02:50):
And so we thought it'd be a really good conversation to open up the floor and chat about pluralism and do Muslims and Jews and Christians.
Do we all worship the same God? Is this an all roads lead to Rome moment?
And are we worshiping God?
But also so are all these other religions and what does that mean and what does the Bible say?
So I think it definitely is an answer to violence, religious violence is like, hey, if we all worship the same God, we just kind of see it.
(03:18):
Then we should be peaceful towards each other. Right.
But at the same time, it seems to go directly against some of the words that Jesus said and that the Bible affirms that historically we've held as Christians.
And not just us, the same exclusive claims that Jews and Muslims hold. Yeah.
They're not comfortable with this either.
Yeah, no, like there's not really, it's not like the Pope saying this, then Christians are like nice and Jews are like nice and Muslims are like nice.
(03:42):
Yeah, you're right. You're right.
That's awesome. Thanks for saying that.
Yeah.
No, I think everyone in their own religious circles is probably a teeny bit up in arms about this comment.
Yeah.
And have you heard, did you remember that Wheaton College professor getting axed in 2015?
I had, I heard a little bit about this, but tell, tell me, refresh me and tell the people.
(04:03):
So this is kind of, well, she didn't get axed per se, but like,
Per se.
In December of 2015, Larissa Hawkins, she was a tenured political science professor at Wheaton.
And she posted on social media, she was wearing a hijab during Advent because she wanted to show solidarity with Muslims.
Yeah.
Because she saw that they were increased discrimination in the US.
(04:24):
And she said on her Facebook post that Christians and Muslims worship the same God and she actually evoked Pope Francis.
Like, because she was like, Pope Francis just said this last week.
And so, um, and so Wheaton College is just kind of like a very, you know, rigorous and famous, very strong evangelical school.
Yeah.
And so they put her on administrative leave and it just tried to figure out what was going on.
(04:48):
They clarified that this was not because she wore hijab, but because of her theological statements regarding the nature of God.
Right.
That if this is the same God, like that's why.
Super important distinction.
Exactly.
And so, but in February 2016, the college and Hawkins reached a mutual agreement and they parted ways.
And they actually did a joint release statement acknowledging that they found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation.
(05:13):
I guess it's somewhat of a happy ending, but this, this woman did lose her job over it, you know, fundamentally.
Yeah.
And so it's something that is, has like real world implications because it is as simple as pluralism.
You could view legitimately as heresy.
Oh, yeah.
Someone finding salvation some other way outside of Christ.
(05:35):
Right.
So this isn't a universalism that could potentially not be heretical.
This is like.
Which we chatted about.
We've chatted about last season with the inclusivism thing.
Right.
Even though I still don't agree with universalism, it could potentially not be heresy.
But pluralism is typically seen as heresy because you have other ways of salvation besides Jesus.
(05:56):
Yeah.
And that's like.
That goes kind of against the whole point.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, but Muhammad didn't die on the cross.
Yo.
Yo.
Jesus did.
Yeah.
Right.
And so like there's.
And then we believe that Jesus was the one to do it.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So there's this claim of exclusivity that like most Christians definitely hold.
Absolutely.
But especially even Jealous Pentecostals and like we totally affirm that this exclusivity.
(06:21):
We want to be generous and gracious and know that the spirit is working as we've talked about
earlier in this season two.
The spirit is at work beckoning us.
But that's kind of like a pervenient grace, you know.
But fundamentally, fundamentally it is our faith in the Lordship of Jesus Christ that saves us.
That's that's what it is.
Jesus is the one who died on the cross and we have to like straight up affirm that.
(06:43):
And so this is a big issue because it's a global issue.
So I think to start with this, let's talk about like how are the so-called Abrahamic religions
connected?
Right.
And this is Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
How are they connected?
So first off, something that a lot of times surprised people, but Islam is 600 years younger
(07:07):
than Christianity.
Yeah.
I mean, we know this, but it seems more ancient.
I think because of the way it's culturally expressed.
I feel like sometimes culturally, like stuff from like Asian countries, the Middle East,
like feels really old.
Yeah.
Like and it is Islam is no for sure, but it feels like Christianity is so contemporary
contemporary.
A lot of ways.
Yeah.
Or it's become like weirdly Western in some ways that it feels like it's not as
(07:31):
Yeah.
Totally old as it is.
Not as ancient, but it is.
It's more ancient.
It's over 2000 years.
It's ancient ish.
It's more ancientist.
But Islam is the youngest.
It's about 1400 years old.
Christianity is 2000 years old.
And Judaism, depending on where you put the start and date, it might be 5000 years old.
Yeah.
I mean, like, so it's like, it's very, very old, right?
Yeah.
All three of these faith traditions point back to Abraham as a common ancestor.
(07:56):
All of them hold to the Old Testament God as God.
And so this is where it's like, it's the same God, but is it?
But is it?
But they all affirm, you know, the story in Genesis, right?
Yeah.
So Abraham's story is told in Genesis 11 through 25 and Genesis will put him chronologically
(08:17):
around 2000 years before Christ.
He was called out of Ur and the Chaldeans.
And we know the whole, I'm just not going to go through the whole story, but with Sarah,
he fathered Isaac.
Isaac and Rebecca had two sons, Esau and Jacob.
Now we know about this.
Esau's the older son, Jacob is younger and he was little mischievous.
You know what I mean?
Miss Chivas.
(08:38):
Yeah.
Ended up getting to birth right and all that good stuff.
But Jacob had 12 sons and these 12 sons would develop as the 12 tribes of Judah.
Sort of.
Okay.
Sort of.
Sort of.
His 10 sons, mine is Levi, priests, wooden, and haret land.
And then Joseph's sons, Manasseh and Naftali made the other two tribes.
So those make up the 12 tribes, which interestingly is listed a little differently in Revelation,
(09:01):
but we won't get into that right now.
That is unimportant to this beginning conversation, guys.
Look away.
Right, right, right.
This is how Israel kind of starts with their tribes and all that kind of stuff.
And then we have, you know, Moses, which we'll talk about in a second, but like that's really
crucial, but it's kind of the beginning.
But before Isaac, you had another son, Sarah and Abraham.
(09:21):
Abraham couldn't have babies.
Correct.
They were frick old.
Okay.
Oldest frick.
You know what I mean?
Little crusty, little dusty.
That's okay.
Was the calendar years and the way they calculated ages the same as it is now?
Maybe not.
Maybe it is.
I don't know.
But the point is they were oldest frick.
They were very old.
Right.
Yes.
Beyond.
Childbearing years.
Beyond childbearing years.
And she couldn't get pregnant.
(09:42):
And then I know that Abraham was like a promise that he would have a great multitude.
Right.
Yeah.
So they were like, Hey.
Let's take it in our own hands.
I got this.
Oh, so.
Thank God.
And because that always goes well.
Yeah.
You know, anytime we say we got this, that always sends to go really well.
It sure does.
In men's amounts of sarcasm.
But to give Abraham and Sarah a little bit of credit, this was a common practice back then.
(10:04):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of people did not.
It's dramatic for us.
Yeah.
People didn't survive childbirth.
People didn't live very long.
So being barren was a no go.
Being barren was, you know, like they just, they had to find other ways to populate like the world
and to keep their lineages going.
Correct.
And so this was a common practice.
So it's not like affirming this is the morally upright practice, but it is a common practice back then.
(10:25):
Well, so why Sarah suggested it?
Yeah.
Sarah suggested it.
She was like, Hey, have a baby with Hagar.
Hagar, Sarah's servant.
He did.
And they had Ishmael.
And then they would raise him as their own, but Sarah could never like feel right about that.
You know what I mean?
And then God's like, Yo.
What's up with that, y'all?
I said, you and Sarah are going to have a baby.
(10:46):
I'm going to put some effects on that.
So sounds, sounds glorious.
Yeah.
So God was like, Yo, you and Sarah are supposed to have that baby.
Okay.
Wow.
So that's what happened.
And then they did have a baby to have Isaac.
And then Sarah, of course, grew in some jealousy and we don't want to act like Abraham wasn't part of this either.
(11:07):
They decided to kick him out and to bring him east, basically where Abraham came from.
And so they settled somewhere alongside the Arabian Peninsula.
And then they had many, many descendants.
And then God even blessed Hagar, right?
And she said, you're going to have a great multitude coming from your lineage.
Yeah.
Well, Muslims believe that the descendants of Ishmael filled out the Arabian Peninsula.
(11:30):
And that's who would become Muslims.
Yeah.
Now we don't have the lineage starting and stopping because when Muhammad actually started Islam,
like he moved them from a polytheistic faith tradition.
So we don't have like a strict, like we have a bunch of chronologies of like how everybody descended from Isaac in the Bible.
We don't have that gap.
(11:51):
But I mean, I have no reason to disbelieve that, you know what I'm saying?
I could totally see them as descendants of Ishmael.
Yeah, for sure.
And a lot of people do, right?
Yeah.
That's kind of like how they're all connected to Abraham.
Obviously Christianity is believed to be the fulfillment of the law in this new covenant in Jesus Christ.
And so we are continuous with the Old Testament.
And Muslims also have the Old Testament because of the story of Ishmael, right?
(12:16):
So in Jewish history, you have Moses, which is basically where kind of like Israel as a nation starts.
Yes.
After he brings his people out of Egypt, you know, this is all recounted in Exodus.
It's a long story of how they got there, but it was during the famine and stuff like that.
And then, you know, after that, God establishes this people where God is supposed to be this executive.
(12:37):
And then you still had like this legislative branch through the priests and the Levites.
And then you had this judicial branch through the judges, but the judges are supposed to lead, right?
Yeah.
The true leader is God, but then they would lead there.
They clamored for a king and then they had the Golden Age where they had kingdoms,
but this is not what God wanted.
You know, Samuel spoke very strongly against it.
And eventually this kingdom fell.
(12:59):
It was a divided kingdom after Solomon's reign, Rehoboam led United Monarchy until Jeroboam rebelled.
And so Jeroboam took 10 tribes of Israel and Rehoboam took the two tribes of Judah.
So he had a divided kingdom.
And when it's divided, guess what?
It's easily conquered.
You'd conquer one, then you conquered the other.
And so you see a whole bunch of captivity is a whole bunch of Israel being conquered from there on out.
(13:20):
One of the main ones was the Babylonian captivity,
which is where Judaism shifted from a regional religion to a more global one,
because they were kicked out of Israel and they had to like form their new thing.
So this is where they formed synagogues that they could worship in where they started writing down
a whole bunch of their oral tradition that we have still as a scroll today,
because they couldn't actually worship in the temple, stuff like that.
Right. So that's essentially the Jewish history of where they come from and what happened there.
(13:46):
Islam, I'm skipping over Christian history because we kind of assume.
Then we kind of know that.
We know this, right?
If not, I have a really good book for you.
But the little recap is when Rome is in power, they go from a republic to an empire.
And then as they start as an empire, that's when Jesus is born,
like literally during the reign of Caesar Augustus.
(14:08):
And then the Christians start as like a fulfillment of Judaism to get rejected
by Judaism to get rejected by the Romans.
And they have their new sect, their new religious tradition.
They do all their missions work all over the place.
And Christianity explodes in this transcontinental place.
Israel is part of Asia.
And people forget that the Middle East is part of Asia, the continent.
(14:29):
Yeah.
Right.
We always just assume like European, but it's not.
But Rome is transcontinental.
It's lower Europe, it's upper Africa, and it's the Middle East Asian part, right?
And these missionary trips are going everywhere.
And this is the church, the early church, and it's going all over the place and spreading,
persecuted for a while until Constantine comes to power.
And then it becomes the official religion of Rome.
Okay. So that's Christian history.
(14:50):
Very, very, very brief.
Then Islamic history.
Okay.
Muhammad lived between 570 to 632 and he belonged to the Arabic tribe of the Q-Resh.
And he was in Mecca.
He preached to the people and he implored them to abandon their polytheism because in the Arabian
Peninsula, they were generally polytheistic.
And he wanted them to worship one God.
(15:10):
Okay.
So remember this.
This is around 600.
Okay.
600 years after Jesus.
Okay.
Much later.
Although some people converted to Islam, Muhammad and his followers were persecuted
by the Meccan authorities.
And so after 12 years of persecution, Muslims performed what's known as the Hijra,
which is an emigration to the city of Medina in 622.
(15:31):
There, Muhammad established a political and religious authority.
The Meccans and the Muslims fought.
But by 629, Muhammad was victorious.
And by the time of his death at the age of 62, he united all the tribes of Arabia to be Muslim.
Now there's a couple of like two pertinent legends that Muslims will tell.
One of them is this night journey.
(15:53):
And so this is according to the Islamic tradition, Muhammad took a journey during a single night
around the year 621, where Muhammad traveled to Burak, the farthest mosque, where he led
other prophets in prayer.
He ascended to heaven, spoke to God and was given instructions to take back the faithful
regarding prayer.
Oh, all the way up.
Yeah.
And, but this is also where the, the dome of the rock is where the, so the Jewish temple,
(16:16):
if you go to Israel, the Jewish temple where Jesus walked those steps, right now you'll see a mosque.
Oh well.
Set up top of it.
They believe is the holy site.
And so this was like a huge reason for the Crusades and why the Muslims and the Christians
fought each other.
Yeah.
Because they were trying to recapture this holy site and eventually Islam won out this
little area right here.
And so Jews and Muslims have been fighting forever.
(16:38):
And then with the Crusades, Christians were involved in that too.
Yeah.
Another one of his legends is during the last 22 years of Muhammad's life, beginning at the age
of 40, he had revelations from God through the archangel Gabriel.
Gabriel visited him nightly and taught him a whole bunch of stuff about things.
He had his followers memorize his teachings and recite them.
(17:00):
And then after he died though, they wrote him down and this is what the Quran is.
And it's also like Quran literally means recitations.
And so that's what is written down.
That's the main holy book for Islam.
Yeah.
So Islam grew and a century after Muhammad's death, the Islamic empire extended from Spain
in the West to the Indus in the East.
(17:20):
To this day, it's one of the biggest religions in the world.
Yeah.
Now, most Muslims are peaceful.
There's various sectors in it, the Sunnis, the Sufis, the Shiite.
But there is a good amount of them that are like, it's a small minority.
But the terrorist groups that come from this Islamic thing are warring.
(17:40):
You think about the history of Muhammad, they came through war and stuff like that.
Similar to the conquest of even of Israel, how they started.
But dissimilar to the start of Christianity, right?
Like Christians were persecuted.
But it was Constantine in his conquest 300 years later that was similar there.
So that's basically the histories involved there.
(18:01):
Did you know all that?
I'm not a huge, I never did like a...
World religions.
World religions, yeah, like class per se or like never really learned about any of that.
So I, but I find it really interesting.
I actually do find it really, really interesting.
So I think it's a good to have a crash course and like understand.
Because I think even, I can be guilty of this, but like even as Christians,
I think it's important that we know the religions of people that we're talking to or about.
(18:26):
Especially if at some point we ever are like witnessing in like a different religious space.
Like it's just good to know.
Like in the wars and stuff that are happening that are all around us.
Yeah. Like it's just good to know things.
Like there's like, there's never any negatives in just like educating yourself about stuff.
So I think this is good.
Like I just, I think it's really interesting.
Yeah.
How all of these things are.
And I do think it helps because when you're going to understand why we're against pluralism.
(18:52):
Yeah.
I think it's helpful to understand why we think that.
Not just the theological aspects, but like the historical aspects of like, hey team.
Exactly.
These came about in very different ways perhaps.
There's obviously the same Genesis in Abraham.
I want to talk about some of the other similarities.
And then we can like kind of get into that question.
(19:13):
Do they worship the same God?
So number one, along with the Quran and the Hadith, those are holy books for Muslims.
Yes.
Muslims also hold parts of the Bible as holy texts.
And a lot of people don't realize that I think.
Yeah. I actually don't really know all that.
Yeah. So Muslims believe parts of the Bible are from God, but others have been distorted.
(19:35):
And so they reject what they think is a lot of the distorted parts of the Bible.
The Quran was given as a remedy to those distortions.
And it identifies three sets of books from the Bible that are genuine and divine revelations.
There's the Torah, which in Arabic is called the Talrat given to Musa, which is Moses.
(19:58):
Right.
There's the Psalms, which in Arabic is the Zabur given to Daud, which is David.
And then there's the Ingyil, which is the Gospel given to Isa, Jesus.
So that's, I think, extremely unknown.
Oh, yeah.
Is that the Muslims actually hold to the Gospels.
Yeah.
The Gospels.
So people don't really realize that.
(20:18):
No.
Big in Islam is the prophets, right?
So they believe that the prophets are chosen by God to be messengers.
They're human and not divine.
All of their prophets, including Muhammad, are not divine.
They do not believe that they're divine.
Oh, yeah.
They don't have a single one that they believe is incarnate the way that we would believe Jesus was.
Exactly.
They only believe Allah is God and that's it.
(20:39):
And they also don't have the same concept of the Holy Spirit that we do as a personal being.
So the Quran mentions numerous figures considered to be prophets in Islam.
So they include Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.
In fact, they believe Jesus is the greatest prophet apart from Muhammad.
(21:00):
They believe Muhammad came after Jesus as the last prophet, as the seal of the prophets.
But they believe Jesus is the greatest prophet.
Do they hold to the same creation account?
Yeah.
To believe that Adam was, yeah, right.
Yeah, they do.
Word.
And so, and so they think Jesus is the greatest prophet apart from Muhammad.
They believe Jesus was, this is going to be surprising for a lot of people.
(21:20):
They believe he was born of a virgin.
They believe he spoke from the cradle, literally from the cradle.
He said, hello everyone.
It's me.
Jesus boy is like sup.
Sup dog.
In a manger, just like yo.
But this is written in the Quran that like the Quran talks about Jesus and Mary.
And they have like this whole Mariology in the Quran.
(21:42):
Mariology.
Come on somebody.
However, they do not believe he was crucified, but he was taken up and the likeness was given
to another man, which is similar to what the Gnostics held.
Wazers.
Right.
So, so he was like, it was like a.
Do they believe in ascension the same way that like theoretically like Elisha ascended?
Yes.
That's what they think happened with Jesus.
And then they just made in a guy look like him.
(22:04):
Yeah.
Or just represent.
You know, one of the Gnostics, I'm not sure if they tie it to him specific,
but one of the Gnostic Gospels said it was, it was actually Joseph of Eremythea on the cross.
Oh, the guy who gave him the.
Yeah.
One of the Gnostic Gospels says that.
Interesting.
That it was an illusion cast over them.
Oh, so that he was, he did look like Jesus.
Yeah.
Or something like that.
That's what one of the Gnostic Gospels say.
(22:24):
And I'm not sure if they hold to that per se, but they believe that he did.
That it was representative.
Yeah.
And not a little.
It was the likeness given to another man.
Okay.
Interesting.
They did say that.
And so that that is like the Gnostics.
Another thing that's super interesting.
Jesus, not Muhammad will usher in the day of judgment.
Jesus is the last judge also for Muslims.
(22:45):
Yeah.
They believe Jesus is going to come back and judge everybody.
Do they hold to a different, like they don't hold the revelation though.
They hold to like kind of versions of it, but not like full on.
Not like the way they do the Gospels.
They'll think it's like perverted, like a perverted, you know, like a witness or whatever.
Okay.
And so the Quran talks a lot more about the Virgin Mary than the Bible does,
which is also interesting.
And so again, Muhammad is the seal of the prophets and he was sent to convey divine message to the
(23:08):
world and to sum up and finalize the word.
And this is why also they rejected some of the things that they thought were perverted
in the scriptures and they accepted the things that they were right.
Interesting.
Very interesting, right?
Right off the bat.
People, you know, Christians a lot of times are very, very pro-Israel.
And for political reasons, because of biblical reasons too, where they think like
(23:28):
Israel plays an important part in their eschatology and you know, they're God's chosen people.
Like this says the right, you know, in the Bible.
So there's reasons for that.
But sometimes in that, they'll like assume certain things.
Islam actually has a more positive view of Jesus than Jews do.
Jews think Jesus was a like a false prophet.
(23:49):
Yeah.
They think he was actually wrong.
A liar.
Muslims believe he was a great prophet, the greatest after Muhammad.
Both are wrong because we believe that Jesus is God incarnate, God himself made flesh, right?
But that's something that I think is surprising to a lot of people.
So like witnessing to Jews, you have to prove that Jesus was the promised Messiah,
(24:10):
as opposed to a heretic liar, right?
Yeah.
Witnessing to Muslims, you have to prove that Jesus wasn't just a great prophet,
but he was actually the incarnate son, like the savior.
So it's a different approach that you're doing.
Yeah.
I also do think that when you only assume that like there's nobody possibly at all in like
any conflict against Israel, that people aren't in there that also hold the same belief of you,
(24:35):
that you do or positively affirm a lot of aspects of scripture.
Right.
It becomes a very us them, which is what we're super against.
We're very against that.
In any format and have spoken out in so many different contexts.
Exactly.
I think the us them mentality kills us more often than anything else.
Yes.
So yeah.
But then we think about like historically what's happened.
We had 9-11, you know, we've had so many terrorist attacks by Islamic extremist groups.
(25:00):
You don't see Jewish extremist groups attacking people.
Correct.
Terrorist Muslim groups coming to power, taking over certain regions and places
like that.
So what you see with ISIS and al Qaeda and different various, all those are deemed already
like globally as terrorist groups and they come and they're coming to power.
Right.
That's what the war in Gaza is literally all about.
(25:23):
Right.
Hamas has been deemed a terrorist group.
And they were this terrorist group that came to power.
So not everybody in their population like supports them or likes them.
But the problem, one of the problems is some Muslims do.
So some Muslims are not violent yet they support these factions that are considered
terrorists.
But then many of them are peaceful.
So it's a very, very difficult situation.
(25:44):
But one thing we can't do is just assume Muslims are terrorists or anything like that.
Generizations are really harmful.
It is a small number that are actually terrorists.
But what is the support of these terrorist groups?
That number is bigger, but still in the minority.
Correct.
Okay.
Now we come back to our question.
Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God if they're all rooted in the Old Testament?
(26:08):
They all hold the Genesis.
Yeah.
They all mess heavy with the Torah.
They do.
They do.
They're like that rocks.
Yeah.
They're like Genesis, they're Deuteronomy rocks in every religion.
They got it.
They got it.
Then it fell apart from it.
So I think, you know, the main question here is can you reject Jesus Christ as the Son
(26:28):
and then truly know God the Father?
That's the real question.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
If you think about this, Albert Moller, who's this, he's a conservative evangelical theologian,
he says, and it's Christ himself who answered that question, most classically in the Gospel of John,
and he said that to reject the Son means that one does not know the Father.
(26:49):
This is John 5.23.
It says that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.
Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
Mm-hmm.
And John 15.23 says, whoever hates me hates my Father as well.
There's other passages I am and the Father are one.
Colossians 1.15 says the Son is the image of the invisible God.
(27:10):
Right?
Mm-hmm.
And so the Christian belief of God as triune makes to claim that this is the same God impossible.
I think.
I would agree.
Because I mean like, okay, so it's Genesis.
You got that right.
Mm-hmm.
But then you're saying when God became flesh in order to save us, you're saying that this isn't God.
Yeah.
The Trinity is what complicates this.
(27:31):
Right?
Yeah.
Because fundamentally, Jews do not believe the Messiah has come.
No, they don't.
And we believe He has come and He is God.
Yes.
And Muslims don't believe a Messiah has come.
They believe in something different.
It's like totally different there.
Yeah.
So to me, that can't be the same God, right?
Right.
Well, you can't really believe, yeah, you can't believe the same God and then actively reject Jesus.
(27:58):
Right.
Like that's kind of what all of those, I mean, stated in like every single one of those scriptures.
Jesus himself being the one to.
To say it.
To say it.
And in Paul too, you know, in Colossians.
Like there's been a lot of it just straight up said in that way, which is why I think it makes pluralism as an argument.
Just wrong.
Yeah.
But second of all, just like really, really difficult to say something like, yeah, we believe that God is the same God.
(28:21):
Is the same.
But then.
But then we reject Jesus.
We reject Jesus.
Who's the actual savior, right?
Yeah.
Who's the way that we get to God.
Yeah.
So if you're rejecting the connection between you and God.
But he's also just not a prophet that somehow made salvation possible.
Correct.
It's because God became flesh.
That we were able to even have access to salvation at all.
(28:42):
Exactly.
Correct.
So, and so this is something that like, I think is an exclusive claim that we can't get away from.
Now we can say like we've said.
One of those primary belief moments.
It is.
I mean, it's Orthodox Christianity.
And as soon as we start getting away from that, I think we get into actual heresy territory.
Yeah.
We can say that the spirit is beckoning us.
The spirit is at work at places trying to reveal Christ.
(29:04):
But the point is he's revealing Christ.
He's not revealing Muhammad.
He's not revealing Vishnu or Buddha or something like that.
He's revealing Christ.
Right.
C.S. Lewis has a really important saying in, uh, mere Christianity.
Have you read mere Christianity?
I've not, but I've heard obviously C.S. Lewis.
Super duper recommend that.
That's, that's the book that made me want to become a theologian.
I read that when I was 14.
(29:24):
That's what you're like, oh, yep, that's it.
I'm in it now.
Yeah.
And he said, he said, a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said
would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg
or else he would be the devil of hell.
You must make your choice.
Either this man was and is the son of God or else a madman or something.
(29:48):
Something worse.
Yeah.
And so based on these claims that Jesus made about himself,
he's either a liar knowingly deceiving people, a lunatic.
He falsely believes that he was God or Lord.
He is who he says he was.
He truly is who he claims to be.
And so the thing is, Jews said he was a liar.
(30:09):
Muslims say he's a lunatic essentially.
Yeah.
Because how can he say what he said and be a prophet?
Right.
Well, they reinterpret it through the Quran.
Right?
Yeah.
But like, but the words he's saying can't be right.
Right.
Christians say he's Lord.
Right.
And so this is kind of where we're at here.
And you know, you want to be gracious.
You want to be loving.
(30:29):
You want to be kind.
That's the disposition we always take everywhere.
But like, I'm sorry, man, you can't be messing with my Jesus now.
But on the real talk, on the real talk, we wouldn't be doing you a service.
Like we wouldn't be doing anybody a service if we got wishy washy when it mattered.
Yep.
Because when it matters, if we let, if we're kind of those people are like,
well, all roads lead to Rome, then we are willingly allowing people to walk head first into hell.
(30:53):
Yeah.
And so look, I think the Pope is a really nice loving guy.
I think he's done so much good stuff in the world, but I think he's flat wrong.
Oh.
Flat wrong.
The flattest.
And I don't know what else to say about that.
Like that's, you know, y'all can't mess with my Jesus now.
No.
It's one of those, but we talked about this so early on about like primary belief,
(31:13):
secondary belief.
It's primary.
This is primary.
You either believe that Jesus was the son of God.
He is the savior.
He is our point of salvation or you don't.
Christians believe salvation.
You are saved if in your proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Correct.
Not just saying, oh, I believe it's true.
No.
Or I believe God.
Or I believe God.
Or I believe in God or just a creator or whatever.
(31:35):
No, you're saying Jesus is your Lord.
Correct.
Because he's God incarnate.
That's why he's your Lord.
Yes.
I mean, that's it.
That's right.
I don't know what else to say there.
Which is why we got to be like-
Got to draw a line.
Got to draw a line.
Yes.
Like there are a lot of conversations we've had on this podcast where there are tertiary beliefs.
Where these are conversations where we're-
Where there's various views and we're like, oh, this could be strong.
(31:55):
This could be strong.
We get it, whatever.
Or like social stuff where it's like, yeah, we believe this,
but here's how to be a better human being when we're having these conversations about it.
Right.
Right.
But this is not that.
Nope.
This episode is a line draw for us because we're like, no, man.
Like, no, you can't.
You can't.
You cannot hold the pluralistic belief.
Don't mess with my Jesus now.
Don't you mess with my Jesus.
This is continuing to fall into our metaphorical line of merge.
(32:16):
Don't you mess with my Jesus.
Jesus tell you what.
Well, you have the lunatic thing.
It's like if somebody now showed up and anytime that somebody shows up and claims that they're Christ,
we're like, oh, cult leader.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Crazy person.
Like-
And some people were saying that about Jesus, but then it was proven true through his miracles,
through his teachings and through fundamentally the resurrection, right?
(32:37):
That part.
That's the big one.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
But yeah.
Rigger, rubber, right.
Man.
Yeah, you can't.
Sorry, y'all.
Y'all can't mess with my Jesus now.
Sorry, team.
But I think that's it.
I think it's kind of sick.
I mean, it's kind of like a dead stop right there.
I mean, we said the T on that one.
That's it.
Don't mess with my Jesus.
So we try to give some explanation of what the views are and why someone would hold it.
(32:59):
And we were fair, I think, in addressing it, but then we were just like, but here's the line.
Well, because it's good to know why people believe things.
It's good to know where pluralists are coming from because arguing when you're only
educated on one side is pointless and dumb.
Because it's like, yeah, you can be right.
But if you don't understand where they're coming from, then you might as well be not
having this conversation because you can't address or discuss anything that they're coming from.
(33:22):
So it's good to have understanding from both sides.
Unemotional sense.
Look, don't view Muslims as evil.
View them as lost.
And the same as Jews.
This is what's like, I think people are, they're God's chosen people.
They rejected the Messiah, meaning they're lost also.
Y'all, we got to do some missions.
(33:44):
We got to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ.
Got to treat them with love and dignity and respect.
Don't view them as the other.
Don't view them as the enemy.
Also don't view them as particularly special like quasi saved.
They need to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord, period.
Just like anybody else.
There ain't no mints and words about that.
(34:06):
You don't make Jesus your Lord.
You ain't getting up there, yo.
You ain't getting up there, yo.
No, I'm saying.
I do.
And on that note, this episode, like always, was sponsored by the School of Theology and
Ministry at Life Pacific University.
All right, we'll see you next time.
See ya.
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