Edward Feser on Christians, Muslims, and the Reference of 'God'

So far, Ed Feser's is perhaps the best of the  Internet discussions of this hot-button question, a question recently re-ignited by the Wheaton dust-up, to mix some metaphors.  Herewith, some notes  on Feser's long entry.  I am not nearly as philosophically self-confident as Ed or Lydia McGrew, so I will mainly just be trying to understand the issue for my own edification. But I am sure of one thing:  the question is difficult and has no easy solution.  If you think it does, then I humbly suggest you are not thinking very hard, indeed, you are hardly thinking.

1.  Feser rightly points out that a difference in (Fregean) sense does not entail a difference in (Fregean) reference.  So the difference in sense as between 'God of the Christians' and 'God of the Muslims' does not entail that these expressions differ in reference.  Quite so.  But I would add that on a descriptivist semantics  reference is routed through, and determined by, sense: an expression picks out its object in virtue of the latter's unique satisfaction of an identifying description associated with the referring expression, a description that unpacks the expression's sense.  If we think of reference in this way, then 'God' refers to whichever entity, if any, that satisfies the definite description encapsulated in 'God' as this term is used in a given linguistic community.  So while difference in sense does not by itself entail difference in reference, difference in sense is consistent with difference in reference, so that in a particular case it may be that the difference in sense is sufficiently great to entail a difference in reference.    Suppose that in one linguistic community a person understands by 'God' the unique contingent being who created the universe but was himself created, while  in another a person understands by 'God' the unique necessary uncreated being who created the universe.  In this case I think it is clear that the difference in sense entails a difference in reference.  Both uses of 'God' may fail of reference, or one might succeed.  But they cannot both succeed.  For nothing can be both necessary and contingent.

From what has been said so far, 'God' (used by a Christian) and 'Allah' (used by a Muslim) may have the same reference or may have a different reference.  The issue cannot be decided by merely pointing out that a difference in sense does not entail a difference in reference.

2.  Feser makes a point about beliefs that is surely correct.  You and I can have conflicting beliefs about a common object of successful reference without prejudice to its being precisely a common object of successful reference.  For example, we both see a sharp-dressed man across the room drinking from a Martini glass.  Suppose I erroneously believe that he is drinking a Martini while you correctly believe that he is drinking water.  That difference in belief is obviously consistent with one and the same man's being our common object of perceptual and linguistic reference.  "Similarly, the fact that Muslims have what Christians regard as a number of erroneous beliefs about God does not by itself entail that Muslims and Christians are not referring to the same thing when they use the expression 'God.'" (Emphasis added.)

True, but it could also be that conflicting beliefs make it impossible that there be a common object of successful reference.  It will depend on what those beliefs are and whether they are incorporated into the respective senses of 'God' as used by Muslims and Christians.  I will also depend on one's theory of reference, whether descriptivist, causal, hybrid, or something else.

It should also be observed that in perceptual cases such as the Martini case there is no question but that we are referentially glomming onto one and the same object.  The existence and identity of the sharp-dressed drinker are given to the senses.  Since we know by direct sensory acquaintance that it is the same man both of us see, the conflicting beliefs have no tendency to show otherwise.  But God is not an object of perception via the outer senses.  So one can question how much weight we should assign to the perceptual analogies, and indeed to any analogy that makes mention of a physical thing.  At best, these analogies show that, in general, contradictory beliefs about a putatively self-same x are consistent with there being in reality one and the same subject of these beliefs.  But they are also consistent with there not being in reality one and the same subject of the contradictory beliefs.

But not only is God not an object of sensory acquaintance, he is also arguably not an object among objects or a being among beings.  Suppose God is ipsum esse subsistens as Aquinas held.  It will then be  serious question whether a theory of reference that caters to ordinary references to intramundane people and things, beings, can be extended to accommodate reference to self-subsistent Being.  Not clear!  But I raise this hairy issue only to set it aside for the space of this entry.  I will assume for now that God is a being among beings.   I bring this issue up only to get people to appreciate how difficult and involved this 'same God?' issue is.  Do not comment on this paragraph; it is off-topic for present purposes. See here for one of the posts in which I disagree with Dale Tuggy on this issue.

3. Now consider these conflicting beliefs:  God is triune; God is not triune. Please note that it would be question-begging to announce that the fact of this dispute entails that the object of the dispute is one and the same.  For that is exactly what is at issue.  The following would be a question-begging little speech:

Look man, we are disputing whether God is triune or not triune; we are therefore presupposing that there is one and the same thing, God, about whose properties we are disputing!  The disagreement entails sameness of object!  Same God!

This is question-begging because it may be that the tokens of 'God' in "God is triune; God is not triune"  differ in sense so radically that they  also differ in reference.  In other words, the mere fact that one and the same word-type 'God' is tokened twice does not show that there is one and the same object about whose properties we are disputing.

4. Feser writes,

Even errors concerning God’s Trinitarian nature are not per se sufficient to prevent successful reference.  Abraham and Moses were not Trinitarians, but no Christian can deny that they referred to, and worshiped, the same God Christians do.

[. . .]

But shouldn’t a Christian hold that some reference to the Trinity or to the divinity of Jesus is also at least necessary, even if not sufficient, for successful reference to the true God?  Doesn’t that follow from the fact that being Trinitarian is, from a Christian point of view, also essential to God?   No, that doesn’t follow at all, and any Christian who says otherwise will, if he stops and thinks carefully about it, see that he doesn’t really believe that it follows.  Again, Christians don’t deny that Abraham and Moses, or modern Jews, or Arians and other heretics, refer to and worship the same God as orthodox Christians, despite the fact that these people do not affirm the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus. 

There is a modal fudge across these two passages that I don't think it is mere pedantry on my part to point out.  In the first passage Feser claims in effect that

A. No Christian CAN deny that Abraham and Moses worshiped the same God that Christians do

while in the second Feser claims in effect that

B. No Christian DOES deny that Abraham and Moses worshiped the same God that Christians do.

If we charitably substitute 'hardly any' for 'no' in (B) then we get a statement that I am willing to concede is true.  (A), however, strikes me as false.  I myself am strongly tempted to deny that Jews and Christians worship the same God -- assuming that the Jewish God is non-triune and explicitly determined to be such by Jews --  and what I am strongly tempted to do strikes me as entirely possible and rationally justifiable.  Why can't someone reasonably deny that Jews and Christians worship the same God?

Feser thinks he has cited some incontrovertible fact that decides the issue, the fact being that everyone or almost everyone claims that Jews and Christians worship the same God.  I concede the fact.  What I don't concede is that it decides the issue. My claim against Feser on the present occasion is not that he is wrong to maintain that (normative) Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God, but that he is not obviously right, his confident asseverations in the passages lately quoted notwithstanding. I am saying to Feser what I said to Beckwith and Tuggy: you gentlemen think this issue easily resolved.  But it isn't, in large part because its resolution depends on the solution of hitherto unsolved problems in the philosophy of language.

Here are two questions we ought to distinguish:

Q1. Do Christians use 'God'  and equivalents with the intention of referring to the same being that Jews refer to or think they are referring to with 'God' and equivalents?

Q2. Do Christians and Jews succeed in refer to the same being?

An affirmative answer to the first question is consistent with a negative answer to the second question.  I agree with an affirmative answer to (Q1).  But this affirmative answer does not entail an affirmative answer to (Q2).  Moreover, it is reasonable to return a negative answer to (Q2).  I will now try to explain how it is reasonable to answer (Q2) in the negative.

5. The crux of the matter is the nature of reference.  How exactly is successful reference achieved?  And what exactly is reference?  And how is worship related to reference?

First off,the causal theory of Kripke, Donnellan, et al. is reasonably rejected and I reject it .  It is rife with difficulties.  (See e.g., John Searle, Intentionality, Cambridge UP, 1983, ch. 9) Connected with this is my subscription to  the broadly logical primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.  Part of what this means is that words don't refer, people refer using words, and they don't need to use words to refer.  All reference, at bottom, is thinking reference or mental reference.  Reference at bottom is intentionality.  To refer to something, then, whether with words or without words, is to intend it or think of it.  This is to be understood as implying that words, phrases, and the like, considered in their physical being as marks on paper or sounds in the air or carvings in stone (etc.) are entirely lacking in any intrinsic referential, representative, semantic,  or intentional character.  They are not intrinsically object-directed.  There is no object-directedness in nature apart from mind.  (Though it may be that dispositionality is an analog of it.  See here.)  This is equivalent to saying that there is no objective reference without mind.   A word acquires reference only when it is thoughtfully used.  

Reference to particulars  in the sense of 'refer' just explained is always and indeed necessarily reference to propertied particulars.  This is because reference to a particular 'picks it out' from all else, singles it out, designates it to the exclusion of everything else. Particulars taken in abstraction from their properties cannot be singled out to the exclusion of all else.  To think of a thing or person is to think of it as an instance of certain properties and indeed in such a way as to distinguish it from all else.  So, to think of, and thus refer to,  a particular is to think of it as an instance of a set of properties that jointly individuate it. 

To refer to God, then, is to think of God as an instance of certain properties.  I cannot think of God directly as just a particular, and then as instantiating certain properties.  This ought to be quite clear from the fact  that in this life our (natural) knowledge of God is not by acquaintance but by description.  I don't literally see God when I look upwards at "the starry skies above me" or gaze  inward at "the moral law within me" to borrow a couple of signature phrases from Immanuel Kant.  Our only access to God here below is indirect via his properties, as an instance of those properties.  Here below we approach God from the side of his properties as we understand them.  The existence and identity of my table is known directly by acquaintance. Not so in the case of God. The existence of God is not given to sense perception but has to be understood as the being-instantiated of certain properties.  The God I know by description is God qua uniquely satisfying my understanding of 'God.'

Someone could object:  What about mystical experience?  Is it not possible in this life to enjoy mystical knowledge by acquaintance of God?  This  is a very large, and I think separate topic.  To the extent that mystical experience leads to mystical union it tends to collapse the I-Thou and man-God duality that is part of the framework of worship as we are discussing it in this context.  See my Buber on Buddhism and Other Forms of Mysticism.   It also tends to explode the framework in which questions about reference are posed .  I mean the framework in which:  here is a minded organism with linguistic capacity who thoughtfully utters certain words and phrases while out there are various things to which the organism is trying to refer and often succeeding.  

There is also the question of the veridicality of mystical experience.  How do I know that an experience of mine is revelatory of something real?  How do I know that successive experiences of mine are revelatory of the same thing?  How do I know that  the mystical experiences of different people are veridically of the same thing?  So I suggest we bracket the question of mystical experience.

Any  natural knowledge of God in this life, then, is by description.  Reference to God is indirect and via the understanding of 'God' within a given religion.  Now the orthodox Christian understanding of 'God' is that God sent his only begotten Son, begotten not made, into our predicament to teach us and show us the Way (via, veritas, vita) and to suffer and die for our sins.  Together with this contingent Sending goes the triunity of God as the necessary condition of its possibility.  This is part of what an orthodox Christian means by 'God,' although I reckon few Christians would put it the way I just did.   It is part of the sense of 'God' for an orthodox Christian.  But this is not part of the sense of 'God' for the orthodox Muslim who denies the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the soteriology connected with both.

So do Christians and  Muslims succeed in referring to the same being?  No.  Successful reference on a descriptivist semantics requires the cooperation of Mind and World.  Successful reference, whether with words or without words, requires that there exist outside the mind something that satisfies the conditions set within the mind.  (Remember: it is not primarily words that refer, but minds via words and mental states.)  Now suppose there exists exactly one God and that that God is a Trinity.  Then the Christian's understanding of 'God' will be satisfied, and his reference to God will be successful.  But the Muslim's reference will fail.  The reason for this is that there is nothing outside the mind that satisfies his characteristic understanding of 'God.' 

Of course, the Muslim could put it  the other way around.  Either way, my point goes through:  Muslim and Christian cannot be referring to the one and the same God.

You say the Christian and Muslim understandings of 'God' overlap?  You are right!  But this overlap is but an abstraction insufficient to determine an identifying reference to a concrete, wholly determinate, particular.  In reality, God is completely determinate.  As such, he cannot be neither triune nor not triune, neither incarnated nor not incarnated, etc.  in the way the overlapping conception is.  So if the triune God exists, then the non-triune God does not exist.  Of course, we can say that the Christian and the Muslim are 'driving in the same direction.'  Heading  West on Interstate 10, I am driving toward the greater Los Angeles area, and thus I am driving toward both Watts and Laguna Niguel.  But there is a big difference, and perhaps one pertaining unto my 'salvation,' whether I arrive in Watts or in Laguna Niguel.  What's more, I cannot terminate my drive in some indeterminate location.  The successful termination of my peregrination must occur at some wholly definite place.  So too with successful reference to a concrete particular: it must terminate with a completely determinate referent.

Here is another related objection.  "If the Christian God exists, then both Christian and Muslim succeed in referring to the same God -- it is just that this same God is  the Christian God, i.e., God as understood in the characteristically Christian way. The existence of the Christian God suffices to satisfy the common Christian-Muslim underdstanding of 'God.'"

In reply I repeat that both mind and world must cooperate for successful reference on a descriptivist semantics.  So it is not enough that God exists and that there be exactly one God.  Nor is it enough that the one God satisfy the common Christian-Muslim conception; for the Muslim God to be an object of successful reference it must both exist and satisfy the characteristic Muslim understanding of 'God.'

Conclusion

My thesis is a rather modest one.  To repeat what I said above:

My claim against Feser on the present occasion is not that he is wrong to maintain that (normative) Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God, but that he is not obviously right, his confident asseverations in the passages lately quoted notwithstanding. I am saying to Feser what I said to Beckwith and Tuggy: you gentlemen think this issue easily resolved.  But it isn't, in large part because its resolution depends on the solution of hitherto unsolved problems in the philosophy of language.

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Comments

[Ed from London]

To see if I understand.

1. If a Christian utters 'God is triune' and a Muslim utters 'God is non-triune', and if there is some x such that each successfully refers to x using the term 'God' (call this the identity condition), then they have contradicted each other. If there is some x and some y such that x not = y (call this the non-identity condition), and the Christian refers to x and the Muslim refers to y, then they have not contradicted each other. Otherwise there is reference failure on one or or both sides (reference failure condition).

2. If the Christian's and the Muslim's utterances express their respective beliefs, and the identity condition is met, then they have beliefs about the same thing. If the non-identity condition met, then they have beliefs about different things. If there is reference failure on one or both sides, there is a question whether there is belief at all.

3. If the Christian and Muslim both utter 'I worship God' and the identity condition is met, then both worship same thing. If non-identity condition met, they worship different things. If reference failure, I am not sure what is going on.

So everything hangs upon the notion of 'successful reference'. Or rather, success in one's aim of referring to x. If you refer at all, clearly you have also successfully referred.

I also agree that the notion of successful reference is a difficult one. Against Feser, Beckwith and Tuggy, I agre that the issue is not easily resolved, almost entirely because its resolution depends on the solution of hitherto unsolved problems in the philosophy of language.

Does this give us a green patch of agreement, amidst the forest of darkness and confusion?

[Bill Vallicella]

>>If you refer at all, clearly you have also successfully referred.<<

I deny it! You must distinguish between reference and referent. A successful (singular) reference is one that (a) has a referent; (b) has the right referent; (c) has exactly one referent.

Shooting analogy. (TRIGGER WARNING! Politically incorrect example coming up! Crybullies out of the room!) Imagine being at a shooting range. A successful act of shooting, or shot, is one that hits a target; hits the right target (the one aimed at, not the one the guy to your right is aiming at); hits exactly one target. (Suppose a sniper wants to kill a jihadi but wants to miss his wife, who is shorter, who is standing behind him. He attempts a head shot. If his high-powered round passes through jihadi and wife killing both, then his shot is unsuccessful.)

Clearly, one can refer without successfully referring.

A reference to Santa Claus fails if there is no Santa Claus.

Suppose I mistakenly think that The Flying Dutchman is a world-class Dutch marathoner. I say, 'The Flying Dutchman wears Nikes.' My intended reference fails by targeting the wrong item, a ship.

A reference to an iron sphere fails if there happen to be two iron spheres with all the same intrinsic and relational properties. (I have in mind Max Black's famous balls of iron.)

[Ed from London]

OK. Importantly: do you agree with my inference from what you are saying? One can proceed by identifying areas where there seems to be disagreement, or by identifying areas of agreement. The latter is often more fruitful. Reasons (1) initial avoidance of conflict (2) identification of the key areas where the real and interesting battle may be fought. Think of the generals on each side trying to work out the best place where battle may be engaged. Obviously there's a secondary kind of warfare involved there, too, e.g. a good general may try to draw the enemy into a battle location more favourable to him than his enemy. E.g. in the miners' strike in the 1980s Thatcher deliberately provoked the union into going on strike in the spring time, when demand for fuel was falling. My friends on the Left consider that one of the defining moments of the struggle.

But I digress. Are we agreed that 'successful reference' is key to the issue we are discussing?

[Francis J. Beckwith]

Let me see if I understand you:

Now suppose there exists exactly one Clark Kent and that Clark Kent is Kryptonian. Then Batman's understanding of "Clark Kent" will be satisfied, and his reference to Clark Kent will be successful. But Lois Lane's reference to a non-Kryptonian Clark Kent will fail. The reason for this is that there is nothing outside the mind that satisfies her characteristic understanding of "Clark Kent."

So, therefore, Batman and Lois know different Clark Kents.

[John Doran]

I'm not sure that we're asking the right question, here: it seems to me that "Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?" is not asking whether Bob and Carol, for example, in their individual acts of Catholic and Presbyterian worship, succeed in referring to the same entity as Malik and Safa do when they engage in their Muslim prayers.

Isn't the real question something more like "Is the God described in the Bible the same God as the God described in the Qu'ran (and Hadith)?"

I mean, the success or failure of individual acts of reference will presumably depend on the specific intentional context of each such act, and will so far forth be resistant to some kind of general evaluation (e.g. Bob might be appealing to the being that his grandfather told him about as a child, and whom he thinks of as a kind of powerful and benevolent octogenarian, while Carol is offering an encomium to the being whose essence is to exist. Ditto, mutatis mutandis, for Safa and Malik.)

I've always understood the query to be, where the rubber hits the road, whether or not the being described as God by the Old and New Testaments possesses a sufficient number of the same essential properties as the being described as God by the Qu'ran and Hadith. (The criteria could perhaps be expanded to include some core of putatively definitive historical/dogmatic scholarly or ecclesiastical commentary and clarification of those texts.)

Of course, that may not turn out to be any more tractable a problem than that of (sense and) reference, but it seems at least to have the twin virtues of generality and independence from recondite questions of linguistic philosophy (for which it substitutes recondite questions of metaphysics, I guess.)

I suppose, also, that the first question could be phrased in terms of the second, as a kind of idealization: Assuming that Christians and Muslims intend to worship the being described as God in the Bible and the Qu'ran (and Hadith), respectively, are they worshipping (would they succeed in referring to) the same God?

[Remington]

Frank,

Doesn't this fall into the mistake the Bill pointed out earlier: that knowledge by acquaintance is a poor analogy for our references to God?

[Bill Vallicella]

Ed writes, >>So everything hangs upon the notion of 'successful reference'.<<

Yes.

[Bill Vallicella]

Frank (if I may),

It seems to me that you are begging the question if you assume that the Clark Kent - Superman case is a good analogy of the Christian God - Muslim case. After all, we know that Clark Kent = Superman who hails from the planet Krypton. There is no question about that (within the context of the fictional story). So it is natural to say that Lois Lane refers to the same individual as Batman does when each use 'Clark Kent,' but that Lois Lane has a false belief about Kent, namely that he hails from Earth like the rest of us.

Since we KNOW that Clark Kent = Superman, it would be false to say that Lois Lane and Batman refer to, know, or admire different Clark Kents.

But if you use this analogy then you question-beggingly assume that the X-God = the M-God.

The question is whether the M and X worship the same God. They do only if they successfully refer to the same God. If they do, then you can say that either the M or the X fails to understand the divine nature properly. If Xianity is true, then God is triune essentially, and indeed necessarily. Now Muslims explicitly deny that God is triune. So you can say that they have a false belief about God -- but only if you assume that they are successfully referring to one and the same God.

But that is the very question! So are begging the question just as you did with your TJ example in the *Catholic Thing* article. Tuggy too begs the question with his GW example.

I maintain that it is reasonable to say that X and M are not successfully referring to the same God, that the M is referring to a God that doesn't exist.

Compare the Spinozist and the Thomist. Both maintain that there is exactly one God. Would you say that they both successfully refer to the same God, but that one of them has false beliefs about God?

If you say No, then why do you think that the X and M successfully refer to the same God?

[Bill Vallicella]

Remington,

That's right.

[London Ed]

>>But if you use this analogy then you question-beggingly assume that the X-God = the M-God.

What are you referring to by the terms 'X-God', 'M-God'?

[London Ed]

Oh scrap that last question. You mean 'whichever god Christians worship', and 'whichever god Muslims worship', right?

There seems something badly wrong with your reply to Francis, but can't put my finger on it.

[Elliott]

>> words don't refer, people refer using words, and they don't need to use words to refer. <<

I agree. This seems clear. Arguably, this is why it's technically incorrect for an instructor to comment on a student's paper as follows:

"The essay argues x"
"The paragraph discusses y"
"The sentence claims z."

And it's strictly incorrect for someone to say "The newspaper says the President will speak at 8 PM ET tomorrow" although one might say this in a loose sense.

Actually, the student argues, discusses, and claims, not the paper or the words therein. And the writer of the newspaper article makes the claim, not the newspaper or the mere words written inside.

[Bill Vallicella]

Ed,

I've used this notation before. 'X' for 'Chi.' Christian God, Muslim God.

Apparently you haven't understood what I've been saying over several posts if you think something is wrong with my reply to Beckwith.

Remington gets it.

[Bill Vallicella]

Elliot,

Exactly right. Outside of philosophy one needn't be so precise, but in philosophy one must be because it all hinges on subtle distinctions.

[Bill Vallicella]

John Doran,

I thought I had made it clear that I am not concerned with the private understandings and misunderstandings of particular Christians and Muslims. This is why I spoke in this and other entries of orthodox/normative Christians/Muslims.

You also must bear in mind that words by themselves do not refer.

Just as guns don't kill people, but people kill people using guns, words don't refer to things, but people refer to things using words.

Moreover, they don't need to use words since at bottom all reference is mental reference as I explained above.

>>Isn't the real question something more like "Is the God described in the Bible the same God as the God described in the Qu'ran (and Hadith)?"<<

Actually, your question would be better formulated if you replaced 'Bible' with 'N.T. and O.T. interpreted in the light of the N. T.' I say this because the question is whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

But my main problem is that, strictly speaking, the Bible doesn't describe anything for reasons I've already given.

>>I've always understood the query to be, where the rubber hits the road, whether or not the being described as God by the Old and New Testaments possesses a sufficient number of the same essential properties as the being described as God by the Qu'ran and Hadith. (The criteria could perhaps be expanded to include some core of putatively definitive historical/dogmatic scholarly or ecclesiastical commentary and clarification of those texts.)<<

Sufficient for what purpose?

>>Of course, that may not turn out to be any more tractable a problem than that of (sense and) reference, but it seems at least to have the twin virtues of generality and independence from recondite questions of linguistic philosophy (for which it substitutes recondite questions of metaphysics, I guess.)<<

There is nothing wrong with asking a different question. Perhaps you want to ask the question: Are their sufficient similarities between the God of the Christians and the God of Muslims to make it worthwhile to have an inter-faith dialog with the goal in mind of reducing tensions, fostering toleration, and promoting comity?

While there is nothing wrong with asking a different question, it seems to me that there is something wrong with changing the subject. The subject is the question, Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? And this question, as I have made clear to my own satisfaction, leads in a step or two to difficult questions about reference, questions which involve phil. of lang, phil of mind, and metaphysics.

You may wish to ask a question that does not entangle us in thorny questions about reference, but then you are asking a different question than the one on the table.

I recommend you give a listen to Tuggy's latest podcast. He does an excellent job of contextualizing all of this starting with the controversy involving Dr Hawkins at Wheaton College.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_P31pv9vB0&feature=youtu.be&list=PLMCt15e8gG-g7t7wo9MCq9KSDSsvGNcsm

[Josh]

Listened to your podcast with Dale Tuggy last night. It's a good listen, but I have to say it is absolutely wild that he thinks the Spinozist and the Thomist are referring to the same object when they say Deus sive natura and ipsum esse subsistens, respectively. But I guess that's philosophy. "It ain't obvious what's obvious", and so on...

[Bill Vallicella]

Josh,

Dale needs to think about that more carefully. But suppose we leave out the ipsum esse subsistens bit. Do Plantinga and Spinoza worship and refer to the same God? Obviously not.

But now here is a toughie: Do Plantinga and Thomas refer to the same God? After all, a God who is Being itself is VERY different from a God who is a being among beings.

[John Doran]

Bill,

Thanks for the response.

Would it be possible for me to flip you an email about this? I'd like to run some thoughts by you without having to worry about the combox being closed before I have the time...

I understand if you're not comfortable giving out your email address, but I thought I'd ask.

Regards,

- jd

[Jeffrey S.]

Bill V.

If you head over to Ed's post on this subject and scroll all the way down to the end of the comments (around number 450) you'll find an interesting four part response to this post. I'm not sure I can make any sense of it, but I thought I'd bring your attention to the 'analysis' anyway.

I've absolutely loved your series of posts on this subject, but then I'm closer to your position than Ed's, while accepting the fact that this is a hard problem with many fascinating philosophical issues involved!

[Bill Vallicella]

jd,

The combox will remain open for some time, so please send your rejoinder here. You can get to my e-mail address via About near the top of the sidebar to the right.

[Bill Vallicella]

Thanks, Jeffrey. More to come.

[Elliott]

The "same God" claim seems to suggest what David Wiggins calls the Relativity of Identity Thesis (R). In Sameness and Substance Renewed (2001), Wiggins distinguishes R from the thesis that identity is absolute. He characterizes R as follows:

a is the same F as b, but a is not the same G as b.

In other words, identity is relative to the language we use to sort things.

Applied to the "same God" claim, R would seem to be:

"The Muslim God is the same God as the Christian God, but not the same God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth as the Christian God."

"The Muslim God is the same God as the Christian God, but not the same triune God as the Christian God."

Wiggins denies R on the basis of the Leibniz principle of the indiscernibility of identicals: if a is identical to b, then whatever is true of a is true of b and vice versa. He defends the thesis that identity is absolute.

[Craig]

My basic intellectual approach is as a historian, not a philosopher, so I may be missing something. However, it does seem to me that the scriptural evidence is very clear that when the evangelists, St. Paul, and Christ himself referred to "the God of Abraham" and just "God" as synonyms. I don't see any justification for supposing that Abraham knew that God is triune.

If it were established that Christ himself says that Christians worship the God of the Jews, would that change your opinion about whether the God of the two religions is the same?