Are They the Same God?

Are They the Same God?

I had an interesting discussion with a group of Muslims and Christians. They claimed the Christian and Muslim gods are the same. Their rationale was that "Allah" is the Arabic word for "God." While this is true, that doesn't equate the Muslim god to the Christian god. Just like the Deist god, the Jewish god, and the Christian god are not the same though they all claim the name "God." This is where I'm sure I've lost your support by now, so allow for me to explain. In this discussion, I claimed that the Christian and Muslim gods cannot be the same for they have separate characteristics (all loving, not all loving, triune, single-personed, etc.). Similarly, the Jewish god and the Deist god are single-personed, making them fundamentally different than the Christian god, philosophically speaking. Allow me to draw an illustration. Let's say that I am talking of my friend Stephen and I say Stephen is 6'2" tall, while you maintain that he is in fact 5'10" tall. I say that I know for a fact that Stephen is so tall while you say that you know for a fact that he is so tall. Philosophically speaking, we are talking about 2 separate Stephens; for a single Stephen cannot possess the characteristics of being both 5'10" and 6'2", this is simply incoherent. However, it is quite plausible that one (or both) of us has (have) a misrepresentation of the true Stephen. Similarly, the gods of the monotheistic faiths (Deism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) from a philosophical standpoint cannot be the same entity; however, it is entirely possible that 3 (or 4) of the views of God are misrepresentations of the one true God. This is the position that I hold. So I'll leave you by asking, are they the same God?