Is Jesus the Only Way?

The objection comes in four forms, and they are different arguments. The first is the charge of arrogance: who are you to say that billions of sincere people in other faiths are wrong about the most important thing there is? The second is the accident of birth. John Stuart Mill made the point in On Liberty (1859), observing that the same causes which make a man a Churchman in London would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Peking. Most people hold the religion of their parents and their region. If that is so, the confidence of any one group that it alone has the truth looks less like insight and more like geography. The philosopher John Hick, who had been an evangelical student and became the best-known pluralist of the twentieth century, said that his own change of mind began from this observation and from friendships with devout Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in Birmingham.

The third form is moral, and it overlaps with lesson 2. If salvation comes only through Christ, what of the great majority of human beings who have lived and died without ever hearing of him: the peoples before Abraham, the millions in Asia and Africa before any missionary came, the ancestors whose names are still remembered in your family? A God who made their salvation depend on a message he never sent them seems unjust. The fourth form is political: exclusive religious claims, it is said, breed intolerance and violence, and a pluralist society can survive only if each faith gives up the claim to be uniquely true.

Where you live, the objection may come from a different direction again. In much of South Asia, a Hindu friend may say that all religions are paths up the same mountain, a view the reformer Swami Vivekananda put powerfully to the World's Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. A Muslim friend will not usually raise this objection, since Islam makes an exclusive claim of its own; the Qur'an at sura 3, verse 85, says that a religion other than Islam will not be accepted from one who seeks it. He is more likely to object that Christians have made a prophet into God. In many African communities, Christianity sits beside traditional religion in the same family and the same village, and the question is whether the old ways can simply be added to the new. Know which form of the question you are being asked.

One point needs saying before any answer. The claim being objected to is not, in the first instance, a claim the church invented about Jesus. It is a claim the Gospels attribute to Jesus about himself, made in answer to his own disciples, and repeated by apostles who had nothing to gain by it. 'Salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved' (Acts 4:12) was spoken by a prisoner to the court that had condemned his master, not by an empire to its subjects. That does not make it true. It does change the picture of who is being arrogant toward whom.

Hick's pluralism deserves to be stated in the form he gave it. In God and the Universe of Faiths (1973) he called for a Copernican revolution in theology: as astronomy moved from putting the earth at the centre to putting the sun there, so theology must move from putting Christianity at the centre to putting God there, with all the religions circling. In An Interpretation of Religion (1989) he developed this with care. There is one ultimate Reality, which he called the Real, beyond all human concepts. Each great tradition is a culturally shaped response to it: the personal God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the impersonal Brahman of some Hindu schools, the Buddhist experience of emptiness. The test of a tradition is not whether its doctrines are literally true but whether it transforms people from self-centredness to Reality-centredness, and Hick argued that, as far as anyone can tell, the great traditions do this about equally well. On this view the incarnation is best understood as a metaphor, which is the position Hick defended in the volume he edited, The Myth of God Incarnate (1977).

Its strengths are the observations it starts from. The moral and spiritual fruit of devout people in other faiths is real and visible, and a Christian who denies it is not telling the truth. The correlation between religion and birthplace is real. And pluralism offers a generous picture in which no one is simply wrong. It is attractive to people who have suffered from religious conflict, and the attraction is not shallow.

Hick did not think he was claiming a view from above. He presented the Real as a hypothesis, offered from within human religious life as the best explanation of the data: that the traditions are all reports of genuine encounter, and that their fruits are comparable. Its critics make three main replies. The first is the familiar story of the blind men and the elephant, often used to illustrate pluralism: one man feels the trunk and says it is a snake, another the leg and says it is a tree, and each has part of the truth. Lesslie Newbigin, a British missionary who served in India for most of his working life, pointed out in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989) that the story is told from the point of view of someone who can see the whole elephant. The pluralist is claiming exactly the privileged view he denies to everyone else. The second reply is related. Alvin Plantinga, in 'A Defense of Religious Exclusivism' (1995), argued that the pluralist believes things that the great majority of religious people reject, for example that no religion's doctrines are literally true, so that if believing what others reject is arrogant, the pluralist is arrogant too. Every position on this question, including pluralism, excludes some others.

The third reply comes from the other religions themselves, and it is the one a student should take most seriously. Pluralism tells the Muslim that Allah is one culturally shaped image of an unknowable Real, the Buddhist that nirvana is another, and the Christian that the resurrection is a myth. Very few informed adherents of any of these faiths would accept that description of what they believe. Gavin D'Costa, in The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (2000), argued that pluralism is not neutral but is itself a particular view, a kind of liberal modern exclusivism, that overrules what each tradition says about itself. Respect for other faiths, critics argue, means taking their claims as they make them, including the claims on which they disagree with Christians.

It should be said plainly where pluralism stands in relation to historic Christian teaching. It requires the denial that Jesus Christ is uniquely God incarnate and the one mediator, which the ecumenical creeds and the confessions of every major tradition affirm. Hick saw this clearly and said so. The Catholic declaration Dominus Iesus (2000) rejected the view that Christ is one saviour among others, and Protestant and Orthodox teaching agree on the point. Pluralism is therefore not one of the live disagreements among Christians in this lesson. It is a serious position held by serious people, and it is an alternative to the Christian claim rather than an interpretation of it. The live disagreements come next.

Two questions are easily run together, and separating them clears up much confusion. The first is whether Christ is the only Saviour: whether anyone is saved by anyone or anything other than the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The second is whether a person must know about Christ and consciously trust him in this life in order to be saved by him. Every view in sections 4 and 5 answers the first question yes. They differ over the second. A student who hears 'Jesus is the only way' should ask which of the two is being claimed.

The ground of the first claim is not Christian preference but the identity of Jesus. If Jesus is God the Son who became man, died for sins and rose bodily from the dead, as module 3 argued, then he is not one religious teacher among many whose teaching might be compared with theirs. He is the one in whom God has acted to save. Paul tells the Athenians that God 'has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead' (Acts 17:31). The exclusive claim stands or falls with the resurrection. That is why apologetics for the uniqueness of Christ is mostly apologetics for who he is, and why this lesson comes after the lessons on the resurrection.

The claim is also not a claim that Christians are better people, or that nothing true or good exists outside the church. Scripture itself says that God 'has not left Himself without testimony to His goodness' (Acts 14:17) to the nations, that Christ is 'The true Light, who gives light to everyone' (John 1:9), and that the Athenians were worshipping as unknown a God Paul could now proclaim to them (Acts 17:23). Justin Martyr in the second century held that Socrates and others who lived by reason had a share in the divine Word. Christians may and should recognise truth, goodness and real seeking in people of other faiths. What they cannot do is regard those faiths as other ways to the same salvation, since the salvation they proclaim is a person.

Finally, the claim is not, in itself, a threat to peace. Tolerance in the older sense means bearing with people with whom you disagree; it presupposes disagreement and cannot require that no one believe anything exclusive, which no one could meet, the pluralist included. The record of Christians toward other faiths includes shameful things, and the apologist should admit them without excuse. But the New Testament combines the exclusive claim with commands that forbid coercion and contempt: give a defence 'with gentleness and respect' (1 Peter 3:15), 'If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone' (Romans 12:18), love your enemies. When Christians have used force to spread the faith, they have disobeyed their Lord, not followed the logic of John 14:6.

Exclusivism, sometimes called particularism or restrictivism, holds that salvation is through Christ alone and is received through conscious faith in him in this life, so that those who never hear the gospel are not saved. Its texts are direct. John 14:6, the anchor. Acts 4:12. 'Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned' (John 3:18). 'For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus' (1 Timothy 2:5). And above all Romans 10, which follows 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved' (Romans 10:13) with a chain of questions: 'How then can they call on the One in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?' (Romans 10:14). Its account of justice rests on Romans 1:18-21: God's eternal power and divine nature 'have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse' (Romans 1:20). On this view no one is condemned for not hearing a message that never reached him, but for refusing the light he had, and Romans 3 says that no one has in fact sought God (3:11). Ronald Nash, in Is Jesus the Only Savior? (1994), and D. A. Carson, in The Gagging of God (1996), defend it, and it lies behind much of the modern missionary movement. Its defenders hold that it alone takes Romans 10 seriously and that it explains the urgency of the apostles.

Its critics name two difficulties. Most exclusivists make an exception for infants who die and for those with profound mental disability, on grounds of God's mercy, which concedes that conscious faith is not an absolute condition and invites the question why the mercy stops there. Exclusivists reply that such people are incapable of the means rather than merely deprived of them, which they take to be a principled difference. Critics also argue that Romans 10 describes the ordinary way God saves, through preaching, without stating that he never acts otherwise, and that the saints of the Old Testament were saved without knowing the name of Jesus. Exclusivists answer that those saints trusted the promise God had actually spoken to them, so that they too were responding to special revelation and not to creation and conscience alone, and that Romans 10 is written precisely to show why preachers must be sent.

Inclusivism holds that Christ is the only Saviour, and that his saving work may reach some who have never heard of him, when they respond in faith to the light God has given them through creation and conscience. Its texts are equally direct. Peter, before ever meeting Cornelius, says that God 'welcomes those from every nation who fear Him and do what is right' (Acts 10:35). Paul says that God will give eternal life 'To those who by perseverance in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality' (Romans 2:7), and speaks of Gentiles who show 'that the work of the law is written on their hearts' (Romans 2:15). 'And without faith it is impossible to please God. For anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him' (Hebrews 11:6), which states the minimum content of faith in terms not specifically about Jesus. 'God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times' (Acts 17:30). Inclusivists also point to Melchizedek, Jethro, Job and Naaman, who stood outside Israel and are commended in scripture, and to the Old Testament saints, who were saved by Christ without knowing his name. Protestant defenders include Clark Pinnock in A Wideness in God's Mercy (1992) and John Sanders in No Other Name (1992). In Catholic teaching, the Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (1964), in paragraph 16, says that those who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel but sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, try to do his will as their conscience shows it, may attain salvation; the same paragraph insists on the missions. C. S. Lewis wrote that we know no one can be saved except through Christ, but do not know that only those who know him can be saved through him, and dramatised the idea in the figure of Emeth in The Last Battle (1956).

Its critics name two difficulties as well. Romans 2 is read by many as part of an argument whose conclusion is Romans 3:10, 'There is no one righteous, not even one', so that 2:7 states God's standard rather than describing anyone who meets it; C. E. B. Cranfield and N. T. Wright, among others, read the Gentiles of 2:14-15 as Gentile Christians. Cornelius, they add, was already a God-fearing worshipper of Israel's God, and even so he was told to send for Peter, who would bring 'a message by which you and all your household will be saved' (Acts 11:14). And critics argue that inclusivism has difficulty saying what the minimum saving response is without either emptying faith of content or quietly bringing the content back. Inclusivists reply that Acts 11:14 concerns the full knowledge of salvation and does not deny that God already accepted Cornelius, and that the Old Testament saints show that saving faith has had different content at different times. Both positions are held by Christians who confess the creeds without reservation, and the disagreement between them is about the reach of Christ's work, not its uniqueness.

Exclusivism and inclusivism are the two main answers, but they are not the only ones, and a student should know the others. The collection What About Those Who Have Never Heard? (1995), edited by John Sanders, sets three views in debate: Ronald Nash for exclusivism, Sanders for inclusivism, and Gabriel Fackre for what he called divine perseverance, the view that God will give every person an opportunity to hear the gospel, after death if not before. Its texts are 1 Peter 3:19, where Christ 'went and preached to the spirits in prison', and 1 Peter 4:6, 'the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead'. Most traditions have not adopted it. The interpretation of 1 Peter 3:19 in particular is disputed, since many scholars read the spirits as the disobedient angels of Noah's day, and Hebrews 9:27 is often cited against any opportunity after death.

A fourth answer is the middle knowledge view of William Lane Craig, set out in an article in Faith and Philosophy in 1989. Craig argued that God knows not only what will happen but what every person would freely do in any circumstance, and that he may have arranged the world so that those who never hear the gospel are those who would not have believed it if they had. On this view no one is lost merely through an accident of birth. Critics reply that it is speculative, that it rests on a disputed account of God's knowledge, and that it seems to imply that whole peoples were born where they were because of what they would have refused, which troubles many readers. Its defenders answer that it is offered as a possible account, like Plantinga's defence in lesson 1, to show that exclusivism is not unjust, not as a claim about how God actually ordered history.

A fifth answer is reverent agnosticism. Lesslie Newbigin, who had spent his life preaching the gospel in India, declined to say how God would deal with those who had never heard, and insisted that the question who will be saved belongs to God and not to us, while the command to preach belongs to us and not to God. Many pastors adopt a form of this. Its strength is that it says no more than scripture plainly says. Its critics, from both the exclusivist and inclusivist side, reply that scripture says more than it admits, and that leaving the question open can weaken the urgency that the exclusivist rightly stresses, or the hope that the inclusivist rightly offers.

For students whose families remember ancestors who died before the gospel came, the question is personal. African theologians such as Kwame Bediako of Ghana argued that African Christians must think about their pre-Christian past as part of their own story under God, not treat it as a blank or simply as darkness, and the question of the ancestors runs through module 5. Whatever view you hold, three things are common ground. The judge is Christ, who knows exactly what each person was given and what they did with it. 'Will not the Judge of all the earth do what is right?' (Genesis 18:25). And none of the views gives the church permission to stop preaching: Romans 10 makes the sending of preachers a link in the chain by which people call on the Lord, and Lumen Gentium 16 closes by insisting on the missions. The Systematic Theology track treats this question as a matter of doctrine in its lesson Resurrection and Judgment, and the Missions track's lesson The Unreached asks what it means for the church's sending now.

In conversation, the claim is better shown than asserted. Begin where Paul began at Athens, with what is genuinely good and true in your friend's seeking, and say so honestly. Then explain why Christians believe what they do: not because they have looked down on every other faith from above, which no one can do, but because of who they believe Jesus is and what they believe happened on the third day. Invite your friend to look at the evidence for himself. Be ready to say what you do not know about those who have never heard, and to say which view you hold and why. And remember that the person in front of you has heard, and that the question for him is not abstract.

With Muslim friends, take particular care, and the module after this one returns to it at length. Learn what your friend actually believes rather than what you have heard about Islam, and expect him to know his faith better than you do. Where leaving Islam, or any faith, could put a person in danger from family or state, never press for a public decision, never encourage anyone to put themselves at risk, and never put a convert's safety second to your own zeal. The Missions track's lesson The Persecuted Church deals with this directly. The same care applies in families where a new believer's conversion may cost them their home.

This week, add the fourth sheet to The hardest objections. On the first line, write the objection in the form you find strongest of the four in section 1. On the second, write how it is asked where you live: by a Hindu friend, a Muslim neighbour, a secular colleague, or a believer worried about an ancestor. On the third, write in two sentences each what exclusivism and inclusivism hold and the main text for each, and then write which you hold and why. On the fourth, write what your answer does not show, including what you cannot say about any particular person.

On the fifth line, write John 14:6 and Acts 4:12 in full. On the sixth, write how you will know when the conversation has become a contest, and what you will do then. Then go back to the person you described in the inquiry. Write three questions you could ask them about their own faith, questions that show genuine interest and do not trap them, and, if it would be welcome, ask one of them this week. Write down what you learned.