One God:

 

We all worship the God of Abraham

 

A question for adherents to any of the world’s monotheistic religions: Do you believe that we are all worshiping the same God by different names? 

A lot of people say “yes!” Allah is just God in a different language, not the name of a different god! That much is true, and I’d love it if everyone could get past that particular elementary hurdle. In a way, because Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all claim that there is only one God, they cannot be worshiping different gods. 

Monotheism is a doctrine of God which states that there is only one God, or, put another way, that God is one. That subtle difference in phrasing is meant to highlight the idea that if there is only one God, that being, since it is absolute, cannot be a predicate. Or put another way, there isn’t a man-made definition of “God” and we’ve only found one being which fits that definition, but rather God precedes any descriptions, being God first and described second. As my favorite professor of Medieval Theology puts it, “We know there is a type of thing which we call a dodo, and at some point in history there was only the last dodo left. One dodo. monododoism? But, there isn’t a type of thing which we call God, of which there is only one.” Rather, the singularity of God is a predicate to God’s existence.

Anselm of Canterbury suggests that God is “that than which nothing greater can be imagined.” Logically, then, God must be one. First, imagine a being as great and as powerful as you can, say an omnipotent being. (Nothing is more powerful than an omnipotent being.) Now, add a second one. Two omnipotent beings? Nope. It’s logically impossible (sorry Star Trek, I don’t buy the Q). Each being’s power is bounded by the other being’s power. So, anything worth being called “God” would have to be unique. 

If God exists, there can be only one. If there can be only one, then all monotheistic religions are, in a sense, worshiping the same being. 

On the other hand, it may be contended that this one being has whatever particular attributes it has and those who know it according to those attributes know the being, and everyone else knows only a fantasy. If I say the One True God has red hair and you say the One True God has black hair, and the One True God in fact has black hair, then you worship the One True God, and I worship nobody. There is no such being as the one I imagine (a One True God with red hair).

Not One God:

I want to try out an analogy. I’d love feedback.

I argue that a religion may be defined as a system of beliefs and practices which aims at conquering, somehow, the problem of evil in the world, whatever that evil is understood to be. We will allow that, for the most part, religions are internally consistent. They make sense on their own terms. One such term common to most religions is that of exclusive possession of absolute or salvific truth. The claims we make about God affect the ways we interact with God and pursue “salvation.”

The Analogy:

Imagine we are playing an arcade game: one of those where we throw little basket balls at a distant hole. Imagine that there is a partition between us and the hole, so that we cannot see it. Imagine that we have a choice of objects of different shapes and sizes to throw at it. Only one type of object will fit into the hole; and when we pay for the game, we must choose a type. The hole is of a definite size and shape.

I believe the hole is big and circular, so I choose to throw beach balls at it. You believe the hole is small and square, so you choose to throw little blocks at it. We agree there is a hole beyond the partition. We believe in the same hole.

But in some ways, we don’t believe in the same hole, and our beliefs about the hole cause us to act in different ways, because winning the game depends on throwing the appropriate shapes at the hole. We believe in different holes. Our differences matter a great deal.

Someone will come along and say, Why can’t there be a hole big enough to accommodate all the things we might throw at it? All analogies have their failings. But that isn’t what I’m discussing above. I am discussing three monotheistic religions, each of which claims exclusivity. There is a separate argument to be had between universalist pluralists (such as Buddhists) on the one side and all exclusive religions (whether or not they are monotheistic) on the other. Another day.