So to review some of the previous discussion, I will explain how 'God' can refer to the divine substance that is the Triune Godhead.
Assuming that we hold to the following three statements:
(1) The Father is God.
(2) Jesus is God.
(3) The Holy Spirit is God.
I'm arguing that 'God' is not a proper name, because it doesn't semantically function like a proper name. An objection was presented to my view that sometimes 'God' is used to refer to the Father in the Bible and that was a problem for my view. In (1)-(3) 'God' occurs in the predicate position, however God cannot be identical to any one person of the Trinity for the following reason, there are properties that God has that any one member of the Trinity lacks. For instance, Jesus died on the cross, however the Father didn't die on the cross. Therefore, God died on the cross, but if we claim that God = the Father, then we commit the heresy of patripassionism (that the Father was crucified).
Here is an analogy to help better explain my view that 'God' refers to the divine substance.
(4) The Atlantic Ocean is water.
(5) The Pacific Ocean is water.
(6) The Indian Ocean is water.
(7) The Artic Ocean is water.
So we can speak about and refer to the Pacific Ocean as water, because it is water, however, the Pacific Ocean isn't identical to water, because the Pacific Ocean isn't identical to the Atlantic Ocean. So just as we can speak of God as Jesus or God as the Father, 'God' is not the name of Jesus or the name of the Father, though it can be used to refer to the Father or to the Son, but this is pragmatic reference and not an issue of semantics (or it may even be what is said).
Muslims affirm that there is one God, Allah. I take this to be a rejection of the Trinity, or to state this in a positive manner, this is an affirmation of a belief in a non-Triune God. Now, if 'God' refers to the divine substance and this divine substance means the Triune God, then clearly Muslims wouldn't refer to the same God that Christians refer to. In other words, 'God' must mean something different for Muslims than it does for Christians. We don't want to attribute any contradictory beliefs to Muslims, especially since they claim that they worship a non-Triune God, then it seems uncharitable to claim that they do worship a Triune God.
However, there is a problem for the Christian theist who claims that Muslims and Christians worship different Gods, since Muslims claim to worship the God of the OT. Yet, Muslims ignore what the NT teaches us about God and which is that God is a Triune God. So by explicitly rejecting a Triune God Muslims have broken the causal chain of reference. Since Israel, didn't explicitly reject a Triune God, then when they uttered the word 'God' they referred to God, although without knowing that God was a Triune God.
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What are the conditions under which a causal chain is broken?
A causal chain is broken when a speaker intends to use a name differently than it has previously been used.
I have a post below which quotes Scott Soames' on speaker intentions.
How divergent must one's use of a name be in order to achieve a break in the causal chain?
It's divergent when one doesn't intend to use a name in the same manner as the person that the individual acquired it from. For instance, take the name Mickey Mouse. If I intend to use 'Mickey Mouse' to refer to Scooby-Doo, and I acquired 'Mickey Mouse' from Walt Disney, then I have broken the causal chain of reference.
But don't Muslims intend to use the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Of course they get things wrong, but isn't their intent to refer to the God who revealed himself to Father Abraham, who has many sons, and I am one of them, and so are you?
I covered this in my post, but I think it's uncharitable to attribute any beliefs to Muslims that violate the law of non-contradiction.
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