Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Wheaton College, Larycia Hawkins, and the Question of Whether Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God

The other day, Wheaton College initiated termination proceedings against Larycia Hawkins, the tenured Wheaton political science professor who has been wearing a hijab in solidarity with her Muslim neighbors. She was suspended late last year for social media statements in which she explained her actions. Among other things, she said that Christians and Muslims "worship the same God," and it was for this claim that her employment was jeopardized. According to Wheaton officials, the concern was that this claim is incompatible with the statement of faith that all Wheaton faculty must agree to.

Apparently, the provost was convinced that, indeed, there is a conflict between Wheaton's statement of faith and the view that Christians and Muslims worship the same God--convinced enough to recommend termination. That recommendation must be reviewed by a number of parties before it results in an actual termination, so there may yet be time to salvage the situation.

I say "salvage" the situation because--unless there is something that both Wheaton and Hawkins are keeping secret--it seems puzzling at best, and marginally crazy at worst, to say that there is a conflict between Wheaton's statement of faith and Hawkins' claim.

Certainly, there is no direct contradiction. Troll through Wheaton's statement of faith all day, and you will not find the claim that Christians and Muslims worship different Gods. It's just not there. Wheaton officials will surely concede as much. What they'll likely say is that there is an implicit contradiction. In other words, what they're saying is that if you accept Wheaton's statement of faith in all its parts, an unstated implication of that acceptance is that Christians and Muslims worship different Gods.

But this is almost as indefensible as claiming there is a direct contradiction. Now, there is something that follows immediately from the understanding of God spelled out in Wheaton's statement of faith, and which has implications for the relationship between Christianity and Islam. What follows is this: Christians and Muslims have very different beliefs about God, including some that are about God's essential nature.

Among other things, Christians believe that God is essentially triune, whereas Muslims reject this.

But to get from this (rather obvious) fact to the conclusion that Christians and Muslims worship a different God, you need to add some premises about the nature of linguistic reference. That is, you need to delve into the philosophy of language. To put it simply, if you adopt a fairly standard view about the nature of linguistic reference--one that was laid out quite beautifully by Edward Feser in a post at the end of December--you get the conclusion that despite the very important differences in belief about God, Christians and Muslims are referring to the same individual being when they speak of God. To get the contradiction that Wheaton administrators claim is there, it seems you'd need to deny this fairly standard view about the nature of linguistic reference.

I don't want to rehearse here all the details of Feser's essay, but let me offer the following simple argument just to clarify the thinking involved: There is one supreme being, creator and sustainer of all reality. This is God. Muslims devote their lives to the worship of this being--and they have a bunch of beliefs about what this being is like. Christians devote their lives to the worship of this being--and have some very different beliefs about what this being is like. But insofar as both direct their worship to that being who is the supreme source of everything else, they direct their worship towards the same entity, even if they disagree in important ways about the nature of that entity. In short, when they speak of God and worship God, they are orienting their talk and their praise towards the same entity, even if they have different beliefs about what that entity is like.

This line of argument is fairly easy to understand, I think, and it is premised on certain views about the nature of language and reference. Put simply, the referent of "God" becomes fixed by certain key elements that establish a shared referent in the face of disagreement about what the object under discussion is like. Central to this view about the nature of language is a distinction between the "sense" of a term (the conceptual ideas we attach to it) and its "referent" (what actual entity or entities the term points to). To say that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, it is sufficient that they have the same referent for "God"--that is, they are pointing in the same direction, even if they have divergent ideas about what the being they're pointing at is like.

And lest anyone think that disagreements about what is essential undercut a shared reference, consider the following example. Suppose I have two students who are doing an independent study with me. The first is a fairly typical college student (let's call her Mary), but the second (Martha) suffers from a delusional disorder that leads her to believe that I am an alien from another world--a Vulcan, let's say. She has a number of other strange beliefs that go along with this--for example, that I underwent ear surgery to remove my pointy ears and that I pluck my eyebrows every morning to obscure their upward sweep.

Now, being human is certainly essential to who I am. But when Mary and Martha are talking about me, are they referring to the same individual? Of course. When Martha says, "He's an alien" and Mary says, "No he's not," they're disagreeing with each other--and the only way they can disagree with each other is if they are talking about the same individual. Furthermore, when they sit in my office for the independent study, aren't they studying under the same professor? Aren't they talking to the same professor when they ask him questions? Aren't they submitting assignments to the same professor? If Martha turned in a final paper, would I be justified in giving her a zero because she hadn't turned it in to me, since "she thought she was submitting it to an alien, and I'm not an alien"?

You get the idea. Given a fairly standard philosophy of language, it is possible to have very different beliefs about an individual--even differences about what is essential--and still be referring to the same individual. You'd need a pretty unconventional philosophy of language to avoid this outcome.

In short, to derive a contradiction between what Hawkins said and the statement of faith she is required to endorse, you need to deny the fairly standard philosophy of language claims explained by Feser in favor of some alternative (and less standard) philosophy of language. There is no reason to suppose that Hawkins endorses this non-standard philosophy of language. In fact, her remarks explaining her views all but imply that she endorses the standard view described by Feser. (Consider the following statement: "In no way did I make a moral equivalency between Jesus and Muhammad or Islam and Christianity. That would be offensive to my Muslim friends and to my Christian friends to pretend that the religions are the same, that they're not different, either in practice or theology.")

Now, were a non-standard philosophy of language part of Wheaton's statement of faith, such that all Wheaton faculty are required to endorse this non-standard philosophy of language as part of their employment agreement, then there would be a problem for Hawkins. But I invite you to read through Wheaton's statement of faith carefully. Is a distinctive philosophy of language that rejects standard ideas about reference clearly laid out as an article of faith that Wheaton faculty must endorse? No? Then Hawkins needn't endorse any such thing in order to be in line with the statement of faith. So, she is free to adopt the standard view--which it seems she does. And when you combine the standard view with Wheaton's statement of faith, guess what? Hawkins' claim about Muslims and Christians worshiping the same God is wholly consistent with standing by that statement of faith.

In other words, Wheaton officials are flat out wrong if they assert that there is a conflict between what Hawkins said and what Wheaton's statement of faith requires Hawkins to endorse. Let me say that again: they are flat-out wrong. This is not some matter of opinion where there is no clear answer. It is a matter of logic. And they are wrong about the logic.

 To avoid an error of logic, they might say the following: "There is a conflict between Wheaton's statement of faith and the conjunction of Hawkins' claim with an unconventional philosophy of language that we have no reason to suppose Hawkins endorses." But saying this does not get them very far. It certainly does not warrant termination proceedings.

Let me summarize as plainly as I can. Whether there is a conflict between a complex statement of faith and a few social media remarks is a question of logical consistency. In the case at hand, there is no direct conflict. To get such a conflict, you need to combine the statement of faith and Hawkins' remarks with certain additional claims about linguistic reference--philosophical claims about the nature of language that Wheaton (wisely) does not require its faculty to endorse, and which there is no good reason to think Hawkins endorses.

Hence, as a matter of logic, there is no good reason to suppose that Hawkins' remarks commit her to standing against Wheaton's statement of faith. Said another way, there is absolutely no good reason to think, based on Hawkins' social media comments about Muslims and Christians, that Hawkins was in any way questioning or rethinking her allegiance to Wheaton's statement of faith. But surely termination proceedings of the sort Wheaton's provost has initiated call for good reasons.

Admittedly, it takes some clear thinking to see this point. And not everyone thinks clearly all the time. I saw a cartoon recently in which the author tried to argue that it was obvious that Christians and Muslims don't worship the same God. But the whole thrust of the argument was that Christians believe different things about God than Muslims do--including several things that are essential (especially the Doctrine of the Trinity). It is worth noting that no one takes these considerations as sufficient to show that Christians and contemporary Jews worship different Gods--but that point aside, it should be clear from what I have said above that the cartoon's author, like Wheaton's leadership, are conflating two distinct claims:

Claim 1: Muslims and Christians believe very different things about the God they worship (as well as some very similar things, too, of course).

Claim 2: Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God.

An argument that establishes Claim 1 does not establish Claim 2. And to get from Claim 1 to Claim 2, you need to introduce additional premises--premises that Hawkins doesn't seem to endorse and isn't required to endorse by her allegiance to Wheaton's statement of faith.

Put simply, Wheaton's leaders (and our cartoonist) are confused. They take there to be a conflict because they are either conflating Claim 1 with Claim 2 or because they think the inference from Claim 1 to Claim 2 is straightforward and uncontroversial, which it is not.

Hence, if Hawkins' public statements about Christianity and Islam really are the basis for the termination proceedings that have begun, the proceedings have been initiated for very bad reasons indeed. But something as serious as initiating termination proceedings for a tenured professor must be rooted in good reasons. Because of this, I hope for more than just that the proceedings end up with a "not guilty" verdict and Hawkins getting to keep her job. What I hope for--at least if Wheaton's reasons for moving ahead with termination proceedings are what they appear to be--is that Wheaton suspends the proceedings as soon as possible and extends to Hawkins a sincere apology.

My reasons for thinking this are implicit in what I've already said, I think. But let me spell it out. As noted above, what Hawkins said would be in conflict with Wheaton's statement of faith only when combined with a controversial set of views about the nature of linguistic reference that Hawkins almost certainly does not hold. It violates the principle of charity to attribute to someone views they almost certainly don't hold in order to fabricate a problem that wouldn't exist absent such an attribution. And it violates basic decency to try to fire someone from their job based on such fabricated problems.

To permit that sort of thing is to open the door to witch hunts. As soon as we allow bad reasons to justify suspensions and termination hearings, we are setting a precedent by which anyone can be subjected to termination hearings based on tenuous grounds. When you open the door to witch hunts, the witch hunters rub their hands together with glee. Accusations begin to fly, and the community becomes infected by paranoia. The spirit of charity and love that is supposed to be the hallmark of a Christian community is lost as members of that community become increasingly motivated by the fear of being kicked out for trivial reasons and trumped-up charges. They begin pointing fingers at others in the hope of deflecting attention from themselves.

It is for the sake of preserving Wheaton's community from the specter of witch hunts that I believe the administration should quickly rescind their actions, admit they made a mistake, and ask Hawkins for forgiveness.

I suspect she'll give it. After all, every sign indicates that she is a Christian, and that's what Christians do.

35 comments:

  1. Hi, Eric-

    Absolutely correct. Yet... there is a long history in theology of there being other gods in competition with my group's god. Indeed, going into the depths of time, gods seem to have arisen from a tribe's ancestors, so each tribe had its own god(s), a tradition that carried on in antiquity with each city having its own god. So the psychology of my group worshipping my god, and the other group worshipping its other god, is very entrenched and human.

    Then there is the issue of where to draw the line, and what the common basis is. If I understand my universal no-god-but-my-god as significantly different from your universal god-triune-deity-creator, they may not after all be the same god. They may be different gods. Your argument depends on their being an actual god, which is the monotheistic common denominator, a god which is mistakenly conceived of by each group to some extent. But if there is no such god in reality, then worshipping variously styled monotheisitic deities actually corresponds to worshipping different things- differing and exclusive conceptions, which may have no common denominator or existence. They may even be violently opposed to each other, meme-istically speaking.

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    1. Burk: You're right that if there is no God, then there is no existing entity to serve as the shared referent. Depending on how you work out the philosophy of language with respect to fictional entities, you could conclude that "God" had no referent but only a sense, and that the different senses attached by Muslims and Christians entails different Gods.

      Hence, Wheaton administrators could defend their position by denying the existence of God. But, of course, then they'd be *directly* contradicting Wheaton's statement of faith and should initiate termination procedures against themselves.

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  2. Okay, I agree with Dr. Hawkins professionally and personally, and I like your defense because it's far more thorough than similar suggestions from Mike Rea; but there's something implicit in this argument that is not logically necessary, and I want to bring that out.

    The logic of the opposition need not rely on a convoluted notion of reference. However, it does rely on the assertion of absolute monotheism—"there is only one deity"—actually being shorthand for an apologetic claim against other religions and their deities. It relies, that is, on making polemically overreaching claims about the nature of reality, without warrant, in order to exclude the possibility of competition from actual competitors.

    Your position relies on absolute monotheism being the basic observation, upon which we have each built our potentially faulty observations about its character. But absolute monotheism, as part of the category of theism itself, has always been a philosophical abstraction, and not a basic evidentiary claim. The evidentiary basis has always been predicated upon particulars that differ, and from those variously-grounded perspectives it has always been a contentious move to abstract away what each group deems to be relevant differences in order to forge unity.

    The claim at issue is not, therefore, that we believe in the god who created everything, and as far as we can tell that god is thus-and-so. It is that we believe in the god that is thus-and-so, who is the only rightful claimant to the title of "the god who created everything." The claims of others to gods who are not this one we accurately describe are therefore null and void.

    So it's not a conflict over description of an obvious unity; you have to actually prove that unity exists. Which is the problem at issue. And for a group whose traditional acceptance of Jews is predicated upon their false beliefs about the same God, and so upon their future eschatological annihilation in "our" favor, shoehorning our Muslim brothers and sisters in is a bridge too far. The Evangelical Right is willing to use Jews as "friends," but they are only willing to use Muslims as enemies. They don't even do ecumenism, outside the limited scope of traditions that have suitably conservative factions. The logical basis is orthodoxy first, because orthodoxy is objective reality; it is not, and has never been, reality first and then orthodoxy as determined by conformity to an outside object.

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    1. All of which is to say: the direct conflict with the doctrinal statement is the fact that it might only be relative truth, only true in a way, only true from a certain point of view. Unless you recognize that the other, Christian or not, is wrong when they differ from it, you will sooner or later come to differ with this statement. Scrupling may hide that difference, but it's naive to think that Wheaton should have to accept a faculty member who refuses to scruple, when they've bounced far more prima-facie-conformant faculty for entertaining the possibility that others might be right within Christendom.

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  4. I agree that the claim that Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God does not self-evidently follow from Wheaton's Statement of Faith although I would add that such a statement needs to be read in context which in this case includes the history of dealing with this question at Wheaton, e.g. the withdrawal of Wheaton's leadership's support for the Common Word statement in 2008. I do not know enough about this history to judge how clear it should have been that the assertion that Muslims and Christians worship the same God departs from the leadership's understanding of Wheaton's Statement of Faith.

    As far as the actual question is concerned, it is astonishing to see how many commenters believe that this is a case of simple logic, without realising that the disagreement lies in the premises more than the logic. It should be obvious to anyone able to give this a moment's thought that using the same designation (God/Allah) does not guarantee identity and that believing different things about someone does not necessitate that the referents are different.

    It is therefore good to see the role of "certain views about the nature of language and reference" acknowledged here although the critical point seems to me still overlooked. To my mind, the disagreement centres around the question how we fix the referent of "God". This post seems to assume that there is only one correct way of doing so: "There is one supreme being, creator and sustainer of all reality. This is God."

    Is this definition of "God" self-evident? Can we confidently say that Abraham knowingly worshipped the "one supreme being, creator and sustainer of all reality" (but not "the Trinity")? If not, do Muslims and Christians worship the same God as Abraham?

    The discussion should really develop along the lines of explaining why this "philosophical" (using the term as a short hand) starting point is to be preferred to a "theological" starting point(God is, in one sense, one and, in another sense, three and both ultimately so, rather than essentially one and accidentally three) or a "historical" one (God is the one who revealed himself to Abraham, who led Israel out of Egypt, who raised Jesus from the dead...).

    In other words, it is clear that once we are in a position to point to someone/something unambiguously, we can affirm the same referent even if we offer conflicting descriptions. The question is what ensures that the pointing is unambiguously to the same referent? (I am hoping to read a little more David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God which seems to get closer to tackling the question than most.)

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    1. I should note that the argument sketched out above for the conclusion that Muslims and Christians worship the same God is not intended to be a proof of this conclusion but an example of a certain reasonable pattern of thinking which relies on certain reasonable assumptions about philosophy of language and how the referent of "God" is fixed.

      My aim in the essay is not to show that Christians can't disagree about this but rather that there is nothing in Wheaton's statement of faith that precludes this reasonable line of thinking--and hence no conflict between what Professor Hawkins said and that statement of faith. Does the Wheaton administration really want to make the rejection of this plausible argument a condition for employment at Wheaton? Should doctrinal tests really extend to the endorsement of specific contestable philosophical/theological arguments over others?

      Such a move would stifle intellectual freedom far beyond the bounds of what commitment to evangelical faith demands. It would not merely create a witch-hunt atmosphere (when *else* will taking a reasonable stand on a philosophical argument, consistent with Wheaton's statement of faith, put one's career at risk?) but will compromise Wheaton's academic credibility.

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  5. I applaud Larycia Hawkins, whose act of solidarity with peaceful Muslims is a profound example for all of us, especially we Christians in this case. Conservative Christians, do all the quibbling and hair splitting you want, but she shines as an example of authentic Christian love. Most certainly she is a light set upon a hill. How are all of our own lights shining?!

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    1. I agree. I find her a model of Christian charity and inclusive love at a time when our Muslim neighbors are especially in need of these things. Which is why Wheaton's response is so vexing. It is certainly possible for someone who is virtuous and admirable in many ways to make a choice inconsistent with continued employment at an institution. But when a choice that doesn't fit this description is treated as if it does, the fact that the person targeted for erroneous termination is a model of Christian love makes the error far more egregious.

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  6. I wonder if some conservative evangelicals would claim that Muslims are not worshipping God (as they understand God), but instead are mistakenly worshipping some sort of demonic power. In that case it would be a different referent.

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    1. Yes--if one held that the referent of "God/Allah" for Muslims was a demonic power, then one would be committed to the conclusion that they do not mean by "God" what Christians mean. But it would take a lot of doing to prove that the referent of "God" for Muslims is a demonic power. That argument would surely turn on several controversial premises which do not appear in Wheaton's statement of faith and so are not premises that faculty at Wheaton must accept in order to be in harmony with that statement (some of those premises would have to be premises about Islam and its teachings--and, last I checked, the Wheaton statement of faith includes nothing about what Wheaton community members must believe concerning what Islam teaches). Hence, it seems to me quite plain that someone could disagree with this view about the object of Muslim worship without in any way coming afoul of Wheaton's faith statement.

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    2. Agreed! Good point. Anyway you slice it it's pretty ridiculous what they are trying to do to that professor. I think Fred Clark pretty much nails it here when he picks up Volf's thoughts on the matter: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/12/28/do-white-evangelicals-and-jews-worship-the-same-god/

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  7. Good grief Eric - the Apostle Paul isn't even confident that the Christians at Corinth all have the same Jesus (see II Cor. 11). I think you are going about this in completely the wrong way.

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    1. Good grief, Nathan! I can see how II Corinthians 11 *might* be read that way, but it's hardly an uncontestable reading. At the very least, it should be clear that if we look at Wheaton's statement of faith, nowhere does it say, "Affirm Nathan's reading of II Corinthians 11" (or the equivalent).

      But even if your reading of Paul here is accurate and Wheaton insists that all its faculty adopt this reading, it would be a far cry from that to the conclusion that Hawkins is in conflict with the statement of faith when she asserts that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. You'd need more premises--none of which are in Wheaton's statement of faith--to get to that conclusion.

      Keep in mind that I'm not here arguing that all Christians *must* agree that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, but that it is a reasonable position to hold, one that does not require denying any of the articles of faith laid out in Wheaton's statement. Rather, it simply requires adopting a certain fairly standard theory of reference and applying it in a plausible way.

      This point is consistent with the continued existence of controversy among Christians. My claim is that Christians who disagree about this can do so while still ascribing to the kinds of doctrinal commitments laid out in Wheaton's statement of faith. Making this point is sufficient to reach the conclusion that Wheaton is wrong to threaten Hawkins' job on this basis--and making this point does not require proving that Muslims and Christians in fact worship the same God or decisively undermining all Christian arguments to the contrary. All it requires is to note that the opposing arguments turn on disagreements that are about matters other than the articles of faith laid out in Wheaton's statement.

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    2. Eric,

      How do you interpret II Cor. 11 then? No, I think Wheaton has made a very good and fair decision. Looking at the contempt that Hawkins shows for Wheaton's views in her most recent statement, it seems rather clear where she stands. Kind of where you seem to stand, quite frankly (given your remarkably clear and helpful 2009 lecture on Vimeo on your book).

      +Nathan

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    3. I couldn't sign Wheaton's statement of faith and so could not work at Wheaton, but the statement clearly allows for considerably more diversity than Wheaton officials are allowing on this case. I think it is quite clear that someone who shares many of the convictions expressed in the lecture you watched (not all,certainly) could in good conscience affirm that statement of faith, even if they would have to dissent from much that the administration seems to embrace. As such, it seems to me that the current administration is making agreement with how *they* elaborate on and interpret the statement of faith, based on their additional premises, the condition for employment there, rather than agreement with the faith statement as such. But I think that this stifles academic freedom too far, even if some constraints are legitimate given the kind of institution Wheaton is.

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    4. I couldn't sign Wheaton's statement of faith and so could not work at Wheaton, but the statement clearly allows for considerably more diversity than Wheaton officials are allowing on this case. I think it is quite clear that someone who shares many of the convictions expressed in the lecture you watched (not all,certainly) could in good conscience affirm that statement of faith, even if they would have to dissent from much that the administration seems to embrace. As such, it seems to me that the current administration is making agreement with how *they* elaborate on and interpret the statement of faith, based on their additional premises, the condition for employment there, rather than agreement with the faith statement as such. But I think that this stifles academic freedom too far, even if some constraints are legitimate given the kind of institution Wheaton is.

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    5. Eric,

      Well, as I noted in my patheos post, I do think the reasons one has for saying "we all worship the same God" - in this or that context - are very important. Conservative Christian believers have always been far more attuned to matters of context than those mocking and disrespecting them would give them credit for. I imagine you would agree that academic freedom only goes so far in every context. As Jonathan Haidt always points out, some things are always "beyond the pale" and it does us all well to recognize that. I think you will find my post on your lecture to be interesting. I agree with what you say above, but for different reasons that you do, I think.

      +Nathan

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    6. Eric,

      " I think it is quite clear that someone who shares many of the convictions expressed in the lecture you watched (not all,certainly) could in good conscience affirm that statement of faith, even if they would have to dissent from much that the administration seems to embrace."

      Well, I share many of the convictions you express in your lecture and do not feel the need to dissent from anything that the Wheaton administration is saying.

      +Nathan

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    7. Eric,

      Do you mind if I quote you here?:

      "...it seems to me that the current administration is making agreement with how *they* elaborate on and interpret the statement of faith, based on their additional premises, the condition for employment there, rather than agreement with the faith statement as such. But I think that this stifles academic freedom too far, even if some constraints are legitimate given the kind of institution Wheaton is."

      +Nathan

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  8. Eric - If you would like to know a bit more about where I am coming from, I have written a piece on patheos titled "Do Proponents of Other Abrahamic Faiths Worship the Same God? The Answer is Not in Philosophy but in the Distinction Between Law and Gospel". I'm a Lutheran, and if I recall, you have some familiarity with our views. : )

    -Nathan

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    1. So I just read your piece, and to be honest, either it's clearly invalid or I don't understand it.

      It *looks* to me as if your argument amounts to this:

      Premise: Some inclusivist/pluralistic Christians are motivated to say that Muslims and Christian worship the same God because they want to hold that good Muslims are saved; in so doing, these inclusivist Christians are slipping into a works theology and have lost sight of the teaching that we are saved by Christ.

      Conclusion: Christians and Muslims don't worship the same God.

      If this is your argument, it is (obviously) invalid. It is a version of what C.S. Lewis called "Bulverism" and which philosophers more commonly call the genetic fallacy (rejecting a view based on a critique of how some people came to hold it).

      But maybe I'm misunderstanding you argument.

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    2. Eric,

      No, that is not my argument for why it is not responsible to assert that we all worship the same God. My reasons for that are found elsewhere, namely in taking seriously passages like John 8 and others. I am simply saying that the reason a lot of people gravitate towards this invalid and faulty assertion is because of the motivation to see all persons as being saved [in Christ, to be sure], in part through their lives [like N.T. Wright's view of justification at the end being about "the whole life lived", thereby including one's good works in the package; or see RC doctrine], particularly Rahner).

      By the way, I enjoyed listening to your 2009 lecture on your book. I plan on doing a blog post on it on patheos next week.

      +Nathan

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  9. Eric,

    Here is my blog post on your lecture:

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/justandsinner/a-very-nice-explanation-of-progressive-religion-filial-foe-of-christ/

    I note now that is also touches on some of your other interests - namely hell and God's desire to save all.

    +Nathan

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  10. While I'm not sure that I believe this to be termination worthy (haven't studied the details enough), I can say that I do agree with Wheaton that the God they define is definitely different than the Muslim God. I'm sure that puts me in the minority.

    Consider: "WE BELIEVE in one sovereign God, eternally existing in three persons: the everlasting Father, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit, the giver of life..." (From Wheaton's Statement of Faith)

    I daresay that if you consulted with any Muslim about whether that defines God to them they would strongly say NO! The simple truth is that anyone who believes in a triune God is not worshiping the same God as other Abrahamic faiths.

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    1. But here's the issue that's being raised by every philosopher with any passing familiarity with philosophy of language: Terms admit of two kinds of meaning: sense and reference. In trying to make sense of statements like "Hesperus (the evening star) is Phosphorus (the morning star)", we need to acknowledge these two different kind of meaning. The statement is true--because both terms refer to Venus. But the statement is not a tautology of the form "Venus is Venus" because each term has a different sense (the former means "the first star to appear in the heavens in the evening" while the latter means "the last star to disappear from the heavens in the morning").

      The point is that a true identity statement can be made with respect to terms that each has a different sense--if (as in the Hesperus/Phosphorus statement) they refer to the same entity. This means that, in order to reach your conclusion, it is not sufficient to point out that Wheaton's definition of God is one that Muslim's would reject. We need to understand how the referent of a term is determined. Two people can refer to the same entity even though they have important disagreements about what that entity is like, even disagreements that shape the "sense" of the term they use to refer to that entity.

      Also, it is not apparent in the Wheaton statement of faith that what follows "one sovereign" God is intended as a definition, as opposed to a theological claim about what God is essentially like. But even if we treat the rest of the statement as a definition, if this is intended to capture the "sense" of the word "God," a word that refers to an actually existing entity, the question remains whether someone who has the wrong definition could, based on that definition, still orient themselves to the same existing entity.

      Suppose someone defines "water" as "a clear liquid with the chemical composition H2O2"--and then points to the stuff in rivers and oceans and says, "That's water," and then proceeds to drink a class of the clear stuff from the sink and say, "I just drank some water." Now the person is clearly wrong about the chemical composition of water--and that error has crept into their definition. But are they failing to refer to water when they use the word? Are they failing to drink water when they...drink WATER and say that this is what they're doing? Does the fact that their error has made it into the definition they offer entail that they aren't drinking water when they claim to be drinking water and when they are putting in their bodies the stuff that we call water? Of course not. They're drinking water. They're just wrong about what water is.

      Can you worship God and be wrong about what God is like--even to the point of including those errors in your definition of God? If the cases are analogous--and it's not crazy to think they are--then yes. Hence, even if Wheaton says Muslims get the definition of God wrong, it doesn't follow that they're not worshiping God. To get that conclusion, you'd need additional premises and arguments, none of which appear in Wheaton's statement of faith.

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  11. I'd agree with you, Eric, although the critical thing here may be the use of "worship". In other words, to say that Muslims and Christians seek to refer to the same God would be one thing, to say that they worship the same God is another. Acknowledging her good intentions, I think it was wrong of Dr Larycia Hawkins to ground her act of solidarity on presumed religious commonalities (as if such are needed to motivate solidarity) and wrong to claim that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. I also think that Wheaton College's response has been wrong, by the way, although the various statements made by Dr Hawkins are at the very least in tension with Wheaton's Statement of Faith (paragraph 8 more than paragraph 1, however).

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    1. Paragraph 8 indicates that "all who receive Christ by faith" are "enable to offer spiritual worship acceptable to God." As a matter of logic, the statement that all A's are B's does not entail that only A's are B's: That all who receive Christ are enabled to offer worship acceptable to God does not entail that only those who receive Christ are so enabled. One might think that I'm nitpicking language to find a loophole here, but this is hardly nit-picky. "All dogs are mammals" does not and should never be taken to mean that only dogs are mammals. Being a dog guarantees you the status of a mammal, but not being a dog does not guarantee exclusion.

      A second point is that there is a clear difference between offering worship to God and offering worship that is acceptable to God. One can do the former without doing the latter--since the latter depends on how God receives the worship as opposed to whether one is offering worship to Him. I think that becoming a faithful disciple of Christ ensures or guarantees that God will find one's worship acceptable (although there are probably self-described Christians who worship in the self-congratulatory style of the Pharisee who are thereby NOT being faithful disciples and hence fail to offer a worship that God finds acceptable), but this does not preclude that others' worship is unacceptable. But even if it did, unacceptable worship of God is still worship of God.

      In short, there are at least two reasons why the paragraph linking faith in Christ with acceptable worship does not preclude affirming that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. And I think there are sound arguments for a common object of worship rooted in Christian theology--specifically in the Christian doctrines that God is love, that God earnestly desires relationship with His creatures (not a doctrine of conservative Calvinism, admittedly), and that God is the creator and sustainer of all. Roughly, the argument is that when anyone who is created and sustained in being at every moment by God starts groping towards their creator in an attempt to connect with that creator, a creator who earnestly desires communion with them would step into the path of their groping. And God would do so even if they have erroneous beliefs about what God is like. As long as the creature is groping in roughly the right direction, so that when God steps into their path they recognize Him as what they've been yearning for, that is enough.

      Admittedly, I'd need to flesh out this argument quite a bit. I'd likely do so in terms of the notion of objective justification endorsed by many Lutheran theologians.

      Again, the issue is not whether the Wheaton leadership is compelled to accept this reasoning or cannot disagree. The issue is whether this kind of reasoning conflicts fundamentally with Wheaton's unifying statement of faith, or whether it is consistent with it such that it is a matter about which Wheaton should, in the spirit of academic freedom, permit disagreement and critical discourse.

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    2. Eric - I do not want to get too embroiled in evaluating the Wheaton affair because I do not know the background well enough. But from what I know I am pretty convinced that those who framed the Statement of Faith, when they state “WE BELIEVE that all who receive the Lord Jesus Christ by faith are born again of the Holy Spirit and thereby become children of God,” mean to say that receiving the Lord Jesus Christ by faith and born again of the Holy Spirit is the way, indeed the only way, to become children of God. By the application of strict logic, what Prof. Hawkins said about children of God is in direct contradiction to Wheaton’s Statement of Faith.

      As for the second half of this paragraph, the very first thing I wrote on this blog was “I agree that the claim that Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God does not self-evidently follow from Wheaton's Statement of Faith.”

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  12. To pl_walker: The question whether Muslims and Christians refer to the same God is answered in the affirmative by many Muslims in spite of these differences. (There are also Muslims who state that we do not refer to the same God and there are verses in the Quran that could be used on either side.) See http://rzim.org/bio/nabeel-qureshi for the contribution by a former Muslim and http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/01/12/4386793.htm for a post by a lecturer in Muslim-Christian relations.

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  13. The problem is not a linguistic one. Objectively speaking Christians and Muslims worship the same actual God because there is no other option. The real difficulty is that Islamic theology is rife with heresy. Christians before the Enlightenment unanimously recognized this and were not afraid to decry it.

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