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Do all Religious Traditions Worship the Same God?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Hendrik M. Vroom
Hendrik M. Vroom
Affiliation:
Free University, Amsterdam
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Extract

Do all religions worship the same God? Sometimes this question is answered positively, sometimes negatively. Various reasons are given. In the first four sections of this paper we will analyse arguments which affirm or deny that all religions worship the same God. We will see that different types of argument are used. Some authors base their answers to our question on their theological insights (section 1); others defend their thesis with reference to the results of studies in comparative religion (section 2); a third type of argument derives from the philosophy of religion (section 3) and a fourth from philosophical views regarding the ultimate unity of the world (section 4). After this survey we will deal with the structure of the various arguments given. What kind of argument is decisive? I will also make some comments on each of these arguments in order to develop my own. We will then draw our conclusion as to the kind of arguments which are appropriate to our theme (section 5). In the last section I will elaborate my own view.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 73 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

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5 These difficulties are overcome traditionally by saying that after Christ the norm for true knowledge of God is Christ. However, this implies a confusion of two different questions: (1) Do they all worship God?, and (2) How deep is their knowledge of God? If you answer the first question positively (‘They do worship God’), the further question is whether they know God well enough.

6 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, ‘Is the Qu'ran the Word of God?’, in Idem, Questions of Religious Truth (London, 1967), 55f.Google Scholar; see his The Meaning and End of Religion (1962; New York, 1964), 171 ff.Google Scholar

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24 As comparative religion shows, Romans 1:21 cannot be applied generally to all religious traditions.

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