I’ve been discussing this question recently on Ship of Fools, and also just read a very good blog post on the subject on the Christ the Truth blog.
A popular illustration is a group of blind people all trying to describe an elephant – one feels its trunk and thinks it’s a snake, one feels its leg and thinks it’s a tree, and so on. Are all religions just different attempts to make sense of the same being?
I don’t think so. The Bible speaks of the true God, and false Gods: the choice is between Yahweh and the idols. The idea that we’re all basically in agreement fails to do justice to the different and varied beliefs that people hold, and rests on some pretty shaky assumptions.
We tend to have in mind a philosophical conception of God, usually in terms of being a first cause with a few “omnis” thrown in (omniscient, omnipotent etc.), as our template, and then think that different religions are simply suggesting various tweaks and modifications to this basic idea.
But the Bible reveals God as trinity, which is very different to that. The trinity isn’t just an afterthought we add onto a general template of what people think God is like, but foundational to the Biblical revelation of God. Zeus is very different from the God of Islam, who is very different from Vishnu, and so on, and all of them are very different to the Triune God of the Bible. Just because Zeus, Allah, Vishnu and Christ are all referred to as a god or the God doesn’t mean that they have anything in common of necessity.
You could say the word “God” is more like a title, like “king”. It doesn’t carry any necessary content (although it has acquired certain baggage, as mentioned above), and doesn’t necessarily refer to the same thing. When we ask “Who is God?”, we aren’t trying to describe the same being but in slightly different ways. We’re asking “Who is king?” and proposing different beings to fill that role. If someone asks “do you believe in God?” the first answer should be “which God?”
Let’s just switch the analogy from “king” to “Prime Minister” for a moment. If I ask “who is the Prime Minister of Great Britain?” and someone answers “Gordon Brown” and another person “David Cameron”, then the first person is right and the second person is wrong. Despite this, there will be similarities in what they think the Prime Minister is like. Both will say that the Prime Minister is male, has dark hair, is leader of a political party and so on, despite referring to different people. Both are talking about the Prime Minister, but about different people.
So I think it’s fair to say that different religions talk about “God” in the sense that both people are talking about the Prime Minister. But different religions are talking about a different God (talking about Dave Cameron rather than Gordon Brown!), and so in that sense are completely wrong. But some of what they say about their God is actually true of the real God, so in that sense can be said to contain elements of truth.
But let’s get away from semantics to the real, vital issue: how do we worship the true God? We need two things: true knowledge of God, and hearts inclined to worship him. Sin deprives us of both, and salvation involves receiving both true knowledge and a change of heart.
To have true knowledge of God, we need the revelation of the Father through the Son attested to us by the Spirit, particularly through the God-breathed, Spirit-inspired Scriptures. To have changed hearts, we need the work of the Spirit to give us the resurrection life of Christ to restore us to fellowship with Father, Son and Spirit, just as they are in fellowship.