In Chapter 13, the final chapter of Allah: A Christian Response, Miroslav Volf asks if his advice for Christians to open themselves up to God in love will benefit the world. Further, he asks if it might not rather exacerbate problems between Christians and Muslims, giving more weight to exclusive religious convictions associated with the belief in one God and adding religious fuel to conflicts.
Volf then lists a number of alternatives to accept the view of a common God between Christians and Muslims, but states that none of them will work...
1. Eliminate religion. Attempts to eliminate religion would be both oppressive and ineffective, and hopes are futile that it will wither away on its own in the foreseeable future
2. Keep religious communities apart. In today’s world, it is impossible to keep religious communities apart.
3. Privatize religion (keep it out of the public sphere). To prohibit religious people from drawin on their traditions and therefore on revelation in their political engagement is to discriminate against them. Religion cannot and should not be privatized.
Volf then gives the consequences for the pursuit of the common good by Muslims and Christians...
1. For both Christians and Muslims, God is not a tribal deity – since God is one, God is never “our” God as opposed to “their” God. If possessive pronouns are appropriate at all, “our” God is as much “theirs” as “ours.”
2. Both Muslims and Christians agree that their common God is just and merciful and requires human beings to be just and merciful in all their dealings.
Volf then provides commonly held opinions about what draws people together to become friends...
1. Like must love like, or as we sometimes put it, “Birds of a feather flock together”
2. Like is the greatest enemy of the like
3. Common values lead to agreement.
According to Volf, not all talk about God is, in fact, about the one true God. Some of it, he writes, is about false gods, and much of it is about culture, territory, and identity and therefore deeply divisive and especially dangerous in an interconnected and interdependent world. It is time, Volf asserts, for Muslims and Christians to rebel against religion as a marker of identity and weapon in worldly struggles. It usurps, he says, the place of God in their lives. As believers in the one God, he states, they should affirm together that no other thing – no culture, no nation, and, yes, not even religion – is God. God alone is God, writes Volf, – the common God of Christians and Muslims, whom they both understand in different and yet remarkably similar ways.
Volf then lists a number of alternatives to accept the view of a common God between Christians and Muslims, but states that none of them will work...
1. Eliminate religion. Attempts to eliminate religion would be both oppressive and ineffective, and hopes are futile that it will wither away on its own in the foreseeable future
2. Keep religious communities apart. In today’s world, it is impossible to keep religious communities apart.
3. Privatize religion (keep it out of the public sphere). To prohibit religious people from drawin on their traditions and therefore on revelation in their political engagement is to discriminate against them. Religion cannot and should not be privatized.
Volf then gives the consequences for the pursuit of the common good by Muslims and Christians...
1. For both Christians and Muslims, God is not a tribal deity – since God is one, God is never “our” God as opposed to “their” God. If possessive pronouns are appropriate at all, “our” God is as much “theirs” as “ours.”
2. Both Muslims and Christians agree that their common God is just and merciful and requires human beings to be just and merciful in all their dealings.
Volf then provides commonly held opinions about what draws people together to become friends...
1. Like must love like, or as we sometimes put it, “Birds of a feather flock together”
2. Like is the greatest enemy of the like
3. Common values lead to agreement.
According to Volf, not all talk about God is, in fact, about the one true God. Some of it, he writes, is about false gods, and much of it is about culture, territory, and identity and therefore deeply divisive and especially dangerous in an interconnected and interdependent world. It is time, Volf asserts, for Muslims and Christians to rebel against religion as a marker of identity and weapon in worldly struggles. It usurps, he says, the place of God in their lives. As believers in the one God, he states, they should affirm together that no other thing – no culture, no nation, and, yes, not even religion – is God. God alone is God, writes Volf, – the common God of Christians and Muslims, whom they both understand in different and yet remarkably similar ways.
