“Do Muslims worship the same God we Catholics do?” This simple question has generated a big dust-up online recently, with many people entering the fray. Here is my contribution.
While I am not sure what sparked this particular permutation of the recurring kerfuffle, the issue does come to the fore from time to time, largely based upon people taking sides on two sentences from Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, 16:
But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. [Sed propositum salutis et eos amplectitur, qui Creatorem agnoscunt, inter quos imprimis Musulmanos, qui fidem Abrahae se tenere profitentes, nobiscum Deum adorant unicum, misericordem, homines die novissimo iudicaturum.]
(I will not quote it here, but here is a similar but longer text in Nostra Aetate 3.)
Many years ago, I asked my beloved mentor, Brother Francis, about this. His response surprised me. I assumed he would have a problem with the text and say that, because we Catholics adore the Holy Trinity and the Muslims do not, then the text is simply wrong. But he did not; rather, he said that, by virtue of the criteria laid out in Vatican I, the Muslims confess the God of nature, who is knowable by the light of unaided human reason; therefore, though they err in rejecting many points of supernatural revelation, they confess the one, true God. Like Saint Thomas Aquinas (on whom more below), Brother Francis rejected the idea that Muslims have the theological virtue of Faith. This is an enormous distinction that must be fully appreciated to speak intelligently on this issue.
Agreeing with this, a Catholic priest on X pointed out that Pope Saint Gregory VII (no ecumenist!) wrote the following to the Muslim Prince of Mauritania: “Therefore we (Christians) and you (Muslims) owe this love to each other more than to the other peoples, since we believe in and confess one God, though in different ways” (PL 148, 0450D). (For a florilegium of quotations from scholastic theologians on the same subject, go here.)
Indifferentism Is Heresy
There is much more to say on what Brother told me in reply to this specific question and on what he said also about Islam itself, but I will come to that in a minute. Suffice it to say for now that Brother agreed with Saint Peter Mavimenus (and the Catholic Church), that their belief in the Creator is not sufficient to justify or to save the Muslims. They are, just like the rest of us, in need of Jesus Christ and His Church for salvation.
To concede that, philosophically speaking, the Muslims confess the one, true God when they profess faith in the God of Abraham is not to be an indifferentist.
Vatican I and Pascendi
Here are the texts of Vatican I that Brother Francis had in mind. The first is from the Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Catholic Faith, Dei Filius, 2:
The same holy mother church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason: ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. [Rom. 1:20]
This teaching of the decree is reinforced later by Canon 2:
If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.
This canon was quoted verbatim in Pope Saint Pius X’s great anti-modernist encyclical, Pascendi Dominici gregis, under the heading, “Agnosticism its Philosophical Foundation” (paragraph 6). Reading the entirety of that paragraph will give the Catholic eager to understand the issue an insight into Brother Francis’ reply to me decades ago. The text makes this negative judgment of the Modernist as an agnostic philosopher — that is, as one who thinks it impossible to ascend by means of what is perceptible to the senses to a knowledge of the one, true God:
Given these premises, all will readily perceive what becomes of Natural Theology, of the motives of credibility, of external revelation.
In other words, it is impossible for the Modernist — who refuses to connect the dots from tangible creation to the intangible Creator (cf. Rom. 1:20, Wis. 13:1-9) — to carry out “Natural Theology,” which is really a philosophical discipline rooted in right reason prescinding from divine revelation. This is how the Catholic apologist proves the existence of God to the atheist or the agnostic.
This, by the way, gives us an insight into the first of the two sentences in that passage from Lumen Gentium that people fight about: “But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator” (emphasis mine). In pointing out that the Muslims acknowledge the Creator, the Fathers of Vatican II seem to be pointing us back to Vatican I and Pascendi, or at least to the great theological tradition that informed both of those texts: theological unbelievers (see Saint Thomas, below), can have human faith in the Creator. To affirm belief in the God of Abraham, Creator and Lord, is not sufficient to have the theological virtue of Faith, but it is a sort of human faith, or credulitas, as the Magisterium calls it elsewhere.
Don’t Forget Florence
Vatican II does not say that Muslims can be saved in their religion, and, indeed, they cannot be, for this is the subject of positive Church teaching elsewhere, notably, in the Council of Florence’s famous Cantate Domino:
She [“the Holy Roman Church”] firmly believes, professes, and preaches that “none of those who are outside of the Catholic Church, not only pagans,” but also Jews, heretics, and schismatics, can become sharers of eternal life, but they will go into the eternal fire “that was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41] unless, before the end of their life, they are joined to her. And the unity of the Church’s body is of such great importance that the Church’s sacraments are beneficial toward salvation only for those who remain within her, and (only for them) do fasts, almsgiving, and other acts of piety and exercises of Christian discipline bring forth eternal rewards. “No one can be saved, no matter how many alms he has given, and even if he sheds his blood for the name of Christ, unless he remains in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.” [Emphasis mine. Besides the passage from Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the two quoted passages in this paragraph are excerpted from a work of Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe, as noted in Denzinger’s. This text, by the way, is used as a proof of the doctrine of Hell in the Catechism of the Catholic Church!]
There is no question that the word pagans in Cantate Domino was applicable to Muslims, for so it was understood in the fifteenth-century Latin theological lexicon. Therefore, the Muslim’s belief in the God who is knowable to the unaided human reason is not sufficient for his salvation. The same applies to Jews, and to anyone else who is a monotheist but not one of Christ’s faithful. In saner times, this contention was far from controversial.
‘Theological Faith’ versus ‘Belief’
Muslim belief in the one, true God is compatible with what Vatican I said about the testimony of nature and the capacity of unaided human reason. But when Catholic theologians in the seventeenth century were concluding that such a testimony is sufficient for justification, Blessed Pope Innocent XI came out with a decree, dated March 2, 1679, condemning the proposition that “Faith in the broad sense, which is based on the testimony of creatures or on a similar reason, is sufficient for justification.” (Fides late dicta ex testimonio creaturarum similive motivo ad iustificationem sufficit — DH, n. 2123.)
A statement from Dominus Iesus (No. 7) is germane to this subject: “…the distinction between theological faith and belief in the other religions, must be firmly held” (italics in original; Latin: Firmiter ergo tenenda est distinctio inter fidem theologalem et credulitatem quae invenitur in aliis religionibus. Dr. John Joy defends the thesis that this is an infallible definition.) The CDF, in this passage, is telling us that Muslims (inter alia) do not have the theological virtue of Faith — that same faith that the Council of Trent said is the “beginning of human salvation.” That is a significant distinction that the indifferentists tend to gloss over in these discussions, and it supports what I said above about Muslims having a mere “human faith” in God, which Blessed Innocent XI called “faith in the broad sense” (fides late).
Before Dominus Iesus and Blessed Innocent XI, Saint Thomas had said this:
Unbelievers [which, for Saint Thomas included Jews, Muslims, and Christian heretics] cannot be said “to believe in a God” as we understand it in relation to the act of faith. For they do not believe that God exists under the conditions that faith determines; hence they do not truly believe in a God, since, as the Philosopher observes (Metaph. ix, text. 22) “to know simple things defectively is not to know them at all.” (ST, IIa IIae, Q. 2, A. 2, ad 3.)
Note that what Saint Thomas is saying here is that unbelievers, including Muslims, do not have the theological virtue of Faith which is infused by God. He is not saying that they have no “faith in the broad sense” (Innocent) or “belief” (Dominus Iesus) in God. This is the same as saying that they have “human faith,” but not “divine faith.”
An Odd Apologetic
But this concession that Muslims worship the true God does bring the indifferentists out of the woodwork. During the height of this brouhaha, an apologist named Michael Lofton revealed his bizarre opinion that the real question is not whether we worship the same God, but whether Muslims (and other non-Christians) can be saved by what is good in their false religions — to which he responded, heretically, in the affirmative. His contention is that since Lumen Gentium says that the “plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator,” then Muslims are saved as Muslims. But this facile argumentation simply will not do; the “plan of salvation” includes the whole human race, but this does not mean all will be saved. Judas was in the plan of salvation, but Jesus said of him that, “it were better for him, if that man had not been born” (Matt. 26:24). Muslims can and, unlike Judas, sometimes do convert. Mr. Lofton perhaps did not notice that the paragraph of Lumen Gentium he cites ends with these words: “Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature,’ the Church fosters the missions with care and attention.”
A young apologist named Christian B. Wagner replied to Mr. Lofton in a lengthy X thread which is worth a look if you are interested.
Let us put it bluntly: If Muslims do not accept Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity with supernatural (divine and Catholic) faith and receive baptism, they cannot be saved.
Still, Isn’t the Text Problematic?
Getting back to my mentor, Brother Francis taught what all Catholics should frankly acknowledge, namely, that the Muslims deny a fundamental, revealed, and necessary truth about that Creator and Lord they profess to believe in when they deny that God is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Therefore, they do not “adore the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23) with us. This, to my mind, bespeaks the need for an authoritative clarification the text of Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium: Where it says that Muslims, “along with us adore the one and merciful God…,” what does the text mean? Our formal, cultic, latreutic worship of the Holy Trinity is founded not upon Natural Theology, much less upon the false revelation of the Quran, but upon the true revelation of the Man-God and the Blessed Trinity in Holy Scripture and Apostolic Tradition. Indeed, the highest act of latria we offer is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the Man-God and High Priest, Jesus Christ, offering Himself to the Father in the Holy Spirit.
Ain’t Allah Some Heathen God?
This brings me to another point we should make as part of this discussion of “Muslims and the True God.” It is the Arabic word, Allah. Some misinformed commentators speak as though Allah is a heathen God, like Aphrodite or Baal. It used to pain Brother Francis, who was an Arab and spoke the language from his childhood in Lebanon, when Catholics would say this. Before Muhammad started his blasphemy, the Christians of Arabia Felix worshiped Allah, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Allah is what our Melkite and Maronite brothers and sisters (and the Orthodox) call God when they speak Arabic. The Maronites sing a traditional hymn to Our Lady, Ya Oum Allah (“O Mother of God”).
Andrew Bieszad, a Catholic scholar of Islam, points out that,
The name Allah comes from a combination of two Arabic words: Al, meaning “the,” and Ilah, meaning “God.” When combined together, the two are pronounced Allah: “the God.” Allah is, grammatically speaking, the Arabic equivalent of the Greek term ho Theos found in Christian scriptures, and is translated into English as “God.” From a linguistic perspective, then, it is indeed correct to say that Allah means God.
Muslims cannot be saved in their religion. Neither can the members of the third of what are often termed “the great monotheistic religions,” Jews. Again, this would not be considered controversial in the ages of Faith. (See Florence, above!)
What we are here considering is not whether Muslims believe with an act of theological Faith (they do not), but whether the God in whom they put their human faith is the God who created heaven and earth — the God who is knowable by unaided natural reason, and about whom we know more than they do, without any admixture of error, because of supernatural revelation which reaches us by the infused gift of divine Faith.
Islam: A Christian Heresy?
Hilaire Belloc made the argument that Islam is a Christian heresy. (Some twelve centuries earlier, Saint John of Damascus had said the same, calling Islam, “the heresy of the Ishmaelites”). Brother Francis did not agree with Belloc because a heretic — generally, a baptized person, as the Code of Canon Law has it — is a self-professed Christian who denies one or more teachings of the Faith. Technically, of course, Brother Francis was right, but there was a fundamentum in re undergirding Belloc’s claim, and that foundation is that the Muslims do not only believe in the God of nature and reject all revelation, but they have a revelation of their own — a false one, to be sure — but one that claims as holy many of the same persons and places as the true revelation of the Old and New Testaments: Jesus, Mary, Abraham, Saint Gabriel the Archangel, and the city of Jerusalem are among the persons and places considered holy in Islam. Yes, for all that, they deny the Trinity and the Incarnation — two articles of Faith which must be believed explicitly to be justified. There is a history behind Islamic perfidy: Many of the condemned and anathematized heretics of the early centuries of the Church (Gnostic heretics, Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, etc.) found themselves exiled from the Roman Empire in the early days of Christendom. If you were in the Eastern Roman Empire and were thus exiled, you might well end up in Arabia, like the “priests and monks” famously mentioned in Surah 5:82, and it was these non-Chalcedonian Christians encountered by “the Prophet,” along with Arabian Jews, that give him many of his ideas.The existence of this historical perversion of divine revelation is the kernel of truth in Belloc’s claim.
It was Brother Francis who pointed out to me that only the Semitic genius for religion could have made possible the Quran’s theologically perfect denial of the Most Holy Trinity: La yalid wala yulad — “He [Allah, that is God] begets not, nor was He begotten” (Surah 112:3). Semitic genius, and perhaps diabolical pseudo-inspiration.
Of course, if Belloc was right about Islam being a Christian heresy, one could, for similar reasons, develop an argument that modern (post-Christian) Judaism is also a Christian heresy, for the Jews, too, accept some part of authentic revelation while rejecting much of it — indeed, its very point!
The Mission of the Church!
If we love God, we will want Him to be known, loved, and glorified. If we love our fellow men — Muslims, Jews, and everyone else — we will evangelize them. There were great saints who burned with zeal for the evangelization of the Muslims (e.g., Saint Francis of Assisi, Blessed Ramon Llull). This is the mission of the Church!
And speaking of the mission of the Church, a fundamental point of what is called missiology when dealing with the Muslims is that we do not have to prove to them the existence of the one, true God. Muslims are neither atheists nor pantheists (who do not believe in the Creator and Lord), nor agnostics. This is an elementary point, I know, but it brings us back to the kerfuffle that occasioned this piece in the first place. If we do not have to bother with Saint Thomas’ five proofs (or any others) for God’s existence, then can we not say that they worship the one, true God, whose existence Saint Thomas proved by natural reason in the Prima Pars?
I strongly encourage anyone interested in knowing more of what Brother Francis thought of Islam to read and savor his “Seven Meditations on Islam.”
