Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?

Lecture given at the Centre for Muslim Christian Studies by Steven Firmin, D.Phil Candidate, Pembroke College, Oxford

Problems and promises of Miroslav Volf's views from a Reformed Christian Perspective...

Miroslav Volf’s book, Allah: A Christian Response argues that Christians and Muslims believe in and worship the same God, a claim that has generated both praise and scorn at the popular and academic levels. Although he admires Volf’s attempt, Steven argues that his book over-focuses on the immanent concepts of doctrine and practice in answering the same-God question, leaving the place of God’s transcendent action almost entirely untouched. To correct this, Steven draws from the reformed tradition of Christianity stretching through Augustine, Calvin, and Bavink to articulate a relationship between God’s transcendent action and immanent concepts of doctrine and practice. He then situates Islam therein to argue with Bruce McCormack that the same-God thesis is not something Christians should normatively believe, but it is something that they may hope.

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