ONLINE FIRST
published on April 12, 2017
Tomas Bogardus, Mallorie Urban
https://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil201741178
How to Tell Whether Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God
Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? We answer: it depends. To begin, we clear away some specious arguments surrounding this issue, to make room for the central question: What determines the reference of a name, and under what conditions do names shift reference? We¡¯ll introduce Gareth Evans¡¯s theory of reference, on which a name refers to the dominant source of information in that name¡¯s ¡°dossier,¡± and we then develop the theory¡¯s notion of dominance. We conclude that whether Muslims¡¯ use of ¡°Allah¡± co-refers with Christians¡¯ use of ¡°God¡± depends on how much weight is given to what type of information in the dossiers of these two names, and we offer a two-part test by which the reader can determine whether Muslim and Christian uses of the divine names co-refer: If Christianity were true and Islam false, might ¡°Allah¡± still refer to God? And: If Islam were true and Christianity false, might ¡°God¡± still refer to Allah? We explain the implications of your answers to those questions, and we close with a few reflections about what, in addition to reference, might be required for worship, and whether, from a Christian perspective, salvation turns on this issue.