Christian Fundamentalists and Muslims (1)

Mel Gibson is working hard to turn their attention to Jews. But many Christian fundamentalists, particularly those associated with Christian Right politics, couch their very traditional and not exactly ecumenical attitude toward Jews and Judaism in "philo-Semitic" language. It often comes down to not much more than, "I support every hardline policy of the Likud Party in Israel so that shows I'm not anti-Semitic."

But the Christian Right doesn't even pretend to be philo-Muslim (if there is such a word). Mississippi's Baptist Record of 12/11/03. They reported on a conference at the southern Seminary in Louisville, KY, at which the speakers took a position on Islam that was anything but ecumenical. Ergun Caner, a professor of theology and history at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University declared his theological position this way:

"To say that our ... monotheistic religions [presumably Christianity, Islam and Judaism] worship the same God, that as sons of Abraham we can unite on a common cause of this said God against the threat of humanism, in my mind ignores the central tenets of each system and insults the adherents of each system," Caner said.

Though Muslims believe that Allah is the sovereign creator, they deny other facets of the Christian doctrine of God such as the Trinity and the deity of Christ, Caner said. "It is not the same God," he said. "The Koran is explicit not to say Trinity... We're not talking about the same God."

One might hope that a professor of theology even at a sectarian institution would know that both the Old and New Testament are "explicit not to say Trinity," as well. Christians argue that the concept is implicit in the New Testament. And can be very imaginative in finding it in the Hebrew Bible, aka Old Testament, too.

But historically, it took centuries for the issue of Jesus' divinity to be settled. In was only in 325 CE that the Council of Niceaea officially declared Arianism, which did not regard Jesus as God, a "heresy." The Athanasian Creed of 500 CE defined the concept in its enduring form. But even in the eleventh century, a difference over the description of the position of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity was the key theological justification for the split between the Western and Eastern Christian Churches.