ALLAH AND THE TRINITY - THE SAME TRUE GOD?

The God of Marty’s Christian Century Is Not The God of Historic Christianity
ALLAH AND THE TRINITY - THE SAME TRUE GOD?

Christians do not have a radically different understanding of God than Muslims says “Allah and the Trinity”, the cover story of the March 8, 2011 The Christian Century. The article concludes: “Unity of God doesn’t separate Muslims from Christians; it binds them together.” The Christian Century article is by Miroslav Volf. It is adapted from his book Allah: A Christian Response just published by HarperCollins. Volf, who teaches at Yale Divinity School, writes in The Christian Century:

“All words we use of God are inadequate. Why? Augustine explains: ‘Because the total transcendence of the godhead quite surpasses the capacity of ordinary speech.’ The words paint a picture or tell a story, so to speak, but the picture or the story is always more dissimilar than it is similar to who God truly is. God is uncreated and infinite, therefore inexpressible and beyond our concepts, beyond our language.

“The talk of persons captures something about God but is inadequate to express the full reality because God transcends the notion of person. The same is true of essence, goodness, loveall to varying degrees correct and true as referring to God, but all also deeply inadequate. The very reality of God is such that God always remains inconceivable, a mystery that can never be properly named or puzzled out. And yet we speak of God, guided by God’s self-revelation. We have true knowledge of God, but we are capable of understanding much better what that Mystery is not than what it is. Important strands in all three Abrahamic faiths agree on this.

“I hope that these arguments will be plausible to Muslims and Christians alike. With regard to Muslims, however, my purpose is not to persuade them that God indeed is the Holy Trinity. I have not offered a single argument in favor of this cardinal Christian belief. My purpose is more modest: to demonstrate that the rejections of the Trinity in the Qur’an do not refer to normative Christian understanding of God’s threeness, and that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity does not call into question God’s oneness as expressed in Muslims’ most basic belief that there is ‘no god but God.’ What the Qur’an may be targeting are misconceptions about God’s nature held by misguided Christians.

“This discussion has been directed not primarily to Muslims but to Christians. My goal is to remind Christians that Muslim objections to the doctrine of the Trinity and the uncompromising affirmation of God’s oneness from which these objections stem are not in themselves good enough reasons for Christians to think that they have a radically different understanding of God than Muslims. Unity of God doesn’t separate Muslims from Christians; it binds them together.”

Islam in the Crucible - Can It Pass the Test, by Riccoldo da Montecroce and Martin Luther (available from Christian News $8.50), shows that the god of the Muslims does not exist and that the Holy Trinity is the only true God.

Dr. Martin Marty, the author of the foreword to James Burkee’s Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod - A Conflict That Changed American Christianity published last month by ELCA’s Fortress Press, has been associated with The Christian Century for more than 50 years. He is now a contributing editor. Burkee, in a section titled “Countering Christian News” reports that CN editor Otten filed charges of false doctrine vs. Marty. Burkee writes: “Harms, struggling at first to respond as a gentleman to Otten’s deluge of letters, was losing patience. ‘Have you dealt with Martin Marty?’ ‘Yes,’ Harms replied.” (p. 56 of Burkee book). “But Harms knew he was playing into Otten’s hands and that he would lose the battle unless he could find an answer to the growing power of Christian News. In April 1964, Harms, Wolbrecht, and Lutheran Witness editor Martin Mueller acknowledged that influence and tried to combat it by printing a public condemnation of Christian News” (Burkee, p. 56).

When Marty offered to resign from the LCMS’s Committee on Social Concerns to which LCMS President Jacob Preus appointed him, Burkee quotes Preus as telling Marty: “No, Marty, you are exactly right for that job. I went over the whole clergy roster and picked the right person for each post. You are the first name that comes to mind for Social Concern.” Preus told Marty: “Now, that Committee on Social Concern; we’ve got to redefine it. . . it isn’t worth a pile of shit.” Burkee notes that Christian News published an interview which the June, 1967 Playboy had with Marty where Marty said: “I could conceive, from the pastoral point of view, the legitimacy of something like adultery in extreme situations” (Burkee, p. 204). Such and “extreme” situation, according to Marty, might be when women who have never married needed to be “uncorked.”

Christian News has often noted during the last fifty years that the god of The Christian Century is not the God of historic Christianity, three separate persons in one divine essence.

The May 18, 1964 Christian News published “Martin E. Marty” by Cornelius Van Til, an orthodox Presbyterian scholar. Marty noted that Van Til presented him as some sort of Unitarian. Van Til’s article is in A Christian Handbook on Vital Issues, pp. 74-75. Van Til quoted from Marty’s books.

The CN editor writes in the introduction to Baal or God, published in 1965:
“How long are you going to limp along on both sides? If the Lord is God, follow him: But if Baal, follow him.” With these words in 1 Kings 18:21 the ancient prophet Elijah asked the children of Israel how long they intended to hesitate between worshiping the true God and worshiping Baal, the pagan idol. Elijah urged those who had been called to be God’s people to make up their minds. He warned that an “either-or” decision had to be made.

Twentieth-century man faces the same choice. He must decide between God or Baal.
In 1924 The Christian Century, a voice of modern liberalism advertising itself as “Protestantism’s leading non-denominational journal,” said:

Christianity according to fundamentalism is one religion and Christianity according to modernism is another . . . there is a clash here as profound and grim as between Christianity and Confucianism. The God of the fundamentalist is one God, and the God of the modernist is another... Which is the true Christian religion is the question to be settled by our generation for future generations.

The “clash” between God and Baal continues. Modern man must make a choice. The god of modernism and of The Christian Century is still the god of many prominent figures within the National and World Council of Churches. The God of fundamentalism is the God of historic Christianity.

Baal or God shows there are basically two different religions within external Christendom. The difference between these two religions is the difference between God and Baal. Informed Christians ought to recognize that the real difference within external Christendom does not lie along traditional denominational lines but within the major denominations. On the one hand there are those within these denominations who accept the fundamental truths of historic Christianity; on the other hand there are the modern liberals within these same denomination who reject historic Christianity. The situation in Christendom is like that in American politics. There are conservatives and liberals in each major political party. So there are believer in historic Christianity and modern liberals in the major denominations.

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In 1997 Christian News published a seven part series on Marty’s theology beginning in the January 27, 1997 CN. CN sent the series to Marty and offered to publish any correction. Part II of the series is titled “LCMS Defended Marty’s Association with The Christian Century.” (CN February 10, 1997). When Concordia Seminary, St. Louis invited Marty to speak, a group of California laymen proposed that Marty and Otten debate at the seminary. Otten agreed but Marty declined to debate.