Pints With Aquinas - 164: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? W/ Dr. Francis Beckwith

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

Sup gang, please consider becoming a patron here to support all of this work I'm doing at PWA at The Matt Fradd Show. Wow! What a fascinating discussion. I sat down with Dr. Francis Beckwith, professor of philosophy at Baylor University, about something he has spent a lot of time thinking and writing about lately, whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. He has, I think, a very nuanced and convincing argument. * Check out Dr. Beckwith's new book, Never Doubt Thomas SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be, I ask you. In today's episode, we are joined around the table by, revert to the Catholic faith, Dr. Francis Beckwith, who teaches at Baylor University. And we're going to ask a very interesting question do christians and muslims worship the same god yes welcome back to pints with aquinas the show where you and I pull up a bar stall next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. I am drinking today. It's been a while. I went on a seven-day drinking fast, everybody. Now, I know seven days isn't much, and I'm not patting myself on the back, but it just got to the point where I'd come home and have a drink, and I'm like, okay, I've got to just chill here. so i gave alcohol up for seven days and it was lovely now

but anyway but that is all a prelude into telling you what i'm drinking now i am drinking a spiked sparkling seltzer water cranberry lime okay so here's what's cool about this put out by smirnoff this is not an advert for Smirnoff, although I wish they would pay me. Yeah, no, it's nice. It's got like, it's basically like water, you know, like La Croix, but it has a bit of vodka in it. Anyway, how you doing? You okay? Today's episode was bloody fantastic. I just got done recording it with Dr. Francis Beckwith. We talked about whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same God. And we get into a lot of really fascinating stuff, right? Like,

and I'm not even going to tell you what he says explicitly, because he's going to tell you that, but I want to kind of, yeah, I want him to lead you into that. But it was really great chat. Francis Beckwith, and we talk about this, he's a revert. He was an evangelical. He was actually founder or president, rather, of the Evangelical Theological Society, teaching at Baylor University. He's a professor of philosophy. Yeah, so it's pretty crazy, right, to be the president of this big evangelical society, and then you can convert to Catholicism. And so we talk about that. He's got a lot of beautiful things to say about his evangelical brothers and sisters. So if you're an evangelical, hi, what's up? This is for you too. Also, if you're a Muslim, this is for you

too. I pointed out halfway through this episode to Dr. Beckwith that we actually have, I think two, but at least one Muslim patron. Because this person, I forget their name, wrote to me recently and said, hey, I'm a practicing Muslim, but I appreciate what you're doing. So, you know, if you are not a Christian, if you're a Muslim, you're so welcome. And I think you're going to find this episode really helpful as well. Here is the interview with Dr. Beckwith. Oh, one final thing before I get into the show. So here's the thing. If you want to say that Muslims and Christians don't believe in the same God, because what Muslims believe about God is different, substantially different, maybe you would say, than Christians, then what about people like William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga and other Christians who do not believe

in divine simplicity? Like, where do you draw the line? I'm not going to tell you the answer right now. We get into that and a whole lot of other nerdy, geeky, beautifully true and awesome philosophical stuff that you're not going to want to miss. Here's the show. Dr. Francis Beckwith, what's going on? Just hanging out in Central Texas where it is very humid and very hot. I just did something either brave or stupid. I'm not sure. I, uh, even though I don't look like it, I do go to CrossFit and I just did a CrossFit workout at noon in Georgia in summer. And it was bloody hot. Wow. Yeah, I can imagine. I can do more than imagine it was pretty gross like

i was doing sit-ups and could feel the pull of water in my lower back but yeah it's great to have you on the show i know a lot of our listeners are big big fans of yours and you've done a lot of great work in regards to well explaining the Catholic faith, and you yourself are a convert, correct? I'm a revert. I grew up Catholic and then left as a youngster. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I kind of drifted away into evangelicalism, and then about 12 years ago, at the age of 46, I returned to the Catholic Church. And it was after several years of kind of thinking through certain issues and decided to return. And my wife, I am fortunate that my wife came with me. She did not grow up Catholic, but for many years prior to my return, had always had an affection for

Catholicism. And so when I told her that I thought it was time for us to become Catholic, she asked, or she said, what took you so long? Now, what were you doing at the time when you felt the call to Rome, as it were? Well, I was a professor at Baylor like I am now, but professionally in terms of outside of Baylor, I was a, at the time was president of the Evangelical Theological Society and returned to the church and actually thought I would be able to remain as president of ETS, but resigned a week later. It occurred to me that even though I think technically there was nothing inconsistent with Catholicism and what was required to be president of ETS, which just involved a commitment to the infallibility and authority of Scripture and the Trinity.

And as a Catholic, you know, we believe in those things as well. But I thought if I had remained as president, it would have involved giving a presidential address four months after that. And it would have been a kind of circus because clearly there were many people in ETS who didn't want me to be president as a Catholic. And so I prudently, at the suggestion of some very close friends, resigned as president of ETS. Now, you said you thought you could continue as president. Is that because you didn't expect maybe the backlash that you did then get? Yeah, you know, I mean, in terms of just what the theological or doctrinal commitment that's required to be a member of ETS, I thought, well, that's required to be a member of ETS. I thought, well, technically as a Catholic, I believe these things as well. Uh, but what I, uh, I, uh, but what I didn't realize and underestimated was

the kind of social and cultural implications of having a Catholic president of a, an evangelical theological group. And I mean, I could have remained, I could have been stubborn and dug my heels in. But I think that would have caused scandal. And it would have, you know, looked as though I was just trying to make a point. And at the end of the day, it was a wise decision. I've actually now spoken at, I think, maybe a half a dozen, maybe seven or eight ETS meetings since having returned to the church, and most of those have been as a result of an invitation. Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of respect for the decision you made because i think it's perhaps easier to make these big decisions when we're younger or when we don't have a lot like at stake you know i mean like if you were a dentist and you and you changed your position

then you're probably not going to lose many people but you know i i mean i i try to think really honestly about my own position like here i I am with this podcast. I travel and speak. I write books. And it really is gross to think about it. But like this is kind of a career. Now, I hope I don't look at it like that. Even though it is that, I hope I look at it first and foremost as proclaiming the gospel, proclaiming the truth, etc. That said, like what would I do if I suddenly discovered, say, that Catholicism was wrong?

Now, I don't think it is, obviously, but that's kind of where you were at. And imagine, gee, the financial predicament I would put myself in, losing friends. I have such respect for folks like yourself who can go through that. Well, I appreciate that. Well, I appreciate that, but I think I was fortunate because I was at Baylor, and still am at Baylor University, which is a Baptist school and has about 10% of its faculty that are Catholic. And so it's not unusual to have a Catholic faculty member. I mention that because I do have several friends at evangelical schools who have talked to me privately about becoming Catholic. And some of them are around my age in their mid-50s and have not done so because they realize it's the end of their career. Now, of course, I don't want to judge them.

I mean, I'm not in that position. In fact, just this weekend, a very dear friend of mine who's a philosopher at an evangelical school returned to the Catholic Church. He was like me, grew up Catholic, and then went to confession on Saturday, texted me, or actually private messaged me on Friday and said, tomorrow I'm going to go to confession, I've decided to return to the church. And he's at a school where he could, he probably would, he probably will be, or he is right now, the only Catholic faculty member. And he fully expects to be asked to resign. Now, he's a little bit older than me. He's about maybe seven or eight years older than me. So a little bit closer to retirement age probably has, you know, can probably live with a pension and so forth. But still, I mean, the good thing for him,

and again, I don't want to mention the institution or his name, is that he is actually at a place where I suspect that a lot of the faculty there would be supportive of him, even though the administration probably won't be. What do you see the relations between Protestants and Catholics these days? Part of me thinks that, you know how you're supposed to have like three miracles before you are like declared a saint by the church? I kind of feel like if you convert to Catholicism during this crazy time, that should be like one miracle knocked off your record. You know what I mean? Like you should only have to do two because inviting people to be a part of the

Catholic church today feels like inviting people to be part of one of those awkward family photos. Like, you'll be with them now. Enjoy life. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I returned to the church when Benedict was Pope, and obviously there were scandals that we knew about from 2002. But the level of controversy that now exists, not only in terms of the scandals of more recent vintage, but just the sort of theological public spats between members of the magisterium is something that just didn't really exist during Benedict's pontificate. exists during Benedict's pontificate. But I think that it's, you know, in a sense, it kind of reorients the believer, and I can only speak for myself in this regard, is understanding that the church is more than just its members. In fact, the great miracle is the fact that it continues to survive and proliferate the gospel, even though, or proliferate its membership, even though

we find within it deeply flawed people who sometimes say things that are outrageous. And I mean, look at the very beginning. I was actually joking with a colleague the other day that if you even look at the 12 apostles, right? I mean, not a good batting average. No, it's right. I mean, as I referred to Judas as the first bishop who took government money. first bishop who took government money. Very good. Very sad, but very good. It's, you know, it's part of the, you know, what makes it sort of both miraculous and kind of sad. Yeah, I kind of feel like, I don't know. By the way, we have a lot of evangelicals who listen to this show and write to me, and I love them all, and I'm so grateful that they listen.

And I always say we can learn so much from our evangelical brothers and sisters. The way they love the Word of God, the way they are so intentional about small groups, and, you know, like really, I think at least the evangelical groups that I've seen tend to take a person's membership in the church very seriously, plugging them in, looking out for them, these sorts of things. So I think we can learn from them for sure. So the last thing I want, and I'm sure the last thing you want is anyone to kind of feel like we're, you know, crapping on them. But, um, no, I actually think that if you look at what's happened at least in the past, uh, if you look at what's happened at least in the past 500 years since the Reformation, so many of the gifts that you and I both see in the evangelical and larger Protestant world were gifts that really should be part of our church. And we lost them as a consequence of that rift.

In fact, in my book, Return to Rome, I mention the names of several people, well-known evangelicals, who grew up Catholic who had left the church. And, you know, it's as youngsters in virtually every case. So, yeah, it's what happens when, you know, there's fragmentation. In fact, in Vatican II, there's, in one of the documents, there's a, and I forget which one, it may be Lumen Gentium, talking about the grace of God is even found in those Christian communions that are not in full fellowship with the universal church. And I think that's right. I mean, we can see it in the way in which, as you mentioned, the way in which they disciple, the way in which they are dedicated and committed to Scripture, and you see it in the preaching and the teaching as well.

What's the number one thing that led you to Catholicism? The kind of, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were. Boy, well, the straw had four strands to it. All right, the four straws. What were the four straws? Well, apostolic succession, the doctrine of penance, the doctrine of the Eucharist, and justification. Those were four issues that sort of I didn't think the Catholic Church could answer. that sort of I didn't think the Catholic Church could answer, but really what unlocked it for me was finding in the early church fathers these doctrines either explicitly mentioned or just assumed to be true.

And this startled me. So, for example, the issues that the early church and ultimately the Catholic councils deal with are questions that Christians are divided over, like the deity of Christ and the Trinity and the nature of the incarnation. Now, ironically, those are the issues on which evangelicals and Catholics agree today. But back then, the issues that divide us, nobody doubted. Things like apostolic succession, the doctrine of the Eucharist, penance. And so to me, it was sort of like this kind of, oh, this is why you have to – this is the thing about when reading the church fathers, it's not so much what they explicitly address, but what they assume.

It's like, so you think. Like there's no need to defend the Eucharist when everyone believes in the Eucharist. That's right. So when you read the council, if you're like, when I was an evangelical, I would read, I read a lot of the church fathers and early councils, but I was looking for, in many cases, defenses of what I consider to be sort of classical Christian doctrines, the doctrine of the Trinity and deity of Christ and so forth. But the things that were not specifically addressed were those things that the reason why

they weren't at least explicitly in councils is because nobody challenged them. In fact, when you read, for example, Irenaeus' response to the heretics, one of the arguments he makes has to do with the fact that they don't have apostolic succession. And that was considered to be a kind of knock-down, drag-out, definitive refutation. And so, in any event, so yeah, for me, it was the kind of irony that what we agree on today were the things that divided the church and were eventually resolved by ecumenical councils that were based on apostolic succession that took for granted the sacraments, which are now ironically those things that are disputed. Now, did you have like an intellectual version through books and then you approached a Catholic parish? Or were you kind of doing it at the same time or what? Because I think a lot of people have this, they see this dissidence, like they read about the church and they're sold out for it. And then they go to like a really poorly, to put it mildly, celebrated liturgy with felt banners.

It's just disgusting. Okay, that might be a bit much, but you know what I mean. Yeah, in my case, that wasn't a problem or an issue because I grew up Catholic. Oh, that's right. Sorry, yeah. So I had gone to 12 years of parochial school, had gone to a variety of parishes when I was growing up. I actually had a mixed experience with Catholic parishes as a youngster. I'd say the liturgy was pretty impoverished, but I met some very devout Catholics. In fact, most of my experience with those devout Catholics were at Bible studies.

I grew up at a time in the early 1970s, soon after the Second Vatican Council, where the Catholic charismatic movement was kind of in ascendancy. And so I was invited by some of my parents' friends. These were older people. I was a teenager. Oh, because they saw that I was sort of interested in my faith. They invited me to Bible studies. And that's where, ironically, I met evangelicals, because these were these kind of ecumenical Bible studies that involved charismatics, both Protestant and Catholic. And so a couple of those folks invited me to attend the weekday services. And at one of these places, I found myself in the library. And I was really drawn to, you know, a lot of theology books written by evangelicals.

Now, at the time, I didn't really realize the richness of the Catholic tradition because I really wasn't exposed to it. that I was denied this by people that thought that the right way to attract young people is to make Catholicism relevant to them. And of course, it wasn't my parents or relatives. It was a lot of the people in religious life that were running the schools. I'm happy to report that the schools that I attended in the 70s are much better now. But it was different back then. Yeah, I want to backpedal. I just said vomit, which was very abrasive of me.

But there's a sense in which that's the right thing to do, to make it relevant. Like if you exist within a culture where people don't really believe the things they say they do, they just do things by rote, they do things because they have to, there's a sense in which it's a good thing to try to make it relevant to them. That's right. the right way to put it is to say to make it accessible to them and to tie it into, let's say, contemporary questions that interest them. So I think that's a perfectly appropriate approach, and this is something that Paul talks about, right? Be all things to all men, right? So you see, for example, St. Paul on Mars Hill in Acts chapter 17, where he says to his audience, I was kind of looking around Athens, and I came across this altar to an unknown God. And I'll tell you who this unknown God is. That's actually a great example of sort of making the gospel relevant, which you're finding is something that you can connect to. But you don't alter the gospel. You don't say, well, by the way,

Jehovah is just a finite God like your gods. That would be a mistake. Well, yeah. Well, speaking of God, let's get into the main topic of this discussion, which I am so jazzed to have. And the basic question is, do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? I know you've written on this, and I'm so excited to learn from you. You know, I hear people seem to be very kind of definitive in their position. Yeah. I'm thinking, well, I won't mention people by name, but certain books have been written on Islam seem to say absolutely not, and then the catechism seems to suggest

yes. So, I don't know. How I want to approach it a little bit is, I'm not even really sure what your position is. I look forward to learning it, but I also want to steel man whatever position you want to refute. Okay. Okay. So, so, um, I think the right way to think about this question, I'm like, I'm like, I don't want to just, sorry. I don't want to just say yes or no. Cause you know, the title of this podcast is going to be do Christians and Muslims worship the same God and people who were listening have a very certain opinion. So if we just come out and say yes or no, they'll dismiss it.

So I'm really looking forward to teasing this out. All right, sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt you. Okay, so I'll give you the answer that won't please anybody. Yes and no. Ah! And what I mean by that is that there's a sense in which both Muslims and Christians have identified the divine nature correctly. So let me give you an example of what I mean.

It's an example that I use in my new book. I have a new book that's coming out in mid-July, or I don't know when this is going to be broadcast. Yeah, so this will go out in a couple of weeks, so the book will be ready, I imagine, by the time we post this, end of July. It's called Never Doubt Thomas, and it's about Thomas Aquinas and how Thomas Aquinas helped me think through certain issues. And this is one of those issues that Aquinas helped me think through. So imagine this. Imagine you have two atheists. We'll call them Abdul and Christopher. So Abdul and Christopher are both atheists. They're both, let's say, undergrad Abdul grew up Muslim and Christopher grew up Christian. But yet when they arrive at Princeton, they both become atheists.

So they both don't believe in God. this course on medieval philosophy and they read Moses Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher, Avicenna, the great Muslim philosopher, and Thomas Aquinas. And they read their arguments for God's existence, which are actually very similar. Avicenna offers an argument for God's existence, which is based on the contingency of the universe. Maimonides, a very similar one, and Aquinas. Of course, we're familiar with his five ways in the Summa Theologica, but he offers arguments in Summa Contragetilis and other places. Supposing they read and Christopher says, wow, I've come to believe in the existence of God because of Avicenna's argument.

And Abdul says, I've come to believe in God because of Aquinas' argument. They compare notes, and they both come to the conclusion that there exists a self-existent, self-subsistent, eternal, infinite, unchanging, simple being that is the source of all existence. Both arguments establish that. Do they both believe in the same God? Yes, they do. Those are indistinguishable. You can't have two perfect, unchanging beings, okay, that are the source of all existence. There has to be one. So they both agree they've arrived at that being. But they realize philosophy just isn't all that it's cracked up to be. There's got to be more to life than just philosophical arguments. So they become interested in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and other faiths. And so they spend the next two years reading different books by theologians, philosophers, apologists from these traditions. And Christopher, the former Christian, now theist,

after reading all this literature, becomes a Muslim. Abdul, the former Muslim who became a theist becomes a Christian. And so what happens with Abdul? He comes to the conclusion. He says, well, I believe that God is the self-existent, eternal, perfect, unchanging, simple creator of all existence, of all reality that requires a source for its existence. And Christopher continues to believe the same thing. But Christopher says, but we disagree, Abdul. You believe that God is triune and I don't. So they both have different concepts of God, but they both believe in the same God.

Now, it turns out as Christians, as Catholics, we believe that Abdul's correct, right? That he's got the right concept. And Christopher is mistaken, but they still believe in the same God. Christopher is mistaken, but they still believe in the same God. And so, and the reason why we have to believe that is that they got the divine nature right. Now, what accounts for their disagreement? What accounts for their disagreement is what Thomas Aquinas calls the articles of faith. So Aquinas distinguishes the preambles of faith from the articles of faith. So Aquinas distinguishes the preambles of faith from the articles of faith. Now, when they first come to believe that there's this self-existent, perfect, simple creator of everything, they're in the realm of what Aquinas calls the preambles of faith. That is, those are

things that people can know about God without special revelation. But when it comes to things like the doctrine of the Trinity, that's something that natural reason just simply can't give you. So think about it this way. Imagine, to use a kind of real simple example, supposing that I can't open up my front door, and I come to the conclusion there is an object behind the front door that is stronger than me that I can't push. And my wife says, I think it's a big block of granite. And I say, no, I think it's a linebacker from the Baylor football team. football team. Now, do we both agree that there is one object that is holding open the door or making the door impossible to open? Yes, we do. But we have different concepts of what that is.

Now, it turns out that we both have the right reference, but we have a different sense of what that thing is. What you're saying is making me think of the first part of the Summa, question two on the existence of God. Let's see here, article one. And this is reply to objection one. The question has to do about whether God's existence is self-evident. And he says, to know that God exists in a general and confused way

is implanted in us by nature in as much as God is man's beatitude. For man naturally desires happiness and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him. This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists, just as to know that someone is approaching. It's not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching. For many, there are who imagine that man's perfect good is yada yada, but it sounds similar to that. That's right. I actually use that illustration of Peter approaching. So, yeah,

so one could, even if, let's say, you not only have this sort of confused and, you know, kind of vague understanding of God that he's talking about there. In fact, I think Aquinas is saying a couple of things in that passage. I think he's saying, on the one hand, we have a natural inclination to God, which makes it possible for us to ultimately review the arguments and come to the conclusion that God exists even without an argument, right? So another example I use in my book is between two people, Tina and Tony. Tina is a philosophy professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Tony is a cab driver in Las Vegas. Tony believes that God is this self-existent creator of all that exists, but he only believes it because he was taught that way. He doesn't have an argument. Tina, on the other hand, is an expert in medieval philosophy and believes it because for her,

it's a rational deliverance of arguments that she accepts, but she doesn't believe in any particular faith. Now, it turns out, let's say that Tony and Tina meet each other at RCIA because they're both interested in Catholicism. Before either one makes a commitment to the faith or assents to the articles of faith, you could say they both believe in the same God. Now, afterwards, let's say they both assent to the faith. Well, they don't believe less about God than they believed before, but they believe more. Right. And I think and I think that's what Aquinas is trying to sort of capture in that. He's also trying to capture something else. He's trying to say he says this, I think, later, I think, in question, too.

I'm not you know, it's I don't have it in front of me. I think in question two, I'm not, you know, I don't have it in front of me. But I think he wants to say that he doesn't want to say that a believer has to have a rational argument in order to believe in God, because that would mean that, like, virtually, because the fact is, 90% of the people who don't do that, And if it were required, he'd fall into the Pelagian heresy, right? It would mean that one of the things Aquinas says is like the belief in God is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of reason because it can be proven philosophically, but just because something can be proven philosophically doesn't mean it cannot necessarily be taken on faith.

That's right. So like my grandma took God's existence on faith. Like the Catholic church told her that, and so she accepted it. And in fact, I think Aquinas would even go so far as to say that my grandma may be in a better position than the PhD philosopher who has come to believe in God on his own steam, but has a lot of inbuilt errors into those, you know, his belief. That's right. you know, his belief. That's right. So, yeah. So, and this is where Aquinas, he mentions later on in the Summa about something called implicit faith. So, like my grandma, God rest her soul, she went to Mass and like all of us, she went to daily Mass, but on Sundays, she recited the

Creed like all of us, right? I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And the Creed also says that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Did my grandma understand what consubstantial meant? Yeah. Probably not. Not many people do. I'm not sure if I do. meant. Not many people do. But you have to know, I mean, it's technical, philosophical lingo, but she assented to it. And Aquinas says, if you assent to it, and you rely on authorities that you believe you can trust, you have implicit faith. You don't have to learn everything.

Yeah, this makes me think of something else. I mean, most Catholics, I would dare to venture, would not, if you were to say, do you think that God is the ground of being? Do you think that he is not just a being among others, but being itself? They'd be like, that sounds weird. No, I don't believe that. So, I mean, I guess if you want to say in order to say that we believe in the same – but then maybe people aren't saying that. Maybe people aren't arguing that all Christians believe in something different than all Muslims believe. Maybe what they're just saying is when you look at what Catholicism says it believes about God and what Islam says it believes, that they're fundamentally at odds.

Yeah, I do think for a lot of people, they are comparing Islam to Christianity. And so if the question is, is Islam the same as Christianity? The answer is clearly no. one substance. Is that the Muslim view? No, it isn't. So, we don't hold the same concept of God, but we do ultimately hold the same view about what constitutes a divine nature in principle, and that is that God is a self-existent source of all. That is distinct from the universe, too. And that's another important thing. It's not pantheism we're discussing. That's right.

Now, think about the example that I used earlier before we got into the question of is Muslim and Christian views of God. That is Paul on Mars Hill. So he begins, if you look at the first part of Acts chapter 17, he first addresses a Jewish audience. He's in a synagogue with Silas and he basically makes the argument that Jesus is the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. There's no need to establish a reference to God because they accept the same God, right?

The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, right? But then when he goes to Athens, he doesn't have the luxury of assuming the same divine nature. He has to sort of establish that first. And so he begins by saying, you know, I'm going to tell you about this unknown God. It is in him that we move and exist and have our being, right? So he appeals to the fact that God is the self-existing creator of all that is. Everything comes from him. And then he goes on to say that God will judge us in that last day by that man that died and rose from the dead, right? So what if, though, you had some members of the audience that said, you know, I accept the first part of what Paul said about God being the self-existent being and creator,

but the Jesus part I don't agree with. Well, would they be believing in the same God? They're believing in the same God. Here's a question, though. So people like Dr. William Lane Craig don't believe that God is his existence. Yes. So is there someone making an argument that William Lane Craig doesn't believe in the same God that Catholics or many Catholics? I know evangelicals do. Some do, too, but is someone making that claim?

Yeah, that's a great question. It's actually something I deal with in the book. At the very end, I bring up William Lane Craig, Alvin Planting, and Richard Swinburne. I say, what about these guys that are sometimes referred to as theistic personalists? That's a term coined by Professor Brian Davies of Fordham University. And what I argue is that I think that Craig Plantinga and Swinburne are wrong, but they still believe that God is the self-existent creator of all that is. So in a way, it's in a way that they're more like both Ptolemy and Copernicus are trying to explain the same universe. What, just real quickly, by self-existent, do you mean what, metaphysically necessary, or what does that mean?

Metaphysically necessary. Okay. Now, do they, I think, accept beliefs about God that ultimately undermine that? I think that's the case. I think that if you say that God has properties that change, that either those properties are essential to God or not. If they're not essential, then they're really not his properties. They're things that he creates in some way. So I think that Craig, Plannigan, Swinburne, other theistic personalists, they're working within the right tradition. And so I don't think that they believe in a different God. I just think that they get classical theism wrong in a way. But that differs, for example, from, let's say,

Latter-day Saint theology. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. And I think with the Latter-day Saints, with the Mormons, God is not even close to that. God is a creature in the universe. Yeah. He doesn't play any explanatory role in accounting for the universe. But see, that brings up a point that I'm thinking now. Like, who gets to decide that here is what you need to believe about God in order for us to say, we both believe in the same God. So,

you know what I'm saying? Like, if you, if it's not enough to say, well, God's essence is existence. That's what we mean by God. If you believe in something different,

you're not believing in God as Craig isn't. So then you'd like, you have to lower the bar a bit. Well, no, no. All you got to do is believe that God is the creator of the world. Well,

okay. Who's setting this bar, in other words? Well, I think the Catholic Church sets the bar. But I do think that in the case of Bill and Al and Richard, who are all to a different degree friends, I'm actually closest to Bill Craig, I think that what's important is that God doesn't depend on anything for his existence in the sense that he is self-existent. I think the difficulty that Plantinga, Craig, and Swinburne have with classical theism is

they see God as this sort of static entity that they want to account for is God's interaction with his creation. And they don't want to accept the view that we have to understand God in terms of those attributes that we typically attribute to his action to analogy. So they want to reject the doctrine of analogy. And I think that's where the rub is, because this is a problem that obviously even Aquinas wrestles with, right? So the way in which God is described in Scripture, he is, you know, interacting with his creatures. He seems to change in certain ways. How can we best account for that? And I think I think these philosophers say, well, you know, God in some way does change. But ultimately, in his essence, he is unchanging. And I'm not sure that works.

So what would Muslims have to believe for you to say, okay, we don't believe in the same God? So like, what's the smallest amount of change they would have to believe in God for you to then say, well, we're now talking about something fundamentally different? Yeah, I think they would have to deny that God is self-existent. Okay. Yeah, so as Mormons do, right? He had a beginning, he was once a man. He's not eternal, except in that weird eternal spirit thing that we all are.

Yeah, in fact, I even wonder, you know, in evangelical circles, there are people that accept what is called open theism. And I mean, Swinburne, you know, kind of is, well, he's an open theist and doesn't believe God knows the future. God is in time. And I just think at some point, and this is going to be kind of unusual or weird to hear, but I sometimes wonder if in some ways Muslims are closer to the Catholic view of God. Someone's tweeting this right now. That some evangelicals that accept this kind of almost finite theism. So I haven't thought through it enough.

Yeah, no, it's an interesting thought, to be sure. Is there some sort of authoritative position on what Muslims believe about God as there is with the Catholic Church? Not really, other than obviously the Koran. And then within Islam, there are different theological traditions. There are certain, there are certain, so for example, if you go to the Sufis, which are the more mystical branch of Islam, in fact, there are people within Islam that don't think that they are actually Muslims. You find something closer to classical theism. You find within certain branches of Islam, at least among intellectuals, I'm not an expert in sort of everyday, ordinary Islam. But Al-Ghazali, for example, is a philosopher that actually William

Lane Craig was influenced by. His Kalam cosmological argument comes from Al-Ghazali, and Al-Ghazali did not like the use of Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy by, or I should be more careful here, the appropriation of Greek philosophy by Al-Farabi and Avicenna and Averroes. He thought that this was kind of undermining of a more kind of sola scriptura approach to Islam. And yet Al-Ghazali gives us the Kalam cosmological argument, which in a sense could get you, if properly argued, to classical theism. And in fact, I find it ironic that Bill, who loves the Kalam argument, says that Muslims and Christians don't worship the same God. I mean if you think about his own book, he's got a book called Reasonable Faith, which is a book in which he spends, I think, 80, 90 pages defending the Kalam argument. Yeah, I've got it on my shelf. It really is instrumental in my own kind of theological awakening.

And then the rest of the book, he defends miracles and the resurrection of Jesus. You know what he doesn't defend in the book? The Trinity. Interesting. So it's weird. the resurrection of Jesus. You know, he doesn't defend in the book, the Trinity. So, so it's weird is that, so I imagine somebody just read Bill's Reasonable Faith and said, I come to the conclusion that through the Kalam argument that God exists and Jesus rose from the dead and that he's God, but I don't believe in the Trinity. Now, do they believe in the same God as Christians? So someone could actually read Bill Craig's book, accept everything. Yes, agree with everything.

And so to me, it's – I use this example in my own book that ironically one could come to the conclusion that the Bill Craig of reasonable faith doesn't agree with the Bill Craig who defends the Trinity. And it seems to me that that is not really fair to Bill, right? That if somebody just stopped reading reasonable faith after the Cullum argument and said, I believe in God, I don't think Bill would say if the person didn't continue— Ah, go on to believe in Christianity. He wouldn't say, no, you don't. You don't believe in the same God. Why does Craig say Muslims don't believe in the same God as Christians? I think it has to do with the way in which he understands the depiction of God in the Bible and the Koran.

But why doesn't he go a step further then and say Catholics and others who believe in divine simplicity also don't believe in God? Because it sounds like he thinks we're totally in error on that point. So why? I think for him, it's the Trinity and the deity of Christ. And then also what he thinks is, he thinks the Quran presents God or instructs Muslims to do things that are inconsistent with the way in which God is described in the Bible. I think that's – my own view on that is that that's a very dangerous thing to say because if you could read the Old Testament in which God instructs the Israelites to go and Israelites to go and, you know, take out the Canaanites, etc. And I think, you know, I know that there are hermeneutical issues here, and I don't want to, you know, be simplistic about it, but I think as Christians we have to be careful when we say things like that, because you could very well, you know, give people, seek the wrong impression on how to read scripture on matters like that. Now, Aquinas is absolutely deadly

when he discusses Islam and the origins of Islam, right? Yes. He essentially just mocks Muhammad saying that he was nothing but a bloody, he had a strong arm and how is that a proof of divinity, yada, yada. How did Aquinas view Islam? Was it a, or maybe even earlier than Aquinas, was there a point where Christians viewed them just as heretics or have they always been viewed in Christianity as a separate religion? That's really a good question. Some of the early Eastern fathers that had a more direct acquaintance with Islam because of living close to the Middle East and in some cases in the Middle East,

East and in some cases in the Middle East, there were some that thought of Islam as a kind of re-emergence of the Aryan heresy. Because remember, for Islam, Jesus is the Messiah, but he's not God. Of course, he's not divine in any ways. In that sense, it would be different from Arius, who believed that Jesus was in some sense divine, but not, you know, consubstantial with the Father. So, yeah, but that's, so you had some Eastern fathers thinking of Islam as a kind of Christian heresy. But in terms of the way Aquinas thinks of Islam, clearly he thinks Islam is false in terms of being the correct successor of Christianity. But he interacts with Averroes and Avicenna and other Muslim thinkers on questions about how to properly interpret Aristotle, but also on issues of the divine nature. And he doesn't – and he treats them as he treats Moses Maimonides, who he calls the rabbi. Yeah.

Right? And he doesn't think of them as believing in the wrong god. He doesn't say they believe in a wrong god. He just thinks that they're mistaken about those things that we call articles of faith. Yeah. Okay. This is awesome. So I guess the concept of God has become perverted.

Because just like it was, I mean, I know the church fathers made this, you know, either God or a bad man. Lewis popularized it in Mere Christianity and elsewhere, this idea that if you believe what the Scripture says of Christ, if it is in fact accurate, then you have three options. He was who he said he was, he was lying, or he was, you know, insane to some degree. Okay, well, what do we say about Muhammad? Like, we cannot call him a prophet. So what do we say? He was either bad, he was possessed So what do we say? He was either bad, he was possessed demonically, the account of Muhammad we have is inaccurate? I mean, do you dare speculate or would you rather not? Most of my reading of Islam is Muslim philosophers. I've read through the Koran several years ago just because I thought I ought to. Yeah, me too.

I was in the Middle East a few years back, you know, proclaiming the gospel while the call for prayer bellowed in the mosque next to me. Now, clearly, I think that as Catholics, we ought not to believe that he's a prophet. That's just—he can't be a prophet under Catholic theology. But to the degree to which he was mistaken, that's something that we can only speculate about. Some people have made the argument that there was some kind of, you know, demonic activity. Other people have said, you know, he was not sane. Other people, you know, say that he was a kind of idiot savant of religion, you know, with no demonic activity. Yeah. You know, I don't know.

And it seems like he picked, I mean, I know you don't know a lot about Islam, neither do I. But I know he, it seems like he drew from some apocryphal gospels. As he talks about Christ and the sorts of things he did, they seem to come from later false gospels. That's right. So the idea that Mary was part of the Trinity, which I think is something that Muhammad claimed Christians believed, which is really silly. In some ways, I mean, if you look at—I think there's a kind of analogy between Islam and Latter-day Saints, the emergence of Latter-day Saint theology. In some ways, Mormonism is the kind of Islam of Protestantism.

I'm trying to think that through. Of Protestantism. Yes, interesting. of Protestantism. I mean, it's interesting. It's, uh, it, it, although I actually think in some ways, and, and I have many friends who are Latter-day Saints, uh, I think, uh, Latter-day Saints have appropriated some of the best, uh, moral lessons. I agree. I've never met a Mormon I didn't think was fantastic. And, and, and I've, and I just have such great respect for them, and I very much enjoy their company. And I find at least talking with them about moral and social issues and even questions of the influence of religion on public life, I find them to be kindred spirits. I just think, I think

theologically they're mistaken, just as they obviously think that I'm wrong. Yes, that's right. Yeah, no, this is really good. I think sometimes perhaps in an attempt to distinguish us from Islam, maybe rush to say we don't worship the same God. But I think it's important that in saying that, yes and no, as you put it, we do worship the same God. But I think it's important that in saying that, yes and no, as you put it, we do worship the same God, but they have an erroneous understanding about what God is or who God is. But in saying that, we're not kind of like advocating a false ecumenism. You know, we're not doing any of that. All we're doing is trying to be very nuanced about the question, do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Yeah, I mean, I think a good way to put it is, Muslims and Christians worship the same God, but they don't share the same faith.

I love it. That's a good one. That's a nice soundbite, and it makes sense. It sums it up. And in the same way, you could say that, see, Catholics and Protestants – I've got to be careful here. I've actually never thought about – I appreciate your courage here, talking things through live this is good coming with a pithy way of saying it i think in a sense um i think protestants and catholics share the same faith but have different understandings about that faith uh i don't know if that i don't don't hold me to that no i won't now do you have to think that through yeah well, well, that's the joy of all this. It's such a delight to do it. Do you know many Muslims?

And, I mean, have you presented this paper to Muslims? What are their take on it, if you have? I've not presented it to Muslims. I've had some correspondences with Muslim scholars. I've had some correspondences with Muslim scholars. When I first wrote on this four years ago, I published a popular piece on the online magazine called The Catholic Thing. It was right after Professor Wheaton College was forced out of her job because she had posted on Facebook that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. And I defended her. because she had posted on Facebook that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, and I defended her. Wow.

And it was unusual for me, because I'm fairly well-known as a conservative Catholic. Yes. And so it was sort of interesting. All these people to my right who were evangelicals were mad at me, All these people to my right who were evangelicals were mad at me. And it was kind of nice to have a few enemies to my right or a few opponents. But to me, it wasn't a left-right issue. It was an issue of sort of theological integrity.

And so I had some Muslims write me. I know I've been at conferences and have met Muslim philosophers. When I was in college, I actually had some dear friends I haven't kept in contact with, two brothers that were Iranian Shiite Muslims who had actually left Iran after the fall of the Shah. And so I've had very good experiences with Muslims over the years. And so, yeah, so I've, you know, but I've not heard anything from... Well, I'll let you know. Would you believe I have people who support me monthly who

are Muslim? That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, I had someone write to me recently, like, hey, just you know, like I'm a Muslim, but I love this work. I'm like, wow! So if you're listening, awesome Muslim supporter of mine, write to me and let me know what you thought of this episode

because... Yeah, because if you say that Muslims and Christians don't worship the same God, and you believe Christians worship God, then what you're saying is Muslims don't worship God. That's right. It's not like there exists God and then a false God, because a false God is just nothing. So you're saying Muslims think they worship God, but they actually don't believe in God. They think they do, but they're wrong in thinking that. Yeah. Or no. Sorry, I'm pontificating. I might be totally wrong. Feel free to correct me. No, I think if, let's say, I think maybe a good way to think about it is, let's say you have a Muslim who converts to Christianity. What do they think about what happened to them, right? So, if you ask, for example, Muslim converts to

Christianity, I actually looked this up online because I was interested, and virtually all of them don't think of themselves changing gods. They think of their experience or their change as sort of believing more fully about the God that they've always believed in. Probably like you, as a Protestant who then came to believe in the Catholic Church, it didn't feel like a privation. It felt like you were entering something deeper. Yeah, I think maybe a better analogy would be, let's say, a Jewish convert to Christianity. Okay. You know, so for example, when Paul, when Saul becomes Paul, does he think, oh, now

that I believe that Jesus is divine— I finally believe in God or something. Yeah, no, he just would believe, I believe more things about God— Makes sense to me. —than I believed before. that's probably, this is why I've convinced that it's a mistake to say that Muslims and Christians don't worship the same God, because I think you get into this problem of, well, what do you do with Jewish people, right? I mean, Moses, for example, when he is confronted by God in the burning bush, right? And he asks, who should I say has sent me?

I am has sent you. And traditionally, that's been interpreted as God saying, I am the self-existent one. Now, you know, he goes and he believes this, and this is part of the Jewish tradition. Now, at the time, according to the way we think, as Catholics, was God a trinity? Of course he was. I mean, what if God were to have stopped Moses and said, wait a second, Moses, before you go, let me tell you, I'm three persons. You know, see what the children of Israel think about that. You know, I mean.

think about that. You know, I mean... And nor would it be enough to say, well, the reason we say Muslims don't worship the same God is because, whereas in Moses' time, God had not yet revealed it, and so Moses was not bound to it. Now we are, including us

Muslims and Jews. Right? Someone might say that, but being bound to believe more about God is something different to believing, as you say, in a self-existent being. That's right. So suppose that you had, you know, let's say two siblings who have different understandings of their own father. One says, you know, I got to understand, our dad's part of the mafia. And the other brother says, no, I can't believe that. He's not part of the mafia and the other brother says, no, I can't believe that he's not part of the mafia. And you show them all the evidence and the one refuses to believe. Does that mean they

don't have the same father? No. I mean, people can all, there's all sorts of reasons why people don't come to believe things. Right. Uh, and it could be, uh, you know, God's grace hasn't touched them or what the church calls invincible ignorance. Even the child who believes that God is sitting on a cloud, I don't know if you'd say to the child, you don't believe in God. You would just say you have some accurate understanding of God, that he's bigger than you, that he watches over you, but you have a lot of inadequacies and errors in your belief. Yeah, I think the idea of God being creator, I mean, even the child would say, you know, do you think God created the universe? Yes. It'd be weird for a kid, let's say, grew up in a church, say, do you think God created the universe? No, I think God is just like he's from Krypton.

Yeah. You know, and he's like Superman. I mean, that would be, you know, you think, well, it'd be unusual. Yeah. Well, this has been thoroughly enlightening. I'm excited for all the feedback I'm going to get. I'm sure most of it will be positive. I hope some of it will be critical because I look forward to running that by you. I know you've thought deeply on these things,

have written on them. And so obviously, we've just scratched the surface of what you'd perhaps want to say. But for those who want to dig deeper, tell us more about your new book and how people can kind of interact with your work. Yeah, I have a book that's just coming out called Never a Doubt Thomas. And you can access through amazon.com and Baylor University Press site. But I have a website called francisbeckwith.com that kind of tells you a little bit about my background, gives you access to some of my articles and links to where some of the books are. And, you know, I'm pretty much an ordinary professor who is blessed to be able to do things like I'm doing right now. Tell me what the subtitle of this book means.

It's kind of confusing to me. It's called Never Doubt Thomas, the Catholic Aquinas as Evangelical and Protestant. Yes, yeah. It's a, I did not, that's not my title. The Joys of Writing for Publishers. Well, you know, originally when I was told the title by my publisher, I didn't like it. And my wife didn't either, but I've gotten so much positive feedback from people on Facebook and Twitter, going, what a cool title. And so it goes to show

you that I'm not a marketing genius. The people at Baylor University Press knew what they were doing. So the subtitle is trying to say this. I go over four issues that I think Aquinas illuminates that are helpful to Catholic and Protestants better understanding each other. So I have a chapter dealing with natural theology and natural law. And so in that chapter, I go over some of the modern criticisms of natural law and natural theology by evangelical Protestant authors. And I show that most of their claims about the shortcomings of both are totally admitted by Aquinas. about the shortcomings of both are totally admitted by Aquinas. Aquinas himself says, yeah, you can't get everything from natural law and natural theology because human beings have an inclination towards sin and so forth. And so in that chapter, it's Aquinas as evangelical or as Protestant. I think that's, yeah, Aquinas is Protestant. Then in the last chapter, which deals with the doctrine of justification, I deal with several evangelical authors who love Aquinas and think that Aquinas' view of justification differs from the modern of Trent. And that chapter, I show how Aquinas is in continuity with Trent, and not

only with Trent, but also Augustine and the Church Fathers. And there I say, Aquinas is evangelical. So just to be clear for those listening who are a bit confused, you're not saying that Thomas Aquinas was a Protestant or denied Catholic doctrine? I know you'd know this, but just for their sake. Exactly. All I'm saying is that Aquinas—I'm trying to take critics and admirers of Aquinas in the Protestant and evangelical world and say the admirers are wrong about his view of justification and his critics are wrong. And so it turns out that those that admire him on what they think is justification really don't understand that Aquinas is really Catholic, and that those that are critics of him who think that he's saying something about natural natural theology that they think is consistent with Catholicism are actually misunderstanding him, and he's closer to their quote-unquote Protestant understanding.

So there's a kind of irony in the subtitle. I can't wait to read it. Just as an offside, as we wrap up here, do you know it was, I'd say, the sixth session at the Council of Trent on justification that cured me, I would say, by the grace of God of my scrupulosity. I struggled tremendously with scrupulosity. And I read what the Council of Trent had to say about salvation, one for me in Christ, about the moral certainty that I can have, etc. And I tell you what, by the grace of God and the prayers of Therese of Lisieux, I would say I was healed, if you want to use that term, of my scrupulosity. Because it was so bad. It got to a point where I was hoping Catholicism was wrong,

because I really so desperately wanted to believe once saved, always saved, because I was so tired of feeling like I was walking around pissing God off. Because I was so tired of feeling like I was walking around pissing God off. Yeah. Yeah, I think the Council of Trent, I think it's one of those things that everybody talks about but has never read. Or if they've read it, they don't read it with the right lenses. And so let me explain what I mean here. I read The Council of Trent when I was 22 years old, before I had studied philosophy in graduate school. I reread it when I was 45, after being a philosophy professor for, oh, how many, almost 20 years, and was interesting,

or almost 25 years, and what I missed as a 22-year-old was the Aristotelian or the Thomistic assumptions in the Council of Trent. So in the section of the, I think it was, was it chapter six that you mentioned? Yeah, session six. Session six, where I think that's where they talk about the five causes of justification. Yeah, probably. And they almost parallel the four causes that Aquinas talks about, efficient, material, formal, and final. The only one that differs is the instrumental cause of baptism. But it turns out that none of the five causes is the will of the person. In other words, you're not doing the work. It's the grace of God that is moving your will and yet in a kind of mysterious way uh you are you're saved

and so you participate in it but you're not doing it and and so i and so i when i read that i thought i go oh my god how did i miss that well it's because i read it with philosophically untutored eyes yeah and i think there's a lot of sort of post-Reformation Protestants who don't have that philosophical background who read it and think, oh, Trent is saying that, that, you know, that somehow I am one of the causes

of my own justification, which of course is Pelagianism. Yeah. Wonderful stuff, Dr. Wonderful stuff. Dr. Beckwith, you are a gem. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. In about three weeks, this is going to release. So I just want to thank you again.

This is going to be such a blessing to people. Well, thanks for having me, Matt. Appreciate it. Boom, ba-boom, boom, boom. Wasn't that great? Dr. Beckwith is super humble. And I got to tell you this story about Dr. Beckwith is super humble. And I got to tell you this story about Dr. Beckwith. I don't think he'd mind me sharing. About a couple of months ago,

I interviewed him and the file became corrupt. And this was after he had spent like an hour doing an interview with me. I felt absolutely terrible, right? Because I've just wasted this man's time. And so I reached out to him over email and I apologized. And I said, I'd love to have you on the show again. I understand if you don't want to. I said, I'd be happy. I want to pay you. Like I didn't say I'd like to, I said, I will pay you. And so I told him I'd like pay him a few hundred bucks to do this interview again for his time, right? Cause he's a busy dude. And we just got done with the show. And I said, Dr. Beckwith, what's your PayPal account? Let me send you some money. And he said, please don't. I said, no, no, no, I won't do it. He said, no, no, no, this was a pleasure.

Please don't. Anyway, I just, if I was as intelligent and awesome as Dr. Beckwith, I would definitely be taking my $200. That's all I'm saying. So that's all I wanted to say. God bless y'all. Bye.

Too many grains of salt and juice Lest we be frauds or worse, accused Hollow me to deepen the news Whose wolves am I feeding myself to? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? And I would give my whole life to carry you