Lotta universities have assorted mechanisms to protect what they see as the correct paradigm within which to view the world.
But not relevant to Dr Hawkins and Wheaton…she freely signed off on the statement of faith.
The way I look at it is that when you are making stuff up, arguing about fine points becomes and exercise in futility, and arguing about which points are fine and which are major is just as futile.
I suspect that the Wheaton statement of faith would not exclude Catholics for most readers of it, since as far as I know, the Catholic church still accepts the definition of God laid out in that statement.
I do think most pro-Wheaton faithful would not agree with the Francis on the “same God as Muslims” comment. Nor would they think that any given Pope saying a given thing is necessarily what Catholicism teaches historically, or even (for any given comment) what most Catholics personally believe.
I don’t think Wheaton’s followers see the Pope as much more than a political figurehead who may or may not get things right. It’s more likely that the Pope would influence a Catholic’s opinion of who he is worshiping than the opinion of a Wheaton Protestant.
Wheaton can do whatever they want, within the bounds of the law. That doesn’t mean the rest of us in the peanut gallery can’t ridicule them for being small-minded, weak-faithed and petty. I have no respect for any Christian that considers her statement a genuine threat.
Well, sure. We might ridicule Wheaton for teaching the trinity, Islamic schools for denying it, or both for making shit up in the first place.
But in general an institution which has as its raison d’être the propagation of a particular point of view probably doesn’t concern itself with the peanut gallery of those who do not support their viewpoint. And since the actual mission of Wheaton is to educate students who will “build the church” as defined in the statement of faith, professors at odds with that statement are, by definition, a genuine threat.
For anyone still following this thread, I found an interesting essay by a former Muslim who converted to evangelical Christianity on the topic. I would say his position (and I do not know if he has any particular ties to Wheaton) probably captures reasonably the Wheaton-type evangelical thinking around the “same God as Muslims” issue. There are also some comments regarding Catholicism and Judaism.
Excerpt:
“I believe that the phrase “Muslims and Christians worship the same God” is only true in a fairly uncontroversial sense: There is one Creator whom Muslims and Christians both attempt to worship. Apart from this banal observation, Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. Let’s start with the obvious: Christians believe Jesus is God, but the Quran is so opposed to this belief that it condemns Jesus worshipers to Hell…
The similarities between the God of Islam and the God of Christianity are fairly superficial, and at times simply semantic. Though Islam claims that the Muslim God has done some of the same things as the Christian God and sent some of the same people, that is not enough to say that Muslims worship the same God as Christians. These minor overlaps are far less essential to the reality of who God is than the fundamental differences of his nature and persons. What God has done or whom He has sent is far less of a defining characteristic than what He is and who He is; though Islam and Christianity overlap at points on the former, they differ fundamentally on the latter.”
Your guy’s claim that the Quran preaches Christians go to hell is at best extremely questionable. Yes, parts of the Quran do very strongly criticize the idea of Jesus being divine, but the Quran also explicitly says that Christians, Jews, and Sabians can go to paradise.
Islam has always been a very practical religion and most of its leaders and followers have chosen to follow the above passage which is seen as a clarification of the others.
I should say the Quran is about as clear as the Missouri River and very difficult to follow which is why traditionally Muslims leave the understanding of it to experts
Do you think the prof in question was denying the divinity of Jesus or claiming that Muslims believe in a triune God? Do you think that’s the point she was trying to make?
I have no idea what point she was trying to make beyond her statement.
She does not seem inclined to clarify her theology further. I have no way of knowing if this is because she is not articulate, doesn’t actually know why what she said is an issue, or just wants her settlement.
I have predicted she will will just accept a settlement and leave quietly, and that part of the settlement will be to not talk about it further publicly.
Getting bought out by an institution sensitive about its reputation is a good gig if you can get it. Between the fact that she is a minority professor and the issue revolves around Muslims, she is in the catbird seat. But the cost of getting bought off will definitely be to keep her mouth shut, and if I know human nature, money will trump any principle she has that this is an Important Issue Which Needs Addressing. LOL
So I don’t think we’ll ever know how cogently she is able to defend her position.
On this we agree, except for the idea that “experts” are any better than the rest of us at sorting out the psychotic musings of the delusional.
The paradigm of arriving at truth by listening to what nutcases have to say when they are communicating their secret messages delivered from the almighty belongs to another age.
Theology is always nonsense, it is the misapplication of the rational mind to the spiritual experience. Any God that is God is going to be beyond our capacity to reason, an ant crawling across Einstein’s foot does not suddenly gain a talent for math.
The uptight constipated Calvinist prays to understand God’s rules and regulations, and finds that they are remarkably similar to his own. A person of a kindly and tolerant nature is unlikely to discover that God wants us to slay the Amorites.
Our reading for today’s lesson is the baptismal rite of St. Elliot of Rosewater…
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Here endeth the lesson.
Are you being disingenous? It’s a pretty common statement, one I’ve heard a thousand times from both Christians and Muslims- as well as from the Pope himself. The meaning of it doesn’t seem enigmatic or mysterious at all, unless you are pretending really hard not to get it.
It seems pretty clear to me that she wasn’t trying to deny the divinity of Jesus (if that was her goal, there are certainly more direct ways to do so.) So if that’s not what she was doing, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to punish her for doing that, does it?
Is it a doubt? chief pedant, you recall I am sure the Ebola discussion or any discussion of the inherent inferiority of the recent aAfrican descended… all façade of a reasoning works as a packaging for the conclusion already in the mind.
In any case it is very simple, if the Wheaton college has applied the same standard to the Jews, then they are simply very narrow minded but consistent in their theology. If they have not - it is suspected they have not - there is a gross hypocrisy and obvious non-theological reasoning going on.
The ad hoc pretended ever moving goal posts reasonings of the pedant is not worth any consideration, it is simply an excercise in detecting if the Wheaton college has been consistent or not in the supposed theological reasoning. If not the real answer is known.
Her position really doesn’t require explanation to those with even a small knowledge of basic theology.
But yeah, that means lots of people don’t get it.
I personally find it fruitless to parse out theologic fine points since I consider them all made up anyway…one is free to take any position one wants about hypocrisy, self-contradiction or any other complaint. Pretty much every religion is full of all that.
As to whether Wheaton (not the Pedant 
) would consider their statement of faith to be at odds with Dr Hawkins, I have offered an essay above by a Muslim converted to evangelical Christianity as a proxy for how I think Wheaton would defend its position that the God of Islam is not the God described in the Wheaton statement of faith. There are other points made there regarding Judaism as well as Catholicism. If you find that essay unpersuasive, I guess my reply is that all theology is unpersuasive to me, so it’s kind of pointless to try and persuade me of anything.
It’s unclear to me why I’m taking any heat on this. LOL. It’s not MY position. I’m just letting those on this board who have a predilection to be inclusive around whose God is whose to know why that position is not going to be taken by Wheaton. There is no chance their ecumenism will extend much further than evangelical Christianity.
I find it hilarious that you throw in an ad hominem you created, in the hope that it’s relevant when I am not even taking a position on the debate at hand! 
I am only trying to help the polloi understand someone else’s position. For the life of me I cannot figger out how “the recent aAfrican descended” relates to the Wheaton statement of faith v Dr Hawkins.
Read the essay by Nabeel Qureshi which I cited above if you are interested in how I think Wheaton would answer the same-God question wrt to Judaism, Islam, and the triune God of Christianity.
While I care deeply about the survival rate of Ebola in competent hands , I’m personally unconcerned about who is worshiping the same God. So whether that was meant as either a cogently germane point, or an ordinary insult, either way it missed the mark… Please sir, may I have another? I’ve had a long day and could use another chuckle.
One freebie to help you out, by the way: “theological reasoning” is a bit of an oxymoron in the Pedant’s epistemologic paradigm.
The point you are missing (I think) is that you have not heard the “same God as Muslims” statement from the guardians of Wheaton’s theologic positions.
It matters not to Wheaton what the Pope says or thinks. Wheaton does not follow Papal proclamations nor Catholic teachings. I’m not sure what you think it is the Pedant is not getting. The thing I “get” is that theology is manufactured de novo by humans, and creates artificial, internally and externally contradictory statements all the time.
I believe what you mean is that Wheaton is not “getting” something. What they are not getting here is how the triune God in their statement of faith is not excluded by Islam.
By all means write them and let them know of your concerns.
What you aren’t getting is that we, sad obsessed internet personalities that we are, are finding Wheaton disingenuous and lacking in internal logical consistency.
Ramira’s basic point is correct (though told in her own inimitably combative style 
): if Wheaton takes the same position as against the Jews, they would be odd and out of the mainstream of Christianity (which was the point of mentioning the Pope’s recent contribution), but at least internally consistent. If they do not, which is the more likely frankly, they are inconsistent.
The suspicion is that the reason they are taking this odd stance has nothing to do with theology and everything to do with reactions to current American political currents - as in, anti-Muslim bigotry.
Now, I understand the point that theology is all “made up”, yadda yadda … but even if one is disinclined to question the premises of theology, one can still quite reasonably question the expressions of theology for internal inconsistency, without either accepting or rejecting the premises. In short, one need not believe in evangelical Protestantism to see that these folks claiming they worship a different god than the Muslims because “trinity” makes no sense unless they reject the Jewish god, too.
Yes, you need to believe in a triune God to follow Wheaton’s statements of the belief. But she didn’t deny that!
She just said that God of Muslims and Jews is the same God of Christians. To deny that is clearly against their statement of beliefs (and ALL mainstream interpretations of Christianity). Yes Christians, Muslims and Jews believe that God has different attributes (and that makes Muslims and Jews beliefs incompatible with Wheaton’s). But extrapolate from that they worship completely different God would required you to ignore most of the new testament.
NOTHING in the statement of beliefs was contradicted by her statement. This has NOTHING to with theological beliefs, and EVERYTHING to do with fear and islamophobia.
And whether you believe “New Testaments are verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writing”. If you do (and Wheaton claims to) you cannot deny they are the same God. Large parts of the New Testament are spent clearly and unambiguously saying that the (non-triune) God worshiped by the Jews IS the same God worshiped by Christians.
Muslims clearly worship the same God as the Jews (their statement of beleid begins with the “God of Isaac and the God Abraham”), so if Jews worship the same God as the Christians, so do Muslims.
I totally get the complaint that Wheaton is logically inconsistent, and disingenuous.
Dr Hawkins signed off on the statement of faith. You can read the essay on why Wheaton-type evangelicals want to accept the Jewish Yahweh but not the Islamic Allah. If it doesn’t convince you, by all means send them a scathing rebuke.
I believe that at least one distinction evangelicals make is that Judaism does not specifically renounce the Trinity, while Islam does. In Wheaton’s view, the triune God is revealed as having existed within the God of Israel, and referenced in the OT, even though Jews themselves may not realize that. Islam however, specifically denies the Evangelicals’ triune God.
But feel free to argue with the people making all this up.
As I said earlier, I don’t think Dr Hawkins will argue her point. I predict she takes the money, shuts up, and bails. Everyone has a price, and to date I have not seen anything suggesting she thought through much of this wrt Wheaton’s statement of faith. That she would quote what Francis said as backup suggests to me she doesn’t really understand the Wheaton theological positions. We’ll see.