Fr. Basile Sakkas: Do We Have the Same God as Non-Christians?

 

On Thursday, April 2, 1970, a great religious event took place in Geneva. Within the framework of the proceedings of the Second Conference of the “Association of United Religions,” the representatives of ten major religions had been invited to gather in the Cathedral of Saint Peter. This “common prayer” was based on the following motive: “The faithful of all these religions had been invited to coexist in the worship of the same God!” Let us see whether this claim is valid in the light of Holy Scripture.

In order to explain the matter better, we will limit ourselves to the religions that have historically followed one another in this order: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These three religions, in fact, lay claim to a common origin: as worshippers of the God of Abraham. Thus, it is a very widespread opinion that, since we all claim to be descendants of Abraham, the Jews and Muslims according to the flesh and Christians spiritually, we all have as our God the God of Abraham, and all three of us worship, each in his own way, of course, the same God. And this same God constitutes, in some way, the point of unity and “mutual understanding,” and this invites us into a “brotherly relationship,” as the Chief Rabbi Dr. Safran emphasized, paraphrasing the Psalm: “Oh, how good it is to see brothers sitting together…”

From this perspective, it is evident that Jesus Christ, God and man, the eternal Son and co-unoriginate with the Father, His Incarnation, His Cross, His glorious Resurrection, and His Second and dread Coming become secondary details that cannot prevent us from “fraternizing” with those who regard Him as “a mere prophet,” according to the Qur’an, or as “the son of a prostitute,” according to certain Talmudic traditions! Thus we would be placing Jesus of Nazareth and Muhammad on the same level. I do not know what Christian worthy of the name could accept this in his conscience.

One might say that in these three religions, if we set aside the past, one can agree that Jesus Christ is an extraordinary creature and that He was sent by God. But for us Christians, if Jesus Christ is not God, we cannot regard Him either as a “prophet” or as a “messenger of God,” but only as a great deceiver beyond compare, since He proclaimed that He was the “Son of God,” thus making Himself equal to God (Mark 14:61–62). According to this ecumenistic solution on a supra-confessional level, the Trinitarian God of the Christians would be the same as the monotheism of Judaism, of Islam, of the ancient heretic Sabellius, of the modern anti-Trinitarians, and of various sects of the “Illuminati” type. There would not be Three Persons in One Godhead, but one Person, unchangeable for some, or one who successfully changes “masks” (Father – Son – Holy Spirit) for others! And yet someone could pretend that this was “the same God.”

Here is something that someone might naively propose: “Nevertheless, there is one common point for the three religions: all three confess God as Father!” But according to the holy Orthodox faith, this is absurd. We always confess: “Glory to the Holy, Consubstantial, Life-giving, and Indivisible Trinity.” How can we separate the Father from the Son when Jesus Christ assures us that “I and the Father are one”? (John 10:30) And the holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, the Apostle of love, clearly confirms: “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either” (1 John 2:23).

But even if all three of us call God Father: whose Father is He really? For the Jews and the Muslims He is the Father of men on the level of creation; whereas for us Christians He is, first of all, “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24), “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:3), and through Christ He is our Father “by adoption” (Eph. 1:4–5) on the level of redemption. What similarity, then, is there between Divine Fatherhood in Christianity and in the other religions?

Others may say: “But Abraham worshipped the true God; and the Jews through Isaac and the Muslims through Hagar are the descendants of this genuine worshipper of God.” Here one must clarify many things: Abraham did not at all worship God in the form of the impersonal monotheism in which the others worshipped Him, but in the form of the Holy Trinity. We read in Holy Scripture: “And the Lord appeared to him by the oak of Mamre… and he bowed himself to the ground” (Gen. 18:1–2). In what form did Abraham worship God? In an impersonal form, or in the form of the Divine Triune Unity?

We Orthodox Christians honor this manifestation of the Holy Trinity in the Old Testament on the day of Pentecost, when we adorn our churches with branches symbolizing the ancient oaks, and when we honor in their midst the icon of the Three Angels, as our Father Abraham honored it! Descent from Abraham according to the flesh is useless to us if we are not reborn in the water of Baptism, in the faith of Abraham. And the faith of Abraham was faith in Jesus Christ, as the Lord Himself has said: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day” (John 8:56). Such also was the faith of the prophet-king David, who heard the Heavenly Father say to His Consubstantial Son: “The Lord said to my Lord” (Ps. 109:1; Acts 2:34). Such also was the faith of the “three children in the furnace,” when they were saved by the “Son of God” (Dan. 3:25); such also was the faith of the holy Prophet Daniel, who saw the vision of the two natures of Jesus Christ in the mystery of the Incarnation, when the Son of Man came to the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:13). Therefore the Lord, addressing the biologically indisputable descendants of Abraham, said: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham” (John 8:39), and these works are “to believe in Him Whom God has sent” (John 6:29).

Who, then, are the descendants of Abraham? The sons of Isaac according to the flesh, or the sons of Hagar the Egyptian? Are Isaac or Ishmael the descendants of Abraham? What does Holy Scripture teach through the mouth of the divine Apostle? “In the case of Abraham, the promises were made to him and to his seed. It does not say, ‘and to seeds,’ as though referring to many, but to one: ‘and to your seed,’ who is Christ” (Gal. 3:29). It is there, in Jesus Christ, that Abraham became the father of many nations (Gen. 17:5; Rom. 4:17). After such promises and such assurances, what meaning does bodily descent from Abraham have?

According to Holy Scripture, Isaac is regarded as the seed or descendant, but only as a type of Jesus Christ. In contrast to Ishmael, the son of Hagar (Gen. 16:1), Isaac was born in the miraculous “freedom” of a barren mother, in old age and contrary to the laws of nature, like our Savior, who was born of a Virgin. He went up the hill of Moriah as Jesus went up Golgotha, carrying on his shoulders the wood of the sacrifice. An angel saved Isaac from death, just as an angel rolled away the stone of the tomb to show us that the tomb was empty, that the Risen One was no longer there. At the hour of prayer, Isaac met Rebecca in the field and led her into the tent of his mother Sarah, just as Jesus will meet His Church in the clouds in order to bring her into the heavenly tabernacles, the New Jerusalem, the long-desired homeland.

No! We do not have the same God as the non-Christians! The absolutely essential thing, the sine qua non, for knowing the Father is the Son: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father; no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6, 9). Our God is an incarnate God, whom “we have seen with our eyes and have touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1). The immaterial One became material for our salvation, as Saint John of Damascus says, and He has been revealed to us. But when was He revealed to today’s Jews and Muslims, so that we should suppose that they know God? If they have a full understanding of God apart from Jesus Christ, then Christ was incarnate, died, and rose in vain!

According to the words of Christ, they have not yet come fully to the Father. They have some idea of God, but this idea does not include the full revelation of God given to man through Jesus Christ. For us Christians, God is inconceivable, incomprehensible, indescribable, and immaterial, as Basil the Great says. For our salvation He became, insofar as we are united to Him, conceivable, describable, and material, by revelation in the mystery of the Incarnation of His Son. To Him be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen. And for this reason, Saint Cyprian of Carthage says that whoever does not have the Church as Mother does not have God as Father!

May God preserve us from apostasy and from the coming of the Antichrist, whose preliminary signs are multiplying day by day. May He protect us from the great tribulation, which not even the elect will be able to endure without the grace of Him who will shorten those days. And may He protect us by keeping us in the “little flock,” the “remnant according to the election of grace,” so that, like Abraham, we may be able to rejoice in the light of His countenance, through the intercessions of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, of all the inhabitants of heaven, of the clouds of martyrs, prophets, hierarchs, evangelists, and confessors who remained faithful unto death, who shed their blood for Christ, who begot us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the waters of Baptism.

We are their children—certainly weak, sinful, and unworthy; but we shall not stretch out our hands toward a strange god! Amen.

 

Source: La Foi Transmise, April 5, 1970.