Dear Abdullah,
Thank you for your very interesting remarks in your last letter. They are remarkably true. One so easily gets sidetracked from the real issue. And that can only be God. We agree that there is, and only can be, one God, by whatever name we may call Him. He would know who we are and why we call on Him.
Does that mean that Allah, as He is called in Arabic, and how He is manifested in the Qur’an, is the same as the One who revealed Himself in the Bible? The meanings of the words we use for God, are the same. Who He is, is not clarified by His Name, but by His nature, the way He acts and ‘speaks’. Therefore, I deem it essential to first define what – or better Whom – we mean when we say ‘God’, or ‘Allah’.
Before we can do this, we have to identify a strange phenomenon. When a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, or any human being for that matter, closes his eyes to meditate about the essence, the nature and character of God, the perceptions of God in their minds is remarkably more alike than the theology of their respective ‘Holy Books’ would allow.
I believe wholeheartedly that all true knowledge about God must essentially come from Him alone, be it by using a man to be His clearly identified Prophet.
So, what can we know, perceive about God? Firstly, there is what we may call the revelation of God in creation. It was really only in the last century or so that man had more functional ‘tools’ to discovered the Cosmos, be it by the use of a Telescope or Microscope. I am referring of the sum of everything that exists. ‘Nature’ reveals to us unimaginable information of something infinitely greater, more powerful, complex, and intelligent than that it just happened to be. This, our unthinkable Universe, could not possibly exist without a designer and creator of all there is. A Psalm expresses this beautifully:
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