God is God

Recently Professor Larycia Hawkins was suspended from her associate professorship at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution that requires its employees to sign some variety of faith declaration.  Her infraction? Making statements on social media that implied that Muslims and Christians worship the same God.  She's on leave while the "theological implications" of her statements are explored.

I was absolutely amazed by the entire ordeal; it just seems so petty.  I had taken it for granted that at the very least all the Abrahamic religions understood each others' texts to refer to the same singular deity.  Since first discovering the story, I've read a few discussions that explore the particulars of Christian and Muslim theology, and center particularly around the divinity of Christ and the tripartite nature of God that anchor most interpretations of Christianity.  Apparently to many these differences provide the substance for complaint against Professor Hawkins' assertion that the God Christians and Muslims worship is "the same."

If that's really what this is all about, then it exposes an unbelievable arrogance in the administrative perspective of Wheaton College, and perhaps a deeply rooted religious insecurity in their leadership and those that subscribe to similar perspectives.  To root a debate about whether or not the Gods of two separate religions are "the same" on textual and historical particularities is absurdly human-centric; it presumes that these humans at Wheaton College have perfectly understood the communication they have received from God about its own nature and character, so much so that they can hear other people saying things about God with which they disagree and safely conclude that those people "are talking about someone else, but certainly not OUR God!"

As an interesting parallel example, consider the Kardashians.  How many rumors swirl around every aspect of their personal, professional, and romantic endeavors?  Consider the multiplicity of interpretations for the personalities of each Kardashian that can be dug up with a simple Google search.  And all of these viewpoints have grown around real, actual human beings, whose lives have been publicly documented and consumed perhaps more than any other humans in the history of humanity.  Why can't we develop human consensus around the Kardashians?  Because we're also fallible humans, that's why.  We can debate about the personality and choices of Kim Kardashian, but no one is crazy enough to excommunicate you because you're talking about a different Kim Kardashian that obviously can't be the same Kim Kardashian that they know.

Now add the layers of ambiguity and abstraction that exist in the spiritual domain, which is itself defined by the necessity of faith (i.e. acceptance of incomplete knowing).  Are the theologians at Wheaton seriously comfortable asserting that Professor Hawkins was wrong when she claimed that Muslims and Christians worship the same God?

The alternative would be to assert that Muslims and Christians worship different Gods, which to me sounds exponentially more offensive to Christian theology, since it accepts the existence of different Gods.  I'm not a master of scripture, but I do believe that Christian commandment Number One says "Make no other Gods before me."  It's a ridiculous debate - for officials at Wheaton to be upset by Professor Hawkins' comments demonstrates a crippling insecurity about the institution's own spiritual strength while simultaneously asserting the diminished status of the God they're trying to prop up with their speech policing.

Wheaton College Officials, please feel free to conclude that Muslims ascribe different characteristics to God than you do, that they've reached a different, imperfect understanding of the transcendent actor you believe you'e come to flawlessly understand, but don't put the ridiculous the sort of laughable hubris on display attached to the assertion that Muslims might actually have a different God than you.