Chapter 02.1 - Why Christianity of All Religions?

Why Christianity of All Religions?

Do not, then, let us serve the creature rather than the Creator ,or become vain in our thoughts. That is the rule of perfect religion. Augustine, Of True Religion For myself, I confess that so soon as the Christian religion reveals the principle that human nature is corrupt and fallen from God, that opens my eyes to see everywhere the mark of this truth: f or nature is such that she testifies everywhere, both within man and without him, to a lost God and a corrupt nature. Pascal, Pensees The way of the good and blessed life is to be found entirely in the true religion wherein one God is worshipped and acknowledged with purest piety to be the beginning of al1 existing things, originating, perfecting and containing the universe. Augustine, Of True Religion With the world shrinking in size and non-Christian religions making great missionary efforts, one can well question any exclusive claims of Christianity. Are there any good reasons for being a Christian as opposed to being a Buddhist or Muslim? ¹ Many people take a casual look at religion and conclude that religions in general are all same. Some are blasé’ and say with the people of Java that "all religions are ultimately one."² Or, they assent to the statement that "there is a bit of truth in all religions."³ Others may remark that all religions are supposed to lead to the same place. Still others argue that so many people in intense devotion have as much right as Christianity to claim that their way of worship is valid.⁴ If one, in rebuttal to these general remarks, poses a narrow view concerning world religions, he is charged with being narrow, dogmatic, provincial, or political incorrectness, but the charges are often made in ignorance of the facts and are the result of naive thinking. Men tend to ignore both sides of the question; they have emphasized the glories of the great religions but often have remained ignorant of the dark sides. There is real truth in Kraemer’s assertion that "the only people that maintain that it all boils down to the same things are those who have never taken the trouble to find out what `it all’ is." ⁵ When one turns to review the contributions of some writers in this area, one is similarly confronted with diverse viewpoints. Many are the followers of Toynbee, who said:

"I think it is possible for us, while holding that our own convictions are true and right, to recognize that, in some measure, all the higher religions are also revelations of what is true and right. They also come from God and each present some facet of God’s truth. They may and do differ in content and degree of revelation that has been given to mankind through them. They may also differ to the extent that this revelation has been translated by their followers in the practice, both in the individual practice and social practice. But we should recognize that they too are light radiating from the same source from which our own religion derives its own spiritual light. This must be so if God is the God of all men, and is also another name for love."⁶

On this basis, therefore, Toynbee says, "We ought also, I should say, to try to purge our Christianity of the traditional Christian belief that Christianity is unique. This is not just a Western Christian belief; it is intrinsic to Christianity itself."⁷ In this conclusion, Toynbee approvingly quotes Symmachus, " `It is impossible that so great a mystery should be approached by one road only.’ " ⁸ There are many who follow Toynbee’s line of reasoning. There is much that is attractive about it, for Toynbee is interested in appealing for tolerance, forbearance, and respect; and doing away with religious bigotry. Does not Christianity in its biblical content have concern for these problems? Toynbee is not without his critics, however. Kraemer charges that Toynbee has ignored the real issue: the truth question.⁹ It is at the issue of truth that Kraemer makes one of his important contributions, for he draws a hard distinction between the trueness of a religion and its value or function. From the standpoint of function, value, and religious experience, one may argue for a bighearted approach. If one grants that all religions fill some need in human psychology, one may argue that all religions are useful,but not necessarily revelations of God. This is to stress their practical or functional value. The question of truth is not necessarily an issue here. A counterfeit dollar will serve a practical value as long as the genuineness or truthfulness of the matter is not a question. Essentially, there is nothing new or modern about the value of religions in fulfilling a human need. This is as old as Hinduism and as modern as a Hegel or Schleiermacher and their descendants. The use of the word "revelation" by Toynbee is misleading since some religions are atheistic (as in classical Buddhism) requiring no revelation, and there is no revelation in Hinduism since one knows Brahma by meditation, not revelation. There is no revelation in Shinto, Jainism, Confucianism, or Taoism. This is true in the classic sense of the religion rather than later corruptions, when gods were fabricated in later Taoism. What about contradictory "revelations" between Islam, Christianity and Judaism? Does God not know when He has given contrary revelations? What are we to do with that? The popularity of religion in general shows something of its psychological functional role. People like to be part of a community, a tradition, and rituals. When religions are evaluated on a functional basis, then all religions become relative. But it is just a short step from the relativity of all religions to the irrelevancy of all religions.¹⁰ When one compares Christianity with the non-Christian religions along the line of value and function, one can acknowledge that

" the non-Christian religions can just as well as Christianity show up an impressive record of psychological, cultural and other values, and it is wholly dependent on one’s fundamental axioms of life whether one considers these non-Christian achievements of higher value for mankind than the Christian. The weakness of the value-argument in relation to the problem of ultimate and authoritative truth is still more patent if one remembers that from the standpoint of relative cultural value fictions and even lies have been extraordinarily valuable and successful."¹¹

Given the contradictory ideas in the great religions of the world, atheism, pantheism, polytheism, and monotheism, it makes more sense to say that all religions are false than to say they are all true. How can one equate monotheism with pantheism? or polytheism? To do so is to ignore the basic meaning of the ideas. Since one cannot judge the ultimate truthfulness of a religion from its functional value, then some other approach must be considered. When a Christian confronts a Buddhist or Hindu, or some other adherent of a world religion, there must be some type of common ground for discussion. It is of little value to quote the Christian Bible to a man who rejects its authority. It is possible for adherents of various world religions to indict Christianity from a similar stance. A Muslim, for example, believes Christianity is incomplete.. Where can one begin in discussing the question of a true religion? If this question is to be taken seriously, it must demand one presupposition. The presupposition is that the classical beginning of the religion is important, and is determinative, regardless of how the faith evolves away from the founder. There are people who make the accusation that Christianity was corrupted by St. Paul and was not in the mind of Jesus. Thus they conclude that orthodox Christianity is illegitimate. They do not make the same accusations against Buddhism, or Hinduism, Taoism. They are more liberal in permitting centuries of Buddhism to be all the same in value and correctness. The religion must be judged from the standpoint of the founder’s teaching and practice, not later corruptions and degenerations. If Buddhism has any right to be considered it must reflect the message of the founder, not something corrupted as in Tibetan Buddhism. In this sense do we speak of classical Christian faith, classical Buddhist faith, and so on.

Criteria of a True Religion

If the discussion of a true religion is to be meaningful, it must have an objective starting point. In a sense it must parallel the scientific method. We cannot start with a given factor. The starting point must be one that all people can have and assume. Such a system of beginning was proposed by Blaise Pascal, the French scientific and religious genius of the seventeenth century. Pascal attempted to put forth certain propositions, based in part on observation and in part on reason, which would help one to discover the true religion if it existed. Although Pascal never finished his proposed work, his fragmented thoughts (Pensees) have become one of the classics of world literature. Pascal’s approach has a feature common to all men: each man may look, observe, and draw conclusions from where he is. It is really an inductive method.¹² Pascal maintains that for a religion to be true, it must give an adequate and satisfactory answer to the following criteria. 1. The true religion teaches the hiddenness of God: It is quite evident that if God is, he is not perceived by sensory perception. God is not an object that has been analyzed in the laboratory. If God exists, he exists in some hidden state or form; for we cannot see him. Concerning this, Pascal wrote, "God being thus hidden every religion which does not affirm that God is hidden is not true and every religion which does not give the reason of it, is not instructive." ¹³ The hiddenness of God, or to use the Latin phrase, Deus absconditus, is a basic beginning point for dialogue among religious traditions. In applying this principle, one may begin with pantheistic religious systems. A popular definition of pantheism is that "all things or beings are modes, attributes, or appearances of one single reality of Being; hence nature and God are believed to be identical." ¹⁴ Man as the observer cannot conclude from his examination of reality that nature and God are identical, To be a pantheist, one must bring something with his observation; namely, the faith that God and Nature are one. He will not get this out of nature alone. Pantheism applied to man’s existence means that man is part of the divine essence. Man is a spark of divinity. But again, this is not something we know by observation, by sight, touch, or self-knowledge. It may be the grossest perversion of self-knowledge. All that the senses will approve are two alternatives: God is hidden, or God is not! ¹⁵ Pantheisms are dangerous because man is led to have an overly optimistic view concerning his own nature. Pantheism is caught up in trying to explain evil away or as an illusion, or false thinking, otherwise it is logically blamed on God because God is everything and evil would be part of his nature. Kraemer charges that the result of pantheism as in parts of Hinduism, is "that God or the divine never really exists."¹⁶ The only thing that one really experiences is human consciousness which is regarded as a mirage at best. But paradoxically, those religions which identify man with God in some pantheistic form are those that stand in abhorrence of a true incarnation, in which God assumes human flesh.¹⁷ In a different way, this principle of Pascal is seen in the classical teachings of Buddha and Confucius as we know them. Neither of these founders was interested in discussing the existence of God. For all practical purposes, Gautama and Confucius were nontheists. In due time, not only were the founders apotheosized or elevated to godhood, but other gods were added. Gautama cannot be said to have received a "divine revelation." What happened was that he came to see a basic truth about the nature of suffering, the reason for it, and the possibility of escaping from it. It is an insight about the way to happiness as one views happiness as the escape from desire. Confucius taught nothing more than an ancient form of humanism. He declared that "absorption in the study of the supernatural is most harmful." ¹⁸ In true humanist style, Confucius "explained evil as human selfishness, delusion and incapability. When a pupil asked him about death and service of the spirits, he replied, `Till you have learnt to serve men, how can you serve the ghosts? . . . Till you know about the living, how are you to know about the dead?"¹⁹ The irony is that both Gautama and Confucius, who had little to say about whether God exists or not, were declared to be gods by their later followers. In the case of Islam, the deity is hidden but there is no explanation as to why he is hidden, which relates to the second part of Pascal’s proposition. The Qur’an does not know of the holy God who has hidden himself because of man’s sinfulness. Islam is a moralistic, rationalistic form of religion emphasizing the works of righteousness as a means of acceptability before God. Kraemer says that it is a "legalistic religion in which everything hangs upon the efforts of the believer and on whether he fulfills the requirements of the Divine Law. Thus it is, so to say, a religion permeated by a form--a somewhat inflected form--of self-deliverance, self-justification and self- sanctification with, in the end, no firm and settled basis for it."²⁰ The hiddenness of God demands that a radically new concept of God be in evidence as the explanation. The concept of God must not be a construction of human thought, for man cannot ferret out that which is hidden as the hidden relates to God. If we are to know the reason that God is hidden it cannot be found out from the human mind. The answer must come from the hidden God. This can only be possible with the idea of revelation. Since Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Taoism do not claim revelation there is no word from the hidden God. In the case of Buddhism and Hinduism there is meditation, not revelation. There is a place where the reason for God’s hiddenness is revealed.. Lev 11:45 "For I am the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that I could be your God. You must be holy for I am holy." Holiness required separation from the sins of the pagans and idolaters around them. It required personal moral purity in life and when the people of Israel continued to rebel against God, he withdrew from them and brought them to judgement for their sins. Jeremiah wrote, "Your own evil will punish you, and your turning from me will condemn you. You will learn how bitter and wrong it is to abandon me, the Lord your God." (2:19) "Your sins have kept these good things from you." (5:25) The summation of this is described in the book of Romans where God gave them up to go their own way to their own self-destruction. The concept of Deus absconditus (or the hidden God) is closely related with the reason for its hiddenness. For Pascal the explanation of God’s hiddenness is in man’s sin. Where sin is not taken seriously, identification of man with the divine comes easy. Where sin is a grave, serious act against the divine, an ethical act and an ethical deviation, then it is not possible to identify man with God. The qualitative difference between God and man must be stressed. For the most part, the religious traditions of the world fail to take seriously the concept of sin²¹. Brunner declares, "The counterpart of unhistorical religion, religion without a mediator, is the failure to recognize the radical character of the guilt of sin. It is an attempt to create a relationship with God which takes no account of the fact of Guilt."²² In the concept of the hidden God, one cannot conclude from observation that God is holy or that he is love. This is a message that has to come from God to man; it has not originated with man.

" The message that God is Love is something wholly new in the world. We perceive this if we try to apply the statement to the divinities of the various religions of the world: Wotan is Love, Zeus, Jupiter, Brahma, Ahura Mazda, Vishnu, Allah, is Love. All these combinations are wholly impossible. Even the God of Plato, who is the principle of all Good, is not Love. Plato would have met the statement "God is Love" with a bewildered shake of the head." ²³

Brunner continues to say that it is possible to find a "gracious" God in some of the religions of the world, "but the fact that God is Love, and thus that love is the very essence of the Nature of God, is never explicitly said anywhere, and still less is it revealed in divine self- surrender. The God of the Bhakti religion, which is often regarded as parallel to the Christian Faith, is `essentially-in his relation to the World-wholly uninterested.’ " ²⁴ In conclusion to this section, we must affirm the hiddenness of God. If God is thus hidden, we must know the reason for it. This means that if we are to know of God and what he is like, this knowledge will not be found in any other way than for God to speak. Because God is hidden, we must reject those approaches to religious life that equate man with God. If God is hidden, the reason for his hiddenness will be given by God and will not be discoverable by man alone. A crucial question that enters here is: Has God spoken in a clear way concerning these things? This will be answered later. 2. The true religion must explain the misery of man: Pascal wrote, "That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature. It ought to know its greatness and littleness, and the reason of both" ( Pensee 433 ) . In Pensee 493, he wrote, "The true religion teaches our duties; our weaknesses, our pride, and lust; and the remedies, humility, and mortification." Pascal’s insight into the nature of man is one that can naturally grow out of an inductive observation. He wrote of man, "What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!" (Pensee 434, p. 143). The history of man gives plenty of evidence that there is something wrong with man. Why the wars, murders, intrigues, plotting, hating, exploiting, and the greed of man? What explanation can we give for the wrongs that people do to one another? Why is there infighting in families, communities, tribes and nations? Why are past evils passed on to new generations as they they had happened to them? Someone has said that if the doctrine of original sin had not been known it would have to be invented. There is something radically wrong with mankind.What best accounts for the misery of man? Pascal’s answer is found in the meaningful little word "sin." We have said that sin as a concept is lacking in much of the religious thought of the world. Misunderstanding can arise here if we are not careful. In many religions, depending upon their orientation, sin is not understood in ethical terms. Sin is a nonethical impediment, or an erroneous way of thinking that keeps one from achieving union with the world soul. In the thought of Hindus, for example, sin would be the continuing erroneous thought about the actual existence of individuality. This sin is not ethical but a matter of wrong knowledge. In this sense, sin may be defined as maya, or illusion. A similar situation prevails in Christian Science in America. Sin is erroneous thinking. With reference to sin, as seen in certain forms of Hindu bhakti, Kraemer declares, "Sin in these religions is not the result of self-centered and misdirected human will that opposes the will of the God of holiness and righteousness, but an impediment for the realization of that fellowship of the soul with Ishvara, in which salvation consists." ²⁵ As one probes more deeply into the real nature of religious expression, one sees that sin is generally regarded as really insignificant and many religions are really means of "self-redemption, self- justification, and self-sanctification"²⁶--concepts that basically ignore sin. Following the clue of Pascal, one may conclude that there is only one adequate concept to explain the misery of man as one can observe man’s problems, and that is sin as a wilful rebellion against a holy God. The sinfulness of man has caused man to pervert his religious worship. He has turned from the Creator to the creatures and reveres a cow or other animals, while his children starve from protein deficiency. He has taken food from his starving babies to give to an idol that does not consume it. His famine is not due to his ignorance of modern technology alone; his religion, with its inadequate definition of and emphasis on sin, can explain much of his misery. There is a lot of bad religion in the world as well as good. In concluding this section, we must say that these two propositions go together. A serious definition of sin is the explanation of why God is hidden. He is hidden in his relationship to men for two reasons: first, he is holy, and his nature is against the whole fabric of sin; second, his hiddenness is for man’s protection. If the holiness of God were revealed against man in his sin, he could not survive. His grace and love toward man provides the reason for his withdrawing himself from man’s presence. 3. The true religion must teach how man can know God who is hidden, or give the remedy for his alienation and misery: Pascal declared, "The true religion, then, must teach us to worship Him only, and to love Him only. But we find ourselves unable to worship what we know not, and to love any other object but ourselves, the religion which instructs us in these duties must instruct us also of this inability, and teach us also the remedies for it" (Pensee 489). In Pensee 546, [Pascal] said, "We know God only by Jesus Christ. Without this mediator all communion with God is taken away: through Jesus Christ we know God. . . . In Him then, and through Him, we know God. Apart from Him, and without the Scripture, without original sin, without a necessary mediator promised, and come, we cannot absolutely prove God, nor teach right doctrine and right morality. . . . Jesus Christ is then the true God of man. But we know at the same time our wretchedness; for this God is none other than the Saviour of our wretchedness. So we can only know God well by knowing our iniquities:"

In Pensee 555, he wrote, "All who seek God without Jesus Christ, and who rest in nature, either find no light to satisfy them, or come to form for themselves a means of knowing God and serving Him without a mediator." The basic idea involved here is the necessity of a mediator. Men in their religious traditions often either ignore the existence of God, or make religion a way of life and human achievement to "buy" God off, or assume that one can enter into communion with God by some mystical experience that ignores God’s holiness. In all of these attempts to enter into a relationship with God, the first two propositions are ignored. God does not need man’s proud religious activities, nor will he be united in mystical experience with presumptuous, sinful men. The god who accepts such is not a holy god. However, if God is truly hidden as is true to observation and experience, then it is impossible for men to find him by searching. God must come to man but God has no basic reason for the Incarnation. Man in his wretchedness and sin cannot enter into the presence of a holy God. The necessity of a mediator is pointed up by Soren Kierkegaard in his little book Philosophical Fragments. He told the story of a king who fell in love with a humble maiden. He was a mighty king; every nation feared his wrath. But the king was anxious, like all men, when it came to getting the right girl to be his wife. The thought that entered his kingly mind was this: Would she be able to summon confidence enough never to remember what the king wished, only to forget that he was a king and that she was a humble maiden? The king was anxious lest she reflect upon this and let it rob her of happiness. If the marriage was unequal, the beauty of their love would be lost. A number of alternatives could be suggested to the king. First, he could elevate the maiden to his side and forget the inequality. But there was always the possible thought coming into the maiden’s heart that after all she was a commoner and he was a king. Such a marriage could be consummated, but love would never be maintained on a basis of equality. Second, as an alternative, should someone suggest that the king could reveal himself to her in all his majesty, pomp, and glory and she would fall down and worship him and be humbled by the fact that so great a favor was being bestowed upon her. To this the king would undoubtedly demand the execution of the person suggesting this as high treason against his beloved. The king could not enter into a relationship such as this. Such was the kingly dilemma.

(There is so many religious cultures today in which people are forced into submission. Such forced worship is an affront to the being that is worshipped.)

    The solution comes in the third alternative. The king should descend and thereby give up his throne to become a commoner for the purpose of loving the maiden as an equal.

Kierkegaard applies this story to the relation of God with man. God could have elevated man into his presence and transfigured him to fill his life with joy for eternity. But the king, knowing the human heart, would not stand for this, for it would end only in self-deception. To this Soren Kierkegaard says, "No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not suspect it." ²⁷ On the other hand, God could have brought worship from man, "causing him to forget himself over divine apparition." ²⁸Such a procedure would not have pleased man, nor would it have pleased the king, "who desired not his own glorification but the maiden’s." This is an impossible alternative because of God’s holiness.

Regarding this, Soren Kierkegaard said, "There once lived a people who had a profound understanding of the divine. This people thought that no man could see God and live--Who grasps this contradiction of sorrow: not to reveal oneself is the death of love, to reveal oneself is the death of the beloved!"²⁹ The holiness of God revealed to sinful man would have meant his destruction. It is for this reason that God is hidden. The third alternative for bringing reconciliation or union between God and man is the same as for the king. "Since we have found that the union could not be brought about by the elevation it must be attempted by a descent. . . . In order that the union may be brought about, God must therefore become the equal of such a one and so he will appear in the lives of the humblest but the humblest is one who must serve others and God will therefore appear in the form of a servant."³⁰ In Jesus we have the God-man walking the shores of Galilee, healing the sick, raising the dead, preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God, and ultimately rising from death Himself.

Both Kierkegaard and Pascal support the idea that only Christianity offers a mediator. Gautama, Confucius, Muhammad,³¹ and others made no claim to being anything more than men with religious insight. Before concluding this section, a reference should be made to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Judaism is to be regarded as a "true religion" only as far as it goes, or is true to itself. The last of the Old Testament prophets appeared in John the Baptist calling Israel to a decision. With John the Baptist, the Old Testament sees itself coming to fulfillment. The Old Testament speaks of a coming Messiah, with many references beginning in Genesis, Deuteronomy, and the many references in the prophetic books. The prophet John the Baptist declared Jesus to be the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. It is questionable whether Judaism can be regarded as a continuation of the Old Testament religion, especially since the authoritative influence of the Talmud has shaped post-biblical religious life. The Talmud embodies the way of thinking which Jesus criticized that the oral tradition had superceded the written Torah. Islam poses a particular problem with reference to Christianity and the matter of being the final successor to Judaism and Christianity. Islam claims that it stands in the line of the prophets and the biblical revelation of Judaism and Christianity. But is this so? Can we equate Allah with Yahweh of the Old Testament? The Muslims make this claim. But consider the following. First, Who is Allah? The name was known in Arabia before Mohammed and was associated with the moon-god Nannar. The moon-god was widely worshipped not only in Arabia but in Israel as reflected in Jer 8:2 where Yahweh declares his judgement on those Israelites who loved, served, consulted and worship the moon god. Mohammed spoke of "Allat, Al Uzza, and Manah, that other third goddess" which were part of Mecca’s polytheism and the Koreish (tribe) people were delighted because these were damsels who would intercede for the people. Whether Mohammed was half-asleep as some suggest, or it was a slip of the tongue, these beings were part of the worship of Mecca and associates of the Moon-god cult. While many gods were worshipped the moon-god was the chief deity. Sin was the moon-god’s name, but his title was al-ilah, meaning "the deity." In pre-Islamic times this was shortened to Allah. Part of the name Allah was used in the names of children as in the case of Mohammed’s father and uncle. When Mohammed preached to the Meccans he did not introduce a new god, but that Allah was the greatest and only god. The Meccans did not accuse Mohammed of preaching a different god than they knew. They still believed in the moon-god Allah. The moon-god was represented by the symbol of the fertile crescent. The crescent is a symbol of Islam, The crescent moon is on mosques and minarets, is found on the flags of Islamic nations and the month of Ramadan begins and ends the fast with the appearance of the crescent moon. The Jews in Medina and Mecca rejected Mohammed’s god because it was not Yahweh of the Old Testament. Mohammed learned a lot from the Jews about the Old Testament but even that information is wrong in many cases. Second, Muslims claim that the Old and New Testament have been corrupted by Jews and Christians to thwart the claim of Muslims that he was prophesied in the Bible. This is unbelievable! There are many manuscripts that pre-date Mohammed time. The Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, and others date before the birth of Mohammed. There are other versions that existed before the rise of Islam, ie., Syriac, Old Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, The Peshitta, and the Vulgate in the Latin. It is a crock that Muslims would argue that the Scriptures have been corrupted by the Jews and Christians.³² It is interesting that Mohammed regarded the Scriptures as reliable contrary to later Muslim writers. Mohammed asked the Jews to check the Old Testament to see if his name was mentioned there. The Qur’an says, about Jesus, "God shall teach him the scripture, and wisdom, and the law and the gospel..."³³ If the Qur’an and Mohammed regarded the Bible as reliable, then the Muslims have a problem. If the Qur’an is right on this point, then the Bible is right also.

If the Bible is correct, the Muslim ideology cannot be in harmony with the Bible.

Third, the character of Mohammed is unlike any prophet in the Bible. Many of his claims to revelation are self-serving. Mohammed’s claim that Muslims could have only 4 wives while he can have any woman he wanted is self-serving. Mohammed could not stand ridicule and that is why he put to death a Meccan women who wrote satirical poetry against him. The commands to kill the infidels, those who rejected him, makes Mohammed a man of war, not peace, Mohammed led his forces in about 18 battles and planned about 38 others. The history of Islam beginning with Mohammed is a history of war, conquest, greed, and tyranny. Islam does not allow freedom of religious expression. It does not understand, or acknowledge that forced worship, coercive worship is not real worship at all. Forced worship would only please the Devil, not Yahweh, or Nannar, not Yahweh We cannot conclude that the god of Islam is the same as Yahweh of the Old Testament who becomes Incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth to redeem mankind. This finality in Christ eliminates any other coming prophet such as Muhammad. The epistle of Hebrews speaks with finality about God’s last word, his highest word, coming in his Son. Islam cannot therefore be regarded as an extension, culmination, or completion of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Uniqueness of Christ Pursuing the line of Pascal’s argument, one may conclude that Christianity alone gives the best answer to the three questions: Why is God hidden? Why is man in misery? How can man know God? If we can say that Jesus Christ is the mediator, then there are some things about his person that are important. In these he was unique as a founder, as opposed to other founders ³⁴ The Incarnation is a necessity for the act of redemption. Human experience has shown, when viewed honestly, that man is incapable of redeeming himself. Anything less than God as Redeemer is to make a mockery of the idea. P. T. Forsyth once said, in stressing the place of the Incarnation, "A half-god cannot redeem what it took a whole God to make." Nowhere in the other living religions of the world is there a claim on the part of a founder that he was the Son of God in the unique sense of the word. This claim remains alone to Jesus Christ. It is sometimes argued that the Christian faith is unique in relation to the sublime sayings of Jesus. This proves nothing. It has been shown by Claude Montefiore, the Jewish scholar, that Jesus said little that was new and different from the thought of Judaism but he spoke with authority unlike the rabbis who quoted the traditions. The only thing that he found that was quite distinctive was the picture of the Divine Shepherd going out into the wilderness to seek a lost sheep. This is only a fragment of the truth of the uniqueness of Christian faith. The uniqueness of Jesus is not in what he said but in what he did. The founders of the world religions proposed ways of self-deliverance, self-sanctification, and self-realization. Jesus Christ, on the other hand, did for man something man could not do for himself. It is for this reason that there is a gospel, a good news, and it is the news of something that happened in Jerusalem at a given point in history. The event that took place was redemption of man in the person of Jesus Christ. His life, death, and resurrection are the redemptive events. He alone gave his life as an atonement for alienated mankind. No other founder of a religion gave his life for mankind, you and me. There is only one statement that has to be made concerning all the founders of the living religions: they died and were buried! The stories of their lives end there. The word concerning Christ is different. He came forth from the grave, was raised up, and ascended to the Father. Without the resurrection, one could only conclude that Jesus was a great teacher, perhaps a second Moses, but with the resurrection he is declared to be the Son of God. On this Barth says:

"The knowledge which the Apostles acquired on the basis of Christ’s Resurrection, the conclusion of which is the Ascension of Christ, is essentially this basic knowledge that the reconciliation which took place in Jesus Christ is not some casual story, but that in this work of God’s grace we have to do with the word of God’s omnipotence, that here an ultimate and supreme thing comes into action, behind which there is no other reality."³⁵

While it is evident that one cannot become a Christian on a purely reasonable basis, Christian faith alone gives adequate answers to the questions of the mind concerning the facts of observation and existence. The founder of the Christian faith possesses a uniqueness that cannot be duplicated or rivaled in the founders of other religions. We conclude with Pascal that "the knowledge of God without that of man’s misery causes pride. The knowledge of man’s misery without that of God causes despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course, because in Him we find both God and (the answers to) our misery" (Pensee 526). Pascal’s line of thought has points up the importance of the original insight of the founder of the religion. Talmudic Judaism is so legalistic that one can hardly recognize its relation to the Torah. Buddhism is fragmented into two great divisions with lots of sub-divisions and Mahayana Buddhism has little relation to the simplicity of Gautam’a insight. In the Christian tradition the concept of development in the Catholic tradition seems far removed from the early church as described in the New Testament. Where individuals and movements have deviated from the pattern as set forth in the Scriptures they stand under the criticism of the Founder, Jesus Christ. There is no justification for development away from the person of Jesus Christ. The Exclusiveness of the Gospel

Pascal’s propositions can lead to the conclusion that Christian faith alone gives the best answers to the observable experience of man. At the same time, the New Testament is written on the assumption that the final revelation of God has taken place. In contrast to Judaism and the Old Testament, the revelation of God in his Son is declared to be the greatest expression of himself to man (Heb 1:1-3). Jesus Christ is said to be a better mediator of the covenant than Moses (Heb 9:15), a better high priest than Melchizedek (Heb 7:1-28), and a better sacrifice than that offered by the Levitical priesthood (Heb 8:1-13; Heb 9:1-15). These references imply the completion or fulfillment of Judaism. In the preaching of Paul to the townspeople of Athens, he declared the Creator who has been the unknown God among heathen people. All other representations in gold, silver, and stone are due to man’s corrupt way of thinking (Acts 17:29). The preaching of Peter in Jerusalem was to the intent that "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). The New Testament viewpoint is identical in exclusiveness with that of Isaiah (45:21-22) : "There is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other." Not only is there an exclusive viewpoint expressed in the New Testament, but other religions are "forms" denying the power of godliness (2Ti 3:5) . Originators of new religions or religious concepts apart from the apostolic gospel are liken unto gangrene eating away the true flesh (2Ti 2:17 ) . The followers of such "strange new religions" are foretold in 1 Timothy 1Ti 4:1-2. Anything contrary to Christ is anathema (Col 2:8 ; Gal 1:8). It is very obvious that Christianity does make exclusive claims to being the only right way of knowing God. One may not like it or agree with it, but the claim is there. A man of Christian faith may not like it, but he is not at liberty to change it for the sake of sentimentality. We may not like the law of gravity on occasions, but there are certain facts that we cannot change by nature of the universe. With an exclusive attitude on the one hand and different religious viewpoints on the other, what is one to say to it all? Can we conclude with Schleiermacher that there is an "essence of religion" which is common to all religions and which manifests itself in different forms? Or is Brunner correct in saying, "It is impossible to be a Christian-- in the New Testament sense--and at the same time to accept the view that there is a universal `essence of religion’ of which Christianity has a predominant share. The Christian revelation and these `relative’ theories of religion are mutually exclusive." ³⁶ We must certainly agree with W. C. Smith in declaring that "from now on any serious intellectual statement of the Christian faith must include, if it is to serve its purpose among men, some sort of doctrine of other religions." ³⁷ We now turn our efforts to this consideration. W. C. Smith and the Identity of "Faith" In an effort to deal with Christian faith and the faiths of other men, or religious persons, W. C. Smith sets forth the thesis that the word "religion" means something different from what the founders of the so-called religions had in mind. In other words, a religion is a doctrinal system rather than an attitude or a way of life. He traced the rise and evolution of the term from antiquity to the present. In Christianity, for example, the key word in its initial stages was "faith," or a way of apprehending the transcendent, whereas, through the centuries the term "religion" grew up. The English term "religion" has had no equivalent in many languages until some word is borrowed to convey this idea. The distinction Smith makes can be seen from the two standpoints of the observer and the participant. "The participant is concerned with God; the observer has been concerned with `religion.’ " <sup>38</sup> Therefore, from the participant’s stand- point, there is nothing known as "religion"; there are only religious persons who are involved in some way with the transcendent by "faith."<sup>39</sup> It has been because of the emphasis on "religion" that a question of rightness has arisen. When the term religion is discarded and faith regained in viewing other men’s worship, then the rightness of one theological system against another is not an issue. W. C. Smith predicts that "a time will come, perhaps fairly soon, when men will see rather that if the Christian revelation is valid, then it follows from this very fact that other men’s faith is genuine, is the form through which God encounters those other men, and saves them."<sup>40</sup> Why does Smith argue this way? Some answers are available in the two works referred to. First, there is the matter of peace. It is imperative that we construct a world of order, or mankind will perish.<sup>41</sup> The world in which we live must be a shared world; it is a world of different faiths, different values, and different cultures. We must get along with one another. Smith argues that if there must be competition between religious traditions, let them compete in the area of reconciliation, of bringing men together. Second, Smith is motivated by a problem that has sometimes been ignored in theology but which is exceedingly thorny to the Christian who is sensitive to justice and yet maintains a view that the Christian faith only is true. What do you do about people who have never heard the name of Christ? <sup>42</sup> This problem is acute not only for the present time, when millions are ignorant of Jesus Christ, but it is also a problem for the vast civilizations before the time of Christ. Are these people condemned to hell for their ignorance? Smith seems motivated to find some alternative to condemning vast numbers to judgment. In attempting to set forth an alternative, Smith argues that truth is the truth of God regardless of where one finds it. In fact he says, "Truth is God."<sup>43</sup> Thus using the Muslims as an example he says, "The first step that a Christian or a Jew must take if he is to understand Muslims is to recognize that when the Muslim speaks of `God’ or `Judgment’ or `Creation’ or the like, he is talking about the same things as those to which a Christian also refers. . . . Yet the second step is to discover that he is talking and thinking about them in a different way."⁴⁴ As a background for accepting the above statement, Smith maintains that Christians do not know everything about God. They know him in a unique way, but the Buddhists, Muslims, and others know him also in a unique, though not a comprehensive, way. The Christian speaks of the transitoriness of this world, and the Hindu does the same. Both express the same truth from a different viewpoint. Smith does not accept the possibility of eclecticism, or the amalgamation of religions. This would be unfair to each tradition as well as muddle the truth of each, or ignore the truths not incorporated into the eclecticism. Instead, he declares: "A truly Christian attitude to outsiders must involve both the validity of Christian orthodoxy and an acceptance of men of other orthodoxies as one’s brothers-in one’s own eyes, and in the eyes of God. In this, the image says to me, as in all ultimate matters, truth lies not in an either/or, but in a both/and."⁴⁵ In another context Smith cautiously says,

"I rather feel that the final doctrine on this matter may perhaps run along the lines of affirming that a Buddhist is saved, or a Hindu or a Muslim, or whosoever, is saved, and is saved only, because God is the kind of God whom Jesus Christ has revealed Him to be. . . . But because God is what He is, because He is what Christ has shown him to be, therefore, other men do live in His presence. Also, therefore we (as Christians) know this to be so."⁴⁶

By way of evaluation, the position of Smith rests upon certain assumptions that others may find it difficult to accept. The first assumption is the developmental nature of religious traditions. Smith prefers the term "cumulative tradition" as the objective material that is studied. Cumulative tradition means "the entire mass of overt objective data that constitutes the historical deposit, as it were, of the past religious life of the community in question: temples, scriptures, theological systems, dance patterns, legal and other social institutions, conventions, moral codes, myths, and so forth; anything that can be and is transmitted from one person, one generation, to another, and that a historian can observe." ⁴⁷ Thus the responses of the followers of the founders of religious traditions is as important as the founders themselves.⁴⁸ Smith thus rejects what can be called the "essence" of religion that one gets to when accretions are peeled off. There is no ideal Buddhism, Christianity, or Hinduism.

It is apparent that one must agree with Smith that religion has developed. But can we say that religion should develop? The idea of development has been so influential in other disciplines that we assume it is all good. Development can be regressive. Smith’s own thesis testifies to that; namely, an evolution from "faith" to "religion." While he rejects this development as a good thing, we raise the question: why not go further and reject the developmental principle altogether? In other words, why not return to the founders and stress the things that were taught by them? Smith does not do this, however. The probability of world religions’ doing this is almost nil, but if truth is at stake, it must be considered.

This leads us to the second assumption which is closely related to the first. Smith debunks what has been called the "cult of the origins," or the theory that the "earliest form of religion or of a particular religion is somehow the true form, with all subsequent development an aberration."⁴⁹ It would seem that in this one there is a serious problem in Smith’s thesis. On the one hand, he wants to recover "faith" as the essence of religion, and he defines it as "my present awareness of eternity."⁵⁰ In this the term "faith" may be applied to any religious person. On the other hand, development is of paramount importance in the study of religious persons and we must accept them for what they are today. For Smith there cannot be an ideal in faith or in the essence of what a religion should be.⁵¹ This raises the serious question of what it is to have faith. How may we know there is Christian faith unless we return to the testimony documents in the New Testament? Can we ever know what Christian faith should be without the original meaning? Was this not the principle in operation in the Reformation of Luther and Calvin? One might push the argument further and say with Emil Brunner, who rejected the principle of development and emphasized the "origins" of Christianity, that the real trouble in Christianity in general arose out of the developmental perversions of the church-idea and faith.⁵² How does one recover the meaning of the church and faith? By evolving further? Or by returning to the founder’s meaning? If there is to be any constancy in Christian faith it must come by means of faith in Christ. If we throw out the importance of the beginning point as the standard and example, there is nothing to keep faith from developing into "unfaith." It would seem that the idea of "origins" as rejected by Smith is really the only tenable one. What gives one the right to refer to himself as Christian if one has evolved so far in his thinking to be anti-Christian? The founder of the religion is the one who professes the deepest understanding of a religious insight. If this has been embodied in writing--in which it is in most cases--it would be better to come to grips with these insights in terms of the original expressions than to follow a secondhand report, regardless of how good it is, much less one that has been contaminated with trappings from who knows where for hundreds of years. Furthermore, can we trust the expressions of succeeding generations to keep the insight from contamination? The vast erudition shown by Smith demonstrates that we cannot. Faith did become corrupted. There is no way of re-capturing the fresh insights of a religious tradition without going back to the founders. At this point, Smith raises a serious point. Hinduism knows no recorded founder as is true of other religions. There is also a problem of history in distinguishing between legend and fact in the material relating the biographical facts of Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Muhammad, and others. This may seem precarious, but would it not be better to attempt a recovery of the "true" insight rather than to be content with a garbled, or possibly legendized, account? If we are to accept the developmental principle in religion, what are we to say about the multiplication of deities as in the religious tradition of China, where an outright fabrication of a deity takes place?⁵³

What of those who worshiped faithfully such an unreal deity? What about the gods of the past who required sacrifice of babies? Are we to assume that was legitimate "faith?" Does it make little difference who is worshiped as long as one worships? Are we to give less attention to deciding which gods we worship than we give to buying a car or trading for some article for hunting? In conclusion, regarding Smith’s positions, he decries the conceit expressed in claiming that one true religion only exists. The Christian, however, is not the only one guilty of this. The missionary zeal of Islam and Buddhism embody it. Most religions are exclusive in nature. It seems strange that it is people from Christian cultures that are pleading for tolerance, but one does not hear that from Muslims or militant Buddhists or Hindus. However, if one knows the truth-- regardless of what it is--there is no basis for arrogance. It is alien to Christian faith to be arrogant. To speak the truth in love is the only meaningful alternative. Moreover, there is an existential involvement in the issue in question: if all men worship with the same quality of faith which Smith sketches, then certainly the missionary movement as traditionally conceived is dead. On the other hand, if there is truth in the "one- religion-only" concept, it becomes imperative that Christians, or whoever possesses the true way, declare it widely and openly.

Chapter II, Part I

¹ Hendrik Kraemer, Why Christianity of All Religions? (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962).The title of the chapter is adopted from Kraemer as well as part of the discussion that follows.

²Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1963), p. 200.

³Why Christianity of All Religions?, p. 6.

⁴ John Hick, Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion, New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1993 ⁵Kraemer, op.cit., p.13

⁶Arnold Toynbee, Christianity Among the Religions of the World (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), pp.99-100 ⁷Ibid., pp.95-96

⁸Ibid., p.112 ⁹Why Christianity of All Religions, p. 46 ¹⁰Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, p. 14 ¹¹Ibid., p.106-7 ¹²A point made by Ravi Zacharias

¹³ Should it be argued that Pascal’s approach is prejudicial because he belonged to the Christian tradition, then it must be remembered that these principles are not a product of the Christian faith. Whether these principles are true or false depends not on whether one is a Christian or not. They deal with facts that can be discussed in the context of any religion. These are questions that are common to all men, and can be verified from the experience of all men.

¹⁴ Pascal, Pensees, p. 191.

¹⁵Van Harvey Handbook of Theological Terms (New York: The Macmillan Colossians, 1964), p, 173.

¹⁶ln asserting such a radical alternative, reference must be made to the first chapter and the "proofs" for the existence of God. The knowledge that one may gain in the arguments is a knowledge for the most part based on "effects" or works of God. It is not the kind of knowledge that will give direction to life nor even intimate that God may love or redeem man.

¹⁷The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, p. 162.

¹⁸The avatar of Hinduism is quite different from the incarnation of Christianity, for the incarnation means that God assumed true human flesh. The avatar is a "mythological personification of a god conceived for a practical purpose, while the real divine is the attributeless and actionless pure essence" (Ibid., pp. 370-71 ).

¹⁹ Lionel Giles, The Sayings of Confucius (London: John Murray, 1917), p. 94.

²⁰ Edward J. Jurji, The Christian Interpretation of Religion (New York: The Macmillan Colossians, 1952), p. 183.

²¹Why Christianity of All Religions? p. 105.

²²Note Jurji’s comment on Islam, which ignores the idea of a redeemer "largely because Islam knew nothing of original sin and its founders and interpreters were oblivious to the problem of evil and sidestepped the need of the soul for forgiveness, a personal Saviour, and prayer as an eventful intercourse with the Eternal" (op. cit., p. 256).

²³Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of the Church, Faith and the Consummation, trans. David Cairns and T. H. L. Parker (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), p. 7.

⁸⁷ Ibid., p. 200.

²⁴The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, p. 172.

²⁵The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, p. 172.

²⁶Kraemer, Why Christianity of All Religions? p. 94.

²⁷Philosophical Fragments, p. 2]

²⁸Ibid., p. 22.

²⁹Ibid., p. 23.

³⁰Ibid., p. 24.

³¹ "Islam’s doctrine of God knows nothing of a Mediator, and Koranic Christology though paying reverence to Jesus as man and messenger of God and as the Word and Spirit of Allah, forswears nevertheless the Incarnation and hence renders void the redemptive purpose of God. Indeed, this is the parting of the road between Islam and Christianity" (Jurji, op. cit., p. 247).

³²Cf. Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq, Sharing your Faith with a Muslim, Minneapolis:Bethany Fellowship, 1980, pp.50-66.

³³The Koran, trans. George Sale, London: Frederick Warne and Co, p. 49

³⁴Uniqueness is not an argument for truthfulness, necessarily. All religions an unique. However, the founders of other religions have more in common with one another than with Jesus.

³⁵Op. cit., p. 126.

³⁶Revelation and Reason, p. 220.

³⁷The Faith of Other Men (New York: Mentor Books, 1965), p. 121.

³⁸Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Mentor Books, 1963), p. 119.

³⁹The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Mentor Books, 1964), p. 172. "There is no generic Christian faith; no `Buddhist faith,’ no `Hindu faith,’ no `Jewish faith.’ There is only my faith, and yours, and that of my Shinto friend, of my particular Jewish neighbor. We are all persons, clustered with mundane labels, but so far as transcendence is concerned, encountering it each directly, personally, if at all. In the eyes of God each of us is a person, not a type."

⁴⁰The Faith of Other Men, p. 85.

⁴¹lbid., p. 92.

⁴²See Addenda at the end of this chapter for a discussion of this question.

⁴³The Faith of Other Men, p. 81

⁴⁴Ibid., p.79

⁴⁵Ibid., p. 74 ⁴⁶Ibid., p. 126-127.

⁴⁷The Meaning and End of Religion, p. 141.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. I 13.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 134 ⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 173.

⁵¹Ibid., p. 172.

⁵²Cf. The Misunderstanding of the Church (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953).

⁵³Emperor Chen Tsung in A.D. 1005 was defeated by the Tartars. He lost not only "face" but territory to them. His adviser Wang Ch’in-jo advised the emperor to fabricate a revelation from heaven. The result: a deity was proclaimed, named Yu Huang who was elevated to supremacy, and widespread response on the part of the people followed. (Cf. Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 364-65. )