Search This Blog

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Do Aztecs and Christians worship the same God?

William Vallicella The Debate That Won't Go Away: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?
... So the conceptions of God in the two religions are radically different. But how is it supposed to follow that Christians and [Aztecs] worship numerically different Gods? It doesn't follow! Let me explain.

Suppose Sam's conception of the author of Das Kapital includes the false belief that the author is a Russian while Dave's conception includes the true belief that he is a German. This is consistent with there being one and same philosopher whom they have beliefs about and are referring to. One and the same man, Karl Marx, is such that Sam has a false belief about him while Dave has a true belief about him.

Now suppose [Atl]'s conception of the divine being includes the false belief that said being [demands, or at least requires/needs, unending blood sacrifice, and on an industrial scale] while Peter's conception includes the true belief that God [offered himself once and for all as the only fitting blood sacrifice]. This is consistent with there being one and same being whom they have beliefs about and are referring to. One and the same god, God, is such that [Atl] has a false belief about him while Peter has a true belief about him.

What I have just shown is that from the radically different, and indeed inconsistent, God-conceptions one cannot validly infer that (normative) Christians and (normative) [Aztecs] refer to and worship numerically different Gods. For the difference in conceptions is consistent with sameness of referent. So you can see that Fr. O'Brien has made a mistake.
Or, alternately, we *could* allow ourselves to see that William Vallicella has made the same mistake he constantly insists upon making.

You know, it's one thing to say that Protestants and Catholics worship the same God, despite that Catholicism just can't seem to get that "once and for all" bit; it's quite another thing to say that Moslems and Christians worship the same God, when nearly every statement of Islam touching on Christ is *explicitly* formulated as a denial of a Christian statement.
But nota bene: Difference in conceptions is also consistent with a difference in referent. It could be that when a Christian uses 'God' he refers to something while a Muslim refers to nothing when he uses 'Allah.' Consider God and Zeus. Will you say that the Christian and the ancient Greek polytheist worship the same God except that the Greek has false beliefs about their common object of worship, believing as he does that Zeus is a superman who lives on a mountain top, literally hurls thunderbolts, etc.? Or will you say that there is no one God that they worship, that the Christian worships a being that exists while the Greek worships a nonexistent object? And if you say the latter, why not also say the same about God and Allah, namely, that there is no one being that they both worship, that the Christian worships the true God, the God that really exists, whereas Muslims worship a God that does not exist?
Well, you *could* say, as I do, that the being whom Moslems worship does indeed exist and is not God.

In sum, difference in conceptions is logically consistent both with sameness of referent and difference of referent.
You don't say! Might that be why -- contrary to Vallicella's prestntation of him -- Fr. O'Brien noted not simply differences between the Christian and Moslem conceptions of God, but also explicit Islamic repudiations of key Christian concepts?
Summary

Most of the writing on this topic is exasperatingly superficial and uninformed, even that by theologians. Fr. O'Brien is a case in point. He thinks the question easily resolved: you simply note the radical difference in the Christian and Muslim God-conceptions and your work is done. Others make the opposite mistake. They think that, of course, Christians and Muslims worship the same God either by making Tuggy's mistake above or by thinking that the considerable overlap in the two conceptions settles the issue.

My thesis is not that the one side is right or that the other side is right. My thesis is that the question is a very difficult one that entangles us in controversial inquiries in the philosophies or mind and language.
Well, Vallicella does love him some entanglements and "inquiries" -- he loves nothing more than to keep jawboning a question while never arriving at an answer.

12 comments:

B. Prokop said...

"despite that Catholicism just can't seem to get that "once and for all" bit"

Ilion, Ilion, Ilion,

The Mass is not a repetition or a reenactment of Christ's Sacrifice on the Cross - it is Christ's Sacrifice on the Cross - the "once and for all" that both Catholics and Protestants rightly affirm. That's how eternity works. When we go to Mass, we are literally standing at the foot of that very Cross on Calvary. We're not watching some play-acting; we are there. It's not happening for a second (or a ten millionth time) - it happened once, yet is accessible to all believers in all places and all times.

K T Cat said...

B. Prokop +1.

As for the content of the post, I always thought that it meant there was one God and both are worshipping Him, albeit with very different concepts of Him. He exists and therefore if you worship God, you worship Him even if your understanding of Him is almost completely wrong.

Looking for an analogy, I guess I'd say that two people can believe in physics even if one of them has the wrong ideas about Newtonian mechanics and the other is correct about electrons. That doesn't excuse the mistakes made from physics illiteracy, but they're still taking about the same physics.

Ilíon said...

Oh! I get it!

And when Catholicism teaches its adherents to call Mary the Co-Redemptrix, much less the Co-Redemptrix & Mediatrix of all graces, and to pray to her as such, they are not at all then engaging in idolatry, nor trying to elevate her to the Godhead.

And when Catholicism teaches its adherents to pray to dead people, including Mary, to intercede with the Father on their behalf, they are not at all then ignoring (to the point of denying) the Bible's clear teaching that "there is ... one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus".

And when some Catholics teach (and are not opposed by The One True Bureaucracy) that Mary commands the Son and the Father to do this or to do that ... and that they obey her -- as though she were some shrewish Italian wife, and the Father her hen-pecked husband, and the Son her emasculated Sonny -- and that Catholics can appeal to her to use her dominatrix powers on their behalf, they are not at all then trying to elevate her above the Godhead.


Speaking of praying to dead people, if Catholics (*) took their 'hylomorphism' seriously, they'd understand that, according to that semi-doctrine, dead people don't presently exist.

(*) I mean, those who pose 'hylomorphism' as the correct understanding of human beings *and* as being as distinct from 'dualism' as from 'materialism'.

Ilíon said...

KT, I believe I've already addressed your concerns in the OP.

If this helps -- we must carefully and consciously distinguish between the human person and the religion to which he adheres. So, to say that Allah is not God is not to say that no Moslem anywhere loves-and-worships God even as he is bowing to Allah.

B. Prokop said...

Now, don't go full-Skeppy on me here, Ilion. One should never go full-Skeppy.

I answered these precise same objections once before, and at length, here, beginning at December 02, 2015 8:50 AM and continuing to 12:31 PM.

I have nothing to add to those crystal clear words of mine back then. I think the link should suffice, so there's no need for me to copy/paste them here.

Ilíon said...

*eyeroll*

Gyan said...

Mary is not "dead people". She never died but was assumed into heaven. There never was her tomb.
Why did Jesus tell his disciplines "Behold your Mother" from the Cross?

Ilíon said...

double *eye roll*

B. Prokop said...

At the risk of giving you eyestrain, even you, Ilion, can read Scripture. Take the Gospel of John - there's not a phrase or a word in that book that isn't weighted with meaning and theological significance. It's no accident that Christ's ministry both begins and ends with His Mother playing a "starring role". In the wedding at Cana, she intercedes for us with Our Lord, and her last recorded words in The Bible are "Do whatever He tells you." Then, at the foot of the Cross, Christ proclaims her to be the Mother of all the faithful. ("Behold your Mother.") Thus, Mary "bookends" Christ's saving action.

And I need not tell you that the Old Testament is strewn with quite literally hundreds of references and prophecies to her role in salvation - in practically every book from from Genesis to Sirach. You can see them for yourself.

Ilíon said...

Gyan: "Mary is not "dead people". She never died but was assumed into heaven. There never was her tomb."

That's not what "the tradition" says.

Gyan: "Why did Jesus tell his disciplines "Behold your Mother" from the Cross?"

You're begging the question.

Gyan: "Mary is not "dead people"[, she] was assumed into heaven."

What does it mean to say that someone is "in heaven"?

There are only two things it can mean; either:
1) that person is living in "the New Jerusalem" (aka, "the World To Come", or "the Resurrection"); or
2) that person is living in the timeless, spaceless, matterless direct presence of God.

But, "the World To Come" has not yet come. So, at this point in the history of the world, to say that someone is "in heaven" is a clain that that person is living in the timeless, spaceless, matterless direct presence of God.

So, among other things, to say that someone is "in heaven" is to claim that that person presently has no physical body. But, according to the semi-doctrine of 'hylomorphism', the human person is the union of body/matter and soul -- thus: no body, no person. As I said above, "if Catholics (*) took their 'hylomorphism' seriously, they'd understand that, according to that semi-doctrine, dead people don't presently exist."

Aristotle's Psychology -- "One way of appreciating this is to consider a second general moral Aristotle derives from hylomorphism. This concerns the question of the separability of the soul from the body, a possibility embraced by substance dualists from the time of Plato onward. Aristotle’s hylomorphism commends the following attitude: if we do not think that the Hermes-shape persists after the bronze is melted and recast, we should not think that the soul survives the demise of the body. So, Aristotle claims, “It is not unclear that the soul – or certain parts of it, if it naturally has parts – is not separable from the body” (De Anima ii 1, 413a3–5). So, unless we are prepared to treat forms in general as capable of existing without their material bases, we should not be inclined to treat souls as exceptional cases. Hylomorphism, by itself, gives us no reason to treat souls as separable from bodies, even if we think of them as distinct from their material bases."

Ilíon said...

At the risk of giving you cognitive dissonance, even you, B.Prokop, are capable of contemplating and answering these questions without beating around the bush –
1) Does Mary give orders to the Father and the Son (as some “non-standard” Catholics teach)?
2) Is Mary the Co-Redemptrix? OR, as the Bible flatly states, is there but one saviour/redeemer, is there but one name given men by which they might be saved?
3) Is Mary the Mediatrix of all graces? OR, as the Bible flatly states, is there but one mediator between God and men?

B. Prokop said...

Mary is not Redeemer, but intercessor with our Redeemer ("They have no wine.")

Mary did not redeem mankind, but her fiat made that Redemption possible. Yahweh is not Zeus, who rapes mortals. Mary's active permission and indeed cooperation with the Holy Spirit was necessary for the Word to become flesh.

So yes, there is but one mediator between God and men, but there would have been no mediator without Mary.

So the only one with cognitive dissonance would seem to be the Christian who denies this.