Do Christians and Muslims Mean the Same Thing by “God”?

Christians and Muslims both intend to speak of the one Creator God, but they do not mean the same thing about who God is.

What Christians confess

Christians worship the one God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

God is not three gods; he is one God in three distinct, eternal persons. The Son is not a creature or merely a prophet: Jesus Christ is truly God who became truly human.

Jesus prays to the Father in John 17:3, yet the same Gospel also says, “the Word was God” and that the Word became flesh in Jesus (John 1:1, 14). Christians therefore know the Father only through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

What Islam teaches

Muslims also confess one, sovereign Creator, calling him Allah—simply the Arabic word for “God.”

But Islam rejects the Trinity and denies that Jesus is God incarnate or the divine Son. The Quran presents Jesus as a revered human prophet and rejects the Christian confession that God has a Son (Quran 4:171; Quran 112:1–4).

The decisive difference

The disagreement is not mainly over whether there is one Creator.

It is over God’s identity and self-revelation:

• Is God eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
• Has the eternal Son truly taken flesh in Jesus Christ?
• Does God save through Christ’s cross and resurrection?

Historic Christianity must answer yes. So Christians can acknowledge real overlap in beliefs about God’s oneness, power, and creation, while saying plainly: the God Christians worship is known definitively in Jesus Christ.

“To know” the true God includes knowing “Jesus Christ whom [the Father] sent” (John 17:3).