Eric Barger,
It is good to take a stand for Christ but one should not bear a false witness while attempting to do so. I just read the Yale document and nowhere does it mention that “Allah and Jehovah are the same deity”. The word Allah is not even mentioned in the entire document.
Funny how a search on Google on with the words “rick warren Allah and Jehovah” shows your name in the first link.
My intention is not defend Warren (I disagree with a lot of what he has to say), but I need to take a stand (pun intended) against false witness.
While I am not convinced that this particular attempt at common ground will bear fruit for the kingdom because of the absence of the gospel (although it cannot hurt to maintain peace with moderate Muslims), there is a biblical precedent in using “common ground” for the presentation of the Gospel.
2 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.
23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship--and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'1 As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'2 (Act 17:22-28)
As such, even the use “All-Merciful One” is not outside biblical boundaries. The Bible uses a few titles for God that were first used to designate the supreme God in pagan religions. “El” was the name of the supreme God in Canaanite religion, the same cognate word is use in Hebrew (as in El Elyon, God Most High) and in Arabic as the root Al as in “Allah”. The same principle is behind the English “god”
Using a generic word to address the deity is not the same as declaring that God and pagan deities are one and the same.
Why don’t you let Warren clarify what he meant instead on putting words in his mouth and thoughts in his mind?