Creator is the One and Only Almighty God Allah Jehovah is I AM, Allah Ya Sin (Ya Seen) the Truth is I AM, God Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto is I AM Bahá 造物主昰唯一的真主全能神安拉御和華昰「我，神真理琞靈」昰「我，神天理王命」昰「我，梵祫（Bahá）」 God and Allah: What’s in a Name? 上帝(神)和真主(安拉)：名字算得了什麽呢？ What we call Creator, another name is still the same Lord. 我们所谓的造物主，换个名字，还是一样的主. by Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Miroslav Volf In October 2013, a Malaysian appeals court ruled that the Catholic newspaper Herald could not legally use the word “Allah” in print. The court argued that the use of “Allah” in non-Muslim writings could confuse Muslims about the differences between Islam and other religions and even entice them to convert, which would violate Malay law. As news of the decision spread, many individuals and organizations voiced their opposition. 2013年10月，馬來西亞上訴法院裁定，天主教報紙報導不能合法使用“安拉”字眼 印刷。法院認為，在非穆斯林的著作中使用“安拉”的可能混淆穆斯林關於伊斯蘭教與其他宗教之間的差異，甚至吸引他們轉換，這將違反馬來西亞法律。當此決定消息傳出之後，許多個人和組織表示反對。 Meanwhile, some Malaysian Muslims demonstrated in favour of the court, and Sultan Abdul Halim Mu’adzam, the current Malaysian head of state, proclaimed his support for the ruling. The controversy even spilled over into violence, as a church in the province of Penang was firebombed in January 2014. At the time of writing the case awaited a hearing in the Malaysian Federal Court, the country’s highest judiciary body. 與此同時，一些馬來西亞穆斯林示威贊成此法院決定，和目前馬來西亞的國家元首，苏丹端古·阿卜杜勒·哈利姆,宣布支持判決.爭論甚至陷入暴力，在2014年1月在檳城省的教會燃燒彈。國家最高司法馬來西亞聯邦法院已決定不能使用安拉。 Our (limited) understanding of Islam leads us to believe that there are good Muslim reasons to reject the lower court’s reasoning. But Muslims who agree with us are much better placed to elaborate them, and indeed some have. Our pluralist political commitments lead to the same conclusion. But arguments based on those commitments can do only so much when disconnected from the theological and philosophical convictions that motivate them and when delivered to the Malaysian political context from the far different American one. It might appear, then, that there is not much for Christian theologians to do in response to the Malaysian court’s ruling. That appearance would be deceiving. 我們的（有限）的伊斯蘭教理解使我們相信，我們有很好的穆斯林理由拒絕下級法院的推理。但同意我們在一起的穆斯林是很多更好地闡述他們，的確有些已經這樣做。我們的多元政治承諾導致了同樣的結論。當從激勵他們的神學和哲學信念和斷開和當從完全不同的美國背景交付給馬來西亞的政治背景。但論據基於這些承諾能做的只有這麼多。那麼， 它可能會出現，針對馬來西亞法院的裁決,基督教神學家沒有太多能做的,這外表會欺騙的。 The ruling in fact raises pressing theological questions for Christians. Does the Christian faith permit one to pray to Allah? And when Muslims worship Allah, might they be worshiping God? To understand the import of these and related questions, it’s helpful to consider a surprising Christian response to the Malaysian court decision. Instead of considering it a violation of the rights of Malaysian Christians, some have welcomed the ban on Christians using the word “Allah” in their texts. Representative of this response is President R. Albert Mohler Jr of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who has argued that Christians should not call upon the true God of the Bible using the word “Allah”, because “Allah” refers only to the radically different god of the Qur’an. 其實這項裁決為基督徒提出了緊迫的神學問題。基督教信是否仰許可證之一祈求真主？當穆斯林崇拜真主，他們可能是崇拜上帝嗎？為了了解這些問題和相關問題,考慮一個驚人的基督徒響應馬來西亞法院判決這是有幫助的。 有些馬來西亞基督徒歡迎在基督徒他們的文章使用“安拉”字眼的禁令,而不認為它違反了馬來西亞基督徒的權利。有代表性的這種反應的是美南浸信會神學院院長R.阿爾伯特莫勒,他辯稱，基督徒不應在聖經中的真神使用“安拉”字眼，因為“安拉”僅指完全不同古蘭經的神。 It matters greatly whether Dr Mohler and those who agree with him are right. If they are, the prospects for respectful, trusting cooperation between Christians and Muslims diminish. The reason, however, is perhaps not what one would expect. It’s not that people have to believe in the same god in order to live together in peace and even to cooperate politically. Contemporary South Korea and the United States,for instance, both see relatively peaceful and cooperative political relations between Christian, Buddhist, and non-religious populations. And, clearly, it’s not that people who believe in the same god necessarily get along. Citing counter-examples here is disconcertingly easy: countless European wars both before and after the Reformation, recent conflicts among Muslims in Iraq and Syria, the American Civil War … the list of tragedies could go on. 莫勒博士和那些同意他的觀點是否是正確的事項很重要。如果他們是，對基督徒和穆斯林之間的尊重，信任合作前景減弱。究其原因，不過，也許不是人們所期望的。這並不是說人們不得不相信在同一個上帝真主才能和平相處，甚至在政治上合作。當代韓國和美國，例如，都可以看到基督徒,佛教和非宗教的人群之間的相對和平，合作的政治關係。而且，很明顯，它不是人在相信同一個上帝真主一定是相處。這裡列舉反例是令人不安容易：無數的歐洲戰爭改革之前和之後，，穆斯林在伊拉克和敘利亞之間的最近的衝突，美國內戰......悲劇不勝枚舉。 It’s not a question of an automatic, necessary relationship. The question of the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an affects the prospects for cooperation for three different reasons. 這不是一個自動的，必要的關係問題。聖經中的上帝和古蘭經的真主的問題，影響了的合作前景的三個不同原因。 First, if Dr Mohler is wrong, then certain otherwise unavailable forms of cooperative reasoning between Christians and Muslims become possible. Among many other things, people engaging in political cooperation make arguments,offer reasons, and try to convince one another. If Christians and Muslims hold that the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an are one, then when reasoning with and convincing one another, they will be able to appeal to arguments about the character of God. They will be able to engage, that is, in common theological deliberation. Since theological reasons are highly important to many Christians and Muslims, being able to deliberate theologically together is a significant help to efforts and cooperation. 首先，如果莫勒博士是錯的，那麼基督徒和穆斯林之間的一定否則不可用的形式的合作推理成為可能。比如人們從事政治合作進行申辯，提供原因，並試圖說服對方。如果基督徒和穆斯林認為，聖經中的上帝和古蘭經的真主是一體的，然後和令人信服的另一個推理的時候，他們將能夠吸引論證上帝真主的角色。他們將能夠參與，即在共同的神學審議。由於神學的原因是許多基督徒和穆斯林非常重要，能夠神學審議在一起是一個顯著幫助的努力與合作。 Second, if Dr Mohler is right, then the mutual sense of respect necessary for public cooperation becomes much harder to maintain between Christians and Muslims. This is because Christians claim that there is one and only one God. As a consequence of this claim, if Christians hold that Muslims do not worship the one God, we must hold that they worship nothing, an empty created idol, or else something demonic. Now, such a belief would not in itself be disrespectful. But Muslims also claim that there is one and only one God. Indeed, the claim to worship that God is likely the most central claim of Islam. So for Christians to deny that Muslims worship the one God is to deny the heart of their confession of faith. No matter how respectfully (or infrequently) Christians tried to communicate that denial, many Muslims would undoubtedly receive it as deeply disrespectful. Since a mutual sense of respect is an important ingredient in public cooperation, cooperation between Christians and Muslims would thus be impeded. 其次，如果莫勒博士是正確的，那麼基督徒和穆斯林之間保持必要的公共合作，尊重彼此感覺變得更難。這是因為基督徒聲稱，只有唯一的上帝。作為這種說法的結果，如果基督徒認為，穆斯林不崇拜唯一的上帝，我們必須認為他們崇拜什麼，一個空的創造偶像，或者是某種惡魔。現在，這樣的信念本身不會不尊重。但穆斯林還聲稱，有且只有唯一的一個上帝真主。事實上，自稱崇拜唯一的上帝真主可能是伊斯蘭教最核心的要求。因此，對於基督徒否認穆斯林崇拜唯一的一個上帝真主就是否認他們自己的心中信仰告白。不管如何恭敬地（或很少）基督徒試圖傳達的拒絕，許多穆斯林無疑會接受它深深不敬。由於尊重相互的感覺是在公共合作的重要組成部分，基督徒和穆斯林之間的合作將因此受到阻礙. Third, and perhaps most unsettlingly, if the bulk of Christians held, as many do now, that Muslims actually worship a demonic force, they would have compelling reasons not to cooperate with Muslims. To do so would be to cooperate in a movement of opposition to God. Clearly, the stakes are high when answering these questions. Before doing our best to give our answers, we need to recognize that as Christians, we are called to follow the truth, regardless of the consequences to ourselves. If we are convinced that the god of the Qur’an is no God at all, then we cannot pretend otherwise for the sake of amiable social relations. Thankfully, there are good reasons to believe that Dr Mohler and those who agree with him are wrong about Allah. Not only should Christians feel free to use the word “Allah” in their worship of God if it’s natural to do so in their language, but Muslim speech about and worship of “Allah” is not by definition worship of a false god. But how do we know this? The first thing to do is recognize the inadequacy of all human language about God. God is unimaginably transcendent – beyond, above, greater than any and all creatures. Our words are the words of creatures, and so they simply cannot refer to God in any straightforward way. All of our conceptions of God fall short. All of our words fail. And yet we often don’t realize that they do – at least, we don’t act like they do. Instead, we tend to worship these ideas and words about God in place of God and so fall into idolatry ourselves. We truly worship God only when God by grace lifts up our faltering words and alltoo-human thoughts and receives them as worship. We should, therefore, always maintain a stance of humility when talking about a subject like this one. Having said this, we can turn to the question of Christian use of the word “Allah”. It is important here to note that Christianity has always been a fundamentally translatable faith. Recounting the miracle of Pentecost, the Book of Acts says: All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages,as the Spirit gave them ability.............. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us,in our own native language?Parthians,Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene,and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ (Acts 2:4-11) From the start, the gospel is not attached to any one language – even the language of Jesus. Rather, by the power of God’s spirit, it adopts and indwells the languages of all who are there to hear. We can see the continuation of this feature of Christian faith in the New Testament, which uses common Greek words to translate Aramaic and Hebrew words referring to God. And also in the fact that the word “God”, which English-speaking Christians use in their Bibles and worship, comes from an Old English word used long before Anglo-Saxons started converting to Christianity. Using generic words for “god” from local languages is how Christians can talk about God. If “Allah” is one such word, then Christians ought to feel free to use it. It turns out that “Allah” is just such a word. Indeed, if you want to translate the Greek ho theos (literally “the God” in English), which is found in John 20:28, Matthew 1:23, and elsewhere, there really is no good option in Arabic other than “Allah”. Unsurprisingly, then, we have evidence that Arabic-speaking Christians have used “Allah” in their worship and their scriptures at least since the 9th century. It’s very possible that they did so before the time of Muhammad. But even if it is natural for Christians speaking certain languages to call God “Allah”, there might be good reasons for them not to use this name. Specifically, it is only prudent for Christians to pray to and worship “Allah” if the meanings associated with that word are not radically opposed to what Christians say about God. Otherwise, they do in fact unnecessarily risk confusion, as the Malaysian court claimed. Early Christians did not call God “Apollo” or “muse” after all. Some Christians claim that the “Allah” whom Muslims worship cannot be the God of Jesus because the meanings of the word are just too different from what English-speaking Christians mean by “God” or Spanish-speaking ones mean by “Diós”. Therefore, they conclude, Christians should not refer to God as “Allah”. They usually emphasize two points: (1) Muslims reject that Jesus was and is the incarnate Son of God and (2) they deny that God is Trinity. We agree that these are two of the most important claims of Christian faith. Without them, we believe, one misses the decisive revelation of God and the very heart of who God is. Even so, just because someone denies these claims does not by itself mean that she doesn’t believe in and worship God. Consider the vitally important case of Judaism. Incarnation and Trinity are perhaps the two most significant differences of belief between Christians and Jews, and yet the vast majority of the Christian tradition, beginning with the New Testament, has held that the Jews believe in the same God as Christians. The gospel stories about Jesus show him assuming that the Jewish religious leaders with whom he disagreed believed in the same God he proclaimed even though many of them failed to understand God and God’s relationship to Jesus in fundamental ways. When Jesus debates those leaders over his status as Son, he does so assuming that he and they are both talking about the God whom Jesus claimed to reveal (John 5). Importantly, Jesus extends his assumption about common ground to people other than his fellow Jews. In John 4:1-42, Jesus discusses the right way to worship God with a Samaritan woman. He assumes that he and the woman are talking about one God, even though he affirms the superiority of the Jewish understanding of that God: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (4:22). The woman worships God, Jesus says, even if she does not understand God as well as the Jews. In accord with Jesus’ example, Augustine extends a similar assumption to the Greek Neo-Platonist philosophers. Speaking to God in his Confessions about some NeoPlatonist books that he had read earlier in his life, Augustine writes: “The books say that before all times and above all times your only-begotten Son immutably abides eternal with you” (7.9.14, translated by Henry Chadwick). These same philosophers deny the incarnation, and so miss the saving truth of the gospel, according to Augustine. But nevertheless, he thinks their books really talk about God. The disagreement is about what Jesus reveals about God and how God is related to Jesus. All of these examples address monotheists, people who believed that there is one and only one God. At a minimum, they would agree with one or another version of three claims that are central to Christian faith: 1. There is only one true God. Any other supposed “god” is no god at all. 2. God created everything that is not God. 3. God is different from everything that is not God. The cosmos is not God. Importantly, claims very much like these can be found in the Qur’an. For example: 1. “Know, therefore, that there is no god but God” (47:19). 2. “It was He who created the heavens and the earth in all truth” (6:73). 3. Allah is “the Merciful One who sits enthroned on high,” which is usually taken to mean that God is beyond the created world (2:255). Consequently, there is good reason to treat Muslim beliefs in and claims about Allah in the same way Jesus treated Jewish and Samaritan beliefs and Augustine treated the Neo-Platonists. We may disagree about immensely important things about God, but we are disagreeing about God, not between gods, so to speak. But even granted Christian and Muslim agreement on the claims of monotheism, some would raise the objection that the character of “Allah” in the Qur’an and Islam radically differ from the character of God as revealed by Jesus. Monotheism aside, they would say, is it not just as misleading to treat them as the “same” in any practically important sense? There is no way to answer an objection like this definitively in a short article (or even a rather long one), but we think that there are good reasons for rejecting this argument, and we would like to offer a very rough sketch of what those reasons are. Let’s start by noting a common stereotype about Christianity and Islam. The Christian God – so the stereotype goes – is loving and merciful, but Muslims believe that Allah is demanding and punitive. This stereotype mischaracterizes both Christian and Muslim understandings of God. Christians do believe that God is loving and merciful. But a robust picture of God as portrayed in the New Testament must include the recognition that God is just (e.g., Romans 3:5), makes demands of us (e.g., John 15:10), and is unwavering in judgment against sin (e.g.,2 Peter 2:4-9). Muslims do believe that Allah issues commandments and punishes evil. But in the Qur’an God is consistently praised as “The Merciful,” “The Compassionate,” “The All-Forgiving,” “The Generous,” “The Benevolent,” and “The Loving.” The stereotype gives us an incomplete picture of both faiths. There are – we emphasize this – crucial differences between how Christians and Muslims understand God’s character. But those differences do not erase the commonalities. For example, Christians emphasize that God loves unconditionally, whereas most Muslims do not. But that does not change the fact that nearly all Christians and Muslims believe that God loves. Overlaps also exist between the commands that Christianity and Islam believe God makes for human beings. The important document A Common Word between Us and You, issued by many of the world’s leading Muslim scholars and clerics in 2007, points out that love of God and love of neighbour are central to Islam as well as to Christianity. The God of the Qur’an underwrites the commandments on which Jesus says “the law and the prophets hang” (Matthew 22:40). Again, there are substantial differences. For instance, Jesus unequivocally commands that we love our enemies. Many Muslim thinkers and leaders insist that we should be kind to all, but they tend not to include enemies among the neighbours whom we are commanded to love. But again, the differences do not erase the commonalities. This discussion of commonalities begins to shed light on the possibility of cooperative forms of reasoning that we raised above. Exploring how Christians ought to relate to Allah has led us to see significant common ground between Christianity and Islam. This common ground does not mean that Christianity and Islam are the same faith. They are not. Nor does it mean that Christians and Muslims agree about everything important. They do not. But it does mean that our visions of the common good are likely to overlap in meaningful ways. We have somewhere solid to plant our feet as we strive to promote that good. And for that we should be thankful to the one God who is over all. Ryan McAnnally-Linz is a doctoral student at Yale University. Professor Miroslav Volf teaches at Yale University and is author of Allah: A Christian Response [2011]. 1 Since the completion of this article and on 23 June 2014, the Federal Court of Malaysia ruled by majority opinion against allowing the Catholic Herald to appeal the earlier High Court judgement which prohibited its use of the word “Allah”.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 10:53:01 +0000
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