Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 170:678 (Apr 2013)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Matthew S. DeMoss

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Book Reviews

By The Faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary

Matthew S. DeMoss

Editor

Do We Worship the Same God? Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Dialogue. Edited by Miroslav Volf. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2012. 192 pp. $20.00.

As the Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, Volf is renowned as a Trinitarian ecumenist at the forefront of interfaith dialogue. The chapters in this work are drawn from two consultations under the auspices of the “God and Human Flourishing Program” at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture (www.yale.edu/faith).

In chapters 1-3 Christian theologians discuss the question of the same God, and in chapters 4-6 two Jews and a Muslim respond. This is not a volume for beginners. As Volf comments, “The discussions touched on matters of ultimate concern (and highest complexity) . . . against the backdrop of mutual enmity and violence, of conflicts with a centuries-long history that continue still today” (p. x).

In chapter 1, “The Same God? The Perspective of Faith, the Identity of God, Tolerance, and Dialogue,” Tübingen University theologian Christoph Schwöbel critiques Vatican II’s primary document on other faiths Nostra Aetate. Affirming the unity and common concerns of the human race, the document asserts on the one hand the election of some (presumably the nonelection of others), and on the other hand that in the eschaton all peoples will “walk in the light of God’s glory.” Nostra Aetate assumes a convergence of understanding of God on some higher level, a tenet Schwöbel finds impossible to sustain. He notes that since faith is a gift of God, as Luther taught, it is a “passively constituted” gift. Therefore to some degree non-Christians may also experience the revelation and presence of God.

Denys Turner, Yale University Professor of Historical Theology, wrote chapter 2, “Christians, Muslims, and the Name of God: Who Owns It, and How Would We Know?” Observing the evolving religious identity of each monotheistic religion, Turner cites eleventh-century Pope Gregory VII’s Letter to Anzir, King of Mauritania that Christians and Muslims worship “the same God,” though “in different ways” (p. 19). This leads to Turner’s question, How would “the same God” ever be defined? Turner dismisses John Hick’s proposal that all religions worship the “ultimate reality” as defined by the lowest common factors. Such a perspective empties the concept of God of any real content, nor can it be replaced with medieval

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mysticism. Turner focuses o...