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I have in mind a more complete critique of the approach taken by Prof. White, but I thought it would be well to respond particularly to a couple of his errors.
Muslims and God
The first regards the accusation of Heresy on the part of our Pope for claiming that Muslims worship the one true God. I simply fail to see this claim as heretical. At worst, it could be misleading; but to be heretical, it would have to be made stronger: stated as, “Christians worship Allah, the God of the Muslims.” That would be a profound error. But with care, we can easily distinguish Benedict’s claim from the erroneous one. We believe as Catholics that natural reason leads to the belief in God — one, single Prime Mover. On a Catholic understanding of Faith, then, belief in God is a rational and philosophical belief: a pre-theological one, not requiring Faith, considered as a Virtue. Thus Muslims, like Christians and any monotheists, believe in the same one God. Muslims err in believing false revelation about God, and their worship and prayers are consequently malformed and evil. But presuming a good will and invincible ignorance among at least some of them, their worshipful acts, insofar as they are not particular to the erroneous aspects of the islamic creed, are directed towards the one and only God, whom even they recognize as the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” The Divine response to these, at best, ill-formed prayers and actions must be considered in a balance of justice, compassion, and charity. They do not know the God to whom they pray, even though they think they do. But nonetheless, since God is One, it is to God that they direct their prayers.
Electricity
It may seem a minor point, but I think it vital to rebut such claims as Dr. White makes regarding the modern dependence upon Electricity in modern civilization and its putative connection to the Satanic. This sort of thinking must be rebuked and rejected. Certainly, dependence is a foundational fact about our technological civilization; but dependence is simply a fact of civilization itself. Once a man becomes a baker and another man a soldier and a third man a tool-maker, each has given up autonomy for specialization and reliance upon others. Electicity is not magic, but a natural, if much continued, extension of this same specialization necessary to civilization. God wrote the laws of electrodynamics that allow us, wonderfully, to turn the heat of burning coal or gas into electric currents; the same physical law, written by God, that gives us light itself compels the existence of electricity. It would have been equally true in an unfallen world as it is in our fallen world.
Indoor plumbing, garbage-collection, and grocery stores are in the same regime of human organization as the production of electricity is; in some way, we are more dependent on them, since God gives us light in the day without fail, but running water takes large-scale human agency to guarantee and the production of food enough for us requires long-term planning and stable farming conditions. So though I’d not call his a crackpot theory, his claim is a paranoid and shallow one, reflecting an incautious and unreflective stance towards the cooperation of grace, nature, and human cooperation.
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St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
To say that one cannot believe in the one true God if one does not believe in the Trinity is a Heresy, for, as Vatican I infallibly taught:
1. 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.
In support of the excellent Ambrosius (as if he needed it!) and in response to Mr Heiner, I would say that another distinction that is useful here is that between “materialiter” and “formaliter” (”materially” vs “formally”). “Materialiter” Muslims in good conscience worship the one, true God. “Formaliter,” even those in good conscience do not, because they do not have a sufficiently complete and true notion of the one God. Obviously, of great importance here (as it is for all those who do not formally hold the Catholic Faith) is the notion of invincible ignorance: those who neglect the inclination, or rather, inspiration, to understand the dogmas better, cannot be in good faith. (As a light-hearted illustration: the estimable Fr Faber said that he used to wear his cassock when he went out on the street in London, so that he could “practically feel the invincible ignorance being dispelled.”)
Note on the term “Allah”: in Arabic it actually means “the One,” al-Lah (shades of Plotinus!). But Islam uses terms for God equivalent to “the Lord” and “the Merciful,” among others. –a Simple Priest.
Ambrosius
Forgive my modern education, I will try to show how your argument doesn’t hold water.
You refer to Aristotle, and people have cited everyone from St. John Chrysostom to St. Isaac Jogues to show how Saints have incorporated pre-existing monotheism into Christianity via true “inculturation.”
OF COURSE Aristotle worshipped Christ our God. Because he believed in one God without reference to a trinity of urine or Jesus Christ SPECIFICALLY being “not God.”
The unfortunate and real (not seeming to you) problem with the heresy of Islam (people often forget it is a Christian heresy - the longest lived and never extirpated) is that their monotheism specifically refuses Christ, our Lord and God. It is total refusal to bend the knee to Him and it is pertinacious to say the least.
Therefore, whatever “one God” they worship is not Christ, due to their specific refutation of Him. A specific refutation lacking when St. John Chrysostom, born and dead before Islam came into existence referred to “Allah” as God and a refutation lacking when St. Isaac Jogues spoke about the Great Spirit.
If the American Indians had a book in which they spoke about the Trinity as urine and said that Jesus Christ was just a man, and yet St. Isaac Jogues still said that they worshipped the one true God, then I would see where your argument would have the support of a saint.
In the meantime, I find it patently absurd (whether you call it “phony” or “yelling”) that you try to maintain that Muslims are some lost, misguided people, with a false understanding of God. They have been exposed to Christ and reject Him. Their God that they pray to asks them to murder Christians in His name.
If I yell it’s because I cannot believe that one of you guys on this site, which is generally balanced, would say such an insupportable, ecumaniacal thing as Muslims worshipping the one true God.
You say argument is hard. So is research. Please find me a single pre-Vatican II document supporting your belief and I will definitely take your argument more seriously. As it is, I find it weak conjecture.
I agree with Ambrosius, to the extent that people when they pray to/acknowledge the “God of Nature” are not referring to their false notions about that God (is this an accurate handling of your statement?). Nevertheless, Mr. Heiner is right to distinguish between people who simply don’t know anything about the Trinity (like Old Testament Jews, Aristotle, and most followers of the natural law) and people who explicitly deny the Trinity (like Jews after the time of Christ, Moslems, Unitarians, and most Protestants [implicitly they deny the Trinity, or else the Incarnation, when they refuse to call Our Lady "Mother of God"]).
“Nevertheless, Mr. Heiner is right to distinguish between people who simply don’t know anything about the Trinity . . . and people who explicitly deny the trinity”
Not that Ambrosius denies this.
Tobias, read the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Regarding Baptism (CCC 1266):
“The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification -enabling them to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues.”
Being in the state of grace through Baptism equates to being infused with the Theological Virtues, and such grace is not preventing if there are no obstacles such as in the case of the baby.
Regarding your comment on St. Thomas Aquinas and heresy/lack of grace please refer to the Catholic Encyclopedia link on heresy which discusses the guilt from formal adherance to heresy versus material heresy:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/0725
6b.htm
Regarding the revealing of truths I think you are confusing Divine Revelation (ie, the inspired Word of God which has ceased) versus the revealing of truths of the faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 66:
“…Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.”
Johnboy, Tobias:
No more discussion between you two on EENS and Justification! Not here, not now, not again!
I’ll be back to answer other arguments anon.
Stephen,
The most widely quoted pre-conciliar mention of this is the letter referenced by Nostra Aetate: from Pope St. Gregory VII to a Muslim King in 1076, which I’m sure you’ve read, since Benedict and John Paul the Fair and Luminous Doctor also quote it again and again and again.
You and we owe this charity to ourselves especially because we believe in and confess one God, admittedly, in a different way, and daily praise and venerate him, the creator of the world and ruler of this world
I think it is important to recognize that everything you are accusing the Pope of believing is found explicitly in the Council. Both Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate acknowledge that Mohammedans worship (albeit falsely) the one God. LG states:
In the first place amongst these there are the Mohamedans, 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.
If you do think the Pope is a heretic for this, you must also believe the Council is teaching heresy in these two documents, and a far more serious heresy than religious freedom it would seem to me.
Is this really your opinion? I thought this was the kind of thing only a sedevacantist could rationally believe - you know, the Popes and everyone but the Dimond Brothers are apostates. I didn’t think you believed that.
I repeat: if these statements, which I think are ambiguous - perhaps even dangerously so, are very clearly heretical, and cannot be interpreted in accordance with Tradition, as you continue to maintain, then wouldn’t they be the worst form of syncretist heresy, equivalent to the profession Ambrosius formulated?
Or is there something conveniently in between?
Gotcha, Ambrosius. Sorry.
Iacobus
I do not, honestly, profess familiarity with the document you reference, but I do not want to get into the tremendously complicated questions of Vatican II here. For my own part Jacob Michael, Philip Candido, and myself attempted a “how does the Council fit tradition series” which broke down when we got to Dignitatis Humanae. The archives are on the Trad Report (www.stephensreplies.blogspot.com).
In the meantime, I would cautiously add that a Pope’s correspondence with a King does not fall under even universal ordinary magisterium, does it? And since I’ve taken to much sarcasm as of late, I’ll specifically identify that it is not in this last question.
Faith in God has nothing to do with whether one is in sin or not. Faith, however, as mentioned prior must be infused with Charity which a person in the state of grace possesses. St. Paul states (paraphrase) if I have faith so as to move mountains but not love, it is meaningless. This is why the devil has faith and believes in God but lacks sanctifying grace and therefore charity.
Likewise, Muslims may have faith insofar as they accept what they believe to be true though they are actually in error…but, just like anyone they may be outside the state of sanctifying grace, lacking charity, and thus able to be damned.
I feel this deals with justification but it also deals with the subject at hand.
So Mr. Heiner wants some sort of Pre-Vatican II proof that states Muslims or non-Catholics can have faith? Is that the deal?
What’s that, Mr. Heiner? Pope St. Gregory VII is, or is not, a heretic? Where’s that fearlessness in decrying this so-called heresy now? That incredulity that so beggared your ability to respond? ‘Course, the muslims had big mo momentum back in the 11th century too, so maybe Pope St. Gregory was just playing nice then as well?
The anonymous commenter who cited Vatican I wrote well: “1. 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.”
But while I see your point about there being a difference in monotheism pre- and post-Christ, this revelation does not change the character of the question. In Whom or What, Mr. Heiner, do you suppose these Muslims believe? If they say that God 1) made the world and 2) is one God, Who else could they be talking about? It is absolutely true that past these two basic points they go wrong, wrong, wrong, but you seem to think they believe in some other god. How can this be?
We need to be careful in distinguishing between belief in the simplest sense and Faith, the virtue. The average muslim believes various facts about that being which they call God which are true about the one true God. Do these accurate, fundamental truths about God not reliably identify Him? You seem to say no: that the false things they believe to be true about the being they call God invalidate the identification of their “god” with the one, true God. But there is no such being: there is no separate god in whom muslims can believe. So it seems to me, as it did to Pope St. Gregory, that the muslims inevitably, if very imperfectly, address the one true God in their thoughts and prayers. Their knowledge of him is so defective and filled with falsehood that it seems unlikely that their prayers can be very pleasing to him. But then neither was Cain’s sacrifice pleasing to Him; we do not therefore conclude that Cain did not believe in the one true God, right? It’s just like someone who believes the earth is flat: they believe false things about our planet, but I don’t doubt that they are talking about the same celestial body that I am talking about.
I think we can all agree that muslims do not have Faith, though, since that is an infused virtue; heck, Protestants don’t have that virtue! And I would, if I were forced to guess, presume most muslims believe so falsely about God that their salvation is pretty much impossible. But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t identify God in a metaphysical line up. That’s the point.
Maybe coming at this from the opposite end would help Stephen. The Manichees believed that the creator of the material world was evil. Now, their belief about the Creator was very flawed — hence, they thought that He was evil and that He was an enemy of Christ. Yet, we Catholics know that the Manichees were blaspheming the One True God when they blasphemed the “evil” creator. Satanists have similar problems — the God of Christianity is evil and Satan is good in their system. So do we say that they “aren’t really” worshipping Satan or blaspheming against God since they don’t have a truly accurate picture of either one?
So if you can have seriously false beliefs about the true God but still be able to blaspheme Him, how can you not at the same time be able to worship Him despite seriously false beliefs?
Is the supposition that anyone who believes the contents of the treatise De Deo Uno, no matter what their heresy in other areas, worships the one true God?
And what do we mean by an object of worship? The idea the worshipers have? The reality to which the worshipers are aiming at?
It seems this conversation would be helped by the scholastic axiom to always distinguish. Clearly both Mr. Heiner and Ambrosius are on to important truths. Abstracting from the inner life of the Godhead, Muslims and Christians worship the same God. But in the concrete, inasmuch as Muslism deny that their God is the same being as the Christian God, they do not worship the same God, since to deny the self-subsistent Trinity is to deny the existence of God. Per impossible, if the Trinity did not exist, God would not exist.
Or do they worship the same God, even when they explicitly do not wish to worship the same God?
That they worship the one True God against their wills, as it were?
In their minds they think they’re worshiping the one true God. Is that all we mean when we say they are worshipping the one true God? Just a question of intent?
There are two ways of looking at the world:
Though the reality as it exists.
In varying degrees of abstraction from said reality.
Catholics know that the reality, what’s true, is that God is a Trinity, in three divine persons. Each of those persons is God, yet the persons are distinct. To deny the divinity of Christ, who is God, is in a profound sense to deny the existence of God. There is no separation in the undivided Trinity.
So for someone to deny the Trinity, and worship, is to have that person worship a figment of their imagination. Because the image they have in their mind does not correspond to reality, it is a falsehood. And while our way of speaking about God allows for multiple propositions about him, God in his reality is supremely simple. You can’t eliminate one aspect, in reality, without denying the whole.
So people who say Muslims don’t worship the True God, what they mean is that there isn’t any being in reality that corresponds to what Muslims predicate of the “True God.” And so their worship is misguided, without an object that exists in reality.
If I pray to the “non-triune God,” I pray to a being which does not exist.
So in one sense the Muslims worship nothing. They worship an ideal, a figment.
However, the triune God does exist in reality.
If we assume that those Muslim prayers to the “non-Triune God” end up somewhere and don’t vanish in the ether, and we abstract from the Muslims denial and just look at the the true teachings they have, we can say, they’re praying to a one supreme being. The only supreme being on the block is God. So they must be praying, albeit misguidedly, to God. But we say this by abstracting from the Islamic negations that, were they true, would logically entail the denial of the true God.
But by that token, don’t we have to say that sincere polytheists are praying to the one True God?
Or do we say that Muslims pray to the one true God simply because they reject polytheism?
Perhaps this is simply a polite way of speaking?
We call Protestants Christians, though in olden times in was commonplace to deny that they were Christians, because of their opposition to Christ’s veracity by opposing his church. But if we just focus on what we have in common, ignoring what false beliefs logically entail, we can say we worship the same Christ, or with Muslims, the same omnipotent self-subsisting reality, that is the same “One and True God.”
Thanks to Anonymous for further helpful comments. In the future, could you use a pseudonym at least, though, so we could distinguish you from other Anonymous commennters?
I’d also like to make a point and challenge Mr. Heiner: the approach we have all taken here is that the Pope — the Vicar of Christ, successor of Peter — should be presumed guilty until we can prove him innocent. But Mr. Heiner has produced no document or statement from any epoch supporting his own accusation of heresy. Should we not presume the Pope to teach rightly unless it can be explicitly shown otherwise? Why should we take Mr. Heiner’s word that the proposition “Muslims worship the one true God” to be heresy when he has not demonstrated that it is such?
I have to say, as a philosopher, it seems a little funny to me to be trying to work this question out logically. We argue about whether or not a pile of sand is the same pile of sand when you remove a few grains — how on Earth can we logically determine whether two believers have enough similar concepts of God to make the object of their worship “the same God”? Part of the point of belief is that it is placing confidence in something we don’t really understand, so this project of matching up truths and falsehoods is sure to be futile.
I will say, however, that Mr. Heiner’s distinction — Aristotle worshipped the one true God because he never said anything wrong about him, but the Muslims don’t because they distorted the teachings about God heretically — makes no sense to me. Surely, the fact that the Muslim notion of God derives from the Christian one should make us more inclined to call them “the same?” Which sounds stranger: “The Muslims distorted the truth about God,” or “The Muslims stopped believing in God and made up a different one”? I think the former is pretty obviously a more natural way of describing what happened when Islam slipped into heresy.
The important thing, though, is that thus far all the authorities cited seem clearly in agreement in calling the God of the Muslims “the same” as ours. So.
As far as the pagans go, that’s a little more confusing, but I would note that St. Paul did use this tactic by telling the Athenians that their altar to the “unknown God” was in fact the altar to the one, true God. So there’s a precedent.
Great comment, Clara.
Of course if such Ambrosius logic were to be reality, then Satan should have more faith since he in fact knows more theology about God and the supernatural order than any other living being in the history of the earth. Does that therefore mean in Ambrosius logic that the devil has more faith than good Catholics, if he is willing to propose that Muslims who don’t know or believe the fullness of truth revealed in the Catholic Church have less or no faith at all?
Great quote by St. Paul.
I didn’t buy Ambrosius’ and Tobias’ arguments regarding the nuanced meanings of “belief” veresus the meaning of the theological virtue “faith”.
I think the thing they do raise is that faith is more than knowing God exists but is also being open and accepting the Revealed Truth.
But you cannot judge a Muslim’s faith or lack thereof on the basis of their material heresy. Again, this is an ancient moral principle.
Not to insist on having the last word or anything like that, however: it seems to me that, as I originally suggested, the distinction between materially and formally knowing (or acknowledging, or loving) the true God could have obviated many of the subsequent comments (some apparently groping towards this same explanation with a daunting prolixity). One single thing may be known (or loved) in two formally distinct ways by two different people, while remaining materially one and the same. So, to take a homely example, a child may see a cat and think it a strange, fuzzy little dog, whereas an adult knows it as the cat it in fact is. Materially, of course, the cat is one and the same. Likewise, the object of faith (God, the dogmas, etc.) is materially one thing, but it may be formally distinct in the intellect of two different people. (And, as I said before, the “good faith” of the person determines whether faith is even possible.) I’m reluctant to say it, but this may be a case of “Father knows best.”–a Simple Priest.
Clara et al
It’s a bit simplistic to say that the Muslims “distorted the truth about God.” Since they reject Christ, they reject God, something neither the Athenians who were present when St. Paul gave his sermon, nor Aristotle, did.
While being accused of illogic or of not producing documents (I asked for them, I didn’t offer to produce them) I cannot see how a religion that denies that Our Savior Jesus Christ is God can claim to worship Him. I’m sorry, I just cannot make that leap. You can proceed with the name-calling, etc., I just don’t see it.
I do want to share how much I appreciate the overall civility of discourse so dreadfully lacking these days. That’s a refuge here at Cornell, and ultimately gives me comfort in having picked you to host the interview - because you wanted to look at the interview itself on its own merits, even if you disagree with its sentiments, or that of Dr. White, or his very mens nostra interviewer.
Steven,
Jew’s worship the same God we do, don’t they? Or did they stop worshiping God after they rejected Jesus?
Muslims only admit of one divine person, but they still admit a divine person, no? If one denies the divinity of Jesus but accept the divinity of the God Jesus called his father, could not one be said to simultaneously reject and accept God?
For they accept the Father but reject the Son.
The Father is God. So if Muslims worship who we’d call the Father, don’t they worship God?
http://angelqueen.org/forum/
viewtopic.php?t=11246
I would note that Tobias eliminated some of his comments regarding EENS on this “thread.” So for instance my second comment seems like I am “talking” to myself. This is not true, I was responding to Tobias (for instance, my second post to this thread).