At a meeting with Sen. Barack Obama recently, the Rev. Franklin Graham asked the presidential hopeful a burning question: Did he think Jesus was the way, or merely a way?
For Graham, — president of the Billy Graham Evangelic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, both based in North Carolina — the answer was critical. Through the ages, Christian evangelicals have affirmed that eternal life is available only through belief in Jesus. This is why they send missionaries around the globe and translate the New Testament into every known language.
For many evangelicals, the exclusivity of Jesus is the linchpin of their faith.
“Anyone who claims to be an evangelical and who says it’s possible to go to heaven other than through faith in Jesus Christ is not an evangelical,” said Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest.
But according to accounts of those who were there, Obama’s response to Graham may be more in line with where evangelicals are today.
“Jesus is the only way for me,” Obama said. “I’m not in a position to judge other people.”
[blockquote] This evangelicalism doesn’t want to appear intolerant of others and seeks accommodation with contemporary society. It may best be represented among emerging churches that hold theological discussions in bars, prefer to minister in urban areas and display a genuine concern for the environment and the poor.
These evangelicals haven’t abandoned the core tenets of their faith. They still believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus and in the literal truth of the Bible.[/blockquote]
But they have. These two paragraphs contradict each other. Christianity and Judiasm are exclusive religions.
Church and State should not intersect directly. I have little problem with the Senator’s answer in that respect. There is no theology test for secular public officials and there should not be.
But Church and State do intersect via morals and moral behavior. In this respect the Senator in his views on abortion and Sodomy are found wanting.
Scott+
Actually there is a lot of things wrong with the whole article and these paragraphs. Reducing evangelicals simply to those who do good works in the first, and the resurrection of Jesus and “the literal truth of the Bible” (what ever they mean by that) in the second.
[blockquote]A recent survey of 35,000 Americans showed that 70 percent of Americans and 57 percent of Christian evangelicals believe there are many roads to eternal life.[/blockquote]
If one accepts the figures cited in the above, unnamed survey, then 57 percent of Christian Evangelicals are 100 percent wrong! Jesus Christ said of Himself that “I am the way, not a way, the truth, not a truth, and the life, not a life; no man cometh to the Father but by me.” Jn.14.6
As an Anglican and an Evangelical, I take offense at such unbiblical misrepresentations. If this is the kind of hogwash which people are being fed with in the “Emerging Churches” then you can keep it! Incidently in the coverage of Lambeth ’08 I heard/read nothing about the presentation which was supposed to have been made there by one of the Emmergent Church gurus from the U.S., did anyone else hear or read anything regarding this?
The big issue here is how one defines Evangelical. I like the definition going back to the Reformation, that an Evangelical is one for whom Scripture is prime, one who subscribes to the “solas.” Thus, a true Evangelical cannot accept that there is any other way than Christ.
#1 Br. Michael
Be very careful here,Christianity and Judaism are two seperate religions but…
“Today it is commonly said that Christianity needs to reappropriate its Jewish dimensions, including the Jewishness of Jesus, and that is undoubtedly part of the truth. But this should not be understood as a matter of taking some parts from the Jewish house next door in order to rehabilitate our Christian house. We live in the same house, of which Christians say with St. Paul that the Jewish Christ is the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20). To change the metaphor somewhat, we live in the house of the one people of God only as we live with the Jews of whom Jesus was-and eternally is-one. The second Person of the Holy Trinity, true God and true man, is Jewish flesh. As is the eucharistic body we receive, as is the Body of Christ into which we are incorporated by Baptism. It is said that when John XXIII, then papal nuncio in Paris, first saw the pictures of the Jewish corpses at Auschwitz, he exclaimed, “There is the Body of Christ!â€
All such insights are but variations on the words of Paul that must, for Christians, be ever at the center of our reflection on the mystery of living Judaism: “But if some of the branches were broken off and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. . . . So do not be proud, but stand in awe†(Romans 12:17ff). “Salvation is from the Jews.†This people is not, as the aforementioned Bible commentator suggests, a “point of departure†but remains until the end of time our point of arrival. By the appointment of the God whom we worship, we travel together, joined in awe of one another, sometimes in fear of one another, always in argument with one another, until that final point of arrival when we shall know even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12).”
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2260
The article is silly in a number of ways, many of which have been documented above. Almost no article in the secular ever has an understanding of Christianity or church history.
It’s also silly, however, in its understanding of electoral politics. It acts as though Obama’s answer to this question has any bearing on what he actually believes. Both candidates will for the next four months be reaching toward the center. They wish to be perceived as moderate inclusive “big tent” people. This happens in EVERY election. No candidate is going to make a response that could be spun by the other candidate as “I think all Jews and Muslims and agnostics and so forth — e.g. a large swath of Americans — are going to burn in hell for all eternity.” So regardless of what Obama believes, we could have predicted he’d answer exactly as he did before he responded at all.
Just thought I’d provide a link to the actual report.
http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2religious-landscape-study-key-findings.pdf
Archangelica, What I was saying is that YHWH admits of no rivals. He is God and God alone. As Christians we claim that Jesus is the only way to the Father. Jews reject this claim, but they believe as we do that not only are we to worship YHWH as our exclusive God and no other, but YHWAH is the only God. All other god are lumps of inanimate matter (stone, wood, metal etc.) or figments of human imagination.
It is this “scandel of particularity” that the secular and relativistic world rejects. They reject the first two commandments. I agree with your post.
[blockquote]57 percent of Christian evangelicals believe there are many roads to eternal life.[/blockquote]
Then they are not evangelicals; a conviction that Jesus is the only way to the Father is an essential part of being an evangelical.
“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). You don’t suppose that He meant it, do you?
#10 hakkatan avoids the problem: most evangelicals recognize that if one really believed Jesus was the only way to heaven, then most other people are going to hell, eternal damnation. It doesn’t make sense if God is merciful, loving and forgiving.
Jesus is simply stating the truth (#11): a life in God is hard. This is not a moral statement, nor is it the way things should be. Its the truth, without any kind of judgment. Ask anyone who has gone through life suffering and believing.
#5 is right but the content of “Christ” is what theologians argue. Some evangelicals have argued that there are elements of Christianity in other faiths – and in so far as they affirm Christ within their own system, they are true. Ogden does address this in his book “is there one true religion or are there many?” He believes in one true religion, but some Christians are barely Christians, and other people of different faiths seem to have a better understanding of Christ than Christians do. The word “Christian” is formally correct. It is the content of what “Christ” is that is problematic.
[blockquote]#10 hakkatan avoids the problem: most evangelicals recognize that if one really believed Jesus was the only way to heaven, then most other people are going to hell, eternal damnation. It doesn’t make sense if God is merciful, loving and forgiving. [/blockquote]
Perhaps you can take your objection to Ol’ Whatizname who said no one gets to the Father but by Him. Or have you dispensed with that narrow-minded, small-box-God guy already?
Whoever gets to heaven, by what ever providential route he takes, Jesus is the door through which he must past. Absent of that there is no Christianity, let alone evangelicalism.
It is the content of what “Christ†is that is problematic.
Only if “Christ” is abstracted away from Jesus, as presented in the Gospels and understood through the authoritative interpretation of early catholic Tradition (which interpretation Evangelical Protestants accept).
In your first statement, John Wilkins, you draw a false dichotomy: that either Jesus is the only way to heaven, and therefore most other people are going to hell; or Jesus is not the only way to heaven. What of the position of the Christian universalist, that faith in the Lord Jesus is the only way to enter the kingdom of heaven, but that everyone will be saved through him? Or of those who hold to faith in the Lord Jesus as the only way of salvation, but who recognize that there will be those who sins will be covered by the blood of the Savior, through the Father’s “divine forebearance” in passing over “the sins previously committed”; that is, that those who truly and earnestly repent of their sins, and recognize that their salvation lies entirely outside themselves – not even in their own religious practices – and thereby in some way mysterious to us lay hold of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness the Father offers through him (the late bishop and missiologist Lesslie Newbigin inclined toward this view).
To assert that there are other ways to enter the Father’s kingdom, or more precisely that one is saved by his own religion, is to deny both the ground confession of the Christian (Jesus is Lord!) and the essential character of the Church, reducing Christian faith to mere religion. The early Christians did not understand themselves to be followers of yet another Near Eastern savior cult, another religion that bubbled out of the ancient Mediterranean cauldron of piety, whose purpose was to save individuals qua individuals from whatever it was that religions save people from. They rightly understood Christianity to be a way of life, and the Church to be a people, called to give public testimony to the fact that in Jesus Christ – and only in him – God had conquered sin and death, that reconciliation to God was thereby offered to all humanity who believed on the Lord Jesus, and that the kingdom of God had been inaugurated by his death and resurrection.
To believe otherwise is to reduce Christianity to precisely what it is not: just another religion, just another offering in the smorgasbord of humanity’s attempts to commend themselves to the gods.
#14 Todd Granger:
Once, back on the old T19 site, I posed a similar question in one of the threads and Kendall promoted it to a post; several people replied to it.
I didn’t do a statistical pass, but the impression I got was that a significant majority took some variation of the “anonymous Christian” position you describe — that is, that people of other faiths could be saved, but it was Christ they were being saved by even if they didn’t know him by that name. Several people mentioned C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, the part about Emeth who thought he was serving Tash but whose service Aslan counted for his own.
However, there was a strong minority of commenters who took the harder position that no, there really is no salvation outside of Christianity; all those dead Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus are in hell right now, which is tragic for them but those are the rules set out in scripture, period, end of story.
The other minority position that I remember from that thread is the one that says, well, on the one hand Jesus tells us that there is no salvation outside of him, so we have to believe that; but on the other hand it seems unfitting to the mercy of God that millions of people be condemned to hell simply because they never had a chance to hear the gospel; so we simply have to have faith that God has a way of making it right even though we can’t see what it could be. (This is essentially the answer that Dante puts in the mouth of one of the figures in Paradise, when his fictional self poses this question.)
So there is some variety of opinions on this question amongst the T19 commenters, at least based on that one sample.
Ross,
I don’t remember that thread, but the responses are not surprising.
I would only add that the position that I described is probably closer to “the other minority position” than it is to the “anonymous Christian” position usually associated with theologian Karl Rahner, if for no other reason than it puts the emphasis on the action of God rather than on the virtue or actions of the “anonymous” believer.
(Though, to be sure, it could be difficult to tell that by the way I briefly phrased the position.)
These things are sure: no person can commend himself to God – all stand equally and totally in need of the divine mercy; the religions are not paths to salvation (this does not exclude the salvation of other religionists, however, nor the possibility of truth in other religions); there is no salvation outside Jesus Christ, the only Name “under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved”; and that we are all great sinners, Christ is a great Savior, and God is a gracious God.
Nevertheless at some point divine action and human response intersect and we tie ourselves into theological knots when we try to over analyze this. God will let us reject Him. God will let us choose. God does reveal Himself through Scripture and in the form of Jesus and we can turn away.
So Christianity is exclusive. Scripture is clear that we are separated from God. God, through mercy and grace offers us a way back into relationship and has taked care of the sin porblem on the Cross. But Scripture is equally clear that we can reject that. And He clearly commands us to preach the salvation of Jesus to all and to work for others to acknowlege the Lordship of Christ.
The Great Commission does not say “No need to mention this to anyone because my death and resurrection saved the whole world regardless so you all can sit back and relax.”
So if Christian particularity bothers you, if acknowliging the one true Triune God as the only God and that Jesus is the only way into His presence then maybe you should reflect on why you want to be a Christian. God will not force you into relationship with Him.
And if you want to use the excuse that somewhere on some remote island or jungle valley there is some one who has not heard of Jesus, well let God worry about that. That is not our job. Our job as Christions is to witness to the truth to the ends of the earth.
John Wilkins:
[blockquote]#10 hakkatan avoids the problem: most evangelicals recognize that if one really believed Jesus was the only way to heaven, then most other people are going to hell, eternal damnation. It doesn’t make sense if God is merciful, loving and forgiving.[/blockquote]
God is merciful is merciful, loving, and forgiving — that is why he sent Jesus. He did not have to do anything. The human race had rebelled against him, and told him in effect, “You’re not the boss of us.” He could have simply left us alone, as he had every right to do. But he sent Jesus, to be THE way of forgiveness, an atoning sacrifice for our sin and our sinfulness. Through Jesus we are forgiven, and a new life and a new nature is implanted within us. There is no other way that God has provided.
That is why the Apostles were willing to die for the Gospel — it was the way of life, the only way of life. That is why so many missionaries leave the comforts of home and culture and pour their lives into sharing the news of God’s mercy in Christ — because they know that, apart from Christ, people are doomed to the natural consequence of that rebellion against God, which is to live without God.
#19 reminds me of the story told by Annie Dillard:
An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Inuit earnestly, “did you tell me?
Todd – I suppose you are correct, but I’m assuming that people don’t experience the historical facts you mention. They experience history now, and that is, in my view, the Christ. It bears analogy to Jesus, and it is crucial that we understand the life of Jesus as history rather than religion or myth (which is what I understand as Christianity just being another religion), but I don’t think the formal “name” works, unless we reduce Jesus to a kind of magick. Its as if we just say the word “Jesus” and we become transformed.
To me, it looks like witchcraft. Say the magic name, and boom, the lights go on. Is that the true faith?